Judge Me Not

by John D. MacDonald

  She nodded. He paid the check. She had a small overnight bag on the bench beside her. He carried it out, placed it on the back seat of the car, held the car door for her. As he got behind the wheel he said, “Shall I leave the top down?”

  “Please,” she said. She took her hat off. Her hair was a cap of brown curls. When they drove up out of the valley the last rays of the setting sun touched her hair and brought out red touches that were like hidden flame.

  “Teed?”

  “Yes, Barbara.”

  “What do you think of pacts?”

  He grinned. “Diplomatic, suicide? What color?”

  “Pull over and stop for a minute. Let’s whip up a pact.”

  He stopped the car, turned to face her, his left arm resting on the top of the wheel, right arm along the seat back. She turned in the seat to face him, and all the light had gone out of her blue eyes. They looked dead, long buried.

  “It is a standard gambit, Teed, that sooner or later you will ask me how I got into the oldest profession. Men seem to have a compulsion to ask that question. So, let’s have a pact. Don’t ask me, and you won’t make it necessary for me to invent some tragic song and dance just to satisfy your curiosity. Teed, just take me for… granted.”

  “Any pact involves a concession on both sides, Barbara. I think I probably would have asked you. Now I won’t. But you have to agree to something too. You have to promise not to pretend to any emotion or any excitement that isn’t genuine.”

  “Aren’t you being stupid? Aren’t you cheating yourself, Teed?”

  “How so?”

  “I’m as cold as those monsters they dig out of glaciers. You’re the first… customer I’ve ever told that to. Now that I’ve said it, I think maybe you better take me back to the hotel. I don’t want to cheat you.”

  “I’d rather keep on with it, Barbara, and have each of us keep our side of the pact. Maybe this will be a little platonic jaunt into the country. I really don’t care, one way or the other.”

  “Then don’t pay me until I ask you to,” she said harshly.

  “It’s a deal, Barbara.”

  Her smile came slowly. She rested her cheek for a moment against the back of his hand. “Drive the car, mister.”

  He drove into the first village just as the market was about to close. She came in with him and they selected steaks and frozen vegetables. He was amused by the way she watched the meat scale as the steaks were weighed.

  Teed carried the bag of groceries out. It was cooler in the hills, so he put the top up.

  “Barbara, a confession. Willing to listen?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ve got a devious motive for taking you to the camp. I want you to do something for me. When we leave, I want the camp to look as though you had been there. Lipstick on the towels, bobby pins on the floor, nail polish on the bathroom shelf.”

  It was too dark to see her face. “Thanks for being honest.”

  “You’ll do it?”

  “Of course, Teed.”

  “Then there’s no question of my not paying you, of course. I’m paying you for agreeing to leave your imprint on the place.”

  “If you say so.” She was silent for a few minutes. “You’re using me to make someone jealous, I suppose?”

  “No, Barbara.”

  “Then you’re using me to cover up the traces of someone else. That’s the only other answer. Probably some righteous wife who can’t manage to restrict it to her own bed.”

  “Don’t be so bitter, Barbara.”

  “Why not? Aren’t professionals in any field bitter about amateur competition?”

  “Please don’t ever tell anyone what I asked you to do.”

  She laughed flatly. “That’s funny. You said that as though you believe you can actually trust me.”

  “Strangely enough, I do.”

  She rested her fingers lightly on his arm. “Teed, we’ve got to stop hacking at each other. Got any ideas?”

  “Sure. Try this idea for size. You’re a girl I’ve known for years. I’ve talked you into a picnic and a moonlight swim, and we’re telling each other that’s all there’s going to be. But I have some pretty advanced ideas, and you’re wondering just how hard you’re going to fight for your honor. O.K.?”

  “Gosh, I don’t know whether I like that game or not.”

  “You’ll love it. Say, remember old Albert?”

  “Albert?”

  “Sure. The guy you stood up so you could go on the sleigh ride with me. You remember him!”

  “Oh, Albert! The one with the pimples. The one that looked like a startled owl. Whatever happened to him?”

  “He’s got a job sitting on public buildings to scare away the pigeons. Making a big success of it, too.”

  “I always knew Albert was going places. I just knew it!” she said.

  She moved so close to him that her thigh was warm against his. She threw back her head and laughed with delight. In the onrushing darkness of the mountain road her laughter was young, warm, heartbreakingly vulnerable.

  They discussed the mythical mutual acquaintances of their imaginary past, and then he slowed for a familiar narrow lane, shifted into second, finding to his relief that there was no car there, meaning that Rogale had finished, had left.

  She carried the bag of groceries and he took the overnight case. “Better wait at the foot of the steps until I get some lights on, Barbara.”

  “Doesn’t the air smell wonderful up here? I’m going to be hungry as a wolf.”

  As he had hoped, Armando Rogale had left the key in the door. He found the light switch. She walked in, put the groceries on the drain board, turned and smiled at him. Once again they had become cautious strangers, tasting their reaction to each other in this new environment.

  Chapter Six

  Teed sensed her uncertainty. “It’s—quite cozy,” she said hesitantly.

  “For guests,” he said, “I have to give up the master bedroom. You will note that it also serves as the living room, dining room and rumpus room. Come here.”

  He took her over, opened the door onto a bedroom so tiny that the double bed almost filled it. He said, “This is my bedroom, and I shall give it up as a dressing room as soon as I get swimming trunks on.”

  “Hey, did you mean that about a moonlight swim? I saw the moon coming up but… say, isn’t that lake cold?”

  “Still contains heat from the summer. It’s just the air that’s cold. I don’t suppose you have a swim suit.”

  She frowned. “No. But the undies are nylon. They’ll dry fast. We going to have a fire?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, go put on your trunks. And then go get in the lake. Those steps I saw when you turned on the light. They go down to the water?”

  “Down to a dock. You can dive off it.”

  “If I get up the nerve.”

  “I’ll put you in, if you start to chicken out.”

  He changed to shorts in the small bedroom, grinned at her as he went through the living room and out the door. The night wind was frigid. He trotted down the steps, wasted no time getting into the water. It took his breath at first, but it was much warmer than the air. The moon was above the southern horizon, its gold paling to silver blue. Wind ripples lapped against the oil drums on which the dock floated.

  When he saw her coming down the steps, he swam in toward the dock. His eyes were used to the moonlight and he saw that she was beautifully constructed, not in a classic way, but in the way made believable only through the efforts of the dreamers who draw the women for gas station calendars. Long smooth limber legs joined sweetly to a torso so short-waisted as to barely escape being out of proportion. Breasts so high, so widely spaced, so firmly heavy that they added a measure of frailty to slim shoulders, to the slenderness of waist.

  “Teed, where are you? My t-t-teeth sound like a Spanish dance.”

  “Dive in and get it over with.”

  “One, t-t-two, th-th-three.” She slant
ed off the dock, pale in the moonlight, sliding into the water as sleekly as an otter. She came up, swimming hard and fast. She grabbed his shoulder, panting. “You cheated me. It’s like ice.”

  “A sissy, eh? Where’d you learn to dive like that?”

  “Water show.”

  He remembered his promise just in time to keep from asking the obvious question.

  “Hey, it isn’t too bad, is it? Race you.” She got a head start on him. It took a surprisingly long time to catch up with her. They were both breathless. She rolled over to float on her back. She floated high in the water, as all women do, and the soaked nylon was transparent in the bright moonlight.

  He felt desire move turgidly within him, quickening the beat of his pulse.

  “Teed, do you have anything I can wear after we’re through swimming?”

  “Jeans and a wool shirt all right? Just take what you want out of the closet to the right of the door as you go in. Haven’t you got anything with you?”

  “Yes, dammit. But what I’ve got isn’t right for—a camp, as you might well imagine. And I don’t want to put the suit back on.”

  “Take a fresh shirt from one of the laundry covers. The others are maybe a little ripe. Ready to quit?”

  “Or else take a bite out of my own arm. I’ve never been so hungry. I’ll go first, Teed. You come up when I turn the light off and on again.”

  “Modest, eh?” he said.

  Her tone turned to ice. “Let me know if it bothers you. It’s a trait I don’t get much chance to indulge.”

  “Please, Barbara. That’s something I would have said to anybody.”

  “I’m sorry. Maybe I’m hypersensitive. And I guess that’s a luxury too.” Something had gone out of her voice. Some necessary warmth.

  “Now you take Albert. He was hypersensitive too. Used to hate to have the pigeons watching him.”

  “Fool!” she said, her voice chuckling warm in her throat. She grabbed his shoulders and ducked him strongly. When he came up, she was racing toward the dock, her arms lifting slim and fleet in the moonlight.

  When the light blinked he pulled himself up over the edge of the dock and ran shivering up the steps. As he came through the door she tossed a towel to him. She had built a respectable-looking fire, and it was just roaring into life.

  “Dry in front of the fire. Look, I found the brandy and the ice and everything, but no mint. You out? You do want stingers?”

  “Mint in the bottom cupboard in back. And the right measure is about two and a half to one. How’s the fit of those clothes?”

  The shoulder seams hung halfway to her elbows. Under the rolled-up jeans she wore a pair of Teed’s wool socks. She’d used a length of clothesline as a belt.

  “What do you think? Talk about bags tied in the middle.”

  He toweled himself, went into the closet and grabbed a twin to her outfit, and shut himself in the bedroom. Her clothes were in there, her purse on top of them. He took five twenties from his wallet and put them in her purse.

  By the time he got out she had made the drinks, set up the card table in front of the fire, found a clean sheet to serve as a tablecloth.

  “Vegetables nearly thawed,” she said. “Do you cook the steaks, or do I?”

  “I’ll do it. How do you like yours?”

  “Rare. If you’d taken a minute more, I’d have eaten mine raw.”

  Between them they got everything ready and had time for a couple of drinks while the steak sputtered. Barbara said, “A good swim. I tingle all over.”

  Her hair, flattened when she had left the water, had sprung back into damp ringlets. She looked at him with nothing more in her eyes than the warm glow of friendship.

  “You’re a nice guy, Teed.”

  “That’s an attempt to get your steak quicker, my friend.”

  “You saw through it, didn’t you? It just doesn’t pay a woman to be subtle any more.”

  They ate hugely and with vast concentration. They had a leisurely cigarette, brandy in the coffee, and then they cleaned up.

  Afterward the constraint came over them again and he, sensing it, said, “There’s cards around here. Ever play double solitaire?”

  “Not since I was a kid.” They played three games. He won the first. She won the next two, her face flushed, her eyes dancing; squealing as they both raced to put a card on one of the ace piles. “Enough?” he asked.

  “I can’t stand the excitement. Say, can we watch the fire? I mean with another log on and the lights out?”

  “Practically standard operating procedure in a camp, isn’t it? Sure.”

  She sat in front of the fire, hugging her knees, staring into the flames. He lay on his stomach beside her, his chin on his fist.

  “Teed, do you look into the flames and see things? Crazy things?” Her voice was almost a whisper.

  “It always makes me feel sort of sad, Barbara. Remote and far away. As though I could look into flames and tell the past and the future.”

  “They aren’t good things to think about. Pasts and futures. Not good at all.”

  He rolled onto his side, reached out and caught her hand. “Barbara, I…”

  The dreaminess left her voice. “It’s your choice, of course.”

  He let go of her hand quickly. “What the hell’s the use?” he said thickly. “It’s an artificial situation and you can pretend just so long and just so far. Why don’t you stay up and watch the fire for a while? I think I’ll turn in.”

  She stood up quickly. “I’ll get my things out of there.” She brought out her clothes, purse, overnight bag, put them on the living-room bed. She turned toward him without expression. He rumpled her hair with his big hand, feeling the tender skull-shape under the crisp curl-cap. He bent and kissed her cheek. “I didn’t mean to pop off. Sleep tight.”

  “What you said was right, Teed. It is an artificial situation.” She looked at him with an odd dignity, in contrast to the absurd fit of the jeans and shirt. “We shouldn’t have had the pact. We shouldn’t have tried to pretend.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe not. But once you start pretending, you’re stuck with it, aren’t you?”

  When he came out of the bathroom she was squatting on her heels by the fire, poking the coals with a twig. She didn’t turn as she said, “Good night, Teed.”

  “’Night, Barbara.”

  He shut the door of the tiny bedroom, stripped and slid down between the cool sheets. He swung the window open, hooked it. The night air came through the screen, touched his face with its coolness.

  He picked his trousers off the floor, fished out the day’s last cigarette, lit it. He lay with his fingers laced behind his head, the cigarette sticking up from the corner of his mouth, and thought about the strangeness of the day, the strangeness of the girl out by the fire.

  It’s your hundred bucks, he thought. What the hell is wrong with you, Morrow? What do you think she is? Stop thinking of her as some kind of a princess, or as a proper and untouchable young lady from Bryn Mawr. How many others have paid their hundred? One hundred? Five hundred? A thousand? What were the others like? Puffy little tired businessmen, trying to pretend they didn’t pay cash on the line. Wealthy college kids trying to be men of the world. And she’s had them all, performing her fundamental female function with all the mechanical joy of a robot with a tin smile. She’s a hundred-buck call girl, Morrow, and if you want it, open the door and call it. Then you can take a shower and go to sleep. She’s out there squatting by the fire, with her dainty little butt on her dainty little heels and smiling her dainty little smile at a sentimental slob named Morrow who let himself be smarted out of his hundred dollars. Those kittens soon get over any sentimental view of life, Morrow. She’s a nail-hard kid. You going to let her spend the next month telling her brassy blonde friends about the guy named Morrow who treated her like a friend of the family?

  But, try as he might, he couldn’t merge the two images—the image of Barbara the call girl just wouldn’t merge with the im
age of the Barbara who had swum with him, laughed with him, eaten steak with him.

  He couldn’t call her. He butted the cigarette, punched the pillow and tried to find a position in which he could sleep. Wind rattled the juiceless leaves of autumn. A chipmunk trotted across the roof. He tried to think of Felice, of the danger he was in, of the wet dark look of Raval’s eyes. But each time Barbara slid back into his mind.

  The door swung slowly open, and she was silhouetted in the doorframe in the red light of the dying fire. The baggy shirt and jeans made her look childlike.

  “Teed,” she said in a choked voice, “Teed, I…” And she stumbled to the bed, to his arms, kneeling beside the bed with her face in the hollow of his throat and shoulder as she wept. He held her, his left arm tight around her shoulders, smoothing her crisp hair with his right hand, making small sounds of comfort as she wept heavily, dully, hopelessly. For a time she vocalized her sobs, as a child will. And then the sobs became dry, thick gasps that came further and further apart.

  She straightened up, still kneeling, and knuckled her eyes. “Sorry, Teed,” she said huskily.

  “Everybody has times when being alone is no good.”

  “I shouldn’t have used you for a wailing wall.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “It isn’t important. You just remind me of somebody, Teed. When you walked up to the booth my heart nearly stopped. And all evening. Little habits you have. The way you use your hands, hold your head. You think something is nicely scarred over and then it gets opened up again. And you bleed some more.”

  “I’ll be a crying towel any time.”

  She stood up slowly. “I wanted to be held. Like a kid, I guess. There’s too much night out there. And looking into fires is a sad business at best.”

  He reached out and caught her wrist, pulled her toward the bed. She resisted at first, then came to him, slackly. He whipped the covers aside, slid her down beside him, tossed the covers back over them.

  Her lips were dead under his. “I’ll stick with the pact, Teed. I mean that.”

  “I don’t want a production,” he said harshly. The baggy garments could not disguise the long clean lines of her. He unbuttoned the shirt, starting at the throat. She sat up with numb docility and let him take the shirt off, toss it aside. It lit with a click of buttons against the bare board floor. She started to untie the knot in the length of clothesline. He pushed her hands aside, untied the knot, undid the buttons, pulled the harsh fabric of the dungarees down from the rounded silk of her hips. He tossed them after the shirt.