Джон Макдональд - The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything

He walked back to Betsy. He stood beyond her line of vision and turned the world on. She turned and saw him and gasped. “This — this is something nobody could ever get used to! But the damned thing works!”

He looked toward the intersection. The light changed. The Navy truck started up and moved slowly away through the dusk. He looked over and saw the billowing of smoke against the dark sky. He heard a distant sound of sirens approaching.

“It worked,” he said.

“We came within an inch of getting murdered or fried and you stand there grinning like a moron! What’s the matter with you?”

“Murdered, fried or shot.”

“Shot?”

“You missed that part of it, Betsy dear.”

She looked at him with a haggard, accusing face. “And you carried me right past them?”

“Yes indeed.”

“And they just — stood there?”

“Like statues.”

She moved closer to him. “Could you have killed them?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t?”

He thought her mouth had an exceptionally ugly look. They were in a small park area sheltered from the flow of headlights and the blue glare of the mercury vapor lights on the avenue. Her damp stained orange coveralls smelled of smoke. Her hair was tangled and her face was smudged.

“I had that idea, to tell you the truth.”

“You fool! You do it again, you hear? Make everything stop. Go back aboard and kill them. Who could ever prove anything? Go kill both of them. They’ll never give up. They’ll never give up until they’re dead.”

He studied her. And he remembered how close he had come to doing just what she now suggested. Nothing would have ever been the same again. The watch, Bonny Lee, all would have been changed. And he would have lost one of the most precious attributes of this unique ability to make time stand still — the additive of wry mischief, of ironic joy. Bonny Lee had understood that instinctively. Murder would have turned the watch into a perpetual solemnity and a perpetual guilt — because, regardless of provocation, the owner of the watch was beyond the need to kill.

“Betsy dear, Charla and Joseph are too busy right now.”

“Busy!”

“Aunt Charla is sort of riding around enjoying the evening. And Joseph is making some new friends.”

“You act as if this is all some kind of a joke!” she said furiously.

He heard men shouting on the dock. The fire trucks arrived. He took Betsy by the arm and walked her away from there, staying in the shadows and on the darker sides of the streets. When they came to a shopping area where a cut-rate department store was open late, he left her in a shadowy place and went into the frozen silence and stillness of the store and found fresh clothing for himself, taking care to select the lightest weight sandals he could find. He changed, selected clothing for her, packed it into a lightweight suitcase and towed it on out. He realized he had been careful not to take anything that anyone was looking directly at. He was acquiring the habit of a basic ethic of using the time-stop. Do not frighten the innocent unnecessarily. With Charla and Joseph he had violated this concept. The sailors were the innocents, and he did not imagine they would seriously question the origin of the gift. And there was enough subjective phenomena in cocktail lounges to make objective magic almost unnoticeable.

When he returned to Betsy he did not bother to reappear in the same place and position. She started violently. They walked further into a small park. He opened the suitcase on a bench. She went behind bushes and changed to the cotton dress and Orlon cardigan he had brought her, and stuffed Charla’s sodden playsuit under a bush. At a drinking fountain under a street lamp he held the mirror he had brought her while she wiped the smudges from her face and used the hair brush he had brought her, and used the stolen lipstick.

He risked a cruising cab and had the driver stop a block away from the Hotel Birdline. She went in with the money he gave her and rented a room, using a name they had agreed upon. He loafed in the shadows for ten minutes, and then halted time and went into the hotel. He looked at the register and saw they had given her room 303. He went up the stairs. She had left the door ajar as agreed. When he materialized instantaneously in front of her, her leap of surprise was smaller than before. He closed the door and said, “You’re doing better, Miss Betsy.”

“I think I’m just too tired to react. What is the world like when you’re — doing that?”

“Absolutely silent. Red light. No motion anywhere. It’s like being in a strange kind of a dream.”

“Does it seem evil? Or is that a silly question.”

“It could be evil. I don’t think it’s a silly question. I guess it would depend on the person using it. I guess it would sort of — multiply whatever you are by ten. Because it’s absolute freedom. You can make your fantasies come true. And if your fantasies are — sick, then that’s the way you’ll use it. Maybe it’s just like any other kind of power. I haven’t really had time to think about the implications. And not much time now. You’ll be safe here and I have a girl to find.”

“Just any girl?”

“Not exactly.”

“Your face is dirty.”

“I’ll use guest rights on the shower.”

“Of course. Go ahead.”

He showered and put the stolen clothing back on. He reached into his pocket and found the watch gone. He ran out of the bathroom. She was sitting huddled on the edge of the bed. She held the watch out to him at arm’s length. Her eyes looked haunted. “I didn’t have the guts,” she whispered.

“What did you have in mind?”

“Please don’t be angry. I just wanted to try. But I couldn’t. Maybe — I was afraid of my own fantasies. They aren’t — particularly nice.” She lifted her chin with a kind of tired defiance. “I would have killed them.”

“I know.”

“For many many reasons. But you didn’t. So maybe you have the right to use that magic, and I don’t.”

“You had the sense not to try. That’s something.”

She stood up and sighed and moved into his arms. She turned her mouth up to him and he kissed her without passion.

“Will you come back here?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll leave money in case I can’t. I’ll phone at least.”

When she looked up at him her eyes seemed softer, more gray than green. There was a faint smell of smoke caught in that palomino hair. Her back was hard and slender under his hands. “I owe you lots,” she said. “And I think you are quite a guy. If you can make any use at all of a sort of neurotic but very grateful girl, and you want to come back here, feel free.” She pushed herself away. “Have I said something so terribly amusing?”

“I’m sorry. It isn’t you. It’s me. I was thinking of all the other nights I spent in this pleasure palace. It was just sort of ironic for the moment. Betsy, you are very tired and very sweet and very desirable.”

“Desirable in general. Nothing specific.”

“I’m sorry. Nothing specific.”

“Then I’m sorry too, because I do feel sort of specific.” She sighed and smiled and touched his check. “Go find your girl.”

Two blocks from the hotel he suddenly came upon a disguise which would render him completely invisible in nighttime Miami. It was a little past nine o’clock. He removed the disguise from a man who was in no condition to realize he was being robbed. Kirby donned the disguise and looked at his reflection in a store window. A comedy derby, a bright red plastic cane and a big round beribboned badge on which was printed “Eddie Beeler — Lubbock, Texas.” He lurched slightly, faked a soft hiccup and nodded at himself with satisfaction.