no place to spend it. Wouldn’t you like to spend it?”
“Anything you like is all right with me.”
“Yeah, but doesn’t it stir you up?”
“Not particularly. I’ve been awfully happy here, Jack.”
“Well, I am, too.”
We didn’t speak for a time.
“You hungry?” I said.
“Not right now.”
I was feeling the whisky good. I went into the kitchen and had another.
“Sure you don’t want a drink?”
She hesitated. “Maybe just a little one.”
I poured her a little one and took it in to her, and watched her sip at it. She watched me over the rim of the glass. I started back to the chair, and my gaze got stuck on that white leather bag with the money in it.
I got that chill.
I turned and went outside.
“Where you going?”
“Be right back.”
I went to the car. In the back of my mind there was always that threat, that they knew, and they were trying to find us. I had it all worked out, how as soon as I figured things had cooled down, we’d get out of here, get another car—steal one—and take a plane somewhere. Somewhere in the Southwest, maybe. And from there we would fly to Europe. I’d have to get papers rigged, but I knew I could do that. I could do anything with that money.
Only right now, there was the threat hanging over my head. I opened the glove compartment, and took out the P-38, and the shells. I loaded the gun, and put the shells back in the glove compartment. I took the gun inside and laid it on the mantel over the fireplace. I felt better.
“What’s that for? I didn’t know you had a gun.”
I had a good edge.
“I just feel better with it in here. Bought it the other day. You never know.”
“I don’t like guns around, Jack.”
“Well, it won’t bite you.”
I went over and stood in front of her. One of her breasts was bare outside the red housecoat. I don’t know. We’d been at it and at it, and she was terrific, but there was that money. And the getting away. And the knowing they were out there someplace, looking.
“You’re pretty, you know it?” I said.
“Am I?”
“Yeah. There’s nobody I’d rather be with.”
“Am I really pretty?”
She opened the housecoat and lay back on the couch.
She kept at me and kept at me, all day long. It was like some kind of marathon. And after a while you can wear anything pretty thin. It might have been different if we were in that big hotel down in Rio. But somehow, here, you were always listening. There would be the pulsing of the river, and the sound of the pines, and you would try to listen above that. Straining. Just a little bit.
But she was at me every minute.
Middle of the night.
“Tell me you love me.”
I told her a few times. I started to go to sleep, telling her, mumbling and drifting off. I came awake fast, with a yell. She was kneeling there beside me, beating me with both fists, her face all wrung up, shouting it at me.
“Tell me you love me! Tell me you love me!”
I took her in my arms. “Would I be here if I didn’t love you?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Jack?”
“Yeah.”
“We didn’t do anything tonight. We just came to bed.”
“Well, for cripes’ sake.”
“I mean it.”
“Okay.”
“Jack?”
“Yeah.”
She rolled over, with her back to me. “Nothing.”
I lay there staring at the dark. You could hear the river pulsing, and the trees moaning. The fire had died down in the other room. There was a lingering acrid odor of stale pine smoke.
“Shirley?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Shirley, what was it? What did you want to say?”
“Nothing. I told you. Nothing.”
I lay there. She didn’t move. Neither did I.
“Come on,” I said. “What’s the matter?”
She didn’t answer.
I thought after a while she went to sleep. I finally slid quietly out of bed and went into the kitchen. I didn’t turn on any lights. I got the bottle, and took a long drink. I carried the bottle into the other room, and sat down on the floor, on a blanket, and pulled down the white leather bag. I opened it; looked at the money.
Every time. The same thing.
I took a drink and looked at the money.
I sat there until the bottle was empty. I was drunk as all hell. I sat there staring at the money. I grabbed the bills in my hands and crunched them together in wads. They were crisp.
I got up and staggered over to the fireplace and put a log on the irons. It flamed up. I came back and sat with the money, looking at it, counting it.
I got that crazy feeling again.
Maybe we’d never get away. Maybe we’d be stuck here forever, or maybe they would get us. And we would never have a chance to spend any of it, live the high life, what I had wanted ever since I could remember.
I was really crocked.
Right now, the way things were, with the law alerted, the two of us could never make it.
But maybe I could make it alone.
I looked at the money. I guess that was the first time I had really thought about killing Shirley Angela.
Only I knew I could never kill her.
I just thought about it. How it would be. But I knew I couldn’t ever kill anybody. I knew that. Big brave me.
“Jack?”
I looked up. Shirley stood there watching me in the firelight. She was naked. I thought how it would be and knew it was crazy and that I could never do it. She swam around in my vision.
“You’re drunk, Jack.”
“So what?”
“Well, I’d like a drink, too. You might at least offer me one.”
“Okay, okay.” I got up and lurched out into the kitchen, found the other bottle of whisky. “Little one?”
“No. A big one.”
I poured her half a water glass full, splashed some water on top of it, and took it in to her. I drank another long one out of the bottle. It socked me hard. I sat down with the money. The whole room was going.
I heard a noise and looked up.
“You still here?” I said.
