Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (23 page)

Now she looked away from me and got up and walked slowly towards the living-room. Jesus, I thought, I just won’t be able to get away from her tonight without a fight. I tell her a perfectly believable story…

‘All afternoon I have been thinking,’ she said, turning around. ‘You talk about what a set-up this is. Have you ever thought about how easy it’s been?’

‘Easy? I don’t get it.’

‘This’s been too easy. All of it. It’s been just too goddamn easy.’

I laughed softly to myself, feeling better. This was what she was concerned about, not the other girl, she was suspicious of the set-up. I swung out of bed and went to her. This was going to be very simple now; it was going to be very simple because she was wrong and I genuinely knew it and I could prove it once and for all. Yesterday I might have done some whistling in the dark, but not today. Today I had the facts, from personal observation and experience I had the facts, and the infallibility of my instincts had been corroborated.

‘What’s been easy about it?’ I asked.

‘Everything. The way it just
happened.
Can’t you see that?’

‘No, I can’t see it,’ I said. ‘Your premise is wrong, that’s what’s throwing you off. Nothing just
happened.
It happened because we
made
it happen. We worked like hell to
make
it happen.’ She shook her head, not argumentatively, still held by the original doubt. How could I make her understand that this was no casual fortuity, no happenstance, that this was conceptional volition, and the subservience of that volition to certain golden ends? ‘Jesus, you know that,’ I said. ‘You know the chances we took to make this happen. …’

‘All afternoon I been sitting here thinking. All afternoon …’ she said.

‘If you’re going to do that every time I turn my back, if you’re going to sit around and worry, you’ll wind up in the bug-house. The danger’s all over. The danger was when the cops shook us down and when I baited ’em back to hear the record. But there’s no danger now. You got to realize that. You don’t have to stay cooped up here any longer. Don’t be afraid. Get out and go somewhere. You know where I been today? Police Headquarters. Yes, sir, Police Headquarters, right in the office of Inspector Webber. Mandon and I. And what about Mandon? Is he a dope? Did he come in with us or didn’t he? There’s your answer. He’s a smart cookie. Do you think for one minute that he’d have touched this thing if there’d been any danger in it? Not on your life. He’s got too much to lose. Before he pitched in with us, he checked all the angles – but
all
the angles…’

‘That son-of-a-bitch,’ she said. ‘He’d double-cross us in a minute. …’

She was right, of course, but at that moment she wasn’t thinking of his morals. She was thinking of the first time she’d seen him, when she’d put her body on display for him in that pleasant predatory way that women have, and he had disregarded it, showing no interest in the rises and falls and curves of her body. … This was what had burned her up, this would always burn her up, even if he became her sexual slave, she would still be burned up. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, of course he’d cross us up in a minute,’ I said, ‘but only if it’s to his advantage. Loyalty’s a matter of convenience and profit, and as long as we can offer him those, he’s on our side. He’s useful to us and we’re useful to him, and between us, we’ve got this town in our pockets. You’ve got to believe that.’

She had stopped shaking her head, but I could tell from the doubt still in her face that none of this had made her feel any more confident. I didn’t know what else to say. There she stood…

Yes, there she stands …

I went over and took her in my arms and she opened her mouth and I heard the hiss of air being sharply sucked through her teeth.

T
HE NAME-PLATE ON THE
radiator said, DELAGE, and it was a long, low automobile, black with red-disc wheels, and quilted red-leather upholstery, and parked on the street front of Dr Darius Green’s cottage, lined up along the kerb with a lot of heaps and small cheap cars, its class and quality evident even in the dim light of the street standards. I knew it was hers before I read the registration certificate that was clamped around the steering post: Margaret Dobson, 4100 Willow Creek Drive. Jesus, I thought, this dame is loaded, she really is. This was a hell of a piece of equipment. It was a right-hand drive, with the individual front seats so low they were practically on the floorboards, and the instrument panel was full of dials and gauges and controls, all identified in French. There was a key still in the switch.

I eased through the opening between the front seats and sat down under the wheel, taking out the key. Now a lot of automobile keys are left in the switches. Most people just forget, but there are some who leave them out of sheer damned arrogance, and I knew that with her it was sheer damned arrogance. The hell with it, they figure, they don’t give a damn, it’s insured and if it’s stolen it will be no inconvenience, they will simply have the Number Four boy pick another one out of the stable and bring it around. The butt of this key was gold and ornate with the initials M.D. forming a stencil, and it was with some other keys, all gold, on a big gold safety-pin that served as a key-ring. There were two objects on the key-ring that were not keys. One was a gold St. Christopher, the back engraved with her name, and the other was a gadget, the like of which I had not seen before. It was slightly bigger than a silver dollar and I finally discovered that it was a folding magnifying glass. I opened it and looked at the keys: 14c gold. They were the real things, and so was the big safety-pin: on the bottom bar in very small letters was stamped: Cartier. Yes, sir, not a false note…

I put the key back in the switch and turned it and heard a faint click. I turned it off and looked at Doc Green’s cottage. The disciples were still in there groping with cosmic consciousness. They were due out now, it was after 9:30, I noticed by the clock on the panel, the time she had told me to come. But from where I sat there was no sign of an adjournment, there was no noise; everything inside was quiet and spellbound. Maybe I had time to take one turn about the block. What the hell, why not? I asked myself, turning on the switch. I located the starter button and checked the gears and shoved the clutch out and pushed the button. The motor caught on the first spin, so quickly that I barely heard the starter gears mesh, and the exhaust exploded with a roar and a clatter that caught me wholly off-guard. Frightened and shaky, I quickly turned off the switch and jumped out of the car and started walking down the street. I walked a hundred feet or more, listening intently for the sounds of alarm and excitement that I thought must follow the racket I had kicked up, but there was no sound except my own footsteps. I stopped, stepping behind a bread-fruit tree, and looked back. It was quiet and peaceful, deserted; and then I suddenly realized that Mandon had been right: a man’s reflexes do get conditioned. Mine had been conditioned by an almost identical situation that had occurred long ago – only the automobile was not a Delage and I had been caught (this was before I had perfected the art of Tampering). This reaction was stupid, this was strictly lower animal response, and knowing that, and also knowing why, I told myself that now it could never happen again.

I started back to the Delage to drive it around the block, the hell with the racket it made, this time I hoped it would make ten times as much.

I had just reached the car when the front door of Doc Green’s cottage was opened and the disciples began to emerge. Well, no matter: I didn’t need to prove it… Some of the disciples got into their modest automobiles and drove away, and some walked, and the street was full of sombre and serious ‘Good nights’, and the clash and rattle of gears, and then it slowly grew still again, and Margaret Dobson came out the door and walked across the lawn towards me, the silhouette of her swinging against the paleness of the cottage, and it was not until she stood directly in front of me and I saw her face still white and her hair still black that the ache in my lungs told me I had been holding my breath.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘What’s the matter? That perfume again?’

‘That’s very cruel of you,’ I said, inhaling deeply.

She laughed. ‘Or are you afraid my car will bite you? Why did you cut off the motor so quickly?’

‘You heard it…’

‘
I
heard it? Everybody for miles around heard it. It’s quite noisy. To tell you the truth, I never use it at night except to annoy people I don’t like. I just ride up and down their street racing the motor. …’

‘Is that what we’re doing tonight – annoying your friends?’

‘I’ve already done it,’ she said.

‘It’s a hell of a piece of machinery, all right,’ I said, helping her into the front seat. ‘Is it fast?’

‘Very…’

‘You won’t have it very long if you aren’t more careful of your switch key,’ I said, closing the door. I went around the rear and got in beside her and slammed my door. ‘It’s people like you who keep car thieves in business. …’

‘I never lock anything. …’

‘What do you do – change cars every day?’

‘Just about…’ She turned the switch and started the motor and the exhaust exploded again. She looked at me, smiling, and shifted gears and we rolled away. I never heard an exhaust like this one; it made as much noise rolling as it did when it was started. It couldn’t have been any louder if it had come directly out of the cylinders.

‘How was the meeting?’ I asked.

‘The usual. How was yours?’

‘Profitable. Nothing definite, but great prospects.’

‘I’m very glad,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ I said, leaning towards her, trying to smell the
Huele de Noche
again, but not being able to. I looked at the side of her white face and the black hair, trying to force the odor, but it simply wouldn’t come. I wondered why that was.

She turned her head and caught me staring at her, and smiled softly.

‘I was just wondering…’ I said. ‘Why don’t you wear makeup?’

‘Because I don’t like it,’ she said. ‘Incidentally, have you any plans for tonight?’

‘Only to be with you,’ I replied.

‘I’d like to go somewhere and just talk. There are many things I want to talk to you about. Many. Where will we go?’

‘Anywhere at all except the country.’

‘I thought you liked the country.’

‘I did until I got home last night and took a look at my clothes. I had a hell of time cleaning my clothes. …’

She slowed to a stop at a traffic signal and looked at me mischievously. ‘Next time,’ she said, ‘I’ll bring a blanket. …’

It all happened so fast I didn’t have time to ask questions. One minute we were rolling along the street in moderately light traffic, in front of a row of high-class apartment buildings, with me sitting there on that quilted red-leather seat thinking how far I had come from the Great Smokies and how much farther I would go before I got finished, and the next minute she had turned the car across the pavement and we were going down a ramp into a basement garage. My heart leaped. I thought this was the ramp down into the basement of City Hall, where I had seen the police cars and that she had sucked me into some sort of trick: and then the nose of the Delage lowered going down the ramp and below I could see two lines of expensive automobiles against opposite walls and I knew then that this was no police garage, not with big, rich cars like these. Two uniformed attendants were springing to attention, and she stopped the Delage between them.

‘Good evening, sir,’ said the one on the left. ‘Good evening, Miss Dobson,’ said the one on the right.

‘Good evening,’ said Miss Dobson, with the proper aloofness in her tone.

The one on her side opened the door and she got out, and he promptly moved to the elevator; but the one on my side, whose chore it evidently was to rack the Delage, stood there his hand on the open door, looking at me; and now that I was undoubted, unseated, out of the car and could properly be seen, surprise came into his face. I thought it was the surprise of recognition until I saw that he was not actually looking at me, but at my clothes, and I was suddenly reminded of how cheap and disreputable they were, in what particular and in what detail I could not recall, just cheap and disreputable, and then I realized that it was not surprise in his face at all, but shock of seeing a bum like me in a place like this with a girl like this. I flushed and tingled all over, moving to the elevator, keeping my eyes off the other attendant who was there waiting for it to descend, but knowing that he was not keeping his eyes off me. The outer doors of the elevator opened and the inner doors opened and we stepped in.

‘Good night, Miss Dobson,’ said the attendant. ‘Good evening, Miss Dobson,’ said the elevator operator, and as the doors closed I dared to lift my eyes and I had a flash of this garage attendant’s face and sure enough it had shock in it too.

I moved around, trying to get behind the elevator operator, trying to hide from his eyes, feeling that I was very conspicuous. He was middle-aged and wore white livery; and I had the impression that the rug on the floor was white and that the walls of the cage were white. … With no direction from her, he stopped the elevator at the fifth floor and opened the doors, and as she started out, he said, ‘Good night, Miss Dobson.’

‘Good night,’ said she, and I went out behind her, swiftly, still not giving him a chance to be shocked, and I heard the doors close and the elevator start down, going straight to the garage where the three flunkies could gossip about that bum the Dobson girl had dragged in. …

There was no need for me to ask questions now. I knew where we were; this was where she lived. ‘I thought you lived at Forty-One Hundred Willow Creek Drive,’ I said. ‘What made you think that?’ she asked. ‘The registration certificate in your car,’ I said. ‘I read it while I was waiting.’ ‘Oh …’ she said. ‘Well, once in a while I live there and once in a while I live here.’ ‘This is nice,’ I said. ‘Very high-class. I can always tell a high-class place from the degree of shock the flunkies get into their faces when they see me come in. The more high-class the place the greater the shock.’ She laughed merrily, pausing in front of a door.