“Double?” I asked her. “Double what?”
“Wedding, of course.”
“Mother, if you’re getting married, fine—I’ll love it, and it’ll be a wonderful day. But me, I’m not getting married, at all.”
“You’re damned right you’re not—not to me anyway.”
That was Jill, coming to life on the sofa. I said: “OK, Jill, that said it. Now how’d you like to get out?”
“I’ll go when I get ready.”
“You’ll go now.”
“You’ll go and kiss her!” screamed my mother at me.
“Me and who else?”
Nobody moved, to go, kiss, or anything, but my mother let me have it.
“You’re just like your father!” she yelped, into my face. “Stubborn as a mule, one of those mules they have in Kentucky, that has to be hit with a chunk, a two-by-four scantling chunk, before you can get their attention and knock the stubbornness out! That stubbornness has kept me waiting for 20 years, because once he said we’d wait till that woman died out there, he was too bullheaded to switch! And fool that I am, I’ve waited and waited and waited, without finding myself any chunk. And she’s still there and I’m still here and—you go over and kiss her, I say! You hear me?”
“I’m not deaf,” I told her.
“You!” she bellowed at Jill. “Why aren’t you finding a chunk? Why aren’t you hitting him with it?”
“The chunks are all on the fire.”
“You could bang him with that poke!”
But at that Jill jumped up. “I’m sick of the poke!” she screamed, bursting out crying again. “It’s ruined them all—every last one that has touched it is dead, and it’s not going to ruin me.” She reached for the firescreen, pulled back when it burned her hands, then reached for the tongs, to topple it over with them. I suddenly realized she meant to heave that money right in the fire. That’s when I grabbed it and flung her back on the sofa. “Oh no you don’t!” I told her. “And there’s not any jinx on it either—except for those who stole it, or tried to. For others it’s perfectly good money, and that includes you. So take it and get out. It’s yours, it’s what you’ve been living for, praying for, and lying for—take it to bed at night, take its pants off and kiss it, and once more, get the hell out!”
I yanked her to her feet and gave her a boot in the tail. She whirled, perfectly furious, and let me have it in the head, with the bag, swinging it by the strap. I went out, seeing white lightning first. I was out a long time, and when I came to I was falling. I caught myself, staggered somehow to my feet, and started for her again. But her eyes opened wide, my lip suddenly tickled, and a blood spot showed on the floor. She hadn’t hit me in the nose, but it was bleeding just the same. She came close, pushed me back on the sofa, and tilted my head back by raising my chin. My mother handed her a swatch of Kleenexes she got out of her handbag. Then she dived for the kitchen and came back with two clean dish towels, one wet. The wet one she put on my head, handing the other one to Jill. Jill jammed it under my nose and held it there, all the time sitting close, so I could feel how warm she was and how soft, especially her swellings in front. She kept whispering how sorry she was for those rotten things she had said: “But I wanted that money so—it was mine and I hated to lose it!” And then: “Bop me!”
“What?”
“I said, bop me.”
She reached around behind, flipped her skirt up and slid down her panty hose, so her bottom was bare. “If you don’t bop her,” said my mother, “there’s something wrong with you!”
I didn’t bop her. I lay there with my eyes closed, wondering what her warmness, softness, and smell, which I could catch in her hair, had to do with what she had said, and how sore I was about it. I didn’t have anything that I could see and yet I didn’t feel quite so sore any more. ’Stead of bopping, I patted her. Then my arm went around her. Then her mouth found mine. If you can’t guess the rest. ...
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1975 by James M. Cain
cover design by Mimi Bark
978-1-4532-9154-2
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