The Postman Always Rings Twice

by James M. Cain

  There came a rap on the door. Kennedy brought Cora in, put some papers down in front of Katz, and left. “There you are, Chambers. Just sign that, will you? It’s a waiver of damages for any injuries sustained by you. It’s what they get out of it for being so nice.”

  I signed.

  “You want me to take you home, Cora?”

  “I guess so.”

  “One minute, one minute, you two. Not so fast. There’s one other little thing. That ten thousand dollars you get for knocking off the Greek.”

  She looked at me and I looked at her. He sat there looking at the check. “You see, it wouldn’t be a perfect hand if there hadn’t been some money in it for Katz. I forgot to tell you about that. Well. Oh, well. I won’t be a hog. I generally take it all, but on this, I’ll just make it half. Mrs. Papadakis, you make out your check for $5,000, and I’ll make this over to you and go over to the bank and fix up the deposits. Here. Here’s a blank check.”

  She sat down, and picked up the pen, and started to write, and then stopped, like she couldn’t quite figure out what it was all about. All of a sudden, he went over and picked up the blank check and tore it up.

  “What the hell. Once in a lifetime, isn’t it? Here. You keep it all. I don’t care about the ten grand. I’ve got ten grand. This is what I want!”

  He opened his pocketbook, took out a slip, and showed it to us. It was Sackett’s check for $100. “You think I’m going to cash that? I am like hell. I’m going to frame it. It goes up there, right over my desk.”

  CHAPTER

  12

  We went out of there, and got a cab, because I was so crippled up, and first we went to the bank, and put the check in, and then we went to a flower shop, and got two big bunches of flowers, and then we went to the funeral of the Greek. It seemed funny he was only dead two days, and they were just burying him. The funeral was at a little Greek church, and a big crowd of people was there, some of them Greeks I had seen out to the place now and then. They gave her a dead pan when we came in, and put her in a seat about three rows from the front. I could see them looking at us, and I wondered what I would do if they tried to pull some rough stuff later. They were his friends, not ours. But pretty soon I saw an afternoon paper being passed around, that had big headlines in it that she was innocent, and an usher took a look at it, and came running over and moved us up on the front bench. The guy that did the preaching started out with some dirty cracks about how the Greek died, but a guy went up and whispered to him, and pointed at the paper that had got up near the front by that time, and he turned around and said it all over again, without any dirty cracks, and put in about the sorrowing widow and friends, and they all nodded their heads it was O.K. When we went out in the churchyard, where the grave was, a couple of them took her by the arm, and helped her out, and a couple more helped me. I got to blubbering while they were letting him down. Singing those hymns will do it to you every time, and specially when it’s about a guy you like as well as I liked the Greek. At the end they sang some song I had heard him sing a hundred times, and that finished me. It was all I could do to lay our flowers out the way they were supposed to go.

  The taxi driver found a guy that would rent us a Ford for $15 a week, and we took it, and started out. She drove. When we got out of the city we passed a house that was being built, and all the way out we talked about how not many of them have gone up lately, but the whole section is going to be built up as soon as things get better. When we got out to the place she let me out, put the car away, and then we went inside. It was all just like we left it, even to the glasses in the sink that we had drunk the wine out of, and the Greek’s guitar, that hadn’t been put away yet because he was so drunk. She put the guitar in the case, and washed the glasses, and then went upstairs. After a minute I went up after her.

  She was in their bedroom, sitting by the window, looking out at the road.

  “Well?”

  She didn’t say anything. I started to leave.

  “I didn’t ask you to leave.”

  I sat down again. It was a long while before she snapped out of it.

  “You turned on me, Frank.”

  “No I didn’t. He had me, Cora. I had to sign his paper. If I didn’t, then he would tumble to everything. I didn’t turn on you. I just went along with him, till I could find out where I was at.”

  “You turned on me. I could see it in your eye.”

  “All right, Cora, I did. I just turned yellow, that’s all. I didn’t want to do it. I tried not to do it. But he beat me down. I cracked up, that’s all.”

  “I know.”

  “I went through hell about it.”

  “And I turned on you, Frank.”

  “They made you do it. You didn’t want to. They set a trap for you.”

  “I wanted to do it. I hated you then.”

  “That’s all right. It was for something I didn’t really do. You know how it was, now.”

  “No. I hated you for something you really did.”

  “I never hated you, Cora. I hated myself.”

  “I don’t hate you now. I hate that Sackett. And Katz. Why couldn’t they leave us alone? Why couldn’t they let us fight it out together? I wouldn’t have minded that. I wouldn’t have minded it even if it meant—you know. We would have had our love. And that’s all we ever had. But the very first time they started their meanness, you turned on me.”

  “And you turned on me, don’t forget that.”

  “That’s the awful part. I turned on you. We both turned on each other.”

  “Well, that makes it even, don’t it?”

  “It makes it even, but look at us now. We were up on a mountain. We were up so high, Frank. We had it all, out there, that night. I didn’t know I could feel anything like that. And we kissed and sealed it so it would be there forever, no matter what happened. We had more than any two people in the world. And then we fell down. First you, and then me. Yes, it makes it even. We’re down here together. But we’re not up high any more. Our beautiful mountain is gone.”

  “Well what the hell? We’re together, ain’t we?”

  “I guess so. But I thought an awful lot, Frank. Last night. About you and me, and the movies, and why I flopped, and the hash house, and the road, and why you like it. We’re just two punks, Frank. God kissed us on the brow that night. He gave us all that two people can ever have. And we just weren’t the kind that could have it. We had all that love, and we just cracked up under it. It’s a big airplane engine, that takes you through the sky, right up to the top of the mountain. But when you put it in a Ford, it just shakes it to pieces. That’s what we are, Frank, a couple of Fords. God is up there laughing at us.”

  “The hell he is. Well we’re laughing at him too, aren’t we? He put up a red stop sign for us, and we went past it. And then what? Did we get shoved off the deep end? We did like hell. We got away clean, and got $10,000 for doing the job. So God kissed us on the brow, did he? Then the devil went to bed with us, and believe you me, kid, he sleeps pretty good.”

  “Don’t talk that way, Frank.”

  “Did we get that ten grand, or didn’t we?”

  “I don’t want to think about the ten grand. It’s a lot, but it couldn’t buy our mountain.”

  “Mountain, hell, we got the mountain and ten thousand smackers to pile on top of that yet. If you want to go up high, take a look around from that pile.”

  “You nut. I wish you could see yourself, yelling with that bandage on your head.”

  “You forgot something. We got something to celebrate. We ain’t never had that drunk yet.”

  “I wasn’t talking about that kind of a drunk.”

  “A drunk’s a drunk. Where’s that liquor I had before I left?”

  I went to my room and got the liquor. It was a quart of Bourbon, three quarters full. I went down, got some Coca Cola glasses, and ice cubes, and White Rock, and came back upstairs. She had taken her hat off and let her hair down. I fixed two drinks. They had some
White Rock in them, and a couple of pieces of ice, but the rest was out of the bottle.

  “Have a drink. You’ll feel better. That’s what Sackett said when he put the spot on me, the louse.”

  “My, but that’s strong.”

  “You bet it is. Here, you got too many clothes on.”

  I pushed her over to the bed. She held on to her glass, and some of it spilled. “The hell with it. Plenty more where that came from.”

  I began slipping off her blouse. “Rip me, Frank. Rip me like you did that night.”

  I ripped all her clothes off. She twisted and turned, slow, so they would slip out from under her. Then she closed her eyes and lay back on the pillow. Her hair was falling over her shoulders in snaky curls. Her eye was all black, and her breasts weren’t drawn up and pointing up at me, but soft, and spread out in two big pink splotches. She looked like the great grandmother of every whore in the world. The devil got his money’s worth that night.

  CHAPTER

  13

  We kept that up for six months. We kept it up, and it was always the same way. We’d have a fight, and I’d reach for the bottle. What we had the fights about was going away. We couldn’t leave the state until the suspended sentence was up, but after that I meant we should blow. I didn’t tell her, but I wanted her a long way from Sackett. I was afraid if she got sore at me for something, she’d go off her nut and spill it like she had that other time, after the arraignment. I didn’t trust her for a minute. At first, she was all hot for going too, specially when I got talking about Hawaii and the South Seas, but then the money began to roll in. When we opened up, about a week after the funeral, people flocked out there to see what she looked like, and then they came back because they had a good time. And she got all excited about here was our chance to make some more money.

  “Frank, all these roadside joints around here are lousy. They’re run by people that used to have a farm back in Kansas or somewhere, and got as much idea how to entertain people as a pig has. I believe if somebody came along that knew the business like I do, and tried to make it nice for them, they’d come and bring all their friends.”

  “To hell with them. We’re selling out anyhow.”

  “We could sell easier if we were making money.”

  “We’re making money.”

  “I mean good money. Listen, Frank. I’ve got an idea people would be glad of the chance to sit out under the trees. Think of that. All this nice weather in California, and what do they do with it? Bring people inside of a joint that’s set up ready-made by the Acme Lunch Room Fixture Company, and stinks so it makes you sick to your stomach, and feed them awful stuff that’s the same from Fresno down to the border, and never give them any chance to feel good at all.”

  “Look. We’re selling out, aren’t we? Then the less we got to sell the quicker we get rid of it. Sure, they’d like to sit under the trees. Anybody but a California Bar-B-Q slinger would know that. But if we put them under the trees we’ve got to get tables, and wire up a lot of lights out there, and all that stuff, and maybe the next guy don’t want it that way at all.”

  “We’ve got to stay six months. Whether we like it or not.”

  “Then we use that six months finding a buyer.”

  “I want to try it.”

  “All right, then try it. But I’m telling you.”

  “I could use some of our inside tables.”

  “I said try it, didn’t I? Come on. We’ll have a drink.”

  What we had the big blow-off over was the beer license, and then I tumbled to what she was really up to. She put the tables out under the trees, on a little platform she had built, with a striped awning over them and lanterns at night, and it went pretty good. She was right about it. Those people really enjoyed a chance to sit out under the trees for a half hour, and listen to a little radio music, before they got in their cars and went on. And then beer came back. She saw a chance to leave it just like it was, put beer in, and call it a beer garden.

  “I don’t want any beer garden, I tell you. All I want is a guy that’ll buy the whole works and pay cash.”

  “But it seems a shame.”

  “Not to me it don’t.”

  “But look, Frank. The license is only twelve dollars for six months. My goodness, we can afford twelve dollars, can’t we?”

  “We get the license and then we’re in the beer business. We’re in the gasoline business already, and the hot dog business, and now we got to go in the beer business. The hell with it. I want to get out of it, not get in deeper.”

  “Everybody’s got one.”

  “And welcome, so far as I’m concerned.”

  “People wanting to come, and the place all fixed up under the trees, and now I have to tell them we don’t have beer because we haven’t any license.”

  “Why do you have to tell them anything?”

  “All we’ve got to do is put in coils and then we can have draught beer. It’s better than bottled beer, and there’s more money in it. I saw some lovely glasses in Los Angeles the other day. Nice tall ones. The kind people like to drink beer out of.”

  “So we got to get coils and glasses now, have we? I tell you I don’t want any beer garden.”

  “Frank, don’t you ever want to be something?”

  “Listen, get this. I want to get away from this place. I want to go somewhere else, where every time I look around I don’t see the ghost of a goddam Greek jumping out at me, and hear his echo in my dreams, and jump every time the radio comes out with a guitar. I’ve got to go away, do you hear me? I’ve got to get out of here, or I go nuts.”

  “You’re lying to me.”

  “Oh no, I’m not lying. I never meant anything more in my life.”

  “You don’t see the ghost of any Greek, that’s not it. Somebody else might see it, but not Mr. Frank Chambers. No, you want to go away just because you’re a bum, that’s all. That’s what you were when you came here, and that’s what you are now. When we go away, and our money’s all gone, then what?”

  “What do I care? We go away, don’t we?”

  “That’s it, you don’t care. We could stay here—”

  “I knew it. That’s what you really mean. That’s what you’ve meant all along. That we stay here.”

  “And why not? We’ve got it good. Why wouldn’t we stay here? Listen, Frank. You’ve been trying to make a bum out of me ever since you’ve known me, but you’re not going to do it. I told you, I’m not a bum. I want to be something. We stay here. We’re not going away. We take out the beer license. We amount to something.”

  It was late at night, and we were upstairs, half undressed. She was walking around like she had that time after the arraignment, and talking in the same funny jerks.

  “Sure we stay. We do whatever you say, Cora. Here, have a drink.”

  “I don’t want a drink.”

  “Sure you want a drink. We got to laugh some more about getting the money, haven’t we?”

  “We already laughed about it.”

  “But we’re going to make more money, aren’t we? On the beer garden? We got to put down a couple on that, just for luck.”

  “You nut. All right. Just for luck.”

  That’s the way it went, two or three times a week. And the tip-off was that every time I would come out of a hangover, I would be having those dreams. I would be falling, and that crack would be in my ears.

  Right after the sentence ran out, she got the telegram her mother was sick. She got some clothes in a hurry, and I put her on the train, and going back to the parking lot I felt funny, like I was made of gas and would float off somewhere. I felt free. For a week, anyway, I wouldn’t have to wrangle, or fight off dreams, or nurse a woman back to a good humor with a bottle of liquor.

  On the parking lot a girl was trying to start her car. It wouldn’t do anything. She stepped on everything and it was just plain dead.

  “What’s the matter? Won’t it go?”

  “They left the ignition on when
they parked it, and now the battery’s run out.”

  “Then it’s up to them. They’ve got to charge it for you.”

  “Yes, but I’ve got to get home.”

  “I’ll take you home.”

  “You’re awfully friendly.”

  “I’m the friendliest guy in the world.”

  “You don’t even know where I live.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “It’s pretty far. It’s in the country.”

  “The further the better. Wherever it is, it’s right on my way.”

  “You make it hard for a nice girl to say no.”

  “Well then, if it’s so hard, don’t say it.”

  She was a light-haired girl, maybe a little older than I was, and not bad on looks. But what got me was how friendly she was, and how she wasn’t any more afraid of what I might do to her than if I was a kid or something. She knew her way around all right, you could see that. And what finished it was when I found out she didn’t know who I was. We told our names on the way out, and to her mine didn’t mean a thing. Boy oh boy what a relief that was. One person in the world that wasn’t asking me to sit down to the table a minute, and then telling me to give them the lowdown on that case where they said the Greek was murdered. I looked at her, and I felt the same way I had walking away from the train, like I was made of gas, and would float out from behind the wheel.