Madball
Page 19
Miss Trixie still hadn't started to undress. But she'd finished mixing the drinks and she was kneeling in front of the suitcase, the one that was open and had the shoe box in it, and she moved the clothes until the shoe box showed. She picked up the shoe box and took the lid off, standing up now and looking in and reaching in, moving some of the bills around.
She shouldn't do that. It was his money and not hers, and if she looked at it and touched it like that she might change her mind about running away with it.
Maybe it would be a good idea to scare her so she wouldn't do that. He remembered the gun in his pocket. Maybe he should scare her with it and let her know he had a gun so she'd be afraid to try to run away with his money.
He took the gun out of his pocket as he stepped down off the stool. He pulled back the hammer with his thumb - because the click it made wouldn't be heard over the roar of the running water now anyway - like the man at the shooting gallery had showed him how to do.
He opened the door and stepped out.
Miss Trixie jumped up, and from the look on her face he knew that he was scaring her all right. She backed away from him. She dropped the box of money and the money came out of the box and made a pile of money on the floor, a pile of green and white paper money.
And she took another step back and he decided he didn't want to scare her too much. He loved her and he didn't want her to look at him like that.
He said, "I ain't going to hurt you, Miss Trixie. I just want to show you that I-"
The gun went off in his hand.
Why, his finger had just been resting on the trigger; it hadn't been pulling hard like he'd had to pull on the trigger of the revolver at the shooting gallery!
The noise it made was awful in that little room.
But the look on Miss Trixie's face was even more awful. And suddenly her head and shoulders bent forward and she fell down on the floor. She jerked and rolled over, her head toward him.
Sammy let go of the gun and it fell on the floor too. He said, "I'm sorry, Miss Trixie, I didn't mean-"
She didn't move or answer. But maybe he hadn't really shot her. Maybe the noise had just scared her and she'd fainted.
Sammy got down on the floor by her and put her head in his lap. He saw now that there was a spreading red spot on her pretty green dress right between her breasts. And suddenly blood, a lot of blood, came out of her mouth; Sammy whimpered.
Her face wasn't pretty any more and Sammy looked away from it. He saw Miss Trixie's purse where it had fallen and spilled its contents. The handful of bills he had given her had come out of it and they were lying right next to the bills that had come out of the shoe box. And a book of matches had come out of her purse and was lying there too.
There was hammering on the door of the room and yelling outside in the corridor and somebody trying the knob and somebody yelling to somebody else to call the police, and Sammy was staring at the pile of money and the book of matches and thinking that now Mr. Evans would get the money back, and Sammy reaching for the matches and striking one and touching it to the money, and flames going up as the money started to burn, and Sammy moving more and more of the five and ten and twenty and fifty and hundred dollar bills onto the fire and Miss Trixie's eyes glazing over and more hammering on the door and yelling and the roar of water still running in the bathroom and the flames getting higher and higher and prettier and prettier and hotter and hotter and brighter and brighter.