by Orrie Hitt
“I’m glad you told me,” she said after a while.
“I don’t know why I did.”
Like hell I didn’t. It was just another intersection on that road to a few easy grand. Sympathy. Tears. You can earn money with them.
“Danny?”
Her head was near my shoulder, resting there.
“What?”
“Where are you going from here?”
“I don’t know.”
Far away, I thought. So far away you’ll never know where your money went.
“More books?”
“I guess.”
She smiled up at me and then sipped at her drink.
“I think it’s wonderful work,” she said. “I honestly do.”
I guess she meant it all right. She’d said it before.
“Risky,” I said. It was a good time to get that in there. “You can make a buck or you can lose a hundred.”
We emptied our glasses and she took mine and put both of them on the floor.
“You’re a funny guy,” she said. “Do you know that? Do you know how funny you are?”
“I’m laughing.”
“No, I don’t mean that. I mean you’re — complex. Different.” Her head was on my shoulder now. “Danny, I’m glad you came here. I’m glad I met you.”
She tilted her head so that she could look up at me. Her black hair fell back away from her face. The moonlight sifted in and crept into her eyes. They were beautiful eyes. The eyes of a woman on the ledge.
I let my arm go around her shoulder and she snuggled in close. I wasn’t wearing any shirt and I could feel the warmth of her body through the dress, against my chest. A tiny tremor swept over her, faded away.
“I was afraid for you tonight, Danny,” she whispered. “When I saw that man after you — oh, it was horrible!”
This time when I kissed her I found her mouth waiting for me. Her lips parted, wet and soft, and then her teeth were jammed up against mine, crushing in.
I put my hand on one breast and she pushed it away. I kept kissing her and when I put it back there she left it alone. Pretty soon I felt her fingers up there, helping me.
“You’re going to hate me,” I said. I was breathing rapidly and my throat burned. “I know you will.”
“Only if you don’t mean it.”
“Christ!”
She fell across the swing and pulled me down beside her. For a moment she held me off, looking up, her lips smiling and her eyes bright.
“I think I love you,” she told me, huskily.
And then I was down there with her, needing her as much as she needed me, wanting her more than I had ever wanted any other woman in my life. Her body was the body of a thousand beautiful women, a body that rose to meet mine, to capture me, to engulf me in all of its exciting mysteries. A wild, yearning body that was mine to do with as I pleased.
Later, much later, as we lay there completely exhausted, locked in each others arms, I came to know what fear was.
Danny Fulton had gone over the bank with all of his wheels down.
He was in love with Sandy Adams.
10
THEY HELD Billy Collins in jail for three days and then they let him go.
“Give the guy some open air,” I’d told the chief of police. “I don’t want to press any charges.”
“But it isn’t up to you, Mr. Fulton.”
“Then suit yourself.”
But they let him out, anyway, because they couldn’t do very much about it without a complaint and nobody else would sign one.
“I hope he goes so far down into Florida that he falls in the ocean and drowns,” Gloria’s father said. “I never thought very much of him but not as little as I should have.”
The papers, both of them, had been kind in dealing with the incident. They merely reported the attack, said that I’d showed fearless courage in disarming the enraged man, and hadn’t gone into the reason behind it. There was no embarrassment in the store for Gloria and her job was as safe as any job ever is.
“I want to apologize,” she’d told me the next day.
“Don’t worry about it.”
She’d just come from seeing Billy in the jail and he had told her the whole thing. She’d called me, right away, and I’d driven over and we’d had a couple of drinks together.
“It’s going to take years to get over it,” she’d said.
“A lot of booze won’t hurry it along.”
She’d been thoughtful.
“It’ll be easier now to cut it out. I thought I was living a lie before. Now I know the truth. Thank you for showing it to me, Danny.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I guess I gave you a jolt, too.”
“A big one.”
“I’ll give you the money back, if you want it.”
“No. You earned it. It’s yours.”
“I won’t bother you again, Danny.”
“Any time.”
I hadn’t seen her since but I’d run into her old man on his beat and he said she’d come back home to live.
“I put that son-in-law of mine on a train and shipped him to Florida,” Maddison had said. “They’re getting a divorce.”
Well, it was their own business, none of mine.
Sandy was all for us getting married but she wanted to wait until after we’d gotten the book out. She said she wanted a real honeymoon, one of those West Indies things, and we wouldn’t be able to take the time for that until later. And she insisted upon going straight from the church on her honeymoon.
“If we don’t,” she said, “we’ll never go.”
“On what we make off this book, we may be lucky to have enough to get out past the city limits.”
“I don’t want you to worry about that.”
“But I do.”
“Kiss me, you nut, and stop running a bank balance in your head.”
One thing she’d been set on doing was to announce our engagement but I’d been able to nail that one down before it got loose. I explained that I’d only been in the city a short time and that some of her friends might frown on such a hasty romance. She saw the logic of that, although it didn’t make her any less passionate, and I felt a whole lot better when I was sure that she’d forgotten about the idea. All that remained to happen was for Madeline to learn that I wasn’t her lover boy any more and I’d have a partly finished book on my hands, less a lot of other people’s money that I’d already spent. As it was, my dual role of keeping both women happy, one on River Street and the other on Summer Road, had fallen apart. I’d almost forgotten that Madeline was alive and waiting.
In fact, things were getting so rough that on Wednesday afternoon I suggested to Sandy that we might chuck the book.
“And let all those people down? I should say not!”
But she wasn’t mad about it, just thought I didn’t want to wait any more than she wanted to wait. And I didn’t. I was in love with her. She was sweet and beautiful and kind and I didn’t want anybody else ever again.
Sandy Adams was into me so deep that I couldn’t touch bottom.
In the meantime, Al and I were doing first rate on the ads. We were close to the three hundred mark and still going like a house on fire. I told Madeline about that and said we wouldn’t be longer than another week.
“I hope I have the script done by that time,” she said. “The first typing, that is. It’s got to be done twice to iron out that right-hand margin.”
“Well, stick with it. The quicker we get this job buttoned up, the quicker we’ll get out.”
“And then where are we going, Danny?”
That’s the trouble with the fund-raising business, you’re always on the move. Either you’re chasing somebody or they’re chasing you.
“Hell,” I said, “I don’t know.”
“Al’s worried about it.”
“I don’t know why. He gets his every week.”
“But he’s married. And he has to think a long time ahead.”
We were in the library, up in the historical room, and it was getting close to the end of the day. The air-conditioning unit was buzzing away on one of the windows and the machine made it a lot cooler in there. Madeline was dressed in the usual shorts and halter and she looked beat.
“Give me a couple of days,” I told her. “I’ll get onto it and we’ll think up something.”
It was hard to say it and make it sound right. I wasn’t going any place. And I wasn’t screwing anybody out of any money. I was staying right there in Port Jessup, putting out a good book and I was playing it straight. Even if I didn’t love the girl I wouldn’t swap five or six grand for half a million. And I loved her, money or not.
“My car wouldn’t start this morning,” Madeline said, getting up. “Drive me home?”
“Sure.”
We went out, locked the door and left the key at the desk. Outside, the late afternoon heat was oppressive.
“I know you’ve been busy, Danny,” she said as we got into the car. “But we’re going to have to find some time to talk about us.”
I could have told her the story in one word — nothing.
“Well, sure.”
“I’ll have to divorce Johnny and it’ll be easier out of the state.”
In New York you can only get a divorce if one or the other, or both, gets caught fishing in the wrong pond.
“Maybe we can get a job in Nevada. Or some place like that.”
Her eyes shone and she turned to me.
“Do you really think so?”
“I’ll talk to Al about it.”
“But he wouldn’t,” she decided later. “He’d never go there. He’s married.”
Nobody was going anywhere and I was getting pretty sick of her. But I had to keep on with the pretense. A three-legged horse is better than none at all.
• • •
We cut down to the river road and swung left. The kids were out there, bouncing around in the water, and a couple of boats went putting past. A man was fishing, waist-deep out near the middle, and the way his pole was bent it looked like he had a fish.
“All this outdoors,” Madeline said dreamily, “and I haven’t been in swimming once this summer.”
It occurred to me that I hadn’t, either. And it was hot, even with the top down and the wind whipping around us.
“No time like the present,” I told her.
I had a date with Sally, but not until after nine and I’d have to take a shower, anyway. I hadn’t really been spending an awful lot of time with Madeline, not nearly as much as I had in the past, and this seemed like a good chance to get myself up to the required schedule.
She didn’t have a bathing suit or, if she did, she didn’t know where it was any more.
“That’s no strain,” I told her. “We’ll pick up a couple.”
I swung the Caddy around and drove back uptown. Generally, the three of us, Al and Madeline and myself, would meet at her apartment about six, have a drink and talk over the day. But if we weren’t there I knew that Al wouldn’t wait for us. He’d just go in and have his drink — Madeline never locked her door — and, when we didn’t show, he’d go off to spend the evening wherever it was he spent evenings.
I bought two bathing suits at Ford’s, on Broad Street; a two-piece affair for her and a pair of trunks for myself. She wanted to come in with me but I told her, no, it was too hot and why didn’t she just sit in the car and keep as cool as possible? I don’t think she caught on to the fact that I didn’t want her along, that I wasn’t going out of my way to do anything that could get back to Sandy and upset my grocery cart.
We drove down the Delaware River about ten miles and found a nice quiet spot with plenty of low bushes nearby.
“I hope I don’t get into any poison ivy,” she said. “I catch it.”
She went behind one clump of weeds and I went behind another.
“Beat you in!” she yelled.
I got out of my pants and the rest of the stuff. The trunks were a fairly good fit, slightly tight, but they’d loosen up when I got into the water.
“All bets are off,” she called out to me. “I can’t get into this damned thing!”
I left my clothes in a pile and went over to see if I could help her. She had the bottom part of the suit on all right but she hadn’t been able to get the halter tied in back.
“Maybe you can,” she said.
The straps were so short they would hardly meet.
“Let your breath out,” I told her.
She did. And I still couldn’t tie it.
“Let something else out,” I said.
She flung her head back over her shoulder, her hair spilling down across her shoulders. She laughed up at me.
“I do that, and there’d be no point to wearing it.”
I let go of the thing and returned to where I’d left my clothes.
“I’ll fix it,” I said.
She wasn’t kidding me. It wasn’t swimming that she wanted. It was something else. And a week ago I’d have been ready for her. But not now. Now, every time I looked at her, all I could see was Sandy Adams. Sandy Adams walking smoothly across the wide lawn at Forty Summer Road. Sandy Adams sitting beside me in the car. Sandy Adams just getting dressed, a look of contentment in her eyes. Or was it half a million bucks that I saw?
I cut off a piece of one of my shoe strings and carried it over to where Madeline was waiting.
“This’ll do it,” I said.
She let out her breath and I got it tied. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs, and I thought the knot was going to rip apart and smack me straight in the face.
We walked down toward the river and when we got to a narrow spot in the path I let her go first. I’d never seen her in a bathing suit before, only with all of her clothes on or most of them off, and in a bathing suit she really had it. Her legs were soft yet solid, too, and her hips were full and rolling. When we got to the edge of the water she turned and faced me.
“By God, you’re right,” I admitted. “They never made that halter for any full grown woman.”
You’ve seen the pictures in the girlie magazines, the ones of bathing girls with hardly any halters at all and their breasts squeezing out like smashed melons? Well, that’s just the way she was. Only she was there with me. She wasn’t something you could turn the page on.
“After you,” she said. “You step on all the sharp rocks.”
Through sheer dumb luck we had picked a good location in which to swim. The river bottom was mostly all sand and the water deepened gradually. I hadn’t been in swimming in a long time but the water felt good, clean and cool, and I splashed away, enjoying it. Madeline was a fair swimmer, though she stayed in close to shore where it wasn’t so deep.
“Better than that hot town, Danny?”
“Hey, you know it!”
We were off the highway about a hundred yards and you could hear the cars moving north and south, their tires whacking against the tarred strips across the concrete. A couple of trains, one a long freight, went chugging down the Erie tracks and after the last one was gone it seemed to get very quiet. The breeze stopped rustling the leaves on the trees and evening shadows plunged down from the hills and across the river.
“Jesus,” I said, coming up onto the bank. “That was good!”
I didn’t know what time it was, maybe close to seven-thirty, but I told her we ought to be getting back to Port Jessup.
“So soon?”
“Yeah. I’ve got work to do.”
She came paddling up to the shore.
“I wish I could write sitting in the water,” she said. “I’d come here and stay every day.”
She stood up. And it happened. That excuse for a string came undone, the bra fell off into the water and her whole upper story jumped right out into the open. She let out a tiny gasp and bent down to get the bra. And what I saw, the way she looked, sent my blood up to the boiling point.
“Well,” I said. “Wel
l!”
Maybe you don’t know what I mean at all, the way this Madeline hit me right then. All right. But maybe you’ve got a wife, or a girl friend, or somebody of the opposite sex that you’re used to being near. Perhaps, at one time, she excited you but now the excitement has been lost in nights of knowledge. Then all of a sudden, when you least expect it, you see her in a different way, like I was seeing Madeline, and she is for those few seconds a total stranger — beautiful. That’s how it was with me right then. Loving Sandy Adams didn’t have anything to do with it. Wanting to get at that girl coming up the river bank was the only thing that was important.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
Her face was flushed, her eyes bright. She held the bra in front of her, acting coy, but the effect of the garment was worse than nothing at all.
“Lucky we didn’t go to some beach,” I said. My mouth was dry. “You’d be killed in a stampede.”
We went toward the car, through the shadows and just as we started around it, heading for the bushes, I grabbed her. I grabbed her with one hand, opened the car door with the other and pushed her inside.
“Danny!”
I yanked the bra away from her and threw it on the ground.
“You untied it, didn’t you?” I said.
She looked up at me, her eyes filled with shame.
“Let me up, Danny.”
“No. You’re driving me nuts.”
“I’ve been losing you,” she said. “I know it, Danny. I feel it. Even before Johnny — ”
“Now, see here — ”
“No. Don’t.” She smiled but it was something pasted on her lips. “It isn’t you, Danny. It isn’t me. It’s this crazy life we’ve been leading.”
“Yeah.”
She sat up, all exposed, and I got in beside her. I put my arm around her shoulder as she started to cry.
“I wanted you to bring me out here, Danny. I did. Anywhere. Just as long as we were together, just so that we could try to find a little of what we used to have.”
I kept my mouth shut. She was stretching it. Both of us seemed to be pretty well equipped to carry on the necessary functions of the human race.
“It’s this crazy business,” she was saying. “There’s never any security, nothing but run, run, run. You go out in the morning and if you have a bad day, you’re broke.”