Джон Макдональд - You Live Once

“Don’t look at me,” she whispered.

“But I like to look at you.”

“Please. I feel so strange.”

I kissed her and tried to hold her. She pushed my hands away.

“Go in the bathroom,” she whispered.

I took my clothes in, dressed in there. I thought as I walked by the gossamer pajamas, crumpled on the floor near my makeshift bed, that they looked forlorn, betrayed. After quite a while she tapped on the bathroom door and I came out. She was in her woolly yellow robe and her hair was combed. She wouldn’t look right at me.

I took her by the shoulders and shook her gently. “Toni! What’s the matter?”

“I... I feel ashamed.”

I tilted her chin up with my knuckles. “There’s no need for that. Kiss me goodmorning.”

She dutifully allowed herself to be kissed. But she still wouldn’t look at me. It wasn’t until after she was dressed that she seemed to regain self-respect.

“Don’t make me feel that it was a mistake,” I pleaded.

She glowed then. “It wasn’t, Clint darling. I know it wasn’t. But... well, if you want to know, I never woke up with a man before. I guess it’s stupid. I feel shy or something. And Clint...”

“What?”

“I don’t want to do this again until... afterward.”

“All right.”

She looked at me dubiously. “You aren’t cross?”

“You’re lovely, Toni.”

“I’ve got to go to work.”

“Your boss won’t be in today.”

She stopped the nonsense and gave me my orders: leave the door locked; not a sound while she was gone; don’t walk, the floor creaks; don’t run any water; don’t put the blinds up; don’t cough or sneeze; if you snore, don’t take a nap.

“Do I snore?”

She looked away. “I was going to stay awake and sort of... watch over you, but I fell asleep.”

She left and the long day began. I heard people moving around the house, someone using a vacuum cleaner. I began slowly to starve. I was empty from collar to knees. I was a hollow tree, with squirrels enlarging the hollow. As a desperate experiment I ate a Kleenex; it didn’t help a bit. I wished I could risk using the little radio to find out what they were saying about me. The dull, interminable minutes went by. I stood at the window and looked out the crack between blinds and frame and watched the infrequent cars and local delivery trucks go by. Next door an old man, scrawny and withered as a dead chicken, guided an asthmatic power mower back and forth across the May grass.

I thought about my darling. Globe of firm breast, and the flexing satin of haunch. Furnace mouth and cool shoulders. All alive in the whispering darkness, all alive and for me and forever.

And I thought of other women. They seemed poor things in retrospect — flaky skin and sour hair, raddled thigh and suet breast. Not like my darling. Not firm and proud and tall in her skin, like my darling.

He came at three-seventeen. I heard his voice in the hall, suave and easy. “I know this is unusual, Mrs. Timberland, but it’s work she brought home from the office and we need it today. She said it would be all right if you’d unlock the door and watch me to make certain I don’t steal anything.” He laughed and the woman laughed.

A key nibbled metallically at the lock and she said, “I can’t seem to get the key in.”

“Let me try, will you?”

The key I had left in the door was forced out of the lock. It fell noiselessly to the rug. I came out of my stupor too late to take refuge in the closet. The door swung open and Paul France smiled politely at me. The landlady, a worn woman with a muzzle like a boxer dog, stared at me in shock which turned quickly to outrage.

“What are you doing in my house?” she demanded.

France touched her shoulder gently. “Now, now, Mrs. Timberland. I’ll take care of this. I’ll see that he’s out of your house in five minutes. We can’t have this sort of thing, can we?”

He bobbed his head and smiled at her and came into the room and pulled the door shut. She stood out there for a few moments and then went down the hall walking with a very heavy tread.

Still smiling, he said, “A six-state alarm and you hole up two houses away. My goodness.” He made a clucking sound with his tongue.

“How did you find me?”

“Your Mr. Wills cooperated with Mr. Pryor and gave me the run of the plant. Including your office. When I began to paw through your desk, the highly decorative young lady became very incensed, too incensed. So I began to look at her more closely. Shall we say she had a fresh high bloom about her? A dewiness? That sort of Joan-of-Arc look young ladies get when they perform a great sacrifice? Once I got her address from your personnel section, I was almost positive. The key on the inside of the door was the clincher, Sewell.”

“What do we do now?”

“The fearless investigator takes you in, thus earning his fee.”

“Do you think I did it?”

“They think you did.”

I moved a little closer to him. I hoped I was being inconspicuous about it. He backed off a little, stopped smiling. “Please don’t try anything, Sewell. I can guarantee failure.”

I guess he could have guaranteed failure if his luck hadn’t been bad and mine hadn’t been very good. He made me stand in the doorway, my back to the room. I heard a faint creak and rustle and guessed that he was bending over to pick up the key. I swung my leg back hard. I did it with no anticipation of success, in the mood of a child kicking the wall when he’s been stood in a corner. There was a slight shock against my heel and a truly theatrical sound of falling. It was the same sound they use on radio after the ringing shot. I turned around. France lay on his face, his glasses a few feet from his head. Even as I looked at him, he grunted and moved his right arm. I picked up the key, went out in the hall, closed the door and locked it.

Mrs. Timberland was standing down in the hall, her arms folded, chin out. “Tell your friend she has to be out of my house tonight.”

I did not answer her. As I went out into the sunshine, I heard France begin to bang on the bedroom door. A grey sedan was parked in front of the house. I threw the room key into the shrubbery.

The world looked different to me. The new and special relationship with Toni had given me a great deal of optimism. False optimism. Up there in the room, with memory so bright and so recent, I had begun to feel that there was good will in the world, that Kruslov would listen, that all could be explained.

But I had left my confidence up in that room. Running down the stairs, I had planned to go turn myself in. That plan evaporated in the sunlight. A woman stared at me from her front porch, then turned and went into her house. I lengthened my stride. If I turned myself in, they would have all they needed. Every bit of it. The joy of a newfound love had affected my judgment. Toni had been brighter about it when she spoke of trying to get me away. I knew that I had to get myself away. I had about twenty dollars on me, a stubble of beard, and the clothes I walked in.

I decided that I would get out of town, somehow. I could contact Tory and he could mail cash to a general delivery address somewhere. I felt as I had in the side lot that night after Yeagger had been knocked out. All the houses had eyes and all the eyes watched me.

I would go far away from them, and later I could get in touch with Toni and she could come to me. I was in panic. My hands were sweaty. I walked as fast as I dared, turning corners not quite at random, heading southeast, knowing that I would hit a main route at the southeast corner of the city. I went through meager neighborhoods, passed candy stores thronged with school children. I turned my face away from traffic, and the impulse to keep glancing behind me was almost ungovernable.