The Last Good Kiss

by James Crumley

“I’m pleased to do what I can,” she said huffily, then went away.

  “Aren’t we all?” I whispered to her departure.

  Trahearne stayed dry, seemingly without effort, except for a sip of my beer the afternoon we toasted Fireball the first time he managed to raise- his leg to take a leak.

  “God, that’s good,” Trahearne sighed after he had swallowed the beer, “so goddamned good.”

  “The first one always is,” I reminded him as I took my beer can back.

  “Right,” he said, then trundled off on his walk.

  Fireball followed dutifully, marking every bush and rock in sight. When they reached the highway, Fireball waddled across the road to the creek to fill up again, and on the way toward town, Traheame fussed at the bulldog constantly, telling him to put his damned leg down and come on.

  That night, as he lowered himself into the pool, Trahearne asked me why I didn’t come in with him anymore.

  “It’s like swimming in somebody’s snot,” I said.

  “Sughrue,” he said softly, “Sughrue, you’re the most disgusting human being I’veever had the displeasure to meet.”

  “At least I don’t swim in—” 260

  “My god, don’t say it again,” he cried, then buried his head under the water. As he bobbed back up, he faked a great sneeze and splashed water all over me. His laughter rattled around the large tiled room, filling it with the sound of breaking glass. Then he drenched me again, shouting, “Never again! Don’t ever say that again!”

  I reached out with a damp boot and shoved his head back under the water. He grabbed my ankle with his huge hand and jerked me off the side of the pool. We both came up laughing like kids.

  Later that same evening, as I was watching television and letting my clothes dry, I heard a knock on the large picture window of the daylight basement. When I glanced up, Catherine was standing there, grinning at me. My pants were nearly dry, so I slipped into them before I went to open the door.

  “Aren’t you the bashful one?” she said, still grinning.

  “My mother was an Avon Lady,” I said, “and she taught me never to answer the door unless I was dressed.”

  “That makes perfect sense,” she answered, then she sighed and her grin didn’t come back. “Listen, I’m coming down with cabin fever. When I finished typing this evening, I decided that I needed to get out of the house. Why don’t we call a truce, and you can take me to town and buy me a drink.”

  “Good idea,” I said.

  When the Sportsman Bar closed at two, I bought half a dozen drinks in go-cups and carried them out to Catherine’s Porsche. As I balanced them and climbed into the passenger seat, she reached over to touch my cheek.

  “Let’s take a midnight dip,” she suggested.

  “Good idea.”

  She eased the sports car through the darkened town and parked it behind the hotel, then got out and unlocked the back door of the pool house. Inside, I lined the paper cups up along the edge of the pool as Catherine rustled out of her clothes. Then she came over to help me with mine.

  “Shall we swim before or afterward?” she whispered when I was as naked as she was.

  “During,” I said as I grabbed her and we tumbled into the warm, slick embrace of the water.

  Sometime later, we sat on the edge of the pool with our feet dangling into the water. Wisps of steam hovered across the rumpled surface of the water, and like a distant echo of thunder, the spring rumbled gently at the far end of the room. The last quarter of the moon ticked slowly past a skylight window.

  “It’s so odd here at night,” Catherine whispered. “It’s like the entrance to some underground world where it’s always warm and silent. That’s why I whisper. When it’s closed up like this, they couldn’t hear you over in the hotel even if you screamed.”

  “Don’t scream,” I whispered as I held my hand over her mouth. She giggled against my fingers. When I moved my hand, she screamed, a quick high note that shattered the silence and echoed around the walls.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly, then giggled against her hand.

  “You’re drunk, lady,” I said as I fumbled for another drink. The ice had melted, but I gunned it anyway.

  “Isn’t it wonderful,” she sighed, leaning against me. “I’ll tell you a secret,” she said.

  “Then it won’t be a secret.”

  “You won’t tell anybody,” she said.

  “I’m too drunk to remember.”

  “In the wintertime, when I come down at night, I climb out of the pool and dash outside and roll in the snow, then dash back into the pool.”

  “Everybody in town knows that,” I said.

  “Oh you,” she hissed, then slapped me gently on the chest. “You should try it sometime. It’s like being reborn.”

  “Rolling around naked in the snow is not my idea of a religious experience,” I said.

  “Sissy.”

  “That’s what they called the brass monkey after he rolled around in the snow,” I said.

  “What brass monkey?”

  “The one that froze his balls off.”

  “You’re terrible,” she said. “Except when you’re being wonderful.”

  “That’s what I always say.”

  “I’ll tell you another secret, you terrible man.”

  “I already forgot the other one,” I said.

  “You’re the first man I’ve ever come here with,” she said, watching her feet as they stirred the water. “The very first.”

  “I’m touched.”

  “Don’t be cynical,” she said. “This place is very special to me.” She sat up straight again. In the darkness, the strips of untanned skin glistened, and as she turned to face me, her white breasts were as luminous as small moons. She must have seen me looking because she covered them with her darkly tanned hands. “The plastic surgeon who does my work says it’s nip and tuck from now on,” she said lightly. “He also reminds me how lucky I am that I didn’t have children. Trahearne wouldn’t have them, you know.” When I didn’t respond, she added, “Considering how things worked out, perhaps he was right.”

  “Trahearne’s all the children anybody needs,” I said.

  “Trahearne is a great artist,” she said quickly, “and

  if I’ve made sacrifices, they were offered to that greatness.”

  “Okay,” I said, sounding, I thought, properly chastised.

  “You don’t sound convinced,” she said.

  “Look, I’m fond of the old fart,” I said, “but I’ll let the folks in charge of greatness and all that crap decide that for me.”

  “C.W., sometimes you exhibit an unbecoming small-ness of mind,” she said.

  “Provincial, huh?”

  “A goddamned redneck,” she said, then laughed. “You damned phony,” she added, “I know all about you. Traheame has told me everything.” I didn’t have anything to say about that, either. If Trahearne wanted to talk to his ex-wife, she was his ex-wife. “I don’t tell him everything,” she said, “if that’s worrying you.”

  “I never worry.”

  “I worry about Trahearne,” she said seriously. “Maybe it’s time you quit,” I suggested. “No, he needs me more now than ever,” she said. “You can understand that.”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re not jealous, are you?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “My needs are small, and if you want to baby Traheame, that’s between the two of you.”

  “Not exactly,” she said softly.

  “What?”

  “Melinda,” she whispered. “Right.”

  “You know, I think I would hate her even if she didn’t have my husband,” Catherine said calmly.

  “Jealous?” I asked. “Only of her backhand.” “What?”

  “Oh, when she first moved up here, back when I was 264

  still trying to be gracious about all this, I asked her to play tennis one afternoon,” Catherine said. “What happened?”

  “Sh
e humiliated me, on the court and in the dressing room later when we came in for a swim,” Catherine said. “I understand that you’ve seen that body she keeps hidden under all those baggy awful clothes, and you can imagine how it made me feel when I saw it.” Then she paused. “Not that she showed it to me. She did her best to hide it—1 have to admit that—but I peeked into the shower. That was the hardest moment of many hard moments.”

  “You’re a lovely woman too,” I said.

  “It’s kind of you to think so,” she said. “I suppose she’s better in bed than I am, too.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said.

  “Really,” she said, sounding genuinely surprised. “I thought she was fairly free with her favors.”

  “You’re not the only one who thinks that,” I said. “You’re a little bit in love with her, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  ‘.‘Trahearne thinks you are,” she said. “Maybe I am, maybe not,” I admitted. “I don’t know anymore.”

  “Damn it.”

  “What?”

  “Are you sober enough for me to ask you something very important?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you think she would leave him? Under the circumstances?”

  “I don’t know about that,” I said. “She loves him but she thinks that he doesn’t love her anymore. She might leave, but I wouldn’t know what the right circumstances might be.”

  “Think about this for a moment,” she said. “In my purse I have three cashier’s checks. One for forty thousand made out to the bearer. Another for twenty thousand made out to a Miss Betty Sue Flowers. And a third in your name for ten thousand.”

  “No,” I said. I stood up and walked toward my clothes.

  “Listen to me,” she said as she followed, “hear me out. Trahearne is working now, he isn’t drinking and he has a chance to live and work for the rest of his life. If she comes back to live here, he will die within the year. You must know that.”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t want any part of this.”

  “When she flies back from San Francisco, Traheame will ask you to pick her up at the airport in Meriwether,” Catherine said as she rummaged in her purse, “and all you have to do is convince her to get back on that airplane—or another airplane—and fly out of our

  lives.” “No.”

  “Please,” she said as she handed me a long white envelope.

  “Trahearne would just send me after her again,” I said as I hefted the slim bit of paper. Seventy thousand dollars seemed as light as a feather, yet so heavy that my hand could barely hold it up. I tapped it against my cast, which was crumbling after being dunked twice that day. “He’d just send me after her again.”

  “But if you took a long time to find her, long enough for him to finish this new book,” she said, “it wouldn’t matter by then.” When I didn’t answer, she added, “I wish you could read the beginning of this new book. It’s beautiful, and you would understand why this is so important.”

  “I can’t do it,” I said as I tried to hand the envelope back to her.

  “Just think about it, then,” she said. “Keep the money and think about it. You owe me that much.”

  “I guess I do,” I said as I set the envelope down and worked into my clothes. “Whose money is it?” I asked as we finished dressing.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Edna and I put up equal amounts.”

  “I’ll think about it, but I know I won’t do it,” I said.

  “If you don’t convince her,” Catherine whispered as she stepped into my arms, “Trahearne’s a dead man.”

  “I can’t,” I said, then buried my face in her damp hair. Beneath the sharp mineralized odor of the spring water, the light flowery touch of her perfurrhe lingered.

  “Everything would be so simple if you could,” she whispered against my neck, “and it will be so awful if you don’t.”

  “It’s already awful,” I said.

  We rode in silence back to Trahearne’s house, and when she dropped me there, we didn’t even say good night. I watched her drive over to the other house and park her car in the garage on the far side, watched the progression of lights turned on, then off as she moved through the house. The light in the living room stayed on for several minutes, as if Catherine had spent time looking at Trahearne’s war trophies again. Then the downstairs went dark and a soft glow lightened the upstairs windows, as if a hallway light had been turned on. As I turned away, both upstairs windows on this side of the house flared, and I could see the two women’s shadows moving behind their separate curtains. The old woman had been sitting downstairs in the darkness among the remains of that old war. A shudder swept across my back, and I went over to my El Camino, unlocked the topper, then crawled inside to lock the envelope in the gun case in the bottom of my tool chest. I went on to bed before I could think about any of it.

  Catherine was right about one thing, though: two days later Traheame asked me to drive down to pick up Melinda so he wouldn’t miss a day’s work.

  When she came down the ramp, I almost didn’t recognize her. She wore a tailored, vested suit in a dark shade of peach, her hair was blond again, short still but smoothly cut instead of hacked into a rumpled mess, and she even wore light touches of make-up. When she walked briskly across the asphalt and through the terminal doors, everything came to a halt at the airport while everybody watched her. She wore a new pair of leather boots, too, with stacked heels, and she didn’t have to reach up to give me the light hug and kiss with which she greeted me.

  “How do you like the new me?” she asked, her smile so warm and dazzling that it nearly blinded me.

  “Jesus Christ,” I murmured.

  “Thank you,” she said, accepting the compliment as if she felt she deserved it. “How are you?”

  “Overcome with desire,” I confessed.

  “Thank you again,” she said calmly, then swung her shoulder bag around and headed for the baggage claim. Two matching leather suitcases came down the conveyor. She nodded toward them, and I picked them up.

  “What the hell’s in here?” I grunted.

  “A new life,” she said, still smiling.

  I followed her out to the El Camino, hurrying to keep up with this new, confident stride. Even from the rear, she looked happy. When she swung open the passenger door, Fireball tumbled out to greet her. If he had been any more excited, he would have rolled over on his back and pissed on himself like a puppy. As it was, he bounced around and barked and slobbered until he ran out of breath.

  “Old Fireball MacRoberts seems to have recovered,” she said as she knelt to rub his stubby ears.

  “Roberts,” I said as I tossed her bags under the topper.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Fireball Roberts,” I said, “not MacRoberts.”

  “Oh who cares?” she said joyously, and I had to agree.

  “I’m almost afraid to ask what happened,” I said as we drove away.

  “Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you all about it,” she said as she opened the cooler between the seats and cracked two beers. She handed me one, then drank half the other in one long rippling swallow, the smooth muscles of her throat working fluidly. “How’s your hand?”

  “Still broken,” I said as I pounded the ratty cast on the steering wheel.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  I had made the mistake of assuming that she knew, but it seemed that Traheame hadn’t told her. If he hadn’t, I certainly wasn’t going to.

  “One of those things,” I said.

  “Well, if you want to be mysterious,” she said, then laughed and attacked the beer again. When she finished it, she crumpled the can like tissue paper, tossed it behind the seat, and went after another. “You

  ready?”

  “Not just yet,” I said, hefting the nearly full beer. “What did you do down there?”

  “I don’t know where to begin,” she said, “so ma
ny wonderful things happened. I found a gallery in Ghirardelli Square, and they liked my work well enough to arrange a show—which sold out in three days; can you believe that?—and I shipped the rest of my pieces to a place in L.A., so that’s settled.

  “Then I went to see all the old ghosts. Rosie and I got roaring drunk, had a terrible fight, then fell weeping and laughing into each others arms.” She paused long enough to laugh giddily. “I went up to see

  Mr. Gleeson, and he was a pathetic old fool. Then I dropped in unannounced on poor Albert, and it took him two Valium and a giant Scotch before he stopped stuttering. I forgave the bastard for being a bastard, and you know what he did?” “No, but I can guess.”

  “He came on like Mister Smooth-action.” she said, “and when I wouldn’t have any of it—1 laughed in the creep’s face—he burst into tears and dashed upstairs to see his shrink. I loved it.” She laughed again, then dug into her purse. When she jerked out a long white envelope, I occupied myself with the beer can, but she slapped me across the chest with the envelope. “Five thousand dollars cash money,” she said. “Will you see that Hyland gets it for me?”

  “All right,” I stammered, then stuffed the money in my shirt pocket.

  “A down payment on a new life.”

  “Melinda—” I started to say.

  “Betty Sue,” she interrupted quietly, “Betty Sue Flowers. It’s a decent name.”

  “I’ve always thought so,” I said.

  “How’s Trahearne?” she asked. “He didn’t have much to say over the telephone.”

  “Nose to the grindstone, dry as a bone,” I cliched.

  “He did mention that you were a great nursemaid,” she said. “You’ll stay, won’t you? As long as he needs

  you?”

  “I guess so,” I said. “Unless you want to run away with me.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she chortled as she slapped me heavily on the thigh. “I’ve just come home again.”

  18••••

  AS SOON AS WE GOT BACK TO THE HOUSE, BETIY SUE tumbled out of the pickup and raced up the stairs toward the front door. Fireball and I followed slowly— I was trying to be polite and he was practicing his aim—but she met us at the doorway, her finger lifted to her soft lips.