Agreement to Kill

by Peter Rabe

She didn’t answer, and any moment Keel was going to laugh.

  “She’s staying here,” said Spinner.

  Keel’s mouth came open but Spinner was looking at Ann. He could see nothing in her face.

  “What did you say? What did he say, Ann?” he heard Keel ask.

  She nodded her head slightly and said, “I’m staying here.”

  The best Keel could do at that moment was laugh. He roared himself up and down the scale a few times and got into his car as if he didn’t care one way or the other. The girl stepped back and Keel kicked the starter, while his laugh slowed to a wheeze.

  “Back to the farm,” he said; “back to the farm.” And then he added, “Anyway, Annie. I’ll be up tomorrow. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “I’ll see you,” she said, and watched him drive off.

  The girl and Spinner stood with the space between them where the car had been, and neither of them said anything.

  CHAPTER 17

  He squinted at the hill behind her and then looked down, without having seen anything.

  “Spinner,” a voice said from behind him, where Loma was under the tree.

  Spinner didn’t turn. He took his hands out of his pockets and walked toward the girl.

  “Spinner,” Loma said again.

  “In a minute,” he said. He stopped in front of the girl. “I don’t know you, Ann. But I didn’t like — I didn’t like what Keel was doing. I thought it was too rough,” he finished quickly.

  “It was,” she said. “Thank you.”

  He looked at her and gave her a short smile.

  “You don’t have anything with you. Clothes, or anything?”

  “That’s all right. He’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Yes.” He coughed once and said, “You understand, this doesn’t mean a thing, about tonight. If you want to go back to town,” and he waved at the car sticking out next to the cabin.

  “Yes, I know. It’s all right, though. I think I know some people up here.”

  “Oh?”

  “Spinner,” Loma called.

  “Sure. Don’t you know this place?” she went on.

  “My first time here.”

  “Most of the guests,” she said, “are from St. Louis. Like Keel.”

  “Oh.”

  “He wants you, I think.” She nodded in Loma’s direction.

  “Yes. Come along.”

  Loma had moved his chair but wasn’t able to get any further. A root was caught in one wheel. Spinner untangled it and when the wheelchair was free Loma pushed at the wheels with both hands to get away.

  The girl said, “Which way are you going?” and put her hands on the back of the chair.

  Loma looked up at her but kept turning the wheels. “I’m not going far. I can manage.”

  “The cabin?” she said.

  “Yes.” Loma looked straight.

  At the door Spinner had to lift the chair over the sill, and then Loma wheeled himself to the phone.

  “I’m going to order something to eat,” he said. “Do you want anything?”

  He was looking at Spinner.

  “Why don’t we go to the main house,” said Ann. “It’s cooler there.”

  When Loma looked at her Spinner noticed that she didn’t react to the stare in any way, as if his eyes and his manner — as if Loma himself were nothing different.

  “You’ve been here before,” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “Then you understand why some of the guests, like Spinner and I, don’t mingle.”

  “I know what this place is. That’s why you don’t have to stay out of sight Look across there.” She pointed out the window. “You know who’s playing checkers there, in front of that cabin?”

  “I’m not interested,” said Loma, and reached for the phone.

  “Suit yourself,” she said. “And I was going to push your chair all the way to the main house.”

  Loma, of course, didn’t react to the joke. He held the phone to his ear and said to Spinner, “There’s a menu on the dresser. Order something.”

  “I’m going to the main house.”

  “Just a moment,” said Loma into the phone. He covered the speaker with his hand and looked at Spinner. “You seem to forget,” he started but Spinner cut him short.

  “We’re not running any more. We made it here.”

  Loma didn’t answer. He didn’t understand Spinner’s remark, and when he realized that Spinner was one of those who thought that you run for a while and then rest, and then run for a while and then it is over, he dropped the argument because it wouldn’t do any good.

  Loma turned away and talked into the telephone.

  Spinner took Ann’s arm and led her out of the cabin.

  They had their food at a corner table in the big dining room, next to a window where a pine branch kept scraping against the screen. The sun was going behind the hill and it got dark suddenly. The pine branch started to get on Spinner’s nerves but he said nothing about it He looked out the window, then at his food, and out the window again.

  “You notice how it gets dark here?” she said.

  “Yeah. You’ve noticed it before?”

  “Yes. I’ve been here before.”

  “That’s right. You said that.”

  When they stopped talking he heard the pine branch again and he tried to think of something to say.

  “See anybody you know?”

  She stretched her neck and said, “I haven’t looked. No. I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe you don’t recognize them.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know who you know,” he said, and when he shrugged his shoulder he felt it ache.

  They ate for a while and then she said, “This man you’re with, who is he?”

  “His name’s Loma.”

  “I know. Keel mentioned it. Are you with Loma?”

  “With Loma? How do you mean?”

  “You know. Work together.”

  “I just met him. I don’t think he really works with anybody.”

  She took a sip of water and then she licked her wet lip. Spinner had seen her do it before; it must be a habit, he thought.

  “You know,” she said, “I had the same kind of feeling. He doesn’t even look as if he is in a racket.”

  “He’s got to be,” said Spinner, trying to end the topic. “Why else would he be here?”

  “What I mean is,” she went on, “whatever he does he doesn’t look as if he works it like a racket. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes. He doesn’t”

  Ann didn’t say anything else because with some people she knew it wasn’t good to ask certain things, but she thought from Spinner’s answer that he knew Loma better than he had said.

  “You want more coffee?” Spinner asked, but the remark didn’t do what he had meant it to do; a casual thing to say, to make him feel casual. It must be because they had talked about Loma, as if Loma still bothered him. Why should he? He had set it up for Spinner the way Spinner had wanted it, and even tomorrow, perhaps, they would be through with each other. And Spinner would have his wish and maybe go to St. Louis.

  “Why did you talk to him the way you did?” he suddenly asked. “You expect a cold bastard like that to go for an ordinary kind of joke?”

  “Talk how? I don’t remember …”

  “Why’d you push his chair, for instance. You think he liked it?”

  A waiter came up to take the dishes away and when they had been cleared she put her elbows on the table.

  “Why not? He’s a cripple.”

  Spinner laughed, a hard sound. He leaned over the table and said, “You know what kind of a cripple he is?” and then he frowned, trying to think of a way to express it.

  “I don’t know what kind,” she said. “Should that make a difference?”

  Spinner made a sound that could mean anything, and leaned back in his chair. He didn’t want to think about Loma. He shook a cigarette out of his pack and offered it to
the girl.

  “Here. You smoke?”

  “Sure.” She took one.

  “I don’t know if you smoke, I don’t know anything. What else do you do?”

  She blew out smoke and smiled. The topic meant nothing to her and she would go through it with practice.

  “I used to be a model. Sometimes I model.”

  “Is that so?”

  She laughed when she saw his face, because he was stuck. She had a number of remarks for that situation.

  “I’m a whore, because it pays better,” she said, and then she saw that it hadn’t been the right choice. He didn’t take up her tone.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s got to do more for you to stick with it.” He looked at her. “Doesn’t it?”

  “What makes you think I’m going to stick with it?” she said, and this time she had lost her easy way of looking at him and started to rub her eye as if smoke had gotten into it. She rubbed hard and the exaggerated motion made her feel angry. “How would you know?” It came out mean. Then she controlled herself and tried to make it more superficial. “Perhaps you’ve known a lot of them,” she said, but she didn’t feel light about it “Intimately,” she added.

  “No,” he said, and then, “Intimately?” He covered himself by making a laugh and asked, “Can you?”

  “How do I know? I don’t remember the subject ever having come up before.”

  It struck Spinner that this was like the time with Keel, when Keel dug at her and she had talked back at him sharp enough, but all of it surface. He felt again that he didn’t like this to happen to her.

  “I didn’t mean to pry at you,” he said and tried to smile so the whole thing would sound easy, “about why you — why you do this work.”

  “Money,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “I don’t know why we’re even talking about it,” she said.

  He said nothing for a while but she saw he was thinking about it. She hadn’t said the right thing again and it made her feel uneasy.

  He looked up at her and said, “I know why. Just a while back, you know, we went to bed together.”

  “That’s right” She reached for another cigarette and lit it herself. “And this is the rehash.”

  “I don’t know. Anyway, that wasn’t money. You knew that ahead of time.”

  “I make mistakes.”

  “Yeah. And it never got anywhere.”

  She had no wish to talk any more and tried to think of something else, almost anything else, even looked across the room to see someone she knew, perhaps, when she heard herself saying it anyway.

  “Maybe that’s why I keep trying,” she said.

  She wished he would say something now to distract them, but he didn’t and she kept her head down while she stubbed out her cigarette because that way she wouldn’t see how he looked or what he was doing.

  After a moment she heard him shift in his chair.

  “Someone to see you, I think,” Spinner said.

  She looked up and saw someone she hardly remembered which was the best, she thought, because it was more familiar.

  CHAPTER 18

  One was called Joe and the other was Phil and they had a girl with them whom they all called Dickie. The one Ann knew from before was Phil, who didn’t look much different from his buddy Joe, both feeling on top of the world and much younger than they acted. They invited Ann and Spinner to have a drink at the bar and later, maybe, they’d think of doing something else though who the hell cared what happened later. They couldn’t talk to each too well sitting side by side at the bar so they went up to Phil’s room on the second floor of the main house. The girl Dickie took off her shoes first thing and Ann took hers off too while the men dropped their jackets. Spinner kept his on because his shirt was so dirty.

  “Come on,” said Dickie, “let’s make a racket. I can’t stand those damn crickets outside and they get louder when it gets dark.”

  “How’s this?” said Joe and started to sing a loud, dirty song. Dickie knew the refrain and made harmony while Ann laughed a lot and held her glass out for Phil to fill.

  “You’re the one never says ‘when,’ ain’t you, Annie?” and Phil gave the bottle an upside down tilt, spilling whisky over the glass and over Ann’s arm. They all laughed like crazy and Ann kept shouting it tickled when Phil grabbed her hand with the glass and started to lick up her bare arm.

  “That Phil!” said Dickie, “just like in the song. You got more verses, Joe, any more?”

  “The rest I’m too young for,” said Joe, and slapped Dickie’s rear.

  “What about me?” said Dickie. “I’m younger than any of you.”

  That meant more laughter and Joe slapping her rear and yelling, “You can’t prove it by me. Lookit that. You can’t prove it by me!”

  Spinner drank faster than any of them and tried to get into the spirit of things. Like a nasty pup a voice kept yapping and yapping at him that this was the way when you switch and this was the new life which had its good sides to it, like now.

  “Jake,” said Ann and stood close to him. “Let’s you and me dance while they sing,” because Dickie had started one of her own and the two men were chiming in at the right places.

  “The hell with that,” said Spinner. “I’m getting drunk.”

  “Here, Jake,” yelled Joe, “take it” He waved the bottle at Spinner.

  “You trying to make that boy pass out on the floor?” said Dickie.

  “The faster the better,” said Joe. He laughed loud when he said it and gave Ann’s arm a loud slap. “Huh, Annie?”

  Spinner thought that he’d get used to the tempo after a while and even gave Ann a slap too.

  “And another thing,” Joe was saying, “when it comes to …”

  “It won’t come to that,” said, Dickie, but neither of them knew what they were talking about so they took a long pull from the other bottle and then Joe started saying the same thing all over again. “When it comes to that, and even that — ”

  Spinner felt the pressure behind his eyes and gave his bottle to Phil.

  “You take it,” he said. “You pass out.”

  “No,” said Phil, “please. Be my guest I’ll join you later.”

  “Join what?” Dickie called from the bed. “You talking about your double-joint jaw again? Jake, let Phil show you his double-joint jaw”

  Phil put his hands into his mouth and then, without any noise, his jaw ended up at a crazy, undershot angle which shortened his face and seemed to make his nose very flat.

  Dickie squealed at the sight and said, “I can’t stand it. Hang it together again.”

  “I can’t,” said Phil, without moving the jaw back into place. “I gotta pass out It don’t work any other way.”

  Dickie jumped up from the bed and ran over to Phil. She hugged him around the middle and kissed the side of his neck.

  “You’re not even warm,” said Phil, in that peculiar murmur the jaw gave him. “Do it again.”

  Spinner shook his head a few times and worried about not having fun like the others. And here was a game that was going to include everything. Part of this game ought to be slugging each other, he thought, and started to look at Phil’s jaw with interest. Ann was looking too and started to rub the sides of her face. Then she turned away and sat on the bed with Joe. They made room for Dickie, who flung herself on her back, and started to moan, “Why do I keep asking him that I can’t stand it — ”

  This time the thing did make a snap, giving Spinner a start, and Phil looked all right again.

  “It starts hurting after a while,” he said to Spinner. “So I always put it back in. What happened to Annie?”

  “On the bed,” said Spinner.

  “You bring her up?” asked Phil. “She’s with you?”

  Spinner knew what he was going to answer but he didn’t answer immediately.

  Ann said from the bed, “No. He’s with Loma.”

  Joe and Phil looked at each other and
nobody talked.

  Then Phil, to be doing something, picked up his glass from the dresser and looked at the ice cube.

  “Gee,” he said. “You know Loma?”

  “Sure.”

  “You mean — you mean you’re working with him?”

  “Christ,” said Phil. “He even takes on apprentices?”

  “No,” said Spinner. “I just met him.”

  “Who’s Loma?” Dickie wanted to know.

  “You mean you never heard of Loma?” Phil made it sound big. “He’s a trigger man.”

  “Yeah. For who?”

  “Whom,” said Joe.

  “Nobody. He’s like calling in a consultant”

  “So why you acting all scared?” said Dickie. “No consultant would be looking for you. For you they’d hire themselves some kind of broken-down pug who — ”

  “Will you stop talking like that?”

  “I’m sorry, sweet. I didn’t mean.”

  Phil shrugged and grinned at Dickie. Then he looked at everybody in the room with an expectant smile, but the mood had gone away. Phil shrugged again.

  “We’re not scared, you understand,” said Joe. “It’s just, you know — you talk about Loma and you talk about something different You just hear about Loma. You don’t know him.”

  “That’s right,” said Spinner.

  He put his glass down and looked over at Ann. She didn’t see him. She was fixing a button on the front of her blouse.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll see you guys around.”

  There was no more party and he went to the door. He didn’t even look back. When he was through the door and tried pulling it shut, the knob came out of his hand and he turned. He stood in the hall and Ann was closing the door, half leaning against it and holding both hands on the knob behind her.

  “I want to go with you,” she said. “Didn’t you ask me?”

  CHAPTER 19

  They walked side by side at first but after a while Spinner took Ann’s arm and they walked closer together. It was dark under the trees and they kept their bearings by looking up at the sky where the trees stood apart over the road.

  “I wanted to ask you,” said Spinner, “back at the brawl, but I know you so little.”

  “That’s right,” she said and laughed. Spinner couldn’t see her face.