Chance Elson

by Ballard, Todhunter, 1903-1980

  She had stalled, getting him out of the apartment finally. She liked Red, liked him better than most of the people she had met, but she was not at all certain she wanted to marry him. That had been when she phoned Chance.

  After phoning him, hearing him say he had to go to Reno, she had hung up slowly and stared from the apartment window toward the east where the sky was just beginning to gray into morning.

  She was trying to be practical. She knew that in his own way Chance loved her, but she realized now that with Chance she would always be the second thing he thought of, the second to be considered. That wasn't enough for her.

  Perhaps it would be better for all of them if she married Tooker. Red needed her, he would share his business problems with her. The band couldn't run smoothly without her help.

  So she had said Yes when Tooker had stumbled back into the apartment at eight o'clock in the morning. That he had

  been partly drunk had not appalled her. That he had cried the first night after the marriage when they had gone to bed had not frightened her. She had known from the first that he was a small boy who emotionally would never grow up.

  The shock of discovery came after they returned to Los Angeles. They were at loose ends, no booking in sight for at least three weeks, and Red was restless. He wandered around town like a tramp dog. It was diuring one of his absences that Judy found out about the heroin.

  The band's drummer showed up at the apartment one morning, looking for Red. He himg around, pacing the room nervously.

  "Sure you don't know where Red is?"

  "I haven't the slightest idea."

  "Or when he'll be back?"

  "He may not be back until evening."

  The man scrubbed one hand across his eyes. "I can't wait that long. I gotta have a fix."

  "Fix?"

  "Horse, heroin, dope."

  She knew that several of the boys in the band used dope. She did not like the idea, but Red had explained to her that a lot of musicians used it. There was something about the profession, the long hours, the grinding schedules, that apparently led to addiction.

  She said, "Red wouldn't have that stuff around here."

  The man growled something, then tramped into the bathroom. She followed, angry, to find him rummaging through the cabinet.

  His sigh of relief was audible. He turned with a box in his hand, opening it to expose the small white-paper parcels.

  She said, "Let that alone. Those are vitamin shots."

  He got a funny look on his face, then laughed sourly. "Honey, I've been on the same kind of vitamins a long time."

  She turned then and fled bhndly into the bedroom, closing and bolting the door. There could be only one answer. Red had hed to her. Red had purposely given her heroin. The thought stunned her.

  Judy had always had a temper, but now her control was 250

  wiped away, her rage deadly. If she had had a gun, she would have killed Tooker when he came home.

  '*You bastard." She stood before him. "What in hell made you do a thing like that? You're on the stuff yourself."

  He nodded miserably.

  How could she have lived with a man without noticing little things? She had known Red was also taking shots, but she had believed these were Hke her vitamins. "God, what a stupid bitch I am."

  "Judy." He reached out a hand appealingly toward her.

  "Don't touch me." She was blazing. "If you ever touch me again I'll kill you."

  Tooker seemed to shrink. Judy turned and stalked around the room. She had to move. She had to let the rage escape somehow or she would explode. "God, oh my God."

  "Judy, I . . ."

  She swung back to him. Her fury now was mingled with a wordless despair. Judy Liller. She'd been so proud of being Judy Liller. So proud, and now she felt . . . unclean. God, what would she do? What would she do? Panic cHmbed through her. She stilled it with an effort of will. She had never gone to pieces in her life. She had faced crises before and she would face this one.

  The thought steadied her and she said in a more normal tone, "I can't imderstand it. Red. You don't hate me, do you? Why should you do this to me?"

  Her words broke him. "It was Cellini," he said. "Cellini owns the Shaw agency. It was CeUini all the way."

  She got the full story out of him, not in sequence, but in small bits, and she stared at him, hardly believing her ears.

  "You mean you married me simply because that gangster told you to?"

  Tooker squirmed. "Jeese, chick, it wasn't exactly like that "

  "And you dehberately put me on heroin because CeUini told you to." She was finding this harder and harder to believe. "Why?"

  "He would cut me off, no more horse. He'd tell the pushers. I gotta have it, hun-bun. I gotta have it or I die."

  "And why should Cellini do this to me?"

  "He hates you, chick, hates your brother. The guy's a monster, a monster, I tell you. He's downright mean."

  This she knew. Anger was a deep well within her, but it had quieted now, not directed at Tooker. To be mad at Red was to be mad at a will-o'-the-wisp. He had no substance.

  "I'm leaving."

  He gasped. It had not occmred to him that she would walk out. "The band, the band, hun, it needs you."

  "To hell with the band. I'll get a divorce."

  "Vegasr

  She hadn't gotten that far yet. Vegas. She pictured Chance seeing her as she was now. Doc, and Dutch, and Joe. She cringed from the thought. Reno? But they would hear that she had gone to Reno. They would not understand. They would be hurt, and she had hurt them enough.

  "Vegas," she said.

  "I'll find you a pusher. You can't just walk off the stuff, Idd. You can't."

  "I'll quit." Her chin was set. "I'll stop if it kills me."

  Red Tooker shook his head sadly. This much he knew. When you were carrying a monkey, you didn't shed it easily.

  "Get smart, him-bun. Get smart. Maybe you shake it, maybe you go to a place and they give you the cure, but it's no breeze. You need it. A junkie always needs it. I'll find you a pusher."

  He found her a pusher, a greasy little man whom Judy despised. She was in Vegas. She had come over without letting anyone know. She had gotten herself an apartment. Not until she was settled and knew that she had herself under control would she see Chance.

  She would get her divorce. She would go on working imtil she had money enough, then she would find a private sanitarium and take the cure. She was no longer kidding herself. She knew it was not going to be easy, but she'd lick it. By God, she'd lick it.

  On her second Monday in Vegas she put on a gay blouse, long sleeved. She always wore long sleeves now to cover the

  telltale needle marks on her arm. She got a cab and rode out the Strip.

  She hardly recognized the stretch of desert highway. Motor courts and small businesses were springing up Hke mushrooms after a rain.

  The Desert Queen was a skeleton of steel girders, their black framework strange against the desert sky. Piles of material littered what would be the lawn and patio, and bulldozers chuffed across the rear of the property, turning it into a nine-hole golf course.

  She saw Chance's Ford parked between two piles of lumber and paid off her driver, then walked across the dust of the broken groimd, feeling excitement creep up through her.

  She climbed over some scaffolding, came across the sunken hollow where the concrete of the porch had not yet been poured, through the opening that would be the front door, and into the space which would be the entrance lobby.

  Chance stood in the middle of the vacant space, alone. She knew a rush of warm feeling that she had never experienced before, as if the mere sight of him wiped away the horror in which she had been living.

  He started to turn and she said, "Chance.*'

  For an instant it was as if they were alone in the world, as if there was no sound aroimd them. They failed to hear the sharp staccato thump of the riveters, the snarl of the bulldozers and trucks, the calls o
f the hurrying workmen.

  He came toward her sure-footedly over the rough-laid floor. "Judy. Darling." She was in his arms and his lips were hot against hers, against her cheek and throat. "Oh, Judy/*

  She had never heard so much feeling in his voice. "I had to lose you to know how much I wanted you."

  Her hands were behind his back, pressing him to her, holding him tight as if afraid the moment would slip away. "Chance."

  He seemed to come to. His mind reasserted its control. His grip about her lessened and he held her away, saying in an unnatural voice. "I forgot about Tooker. . . ."

  "IVe left him."

  He stared at her, seeing the slight hoUowness of her cheeks, 253

  the deep shadows under her eyes, which even make-up failed to mask. "J^^Yj what did he do to hurt you?" The note in his voice made her afraid.

  She gripped his arms, hard, trying to make her smile convincing, trying to make her voice easy. If she had ever thought of telling him what had happened, she knew now she could never teU him. He would go out and kill both Tooker and Cellini.

  She had a steady hatred of Cellini that nothing would now destroy. But Tooker, to kiU Tooker for what he had made of her would be like wiping out a thoughtless child for breaking a window.

  "Red Tooker did nothing to me. I made a mistake. I shouldn't have married him."

  "I made the mistake." His hands tightened again on her shoulders. "If I had come to Los Angeles when you asked me, you wouldn't have married him."

  Her impulse was to lie, to save him this, but meeting his eyes her resolution died. He bent and kissed her again and she thought that if he had once kissed her this way she would never have gone to Hollywood. The strength was out of her. It was all she could do to stand.

  "Do you have to stay here? Could we ride out someplace and talk?"

  "Of course." He let her go, crossed the future lobby and called to one of the foremen. "Tm going into town. I'll be back this afternoon."

  He led her out to the car. "Where would you like to go?"

  She considered. "The observation point, above the dam."

  "It'll be hot."

  "I love it. I don't think I've been really warm since I left the desert."

  "When did you get in?"

  She hesitated. "About ten days ago."

  "Ten days . . ." the car almost went oflF the road as he twisted to look at her. "Where have you been?"

  "I've got an apartment, oflF Charleston."

  "You've got an apartment? But why didn't you come back to the ranch? Joe wiU never forgive you."

  She couldn't explain that she had not dared come to the ranch, that Doc might recognize her trouble, that she had to be alone.

  "Things have changed, Chance. I'm a big girl now, and that house hasn't much room."

  He smiled and shrugged. They took the left Y across the railroad, drove through the tree-Hned streets of Boulder City and on down the twisting grade which led to the lake and the dam below. At the turnoff for the observation point, he took the left road and pulled out into the wide parking place.

  They sat looking up the lake across the wide beach toward Vegas Wash.

  "Judy?"

  "Yes?"

  He grasped her shoulders and turned her so that she faced him. "Will you marry me as soon as your divorce comes through?"

  This she had been afraid of. She caught his arms, partly to hold him away from her, trying desperately to think, afraid he would kiss her, afraid that the emotion weUing up through her would make speech impossible.

  "Chance, please hsten. I need time to think, time to readjust myself. I . . ."

  She saw the filmlike mask close over his eyes, blanking out expression, shutting her away from him.

  She almost shook him. "Don't do that."

  "Don't do what?"

  "Shut me out. Hide your thoughts from me. You used to do that when I was a girl, and it frightened me. It made me feel that I couldn't reach you, that I couldn't understand you or make you understand me."

  "I'm sorry, I . . ." He was puzzled. It was something he did without being conscious of doing it.

  She leaned forward then, raising her face for his kiss. She couldn't let him pull away from her now, just when she had to make him understand.

  Her hps were against his, moving so that the meaning came as much through contact as through hearing. "I want to marry you more than anything in the world, but I've got

  some things to straighten out. I have to be sure in my own mind that I can be the land of wife I want to be, the kind of wife you need."

  He held her away so that he could look at her. **What is it, your work? Your singing?"

  She lied to him. She could not tell him that she would not marry him until she was certain in her own mind that she had broken with dope once and for all. She could not admit to him yet that her association with Tooker, the one-night stands, the constant quarreling of the band, the inquisitive hands of the bookers, the passes she had been constantly called upon to avoid, had disillusioned her with a career in the entertainment world, that now she wanted to come back to the ranch, never to leave it again, to raise her chickens and pigs, to be with Chance, to have a family.

  "You can marry me and still keep on," he pressed. *1 wouldn't like it, but I can't make the rules and I don't want to. You're a person. You deserve your chance as much as I do."

  She squeezed his arm. "Just give me a httle time. Just don't push me too hard. Let me forget a few things I would rather not remember. Be patient. Chance, be patient."

  He would be patient. He was so glad to have her at home. He took her out to the ranch for supper, and she had a difficult time explaining to Joe why she could not move into her old room.

  Joe was not happy about it, but Judy fell into the habit of spending the afternoons with him. Her presence affected them all. For months Doc had come home only one or two nights a week. Now he made a point of being at the ranch whenever he knew Judy would be there.

  Chance was still busy, but he had visibly relaxed. He and Judy discussed the furnishings for the hotel and he took her decisions over those of the decorators.

  The hotel moved forward rapidly. And then, three weeks after Judy had come home, she stepped into the house and knew that something serious had happened.

  Chance was sitting by himself, having a drink. This was imusual. He seldom drank alone. "What is it?"

  "John Kem died this afternoon. They phoned me from Reno."

  She had met Kem only twice, but she felt that she had known him well. Yet all she could think of was her concern for Chance.

  "What does this mean to you?"

  He said heavily, "Get her a drink, Joe. Get me another one.

  Joe turned toward the kitchen, and as she watched him he moved with a kind of halting step. Joe was getting old, and his eyes had taken too much rosin in his fighting days.

  She repeated her question. "What does it mean to you?**

  "That I hadn't even thought of. The only thing I know is that I've lost the best friend a man ever had."

  She was at his side in a moment, on her knees beside the chair. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it the way it sounded."

  *1 know you didn't." He put out a hand to ruflSe her soft hair. "I know you didn't. I'm flying north in an hour." He broke off to accept the drink Joe brought. "J^^t hope, sweetheart, that we can do half as much for this state as John did."

  She had the impulse to ask him to let her go north with him. He was hard hit. He should not be alone, but the idea was not practical. She stood by while he packed his bag, and then drove him to the airport. At the gate he kissed her gently.

  John Kern's funeral was one of the largest that the state had ever seen. Chance rode to the cemetery with Mrs. Kem. He rode there at her request. He had gone out to the house as soon as he landed in Reno.

  He found her composed, sitting quietly on the terrace, looking out toward the river at the foot of the garden. She thanked him for coming and motioned him to one of the lawn chairs. "
I'm very glad you're here."

  She reached across to squeeze his arm gently. "Will you ride in the car with me tomorrow? There's no one else I want. John looked on you almost as a son. He never said

  so, but I knew. He showed little feeling for most people. He was not outwardly a sentimental man."

  The procession winding from the chapel on the hill to the cemetery was more than a quarter of a mile long. Chance had not filed past the casket with the others. He preferred to remember Kern as he had last seen him.

  He rode back to the house with Mrs. Kern and stayed, helping to ward off the horde of people who came to pay their respects. It was after eight before he retiuned to his hotel room. The phone rang. He looked at it, tempted not to answer, but it might be Judy.

  It was a man's voice. "This is Judge Wellman, one of John Kem*s lawyers."

  Chance said, "Yes," mechanically.

  "I was afraid you'd get away before I had a chance to talk to you."

  "I'm going back on the morning plane."

  "Could you see me for a few minutes tonight? It's important."

  Chance hesitated. "All right."

  Wellman was there in an hour, a small man with a bald spot and a fringe of gray hair which he allowed to grow too long. He had the pleasant face of an aging cupid. Chance had met him twice, once with Kern and once at the funeral.

  "This is hardly the time or place for a business discussion," Wellman said, "but because your hotel is in the middle of construction, and you have already appHed for a further loan I thought it wise to see you before you got away. You understand of course that with his death the agreement between you and John is canceled, that the estate cannot fiuther guarantee your loans?"

  If the floor had suddenly collapsed under his feet. Chance could not have been more startled. "Why not?"

  Wellman said, "I'm personally aware of the agreement John made, that he would back you to whatever amount was needed, but it was verbal as you know, nothing on paper."