Hit and Run

by Deming, Richard

  “Just a minute,” Helena called. “I’m still dressing.”

  It was closer to ten minutes before she appeared, and meantime he stood out in the sun letting the heat wilt his collar and undo all the good a cold shower had done him. When Helena finally appeared, she was dressed in a white sun dress, low-heeled sandals that exposed bare, red-tipped toes, and no hat. Her long hair was pulled up in a pony tail.

  Carefully she locked her cabin door behind her and dropped the key into a straw purse.

  This time Calhoun drove the Buick. When they pulled up alongside the parked Dodge, he handed her the keys to it.

  “Instead of my following you, suppose we arrange to meet somewhere?” Helena suggested. “I’d like to do a little shopping.”

  “You know Cleveland?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Then we’ll make it somewhere simple.” He looked at his watch, noting it was nearly ten A.M. “The Statler cocktail lounge at two P.M.?”

  “All right.”

  “Be careful you don’t get picked up for anything,” he cautioned. “Even a parking ticket would put us in the soup with that New York plate on the Dodge.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  He drove off while she was unlocking the coupe door.

  He was halfway back to town before it occurred to him that it would have been wiser for her to follow him in case the Buick finally ran out of gas. The gauge registered just below half full. If her estimate was correct that five gallons caused the gauge to show just under three-quarters full, fuel was running dangerously low. And even with the new plates on the car, he didn’t want to chance stopping for gas. The fewer people who noticed the damage to the car, the better.

  He was nearly in the downtown section before he spotted a Buick service sign. He pulled through the open repair-garage doors just as the motor sputtered and died.

  A cheerful-looking middle-aged man in coveralls came over to the driver’s side of the car and said, “Yes, sir?”

  “Looks like I just ran out of gas,” Calhoun said, climbing out of the car.

  The repairman raised his eyebrows. “We have a gas pump,” he said. “But wouldn’t it have been simpler to pull into a gas station?”

  “I didn’t know I was low,” Calhoun explained. “The gauge has been acting up. It registers nearly half full. But I didn’t come in for gas. I need some body work.”

  He led the man around to the other side of the car and pointed to the smashed fender, door, and bumper.

  After carefully looking over the damage, the repairman asked, “What’s the other guy look like?”

  “There wasn’t any other guy,” Calhoun told him. “My wife mistook a tree next to our drive for the garage.”

  The repairman said he could do the whole job, including a check of wheel alignment, in three days for approximately three hundred dollars.

  “That’s a rough estimate, you understand,” he said. “May vary a few bucks one way or the other.”

  Calhoun gave him the name George Seward and a south Cleveland address a few miles from the repair garage. When the man asked for a phone number, Calhoun said he didn’t have a phone, and just to hold the car when it was finished until he picked it up.

  “Might as well fix that gas gauge while you’re at it,” he said.

  Calhoun’s business was completed by noon, and suddenly he was exhausted from lack of sleep and the strain of driving all night. He began to wish he had arranged to meet Helena at twelve thirty instead of two.

  There was nothing to do but kill two hours, however. He took a taxi to the Statler, had lunch, and slowly sipped four highballs in the cocktail lounge while he waited for her. She showed up at ten after two.

  “Want a drink?” he asked. “Or shall we go back to the court and collapse? I’m ready to fall on my face.”

  She looked him over consideringly. “You do look tired,” she said. “We’ll pick up a couple of bottles of bourbon and some soda on the way, and I’ll have my drink at the court. Maybe we can get some ice from the proprietor.”

  His four drinks had relaxed Calhoun just enough so that he had difficulty keeping his eyes open. He let Helena drive.

  He was just beginning to drift off to sleep sitting up when the car braked to a stop, then backed into a parking place at the curb. He opened his eyes to see they were in front of a liquor store.

  Reluctantly he climbed out of the car. “You say bourbon?” he asked Helena.

  When she merely nodded, he went into the store. He bought two quarts of bourbon and a six-bottle carry-pack of soda.

  Helena had filled the back seat with so many bundles that he decided to stow away his purchases in the trunk. When he raised the Dodge’s trunk lid, he was surprised to find the floor of the trunk soaking wet. There hadn’t been any water in it when he had searched the trunk for tools to change license plates.

  But he was too sleepy to wonder about it much. He slammed the lid shut, climbed back into the car, and let himself sink back into a semicoma again. Helena had to shake him awake when they got back to the tourist court.

  He climbed from the car and sleepily got the bourbon and soda from the trunk. “I think you’re going to have to drink alone,” he told Helena. “If I don’t lie down within the next thirty seconds, I’ll fall down. Want this stuff in your cabin?”

  “I can carry it,” she said. “You go to bed.”

  Taking it from him, she moved toward the door leading from the carport into her cabin. Over her shoulder she said, “I may not have a drink, either. I’m pretty tired, too. Maybe I’ll follow your example and just go to bed. Want me to get you up for dinner?”

  “All right,” he said, and stumbled toward his own cabin.

  Inside, he managed to get his shirt and his shoes off before falling onto the bed. He went to sleep instantly.

  11

  Calhoun slept straight through until eight o’clock that night. Apparently Helena did the same, for when he finally peered next door, her cabin was dark and the Dodge was still in its carport. She must have awakened about the same time he did, though, because she knocked at his door just as he finished dressing.

  She was holding the two bottles of bourbon and the carry-pack of soda.

  “I thought we’d have a drink before we went out to dinner,” she said.

  Calhoun found two glasses in the bathroom, but the prospect of warm soda and bourbon didn’t appeal to him.

  “I’ll see if I can get some ice at the office,” he said.

  But the proprietor told him he was sorry, he had only enough ice for his personal needs. When Calhoun returned to the cabin, he suggested they have their before-dinner drink at the place they picked to eat.

  “Maybe I can get some ice from him,” Helena said.

  A drink didn’t mean that much to Calhoun, but since she seemed so set on one, he didn’t argue. From his open door he watched her move toward the office. The movement walking gave to her body was worth watching. It occurred to Calhoun that the motel proprietor would have to be made of ice himself to refuse her.

  In a few moments she reappeared carrying a china water pitcher.

  As she neared, he said to her, “You must have more sex appeal than I do.”

  She came to a halt before her own cabin door and unlocked it. “Maybe you should have asked his wife,” she said. “Be with you in a minute.” She disappeared into her cabin.

  What she wanted in the other cabin, Calhoun couldn’t decide, and when she reappeared a few moments later, she still carried nothing but the pitcher. Carefully she locked the door behind her, and came over to Calhoun’s door. When she handed him the pitcher, he saw it was full of cracked ice instead of cubes.

  “What’s he have, an old-fashioned icebox?” Calhoun asked in surprise.

  “I didn’t inquire,” Helena said. “I just asked for ice.”

  They had two highballs before going out to hunt a place for dinner.

  It was nine o’clock before they found one. It w
as a roadhouse called the White Swan, about a half mile from the tourist court, toward town. It was a big barn of a place, with booths lining two walls and tables spread over all the rest of the space except for a small dance floor at one end and the few feet in front of the bar at the other. A rather incompetent three-piece orchestra was playing pop music.

  There was no head waiter or hostess. You found your own table and took your choice. The place wasn’t crowded, and Calhoun picked a table at the edge of the dance floor.

  When a waitress came over, Calhoun looked inquiringly at Helena and asked, “Want a cocktail?”

  “Just a bourbon and soda, I think,” she said. “I don’t like to mix my drinks.”

  “Two bourbon and sodas, please,” he told the waitress. “And we’d like to order dinner.”

  She left menus and went off for their drinks.

  They ordered steaks, which turned out to be surprisingly good. It was nearly ten by the time they finished coffee, and the place had completely filled up. Only a few couples were dancing, though; most of them were sitting at tables or in booths with drinks. Calhoun noted that a large number of tables contained nothing but men.

  “Wonder what the attraction is here,” he said. “It can’t be the music.”

  They found out a few minutes later. The orchestra played an off-key introduction, the house lights dimmed, and a spotlight speared a young man who carried a portable microphone to the center of the dance floor.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” the young man said. “Welcome to the White Swan. It’s time once again for the White Swan’s nightly show.”

  “Oh, we’re going to have a floor show,” Helena said in a pleased voice.

  The young M.C. told a couple of off-color jokes, which brought raucous laughter from some of the audience but didn’t stir Helena from her normal expressionlessness. She didn’t look offended, but she didn’t look amused, either. If anything, she looked bored.

  Having warmed up the audience to the limit of his limited capabilities, the M.C. proceeded to eulogize the coming attractions of the evening. His announcements that they would be entertained by a female vocalist (“that great young lady with the great big voice”) and a tap dancer (“a great young man”) were greeted by total silence. But when he mentioned “our featured dancer, that great young performer, Ann Devoe,” he brought down the house. There were wild hand-clapping, whistles, and catcalls.

  Helena said, “She must be good. Did you ever hear of her before?”

  “The audience reaction is familiar,” Calhoun said dryly. “I imagine I’ve seen the same act. The applause doesn’t necessarily mean she’s good.”

  Helena asked, “What do you mean?”

  “It’s probably a strip act.”

  “Oh,” Helena said with interest. “I’ve never seen one.”

  The young M.C. finally retired, and the great young lady with the great big voice came on. She was a buxom woman in her mid-thirties, and the M.C. had been right in describing her voice. It shook the building. Unfortunately, volume was its sole attribute. Nevertheless she received applause, not for her talent but for her lyrics. She sang two songs, both of them the double-meaning sort of thing you usually hear only at stag parties.

  Calhoun studied Helena with interest while the woman sang. Helena’s face was totally blank, and she was watching the vocalist with the intent gaze of an entomologist peering through a microscope at a new type of insect life.

  When the woman finished her act, Calhoun said, “Penny for your thoughts.”

  Helena glanced at him. “I was just wondering what could bring a woman to make that kind of vulgar display in public.”

  “The necessity of making a living,” he said dryly. “She’s probably an ex-stripper with too much sag for the bump-and-grind circuit. You must have lived a very sheltered life.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You’ve never seen a strip act. Apparently you never heard a dirty song before. And from your expression when the M.C. was on, you never before heard a dirty joke told out loud.”

  Helena said reflectively, “Perhaps I have been sheltered. Lawrence would never think of taking me to a place like this. And if we got into one by accident, as we did tonight, he’d drag me out before the show started.”

  “Doesn’t your friend Cushman ever take you to night clubs?”

  She shook her head. “We stick to quiet places. You have to when you’re practicing adultery.”

  The casual manner in which she referred to her own sins intrigued Calhoun, particularly after her comment about the vocalist. He decided that it was probably only public vulgarity she disapproved of, and that otherwise she was quite matter-of-factly amoral. A moment later he became sure of it.

  He said, “Weren’t you ever exposed to life before your marriage?”

  “I was married at eighteen,” she told him. “I was a clerk in Lawrence’s bank after I graduated from high school, and we were married when I’d been there only two months. Lawrence was thirty-eight at the time. He’s always been rather protective. Our relationship has been more of a father-daughter one than a husband-wife one. Which may be the reason I take lovers.”

  “Lovers?” he asked. “There’ve been more than just Cushman?”

  “In twelve years of marriage?” she said with raised eyebrows. “Of course.” She gave the hint of a smile. “Lawrence thinks I’m frigid.”

  Her frankness both startled him and puzzled him. From another woman, he would have diagnosed the conversation as a bald invitation to become her lover. But Helena was an almost complete enigma to him. He suspected her casualness about her love life was not assumed to impress him but was her actual attitude. She was frank about her adulteries because they were unimportant to her.

  Remembering the time he had kissed her, and her total lack of response, he wondered if her husband was right and if perhaps she was frigid.

  The tap dancer came on, went through a routine act, and was rewarded with tepid applause. Then the feature act came on.

  Ann Devoe was a voluptuous redhead in her early twenties. She had rather plain features, but a smooth, well-formed body and remarkably large breasts with no trace of sag. She did what is known in the trade as a street strip, which is the taking off of ordinary street clothes instead of a trick gown with numerous zippers that allow it to be removed a section at a time.

  She started in a conservative skirt, jacket, and blouse, nylon stockings and plain pumps, and ended in nothing. In a way it was more provocative than the ordinary strip act, for she managed to create the illusion that she wasn’t a professional performer giving a professional performance, but merely an attractive young woman disrobing in public. She heightened the impression by seeming to be unaware of the audience. She maintained a deadpan expression the entire time, and she eliminated the usual gliding motions of the strip dance. She merely stood there with a thoughtful expression on her face and slowly disrobed, looking for all the world like a young secretary getting ready to take a shower and go to bed. When she was completely nude, she stood motionless for a few seconds, then made one slow, complete turn and walked off the floor.

  The applause was deafening, but she didn’t come back for any bows.

  Calhoun said, “What’s your verdict on that?”

  “She has a lovely figure.”

  “I mean, do you wonder how she can bring herself to do it?”

  Helena looked at him. “It’s not the same as the vulgar songs. I could do that if I needed the money.”

  When he looked surprised, she said, “I’m not ashamed of my body.”

  The remark made him recall the day he had surprised her sun bathing. She had certainly exhibited no embarrassment then. He had a mental picture of her performing the act they had just seen, and decided she probably could do it without vulgarity. With her cool, unemotional manner, she would make it a display of beauty rather than a display of sex.

  He wondered again if she were frigid. He also wondered if he woul
d ever understand her.

  After the floor show they had another drink and then decided to dance despite the orchestra’s lack of talent. Calhoun discovered she was a remarkably good dancer.

  They stayed at the White Swan until closing time, alternately dancing and drinking. And with each drink and with each chance to hold her in his arms, Calhoun’s temperature rose another degree.

  He began to get the impression that the closeness of their bodies on the dance floor was having an effect on her, too. Not from anything she said, for the conversation didn’t touch on love or morals again. But each time they danced she seemed to move more compliantly into his arms and her eyes seemed to get a warmer shine.

  When he finally drove the Dodge back into the carport, he was on the verge of suggesting she come into his cabin for a nightcap, with the idea that more interesting things might develop. But before he could open his mouth, Helena jumped out of the car and went to her cabin through the carport door without saying a word to him.

  Then as he sat there foolishly looking at her closed door, he experienced a terrific letdown. He was tempted to get angry, but reflected that she hadn’t actually said or done anything to make him think she had been sharing his cozy thoughts. Perhaps she had just now realized the direction his thoughts were taking, and wanted to leave no doubts in his mind that their relationship was strictly a business one.

  Shrugging, he locked the Dodge and went into his own cabin.

  Five minutes later, just as he finished pulling on his pajamas, there was a knock at the door. He put on his robe and opened it to find Helena standing there with her suitcase in her hand.

  When he had stared at her expressionless face for nearly a minute, she asked, “Aren’t you going to let me in?”

  “Sure,” he said, recovering his wits enough to step aside.

  She walked past him, set the suitcase on a chair, opened it, and drew out a nearly transparent nylon nightgown. Then she turned and, holding the nightgown out in front of her, examined it critically.

  Her husky but flat voice said, “I’m frightened all alone over there. Am I welcome here?”