Cloud Nine

by James M. Cain

  “Oh it always is when Mommy finds out.” Then, as though none of it amounted to much: “If I were you, though, and you can afford it, I’d pick up the tab—it might relieve the tension. I mean the Florence Crittenton charges.”

  “I thought of that. I made the offer.”

  “...And?”

  “Declined—with a kick in the teeth.”

  “Keep trying, Gramie.”

  The car rolled up, I took her down and put her in, and that was all that we said on the subject. I’d have given anything for something helpful out of her, and she didn’t seem to know it. I kissed her good-bye, shook hands with the Hamells, stood back and watched them roll off. Then I found my own car and started once more for my own headache.

  Chapter 6

  I HAD TOLD HER not to answer the bell, so I let myself in with my key, and didn’t see anything of her, but caught the smell of furniture polish. I went in the living room and she wasn’t there, but the smell was, even stronger than in the hall, and I was surprised at how slick everything looked, especially the bookshelves, which are maple, and showed the grain of the Wood in a way I’d never noticed before. I was opening my mouth to call, when she whirled past the arch that led to the hall, a dust mop in her hand, which she shook out the front door, first taking a peep out to make sure no one was looking.

  But her costume was really quite startling. It consisted of one of my shirts, with the sleeves buttoned back on her elbows—and that was all, at least that I could see, except for her shoes and a tea cloth bound on her head. Her legs were bare, but there popped in my mind an impression, which I’d got from peeping before, that she hadn’t had garters on, which of course meant panty hose. But if she’d taken them off, what did she have on now? I was working on it, as she started back to the kitchen, when all of a sudden she saw me and gave a yelp.

  “Oh!” she said. “Oh!”

  “Yeah,” I answered. “Hello.”

  “What did he say? No wait, I’ll clean myself up.”

  She started for the kitchen again, but stopped again and popped out: “Well you said ‘cleaning woman,’ but I wouldn’t go that far. This was the dirtiest place! And I thought I could clean it for you. You’ve been so nice to me, it was the least I could do, to show my ’preciation.”

  “You’re quite wonderful, Sonya.”

  “Well? Does it look nice?”

  “So shined up I hardly know it.”

  “Be back.”

  She went scampering back to the kitchen, and I heard the water running. Then she was there again, saying: “Innyhow, my hands are clean. So? What did he say?”

  “He said no. I doubled the ante, as a matter of fact, upped it to twenty-two twenty-two—and he still said no. I went to bat and struck out.”

  “I was kind of hoping he’d take it.”

  “So was I—I was stunned at his reaction.”

  Then, being careful of what I said, especially to keep Mother out of it, her trick to let Burl skip, and her suspicions of how the teacher got killed, with the possible money angle, I gave a few more details of what her father had said, telling her: “As well as I can make out, he means to wreak a revenge, on Burl, as a matter of family honor, and then get money for you, as the price for reversing his gears. But it has to be Burl’s money, and I may as well tell you that things came out in our talk, to arouse suspicions in me, that you may not know about—”

  “You mean, in connection with Dale Morgan?”

  “Then you do know about them?”

  “I don’t know about innything. But my father kept plaguing me, after Dale Morgan died, about the insurance she may have carried”—she called it shurance—“in Burl’s favor. But I know nothing to tell him—is that what you’re talking about?”

  “As I pieced things together, yes.”

  “Family honor’s bugging him.”

  “...I can’t picture him using a gun.”

  “He wouldn’t have the nerve. But he has to do something, something for me he thinks, and has decided to settle for money. But to prove he means business, Mr. Kirby, I think he means to charge Burl. That’s what scares me so, that he’ll swear out a warrant for him.”

  “That’s about as I figure it out.”

  “And that will bring the newspapers in.”

  She sat there in her old place on the sofa, I in my old place across from her, and for some time nothing was said, though she kept staring at me. Then I remembered Mother’s warning. “By the way,” I said. “You shouldn’t go home tonight. You shouldn’t be anywhere Burl is likely to find you.”

  “You mean he might try to kill me?”

  “...Well—not exactly that.”

  “Then, exactly what?”

  “Okay—that. He raped you, didn’t he?”

  “And killed Dale Morgan, Mr. Kirby.”

  “Sonya! He couldn’t have! He wasn’t there!”

  “And her mother was driving. He killed her, though.”

  “But how? How?”

  “I don’t know how, Mr. Kirby.”

  She leaned forward, both hands on her knees, looked me straight in the eye, and went on: “I tell you one thing, though: My father knows how, and we’d better do something quick, or he’ll blow this ship out of water. And that could ruin us both. Both, do you hear, Mr. Kirby? I said—”

  “I heard what you said, Sonya.” We sat blinking at each other, and then in a low voice she said: “There’s one way out, Mr. Kirby, that’ll settle Burl’s hash, settle my father’s hash, and settle my hash, for that matter—I mean, from your point of view. One way out for you, that would be a whole lot cheaper than the Crittenton charges would be. One way out that would take care of everything.”

  “What way is that, Sonya?”

  “You could marry me yourself.”

  “...I bet I could, I bet I could!”

  If she’d set off a cherry bomb under me, she couldn’t have jolted me worse, and I didn’t try to hide it, how her idea hit me. She didn’t move or raise her voice, merely telling me: “Well don’t fly off the handle. I mean it.”

  “Sonya, I think you’re feeling the strain.”

  “I am, I admit it, and you better.”

  “Let’s stick to what makes sense.”

  “This does, if you’ll let me explain it.”

  “I’m sorry, I couldn’t keep a straight face.”

  “Then I’ll explain it innyway, and if your face gets all twisted up, from how funny it is to you, then okay it’s funny to you, but it’s not funny to me, so suppose you hold still and listen and stop making silly cracks.”

  “You talk like a wife already.”

  “You ready?”

  “Then, make with the explanation.”

  “You go to Northwestern High, you hear things all the time, because some girl’s always in trouble, and the rest of them talk about it, coming up with stuff that doesn’t come up in sex-education class. So you and I get married, and that makes you my guardian—not my father inny longer, or my mother, or innyone, but you. So that gives you the right to have an abortion done, in New York, where all they want is your money, two hundred dollars, please pay the cashier. So, two hundred, plus the plane fare, plus the hotel bill, is a whole lot cheaper isn’t it, than the Florence Crittenton Home? It would wind the whole thing up, because you’ll be the one, remember, who decides if Burl’s to be charged, if a warrant’s going to be sworn out. If you say no, that’s it. So? Does that make sense or doesn’t it?”

  “...Okay. And then what?”

  “What do you mean? And then what?”

  “We come back from New York and then what?”

  “Well that would be up to you.”

  “Hey! This was your idea. What’s the rest of it?”

  “The rest of it is, it would be up to you, to keep me or ship me home, and whichever way you want, I won’t be inny pest. Of course, I’d feel I owed you something, nice as you’ve been to me, and maybe you wouldn’t mind. But, if you didn’t feel that way, you could ge
t a divorce, or ’nullment I think its called, on account of me not being consummated. Of course, I own up, I would try being nice to you, so nice you might want to keep me, without shipping me back. At least, you don’t think me repulsive.”

  “How do you know what I think?”

  “By how you look at my legs.”

  “Well who wouldn’t, the way you throw them around?”

  “Now you talk like a husband.”

  “Well, it makes more sense than I realized, and I confess the guardian angle hadn’t occurred to me. But—”

  “It would fix everything up—Burl, Father, Mother, honor, the whole stinking mess. We could apply for a license today, pick it up, be married Monday, go to New York Monday night, and have the surgery done on Tuesday—it takes a minute and a half. And then Tuesday night with me in your lap, helping you make up your mind, you could say what you want to do.”

  “The answer has to be no.”

  “Want to bet?”

  “...Bet? Bet what?”

  “What do you think? Money.”

  She fished under one heel and came up with a dime she put on the table. “I always keep it in my shoe,” she said, “for luck—but sometimes it comes in handy. You covering it?”

  I put down a dime, saying, “Taking candy from a child.”

  “Okay, twenty cents in the pot.”

  With that she unbuttoned the shirt, took it off, and draped it on the sofa. She was naked as when she was born. “Goddam it,” I snapped, “put that shirt back on!”

  “Goddam it, I won’t.”

  She walked a few steps toward the hall, switching her bottom at me. Then she stopped and began turning around. “I model myself for you,” she explained, “so you see what the rest of me looks like. So you see what you’re getting.”

  As she turned she talked: “Leftside—backside. Is it pretty?”

  “You know damned well it is.”

  “Yeah, but I like to be told. Right side—”

  “Very nice.”

  “Front?”

  “That’ll do! I’m not looking.”

  “Oh yes you are, you’re peeping!”

  “If so, it was a slip.”

  “We all can yield to temptation.”

  “Sonya, you’re beautiful, I’m so excited I can’t talk, and yet—we’re barely acquainted—”

  “I’m not done yet, I’ve barely started.”

  She gave a hop, skip, and jump, and landed beside me on the sofa. I stiffened, so as not to fold her in, or respond if she tried to kiss me. But kissing me wasn’t the idea. She started unbuttoning my shirt, first pulling my necktie aside, until it was open down to my belt, and then pushing her face inside, and nuzzling into my armpit. Then she began to inhale, but slowly, as though concentrating. After some moments of that she seemed to wilt, crumpled in my arms, and lay with her eyes closed, her head against my chest. I wouldn’t have been human if I didn’t hold her close, or notice how soft she was, and warm, and how silky her skin. Pretty soon she opened her eyes, and began whispering to me, “Okay, Mr. Kirby, I’ll say it, why I could like Burl Stuart, across the drugstore table, and couldn’t stand him that other way, or possibly marry him. Mr. Kirby, he stinks. Maybe he’s your brother, maybe he smells nice to others, but to me he smells like feet. He makes me sick to my stomach. But you don’t, you have a heavenly smell!” I said I smelled like Russian Leather, the face lotion I use, but she said: “It’s not that, it’s you. You smell like grass, grass that’s just been cut. I noticed it that first day, when I sat down beside you in school—maybe that’s why my dress slipped up, and you first peeped at my legs. And then you caught me again today, sniffing you in the car. I had to know if you still smelled the same way—and you did. And do. It’s why I took that shirt out of the laundry basket, instead of finding a clean one. I knew it would smell like you. How do I smell, to you?”

  She lifted a swatch of her hair and dusted it over my nose. “Beautiful,” I whispered. “Just beautiful.”

  “Hold me close.”

  “I am holding you close.”

  “Pat me.”

  I patted her on the bottom, both sides.

  “Paddywhack me.”

  “I couldn’t make myself.”

  “Mr. Kirby, I could give myself to you, now.”

  “Sonya, it must not, it cannot be!”

  “I said could—not that I’m going to. I can’t, I know it, not with this thing inside—it would be messy, it wouldn’t be decent. Till Tuesday we have to hold off. My that’s a long time, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday—I’m going to suffer. Are you?”

  “Yes, it’s going to be hell.”

  “But then, Tuesday night, I promise you—”

  “Shut up, stop tempting me!”

  “Can I pick up the money?”

  “...You win. Pick it up.”

  Chapter 7

  SHE GAVE ME A long, hot kiss and I thought about God. Then she looked at my watch and jumped up. “It’s going on for three,” she whispered, “I have to get dressed.” She grabbed the shirt and scampered upstairs, I following after, for what reason I have no idea, unless for the ancient intimacy of watching a woman dress. Her clothes were on my bed, such few clothes as she had, and she got them on pretty quick, first taking off her shoes and putting a dime in each heel. “Now I have two dimes,” she said. “Should bring me all kinds of luck.” She got into her panty hose, then into her shoes, and then picked up her dress.

  “Hold it!” I interrupted. Aren’t you forgetting something? Like, for instance, your bra? Where is it, by the way?”

  But that drew a blank stare. “I don’t wear inny bra,” she informed me. “I don’t need inny bra—here, I’ll show you.”

  She caught hold of my hand and guided it, so it covered one of this beautiful protuberances, and I felt a touch of vertigo, from how warm it was, how soft, and how firm. “Well?” she asked. “Does that need a bra.”

  “No,” I gasped. “Come on, hurry up.”

  She pulled the dress over her head, zipped it, and put on her hat, after combing her hair at the mirror. “Okay,” she said. “Now we better call home. They’ll have to come with us, you know, Mother and Father both, so they can sign the consent, parental consent, it’s called. On account of me being so young.”

  “Yes,” I said, “you’d better call.”

  She sat on the bed, picked up the phone on the night table and punched the buttons. But then I took the receiver. “Better I talk,” I said.

  It was Mr. Lang who answered. I said who I was and went on: “Sir, I think now we’re all straightened out on this little problem of ours. I neglected to tell you before, but Sonya and I are old friends—we met at a school assembly, at Northwestern High, when she played the march at assembly, and I made the Christmas address. We got along famously then, and talking it over today, in a thorough frank way, we’ve decided we are going to be married—which of course will pretty well take care of everything. But, on account of her age, we must have your consent, yours and Mrs. Lang’s, which is what I’m calling about.”

  I stopped on purpose, expecting him to come in and say what he had to say. But I waited and no answer came. I asked, “Mr. Lang, are you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here,” he said.

  “Well? What do you say?”

  “What is there to say, Mr. Kirby?”

  That didn’t quite seem to cover it, and I pressed him, as to whether he’d sign the consent, and whether Mrs. Lang would. But no answer came, and then I could hear her voice, but couldn’t hear what she said. Then came that blank you get when somebody cups the phone. Then the blank went off and her voice came through: “Mr. Kirby, my husband just told me what you and Sonya are fixing to do, and I can only say: God bless! Mr. Kirby, I’ve always admired you so, and want you to know how grateful I am, how grateful we both are, that you’d step into the breach this way, and—”

  “But I want to step into the breach!”

  “And it’s so decent of you, M
r. Kirby—”

  “Mrs. Lang, about the parental consent—”

  “And Mr. Kirby, one other thing—“

  But on that, Sonya grabbed the receiver. She’d been cuddled into my arms, so she could hear, and she let her mother have it: “Mother! This is me! Now will you knock it off with the goo, all this ladylike talk? It’s getting late, and we have to apply for our license—we want to do it today, so we can be married Monday and get it over with! But we must have your consent, and—” But there was more talk from the other end, and suddenly Sonya screamed, “Yah! Yah! Yah”—or something that sounded like that, and began jawing stuff that seemed wild, but that apparently did the trick. Then she snapped: “Okay, we’ll be by in ten minutes! See that you don’t keep us waiting! We have to be there before that bureau, the Marriage License Bureau, closes down for the day! Ten minutes!”

  She put the receiver back, stood up, smoothed her dress, and kissed me. “Okay, let’s go,” she said. “We’re set.”

  So started an afternoon and evening that melted into a blur, that was something like a dream, and yet at the same time was real. They were waiting out front, Mrs. Lang in a black silk dress with red flowers on it, he in a suit, with no hat. I hopped out, kissed her, and shook hands with him. I handed her in, let him climb in beside her, closed them up, got in myself, and started out. He said, “Mr. Kirby, I don’t try to read your mind, but if it was me, I’d want it done kind of quiet, so how about Rockville instead of Marlboro? I imagine you’re not so well-known in Montgomery County, as you are here in Prince Georges, and—”

  “Good!” I answered. “Sonya?”

  “Well of course,” she chirped. “It’s how we should do, of course. It’s amazing, dumb as he is, the things my father thinks up.”

  “He’s due to get brighter. Did you know?”

  “He is? So he won’t be so dumb inny more?”

  “It’s a well-known fact—when smart-alecky kids get older, their parents get un-dumbed.”

  “Well what do you know. But, take the dumbness out—”

  “Sonya,” I said. “Shut up.”

  “Okay.”

  She said it meek, opened her legs, and began fanning herself with her skirt. “Mother,” she asked, “if you had told me that, what then?”