‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘The bed’s warm.’
I took a drink and set the bottle on the bureau and fell off the chair. I got up on the chair again and watched her.
‘Nichols?’
‘What?’
‘You can’t sit there all night!’
‘Shut up.’
Then she was standing by me, pulling at my arm. I stood up and fell flat on my face. The floor was grimy and there was no rug . . .
In the morning I was hung over bad, and plenty sick. She gave me the money and I went out and found a car. I wasn’t thinking yet. I couldn’t think.
It was a good car. It was a Ford sedan and it hadn’t taken more than a half-hour to get the papers changed. The used-car dealer took them to the courthouse himself, while I waited on the lot.
He came back, smiling through the flaps of his jacket collar, turned up against the cold. He was a tall guy with bloodshot eyes and he was happy over the sale.
‘You’ve got a good car,’ he said. ‘A good car.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Boy!’ he said. ‘Everybody’s running out to the other end of town this morning. Big wreck out there. Police are going out there now, I reckon. Maybe I’ll run out there. Somebody spotted a smashed-up Lincoln out there. Sailed right over the damned pine trees.’
‘Oh. Anybody—? They find anybody?’
‘I don’t know. I’m going to run out there.’
So I looked at him, and it was like something clicked inside my head. Maybe it was just the cold morning. But I suddenly didn’t want any part of this. It scared the hell out of me, just standing there. I’d gone too far, and I wanted to get home to Bess. Money or no money.
I took the papers he’d given me and put them in the glove compartment of the car. Then I turned to him again.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘Do me a favor?’
‘Sure.’
‘You got an envelope?’
He went into the little office and came out with an envelope, frowning. I turned away and took what money there was left and put it in there and sealed it and handed it to him.
‘Do me a favor,’ I said. ‘Take this, and the car. Drive the car over to the Ambassador Hotel, all right? Leave the envelope at the desk for Mrs. Ed Latimer. Got that?’
‘Yes. Sure, but—’
‘Better yet. Take it up to room two-oh-two, see? The envelope, of course, with the car keys and papers. She’ll tip you. Tell her you brought the car over. All right?’
‘But, I don’t understand.’
‘You don’t have to. All right?’ I repeated the names. ‘Take your time. There’s no hurry. Wait an hour or so.’
We looked at each other. I turned away and started walking fast down through town toward the main southern route.
I wasn’t on the corner under the stop light more than three minutes, when this convertible came along with an old guy and his wife. They were headed for Key West. Sure, they’d be glad to take me to St. Pete. I got in and sat quiet.
It wasn’t till we were way down in Florida that I remembered I’d bought that Ford in my name. So the rest of the way, I sat there sweating with that, trying not to think about it. Then trying to think what to do about it. Nothing.
It wasn’t much good, I’ll tell you. The old guy and his wife knew I was sick. Getting to St. Pete didn’t help, either.
Chapter 5
They let me out on Lakeview. They were headed for the Sunshine Skyway bridge, and if it hadn’t been for Bess, I’d have stayed with them. ‘We’d be glad to take you wherever you live,’ the woman said.
‘Thanks. It’s all right.’
The old guy wanted to move on. His wife wanted to talk. I grinned at them and started across the street. They started off toward their happy, unworried vacation.
I crossed to the sidewalk and began walking down Lakeview. It was off schedule for the bus, so I’d probably have to walk all the way home. It was afternoon. The sun slanted across a stately row of royal palms along the street and the air was warm. Two girls in shorts went riding by on bicycles, jabbering at each other. Cars hissed past on the asphalt. Over there between patches of green jungle, beyond cool-looking homes, you could see Lake Maggiore, pale blue and shadowed in the sun.
I moved along, trying not to think. I’d have to face Bess with this, and with the rest of it in the back of my mind. Vivian and that damned money. I’d been that close to a solution, and then turned away from it. Maybe it was wrong. I felt bad and I wanted to feel good. I’d done the right thing, it had to be. But did it matter? What was I going to tell her?
How do you tell them you’ve failed them at the last ditch? especially when they depend on you; when they’re sure of the way you do things—banking on you, like they do.
I remembered that guy, Teece, lying twisted in the wreck, and I began to feel better. I needed something to fasten my mind to. I was well clear from them both and that had to be right.
Crossing another block, it was plenty warm. I paused under a young banyan and started peeling my coat. I turned and glanced back there along Lakeview to see if a bus might be along.
A Ford sedan slid into the curb, tires scraping, steam frothing white and hot from under the fenders and hood. Vivian looked at me, pale-faced, and beeped the horn.
I looked away, shrugged back into my coat, and started walking. It wouldn’t do any good. There was no place to run, and anyway, you don’t run. There were about fifteen more hot blocks to my place. I heard the cars peel by through the shadows and the sunlight.
‘Nichols—’
The car door slammed and I heard her running lightly across the grass and down the sidewalk after me, her heels snicking. A young guy and his girl came strolling out of a nearby house. They stopped, whispering, watching. The guy grinned behind his shoulder.
She caught up with me, grabbed my arm.
‘Go away, will you?’
‘You ran out on me before. You can’t run out on me now.’
I kept staring down the street. In the back of my mind, I knew nothing was going to work. She’d found me, just like that—and it was only natural she would come on down here. I looked at her and she was plenty worried. Worse than before, even.
She began to laugh. It was a kind of strained, muted, hysterical laughter. ‘Nichols. Come back to the car!’
‘What d’you want with me?’
‘You know what I want.’
I figured I should have had sense enough not to try and get away from this one.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Will you?’ She stood there watching me with her eyes all shot full of worry and waiting. ‘The minute that man from the car lot drove up to the hotel, I knew,’ she said. ‘I knew even before that. I got one of those feelings.’
We went back to the car and she climbed under the wheel and sat there. You could hear the steam hissing, and the engine creaked a lot.
‘I’m going to stay right at your place, Nichols.’
I turned and looked at her. She didn’t bother looking at me. ‘Like hell,’ I told her.
‘It’s got to be that way. I’ve got to be able to get to you.’ Then she turned to me and her voice had that dead seriousness she was able to get. ‘How could you run out on me like that? After all I’ve told you?’ She turned away and hid her head down against the steering wheel. She was going through plenty. Vivian kept her head pressed against the wheel.
‘You can’t stay at my place,’ I heard myself say. ‘What about my wife?’
‘God, I thought I’d lost you. I got to thinking, suppose he lied to me. Suppose he doesn’t live down here at all. There was no way of telling. Nichols, I’m about dead from driving. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had to find you.’
‘What about my wife?’
‘She doesn’t have to know.’
‘Your damn right. She isn’t going to know. Hear?’
‘Don’t worry. I’m going to pay you. That’s all you want—money.’
I’d ma
de up my mind, now. ‘That’s for sure.’ Well, all right. I’d let her stay at the motel. She’d be a customer. Somehow. A guest. Some guest. Then I told her about how they’d spotted the wreck.
She came around in the seat like a shot. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
I didn’t say anything. She started the car. It took some starting, it was that hot. Finally she got her going and you could feel the fear in her and the dead tiredness.
‘Where’s your place, Nichols?’
She was sitting up on the edge of the seat, staring at the windshield as if she were hypnotized. It was hard to figure her as a woman who would play it this tight. She was nice looking; more than that.
She sure had fouled me up.
I had her park the car on a side street, three blocks from the motel. The car was still steaming. I told her to get some water and she didn’t say a word. I got out and leaned in the window and looked at her.
‘You wait a while, then just drive up front. Give me enough time. It’s the Southern Comfort Motel.’
‘All right. Some name, Nichols.’
We watched each other. She had her hands clenched tight on the wheel.
I turned and took off my hat and coat and started down the block, toward home. It hadn’t turned out the way I’d wanted. You get caught in something like this and you get in deeper and deeper, and you begin to accept it.
Traffic had been rerouted off the main street past our place. The bricks were torn up and there was a tractor sitting silent across the way.
I walked along, alone and beat and kind of lost. Everything was cockeyed, but there was that money. I kept thinking about that. It had to work, now.
My head ached and I needed a shave and I was in a dead man’s clothes. It’s real great, the things that happen to you. You don’t even have to look for it hard.
Southern Comfort Mote
Vacancy
I could see it down there.
‘Vacancy. ’ That was a hot one. We’d never once used the ‘No Vacancy ’ sign. But it did look good down there. The lawn would have to be mowed. I’d have to get at it right away. And some fronds on two of the plumosas needed trimming.
Walking along, I began to feel a little better. Sanctuary down there. And it was Bess who made it that way, made me feel good.
It took up a whole block. Boy! Nichols, the land baron.
Why didn’t they put that highway through? I wasn’t the only one, there were other motel owners going through the same thing. But most of them had been in business for quite a while. They had a nest egg.
You could limp along the way the road was before. But with it shut off and the detour, you had nothing.
The hedges needed trimming, too. I hadn’t noticed that before I left. Then I saw the hedge that ran along the side nearest me had been trimmed about halfway.
Bess again. I’d told her never to do that. I started walking faster, unconsciously.
It was good to be home.
So then it all rushed back into my mind, maybe worse than before, like it does sometimes. Her, in the Ford, waiting back there. The wreck. The brief case with all that money. And Teece—Noel Teece, lying there dead with his two elbows on one arm.
Bess was sitting on the steps by the office. She had on a slipover and a pair of red shorts, just sitting there holding a broom, staring at nothing. I whistled at her.
She looked up and saw me and flung the broom and came running.
Then, watching her, I knew I’d done the right thing, after all. It had worked out right. I wasn’t coming home empty-handed and I knew now I never wanted that to happen. Now she’d have what she deserved, or as near to it as I could deliver. It had been in my mind all along, I guess. If I’d come home the way I’d started, without Vivian—it wouldn’t have been good.
‘Roy!’
It seemed odd and sort of wonderful, hearing her call me that—after all that ‘Nichols’ business.
How Bess could run! She wasn’t too tall, just right, and built just right, too. With light blond hair that the sun was dancing in, and bright blue eyes, her slim legs churning. And those red shorts. She came running across the lawn past the sign, and down the sidewalk.
She hit me hard, the way she always did, jumping into my arms. ‘Roy—you’re back!’
I kissed her and held her and we started walking across the lawn toward the office. We had the apartment behind the office.
Like I say, the sun was in her hair and it was in her eyes, too. She had on a white terry-cloth slip-over, and walking across the lawn she kept swatting me with her hip.
‘Did you get it, Roy?’
‘Sure.’
She stopped again and jumped up and hung on my neck, kissing me. Bess was the way I wanted it and I never wanted it any other way. Just Bess.
I dropped my hat and she let go. ‘You mean, Albert gave you the money?’
I nodded.
She picked up my hat and looked at me and there was a flash of suspicion, only she chased it away. ‘That’s a different suit, Roy. Where’d you get the suit?’
‘It’s—’
‘Doesn’t fit you quite right.’
She reached out and flicked the jacket open and grabbed the waist of the pants and yanked. She was that way; quick as anything and I stood there, looking down at the gap. He’d been a lot bigger around the middle than I was.
‘Al gave it to me.’
‘Oh?’
‘Like it?’
‘Where’s your other suit?’
‘I gave it the old heave-ho.’
‘But, Roy! That was your best suit.’ She began to look at me that way again.
‘My only. And three years old. It fell apart.’
‘Oh, Roy!’
I grabbed her again and kissed her and we went on over to the office and on inside. I had a desk in here, and a couple chairs. It was a small front room.
Bess looked at me kind of funny, and took my coat. She flipped the coat on a chair and plopped the hat on it, and looked at me again.
‘It’s good to be home.’
‘You know it.’
I took her in my arms as she walked up to me. She pressed against me, and when she kissed me, she really let me know. I got my hand snarled up in her hair and yanked her head back, looking down into her eyes.
‘Gee, Roy!’
‘Yeah.’
‘He came through!’
‘That’s right. He’s going to send the money down. Don’t know what got into him.’
‘You were right, then—in going up there. Instead of writing or just phoning, like I said at first.’
I kissed her again, kissing her lips, her chin, with my hand snarled in that golden hair.
‘Roy, you better stop.’
I was trying to hold the rest of the bad stuff away from my mind. It was rough, because I hated lying to Bess. I remembered Vivian, and kissed her again and said, ‘You son-of-a-gun!’ Then I let go of her and turned around, looking at the office, rubbing my hands together. ‘Boy, it’s sure good to be back! Any customers?’
‘A couple. Listen, you’re not getting away that easy. How come you’re late? I figured the day before yesterday. Where’ve you been?’
‘Got a ride down. It saved some money. Folks coming south to Tampa, and I bummed over from Tampa.’ I cleared my throat. ‘For free. I drove them down, see?’
She kept looking at me. ‘What did your brother say?’
I shrugged. ‘Well, I laid the cards on the table. I told him what kind of a fix we were in. He saw it, all right.’ I laughed. ‘Wouldn’t trust me with the money, bringing it down myself. Thinks I’m still wild, or something. Said he’d send it.’
She came over and put her arms around me again. ‘You’re sure he will, Roy?’
I nodded. ‘Anything new about the road?’
She shook her head, laying her cheek against my chest. ‘I missed you, Roy. And you look sick. You need a shave and you’re pale. Is something the matter?’
‘I’m fine. No sunshine up there. Freezing. Snowing in Georgia, even.’
I kept trying to look out the window. I knew damned well that Ford would be along any minute. She was plenty anxious. Then I got to thinking, ‘What if she doesn’t come? What then?’ It hit me just exactly how much I was depending on that money. It was like caving in—I had to have it.
‘You went and started trimming the hedge. I told you not to do that.’
‘It’s just started growing again. I had to do something.’
‘Yeah, I guess.’ I caught myself pacing.
‘Roy, you sure you feel all right?’
I turned and looked at her. ‘Just happy, getting home and all.’ She started to come over to me and I heard the car drive up out in the street. Bess looked at me. I didn’t look out the window, I didn’t dare.
‘Somebody’s stopped out front,’ Bess said. ‘Maybe business is picking up.’ She yanked her sweater down and headed for the door. ‘I’ll go see, Roy.’
‘No. You take it easy. I’ll check this one.’
We stood there, looking at each other, by the door.
‘You listen to me,’ she said. ‘One look at you, and you’d scare anyone clear down to Key West. You look like you’ve been shot out of a cannon. So I’ll see who it is. You sit right here and relax.’ The screen door slammed. I watched her cross the lawn, her legs scissoring, the red shorts in and out of shadow.
Sweat popped out all over me. I stood watching them through the window. Vivian got out of the car and stood there, looking at the motel. When she saw Bess coming across the lawn, she kind of shrunk back against the car, then straightened and reached for her purse on the seat. She turned as Bess stepped up.
They were talking, and I sweated and sweated, sitting at the desk, my head propped on my fist, watching Bess and Vivian. Vivian was nodding about something. Her hair was real black. Bess was shorter than Vivian, standing there with her hands on her hips.
They both started up toward the office.
It was all wrong. I got up and walked out of the office, into our living room. I couldn’t stay there, so I came back. They were talking out on the front lawn. It was enough to drive you nuts.
I had to have a cigarette. I found a pack in the desk drawer and lit up and stood there sweating and fuming. I went out into the kitchen and got a drink of water.
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