She moved into my arms, and it started. We didn’t get our clothes off right then, either. It was as if she wanted to devour me. I’d never seen anything like it. She was wild. It got me, and we were both swept up in it, a kind of orgy of flesh. And, like always, the pallor of her body seemed to make it stronger somehow. She moaned. She didn’t hold back. I saw that she had been holding back the other times. She talked wildly, yelled, and writhed like the flames of hell.
“I won’t worry about that Grace anymore,” she said once. Then another time, “This! This is for the money. For the money. This!”
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
It was dark and the fire had died down to red embers before we rested much. Then we just lay there and she had been right about everything. It was good with the fire. The cabin was warm, and it smelled of her perfume, mingled with burning pine.
“You’re a mess,” I said.
“You made me that way.”
Her aqua dress was all roped up around her middle, and her hair was snarled, and she just lay there, like some glorious whore, glorifying her whoring, happy as hell.
I went over and put some more wood on the fire.
When I turned around, she was naked, lying there on the blankets.
“Get the money, Jack.”
I didn’t say anything. I turned like a hound on the scent. I got the money bag and brought it back.
“Where’s your purse?”
“Over there on the table.”
I got the key from her purse and unlocked the white leather bag.
“Pour it out,” she said. “Here.” She slapped the blanket between us.
I opened the white bag and turned it upside down. The money fell there on the blanket between us, piling up and piling up. I threw the small suitcase across the room, and knelt looking at it.
“It kind of makes you crazy,” I said. “Doesn’t it?”
“Undress,” she said. “Like me. Take your shirt off.”
I undressed all the way to make her happy, then we lay there, and looked at the money. The firelight was high now, and the flames danced across the ceiling and played like thin wicked fingers across the pile of money.
“Let’s take all the paper bands off,” she said. “It’ll look like more. Jesus, Jack—just look at it, will you?”
I felt a little crazy, right then. I couldn’t help it. Over three hundred thousand dollars, and all mine.
Right there on the floor. I could touch it, and run my hands through it.
“Fun,” she said.
“Yeah.” My throat was dry.
I looked at her. Her breasts stood out and she sort of sprawled around, stripping the paper bands off packets of the money. There were all denominations. Tens. Twenties. Fifties. Hundreds. There were lots more hundreds than anything else. I helped her. She was a lot steadier than I was. I was sweating to beat the band, stripping those packets.
Then we had this pile of money on the blanket. I couldn’t say anything. I knew I would have yelled, or something.
“Just think,” she said. “It was all mine. Only now it’s ours. I mean, if I hadn’t met you, Jack, I’d still be back there feeding Victor his oxygen and secretly burning up inside.”
“But it’s not that way, so don’t think of it.”
Shirley knelt by the money. She reached into it with both fists and tossed it into the air, and watched it flutter down.
“Think of all the things we can do,” she said.
“I am.”
I lay there, watching her. She was beautiful, Christ, they didn’t come any more beautiful than Shirley Angela. Kneeling there with that big pile of money, and the firelight playing across her body, breasts, hip and thigh, her flesh sheened a little with perspiration from the heat so it mirrored the flames—there was never anything like it.
She saw the way I looked at her and laughed happily. She stood up, swaying her hips and shoulders in the firelight, then went into a little dance, playing her body against the fire and the shadows.
She came by me and I tripped her. I grabbed her and kissed her and she was hot all over.
“Jack,” she said. “I’m so happy. I love you so!”
“Prove it.”
She eyed me. “With pleasure!”
We rolled around in that money, loving it up, like a couple of swine, and this time there was nothing slow about anything. It was like that time on the kitchen floor, at her house. Only it was better. It was the best.
After a while, we went into the kitchen, and opened a couple cans of stuff. We ate that, and I made some coffee.
“We’ll have to get some groceries,” I said.
“How long do you think we’ll be here?”
“I don’t know.” And I didn’t, then.
Next day it was the same.
About noon, it was, we packed the money away in the suitcase. We were out of cigarettes, so I said I’d drive over to Wilke’s Corners.
“Be careful.”
“Don’t worry.”
I went over and bought groceries, and cigarettes, and two bottles of whisky. Everything went smoothly. I listened to the car radio, but I didn’t get anything about us. It was almost too quiet.
When I got back, Shirley had found a radio under the bed and she was listening to it in the living room. She was wearing a red housecoat, and that was all.
“Hi,” I said.
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t look at me.
“Hey, there,” I said.
She looked up at me and smiled hesitantly. I went into the kitchen and put the stuff away, and poured a drink.
“You want a drink?” I said.
“No.”
I didn’t like the way she said that. She was acting strange.
Then she said. “Did it go all right?”
“It went perfect.”
“That’s good.”
“No questions, nothing. I didn’t talk to anybody but the grocery clerk, and the guy over at the bar. There was nobody in the bar.”
“Oh.”
“Something the matter?”
“Oh, no.”
I drank the drink. I had another. Then another. I felt it right away, and it felt good, so I had another. I went in and sat down in a chair across from where she was on the couch. She flipped the radio off and looked at me. We watched each other.
“Happy?” she said.
“Sure. You?”
She looked at her lap, then at me, then she nodded.
“Isn’t much to do around here,” I said.
She turned her head away.
“You know what I mean,” I said quickly. “Only we can’t take off. It’s a shame, in a way. All that dough, and
