Текст книги "Death Wish"

Автор книги: Brian Garfield

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“Jack, you’re in with all the criminal lawyers, you know people in the District Attorney’s office. I want a pistol permit.”

“It’s not that easy, Pop.”

“I read somewhere there are half a million New Yorkers who own firearms.”

“Sure. Shotguns for hunting, mostly. The rest of them are mainly war souvenirs and rifles. A certain number of people own guns illegally, of course, but that’s a violation of the Sullivan Law—you could get sent up for twenty years for carrying a gun without a ticket.”

“What about all the storekeepers who keep pistols under their cash registers? What about them?”

“Pop, it’s a different kind of ticket. The Bureau of Licenses issues pistol permits in two categories—premises and carry. You could probably get a premises permit if you wanted to stow a captured German Luger in your apartment or something like that, but that’s totally different from getting a permit to carry a concealed weapon on the streets.”

“Then what about all these gangsters who’ve got licenses to carry guns?”

“It’s a corrupt city, Pop, we all know that. If you’ve got ten or twelve thousand dollars to spare to grease certain people, you can get a concealed-pistol permit. It’s not fair but it’s the way things work. It’s an outrageous price, but the Mafia can afford it and it protects them from the inconvenience of being run in on a weapons charge. But I never heard of an ordinary law-abiding citizen willing to spend that kind of money on a gun. Even if you did, it would make them suspect you were some sort of criminal. They’d start bugging your apartment and your phone and you’d live your whole life under surveillance. Is that what you want?”

“All I want is the machinery to defend myself.”

“Have you thought of moving out of the city?”

“Have you?” he countered.

“God damn right I have. As soon as Carol’s on her feet we’re getting out of this hell-hole. I’ve already started reading the real estate ads. You ought to do the same thing, Pop.”

“No. I thought about it. I won’t do it.”

“Why?”

“I was born here. I’ve spent my whole life here. I tried living in the suburbs. It didn’t work. I’m too old to change, I know my limitations.”

“But things aren’t the same as they were then, Pop. It used to be a place where you could live.”

It was a bilious tone he had never heard from Jack before; but he shook his head. “I won’t run. I just won’t.”

“Why the hell not? What’s keeping you here?”

It was too hard to explain. He wasn’t going to allow himself to be driven from his home by a pack of savages who weren’t fit to wipe his shoes. But how did you say that aloud without making it sound like a corny line from an old cowboy movie?

What he said was, “Then you won’t help me get a gun permit?”

“I can’t, Pop. I haven’t got that kind of clout.”

“And I get the feeling from you that even if you did, you wouldn’t use it. You don’t approve of the whole idea.”

“No. I don’t. I don’t think adding to the arsenal on the streets is going to help calm things down any.”

“It’s too late to calm anything down,” he said. “It’s about time we revived our self-respect, don’t you think? Nobody should have to walk down a public street half-paralyzed by fear that somebody could come leaping out of any doorway with a switchblade knife. Human beings just shouldn’t have to live that way.”

“And you think having a loaded gun in your pocket would give you back your self-respect and make you feel ten feet tall. Is that it?”

Now who sounds like bad dialogue from an old movie? But he didn’t laugh; Jack had neither the imagination nor the sense of humor to appreciate it.

Jack said, “You’re kidding yourself, Pop. Have you ever even handled a pistol in your entire life?”

“I was in the Army.”

“All right, so you were in the Army. You were a clerk-typist, not a combat infantryman.”

“We still had to qualify on the range. I’ve handled guns.”

“Rifles. It’s hardly the same thing. A handgun’s a very tricky job to handle, Pop. People who don’t know them very well are always blowing holes in their own knees. And what happens if you’re accosted by another man with a gun? What happens when he sees your gun? Christ, you’d get your ass blown off.” Jack spread his hands and ducked his chin toward his chest. “Look, you’d better forget the whole idea. Guns aren’t panaceas, Pop. Bullets never answered any questions.”

“I don’t want to ask questions. I want to protect my life. What is it in this day and age that makes that simple desire so incredibly immoral and wrong?”

He gave in because Jack wasn’t going to; there wasn’t much point prolonging it. He knew all the arguments to which Jack would resort; he had used them all himself, in the past. And to keep pressing the point would make Jack suspicious that perhaps Paul had something more than self-defense in mind.

On the way home he asked himself exactly what he did have in mind.

Revenge, he thought. It lay curled in the back of his mind like a poison snake.

But it was a meaningless fantasy, really. The police had got nowhere; they would never get anywhere. Esther’s killers were free and there wasn’t a chance in the world of anyone’s ever finding them. Sooner or later they would be arrested for something, but it wasn’t likely this crime would ever be pinned on them. No one knew who they were and there was no way to find out. So it didn’t matter, that way, whether or not you went armed in the streets; you’d never have a chance to take a shot at them. You wouldn’t know them if you walked right into them.

Still, he had wanted a gun. Jack’s advice was simple to disregard, but he did know the facts; it was a keen disappointment to find out how impossible it was to obtain a pistol license.

It was dark when he came up out of the subway. The fear settled in his bowels again when he walked the single crosstown block to West End Avenue. No one accosted him, he reached the apartment without incident; but he was covered with oily sweat.

I just don’t want to feel like this, he thought. Is it so much to ask?

13

A phone rang, closer to the bed than it should have been. He blinked. The surroundings were unfamiliar and with momentary disorientation he rolled over, saw the phone and listened to it ring again. His arm reached it and tipped it off and he heard a weary female voice whine, “Seven-thirty, sir, you left a wake-up call.”

The motel. The Arizona heat just beyond the whispering air conditioner.

He ate breakfast quickly in the coffee shop and went back to the diagonally ruled parking slot in front of his room where the rent-a-car sat; the sun shot painful reflections off its chrome, the dry heat was already building toward another suffocating noon. He climbed in and started the car. The steering wheel had sun on it; its rim was almost too hot to touch. He switched on the air conditioner but the engine hadn’t smoothed out and it stalled. He cursed mildly and spent a while grinding the starter before it caught again.

He had always kept his driver’s license up even though he hadn’t owned a car in two decades nor driven one in several years. He still felt uncomfortable behind the wheel after nearly a week on these boulevards and freeways; it was a different style of driving out here, philosophically different from the kind of dodging and diving you got used to in city taxis. There was just as much aggression here but it was a high-speed kind and they came at you blinding fast from long distances away. Tucson had a main boulevard actually named Speedway; it had a green mall down the center, palm trees and lawn, several lanes on either side—the street itself was as wide as a New York city block and the drivers seemed to have cross-country racing in mind. Miles of it were lined with sportscar showrooms and speed shops and car-washes and gas stations. Everything glittered too much; even with sunglasses he had to squint.

Williamson had told him about the series of grisly murders. They were scared here too. No place was immune any more. You thought of muggings and murders as dark city things—as if wide boulevards and low rooftops and a brass desert sun would inhibit them—but the crime rate was alarming here too and Williamson carried a revolver in the glove-compartment of his Cadillac.

Paul envied him. Two days ago he had asked where Williamson had got the gun—how he’d got a license for it.

“Well, you don’t need a license to buy one. You’ve got to register it, of course—the federal act—but they can’t refuse to sell you a gun as long as you can prove you haven’t got a criminal record. Technically you’re not supposed to carry a concealed weapon, and the cops enforce that if they catch you with a gun in your pocket, but I never heard of anybody getting arrested for carrying a piece in his car or keeping a gun in his house. Course you can get a concealed-weapon permit from the local cops if you really want one. Not like back East, thank God.”

They were all right-wing down here, it was Gold-water country. He hadn’t lost his contempt for their attitudes on almost everything. They supported free enterprise for the poor and socialized subsidies for the rich. They insisted on your right to die if you didn’t have enough money to afford expensive private medical treatment. They saw Communists behind every bush and wanted to drop Nukes on Moscow and Peking. You had a right to good transportation if you had the price of a Cadillac; Tucson had no public transportation to speak of.

But they had a hard-nosed fundamentalist attitude toward crime and he knew now they were right about that.

Jainchill’s head offices occupied the top three floors of a very new high-rise building near the foothills of the mountains that loomed over the city. The building was all plastic and glass, it had all the warmth of a digital computer. He put the car in the vast parking lot and went into the lobby and felt the blast of chilled air hit him like an arctic wind after the heat outside. He pressed the elevator’s depressed plastic square and watched it light up.

They had assigned a conference room to him. The long table was littered with ledgers and documents. He spent the morning alone with columns of figures; at noon he left the building and drove to the restaurant to meet George Eng for lunch. On the way he got caught in a little knot of traffic; a fool blocked his way, one of those uncertain drivers who crept through the intersection and inevitably put on a burst and squirted through the traffic just as it turned amber, leaving Paul stranded at the stoplight. He looked at his watch and chafed.

On the corner beside him stood a small shop with fishing tackle and bicycles and guns in the display window. Hunting rifles, shotguns, more varieties of handguns than he had ever thought existed. He stared at them.

A horn blared behind him. The light had changed. He drove across the intersection, craning his neck to find the street signs. He couldn’t see them. The idiot behind him blatted again and he drove on, never having found out what cross-street it had been. But he knew he was on Fourth Avenue; he’d be able to find it again. He dipped down into the sudden dimness of the railroad underpass and when he emerged from it he began to look for a place to park.

“The shrimp’s pretty good here. It’s Guaymas shrimp, they fly it up here fresh.”

“I bow to the wisdom of the East,” Paul said and closed the menu.

George Eng smiled at the little joke and gave the order to the hovering waiter. When they had been left alone at the table with their drinks he said to Paul, “How’s it going?”

“Steady and tiresome. I haven’t found anything shocking.”

“Kind of hoped you wouldn’t.” George Eng was fleshy around the face and his movements were those of a heavy man but he was not overweight. Paul had only met him within the past year; he assumed Eng had done a good deal of dieting in the recent past but hadn’t yet got used to being slender. He had a thin feathering of dark hair and a self-conscious Fu Manchu moustache that lent his Oriental features a sinister appearance. He had been born in Hawaii into a wealthy family; he had no discernible accent. He dressed with conservative care and had expensive tastes; he was a good businessman with a quick decisive mind. Paul had met him only at business affairs and gatherings associated with business—cocktail parties, luncheons. He knew nothing about the man outside of that context; Eng was a private person, he didn’t open up. It had been months before Paul had screwed up the nerve to crack mild and inoffensive Oriental jokes at him, and he’d only started because it had become evident that Eng expected it and enjoyed it. He played the role of Chinese man-of-mystery with deliberate intent.

It was the sort of restaurant that did most of its business at the noon hour and attracted a business-lunch clientele of the kind that didn’t stint on expense accounts: The drinks were generous, the menu straightforward but served with a proper elegance, and the tables were separated by pillars and rubber plants and discreet distances. The lighting was recessed and indirect but you didn’t have to strain your eyes to read your partner’s expressions.

“All right,” George Eng said, “let’s wheel and deal. You’ve been at it all week. What can you tell me?”

“It’s pretty much what we expected. Nothing alarming. Naturally they’ve done everything they can to put the company in the best light—they’ve seen you coming, for quite some time.”

“In a way we did that on purpose. Wanted to see how much skulduggery their management was willing to indulge in. We’ve given them ample opportunity to show their true colors, don’t you think?”

“I’d say so, yes.”

“And what are their true colors?”

“I’d call it pale gray,” Paul said. “You’ve already seen the routine posting-and-footing audit; that was done back in New York with electronic data-processing. We already knew they’d done some mild fiddling with their earned surplus and net working capital and other vagaries like that.”

“You’re suggesting I needn’t be surprised to find they’ve carried that policy through to the rest of the company.”

Paul nodded. “I didn’t think it would put you off.”

“What specifically are we talking about now?”

“I’ve found half a dozen points you can use for leverage, I think. For instance, they’ve tried to show a sharp increase in assets by reporting the company’s subsidiaries at book value instead of original cost.”

Eng made a face. “That’s a little cheap. I’m disappointed in Jainchill.”

“You can’t really blame him for trying.”

“I had a sneaking hope he’d be a little less obvious than that. What else?”

“Well, they’ve started amortizing their research costs over a five-year span. They only started doing that last year—before that they were absorbing them immediately in each fiscal year. Nothing dishonest about it, but it does paint a brighter picture. The only other thing of any consequence I’ve been able to find is a sharp increase, within the past eighteen months, in stock options to their executives.”

“In lieu of cash bonuses, you mean.”

“Yes. They used to pay cash bonuses almost exclusively.”

“What do the stock options amount to?”

“I’m still working on those sheets. If I had to make a general projection I’d say it would be in the neighborhood of four hundred thousand dollars.”

Eng put a cigarette into a stubby silver holder and lit it with a jeweled lighter. “And of course those stock options aren’t charged to income.”

“No.”

“Stock options,” Eng muttered, “can turn out to be a long-run drain on per-share dividends. They could end up diluting their capitalization if they kept it up at that rate.”

“Well, I’m sure they had no intention of keeping it up. They knew you were nosing around, there was a good chance of a take-over bid from Amercon—you’d have done the same thing, in their shoes.”

“In effect, then, they’ve been paying bonuses to their own executives in the form of options on what they hope will be Amercon stocks.”

“It amounts to that.”

“That’s a little blatant,” Eng observed, “but if it’s the worst they’ve tried to pull, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. I was more concerned about the possibility that their cost system didn’t reflect actual production costs, or that they might be saddled with big inventories of obsolete stock that they never bothered to write down or charge off. I’ve run into that several times—losses that should have been taken long ago, but somehow end up staying back in a warehouse somewhere with no liability accounts to cover them.” His eyes suddenly whipped up to Paul’s face. “But you haven’t found anything like that.”

“No. That’s not to say it couldn’t exist. I just haven’t found any signs pointing that way. We won’t know for sure until we’ve been over the inventory sheets for all their subsidiaries.”

“How long do you expect that to take?”

“Depends on how detailed an audit you want. Jainchill’s got five subsidiaries. He took over three of them within the past four years. Naturally at the time of the mergers he had audits done. Now either we can accept those figures or we can duplicate those audits ourselves.”

“What would you recommend, Paul?”

“I’d be willing to accept his audits. It would cost you quite a bit of money and three or four months’ time to dig back into all that stuff now. And don’t forget, Jainchill didn’t have a buyer for his own company sniffing around when he went into those mergers. He hired competent accountants and they did a thorough job of investigation for him before he moved in and took over these subsidiaries. He couldn’t afford to do any less than that—he had to be sure he wasn’t buying a pig in a poke. He was in the same position then that you’re in now.”

Eng speared a shrimp and sat with it half-raised over the plate. “Suppose we decide to accept those figures. How long will it take you to finish up the rest of your audit?”

“My end of it or the whole operation?”

“They should be finished in New York by the end of this coming week. I’m asking about your own work here.”

“From the way things look right now, I’d say I should have everything I need here by the middle of the week. Say Wednesday evening. Then I’ll need a few more days on the computers back in New York. Ten days from now ought to wrap up the whole thing.”

Eng nodded. “Good. Then let’s do it that way. My board of directors is anxious to get this merger rolling.” The shrimp made the rest of the trip to his mouth and disappeared inside. “How do you like it out here?”

The sudden switch of tone and topic took him off guard. “Well—it’s kind of hot.”

Eng shrugged. “Everything’s air conditioned. Half the year it’s pleasant anyway—no snow, you never need an overcoat.”

“So they tell me.”

“I gather you don’t like it much.”

“I wouldn’t say that. It’s too different a life-style for me, I suppose—I’ve spent my whole life in New York. I’ve nothing against it for other people. But it does remind me of the suburbs. Does that make any sense?”

“Yes. There’s a small-town flavor to it even though there’s half a million people here. I take it you must have tried the suburbs at one time.”

Paul nodded, finished chewing, swallowed, reached for his napkin. “Some years ago. You need a certain kind of patience to live in a house and put up with all the mechanical things. Every time you want to buy a newspaper or a carton of milk you’ve got to get in a car and drive somewhere. It’s all right for most people—I just never got in tune with it. And I always hated the idea of neighbors nosing around one another. In the city your neighbors don’t bother you unless you make it clear you want them to.”

“I’m a little surprised to hear you talk that way, after what happened.”

“I like to think my wife would have understood.”

Headlights swept into the motel room, slatted by the blinds. He switched on the free television and watched mindlessly for a few minutes; turned it off and went outside. The night’s residual heat oozed out of the walls and pavements. The boulevards were all neon and incandescence, the lights of cars slid by, the snores of big trucks shook the air. Against the dusty sky the mountains were a vague heavier mass.

He walked across the motel apron to the sidewalk and went along the neon-lighted strip to a stucco building that sat by itself in a dusty gravel yard, Schlitz and Coors signs filling its windows; he went inside and got his bearings. It was a cheap saloon—eight wooden booths, dark scratched bar with cracked-upholstery stools, glass-framed licenses, dusty snapshots, and half a dozen broken old guns on the wall.

There was a scatter of people in the place, hunched painfully over drinks, listening to the thump and whine of hillbilly records on the jukebox. Several people looked at him, saw he wasn’t an acquaintance and went back into themselves. Suddenly he didn’t want this; he almost turned and left, but the bartender was giving him a big smile and a “Howdy there,” and Paul went to an empty six-foot space at the bar and asked for a dry martini.

If his appearance hadn’t identified him, the martini order did; several sets of eyes flickered at him again. He took the drink across to an empty booth and sat down with his eyes half-closed and let the twanging music get into him. He didn’t want to think; thinking had become painful.

Cowboy boots went thudding past; he looked up at the receding shape of a big man in a business suit and a white ten-gallon hat. He had an urge to snicker. The man in boots and hat left the place and Paul swept his glance along the bar, the people at the bar. They were all so anxious that strangers should like their desert city. The forced hospitality, the desperate boosterism. It was an alien country to him; he’d felt less out-of-place in Europe. Sam Kreutzer would feel right at home, but not me.

I hear that lonesome train

Whistle down the rails;

Sometimes I hear you call my name

Down that far backtrail

From Yuma, all the way from Yuma

.

The guitar and the fiddle and the rhythm, the woeful plains-twanging voice. Always sad songs about lost loves. No Gershwin and Porter and Rodgers out here; it was a foreign tongue.

He bought another drink and sat listening to the sad simple tunes. They made the past a troubled reality; he drank quickly and bought a third, and sat twirling the glass in his fingers. Remembering the times when everything existed in its ordered place, when you could tell right from wrong. Days of black telephones, two-decker buses on Park Avenue, ticker-tape parades for heroes you didn’t laugh at, a pad of check blanks at every cash register, Grable and Gable and Hayworth and Cooper, an amiable cop on the beat, a fish wrapped in newspaper, clandestine dreams in plain brown wrappers, Uncle Irwin in the Depression wearing white shirts to prove to the world he could afford the laundry bill, the importance of chastity and the evils of alcohol and the goodness of Our American Boys, Pat O’Brien and apple pies and motherhood and tell-it-to-the-Marines and “The Darktown Strutters’ Ball” and Glenn Miller’s “Stardust.” Jesus, I remember Glenn Miller. By crap, yes I remember Glenn Miller—very important to remember Glenn Miller.

“My name’s Shirley Mackenzie.”

She was standing by his table with a glass in her hand, pushing the ice cubes around with a swizzle stick. He was so startled he only stared up at her. She wore a maroon velvet band across her dark hair. A narrow large-eyed face with succulent cushion lips. A thin body clad in a silvery blouse and a short leather skirt. She smiled a little, not brazenly. “You sort of look the way I feel. That’s why I came over. I’ll shove off if you want.”

“No—no, don’t. Sit down.” He got clumsily out of the booth, remembering his manners.

“I don’t really mean to intrude. I mean–”

“No, I could use some company.”

“Only if you’re sure.” She had a good voice, low, half a whisky baritone. A walnut-brown face; when she turned into the light he saw she was a good deal older than he had thought at first. Thirty-five or so. Her nails were chewed down to the quick.

Standing there while she slid into the booth he realized he was perilously close to being very drunk: his vision was blurred, his balance uncertain, his tongue thick and clumsy. He got back into his seat and watched her across the table. “Paul. Paul Benjamin.”

She acknowledged it with a vague smiling nod. “I don’t suppose names really matter, do they. I mean ships that pass in the night and all that.” Her lips quivered before she drew them in between her teeth. She had both hands wrapped around her drink.

“Well, then, Shirley Mackenzie.”

“You remembered it. Think of that.” Her face tipped to one side; the smile was wider now but filled with self-mockery.

“What did you mean, I look the way you feel?”

“Oh, sort of like the world had just fallen down around your ankles.” She tossed her head back and lifted her glass, a faint gesture of toasting; ice clinked against her teeth and she put it down empty of everything but ice cubes. “Look, I’m not a B-girl with a sob story if that’s what you were thinking.”

“At this point I’m not sure I’d mind.”

“That’s painfully honest. Honest for you, painful for me.” She smiled yet again to show she wasn’t offended.

“Would you like another?” He indicated her glass.

“Sure. I’ll pay for it, though.” She lifted her shoulder-strap bag onto the table.

“Not necessary,” he muttered awkwardly. “What was it?”

“Scotch and soda.”

“Any brand?”

“Bar Scotch. I never could tell the difference.”

He bought the two drinks and brought them back to the table. She didn’t make a fuss about his having paid, but her bag was still on the table. He took a swallow and knew his mouth would taste rancid by midnight. What the hell. “So,” he said, and stopped, unable to think of what to say.

“I’m sorry, I’m not much help either, am I? I’m not used to picking up strangers in bars.”

“Neither am I.”

They both smiled. Then the shape of her eyes changed. “Hate is a very exciting feeling, do you know that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, I was sitting over there at the bar thinking about killing my son of a bitch of a husband—ex-husband, pardon me. I mean really thinking about killing him. Imagining what it would be like to strangle him with piano wire or stick a kitchen knife in his throat. I’d never do it, of course, I’m not that crazy. But do you ever have daydreams like that?”

“I guess so.”

“It’s exciting, isn’t it. Gets all the juices flowing. You get very stimulated.”

“You know that’s true.…”

“You said that as if it’s happened to you but you never recognized it before.”

“Something like that, yes.”

She shook her head—the same mockery again. “I guess you don’t want to talk about yours either.”

“My what?”

“Whatever it is that made the world fall down around your ankles. All right, we’ll make a deal—we won’t talk about any of that, we’ll talk about something else. You live here?”

He widened his eyes. “Here? Tucson?”

“I guess you don’t.”

“I’m surprised—I thought it stuck out all over me. I’m from New York.”

“Well, if I were a local I’d probably have noticed. I’m from Los Angeles.”

“On your way to or from?”

“From. Emphatically from. I got this far today—I’m staying in the motel next door.”

“So am I.”

It caused a brief gap; she dropped her eyes to her drink. Paul said, “Look, I didn’t mean anything by that. It wasn’t a hint. I happen to be staying there, that’s all.”

“I am beginning to feel,” she said in an abrupt vicious little voice, “like the world’s prime cock-teaser. Please forgive me.”

“What for?”

“For coming on like some kind of nympho bar girl and then flying into a twitter the minute I imagine I hear you tossing a gentle pitch my way. I am sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for, I promise you.” Another swallow: Take it easy on this stuff. “Where are you bound for, then?”

“Ask me tomorrow when I get in my car. Maybe I’ll have an idea by then.”

“You really are footloose and fancy-free.”

A twisted smile, a dip of her face; her hair swung forward, half masking her. “I have a sister in Houston. I suppose I’m edging in that direction. Reluctantly.”

“No other family? No children?”

“Three kids.” She bit it off. “My husband got them.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“It’s all right. All you’d have to do would be read the Los Angeles papers. It’s public knowledge. I’m not fit to raise my own children—the judge said so.”

“I’m sorry. Really.”

“Of course it helps when your husband’s a lawyer and the judge is a friend of his.” Her face whipped up. “Do I look as if I’d neglect my children? … Shit, never mind, how could you be expected to answer that? Look, I promised we’d talk about something else. What are you doing here? Vacation?”

“Business. Very dull, I’m afraid.”

“All the way from New York. It must be big.”

“Big for some people. For me it’s just my job.”

“What do you do? Or is that prying?”

“No, not at all. I’m a C.P.A., I’m doing an audit of a company’s books. It’s hardly a sensitive subject but I promise you it’s less interesting than dishwater.”

“Well, then. What shall we talk about? Nuclear submarines? The weather?”

“I don’t mind, really.”

“We don’t really have to talk at all. It’s such a strain sometimes, isn’t it.” She gathered her handbag and tossed off the rest of the Scotch. “Why don’t we go?” The voice was pert but she wasn’t meeting his eyes.

He walked her across the motel’s concrete apron, concentrating on his balance. She trailed along beside him with her vague involuted smile, her hips swaying from the slender stem of her waist. “The station wagon with mud all over it, that’s me. My room.”

“I’ll say goodnight then, and good luck to you.”

“No.” She turned under the porch overhang. “Do you like me? Do you like me at all?”

“Yes—I do.”

She opened the door; it hadn’t been locked. She drew him inside and pushed the door shut behind him. The only light was what slotted in through the half-closed blinds. Against it her eyes glittered, betraying a wild desperate appetite. “I want to hold you. I want you to hold me. Please hold me for a minute.…”

He reached for her and they breathed liquor on each other, and kissed; he felt the tears on her cheeks. “Oh, come on to bed,” she said, “we both seem to need it and it’s a friendly thing for two people to do, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”