“Yes. I’m still here. Pour me another.” She handed me the empty glass.
“Well,” I said. “An old toper, eh?”
“No.”
I poured her another big one and she took it and drank it. I looked at the money and heard a crash. I looked up. She had thrown the glass into the fireplace. She stood there grinning at the fireplace.
“Watch it,” I said, “You’re getting plastered.”
She turned and looked at me, and her eyes were glazed a little.
“Jack, let’s go to bed.”
“I don’t want to go to bed. The hell with it.”
“Not even with me?”
“Not right now. Jesus Christ, lay off, will you?”
“I just asked you to come to bed.”
“I want to sit here.”
I looked up at her. She was glaring at me. She was mad as hell. I thought, The hell with it, then.
“What I wanted to tell you,” she said. Her voice was flat and level. “When you went out to the store. I saw a car.”
“Good for you. Good eyes. Take care of ’em. Precious possession. You’ll never know when you need a good pair of eyes. Saw a car—what kind of car?”
“A yellow hardtop.” She came closer. “Jack, I swear it was the same car I saw going up and down past the house the other night. The one I told you about.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
None of it was coming through very well. I fought to clear my head, but it only became worse.
“Jack?”
“Yeah? What now?”
“Who is it owns a yellow car? You know somebody who owns a yellow hardtop. I think it’s a Buick. Who?” She paused and I tried to hold my head up, but I couldn’t seem to do it. The hell with it. I was stoned.
“It’s that Grace, isn’t it,” she said. “She owns a yellow hardtop Buick, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah. How’d you guess?”
“Now I know why you took so long at the store.” I twisted my head up at her, trying to see her. It frightened me deep inside someplace, but I couldn’t seem to do anything about it. She blurred and I said, “You’re crazy as hell,” and everything went away, and I came to, still trying to see her, still trying to say something, only it was daylight.
“Shirley?”
I felt panic. My head was bad. I came to my feet, running, calling her name.
“Shirley. What was that about a yellow car?”
She wasn’t in the bedroom.
I ran back across the living room, jumped the pile of money, then damned near fell over the bottles. They were on the floor and they were both empty. The last one had been nearly full, I remembered that. I knew I hadn’t drunk it all.
She must have.
And right then I remembered something she’d said a long time ago, it seemed like years.
I went outside. It was misty and chill with morning, but the sun was coming up over there, a yellow ball. I could feel the faint warmth of the sun.
“Shirley!”
Nothing. She wasn’t around. The car was there.
I ran on around the outside of the cabin, and down along the riverbank.
“Shirley?”
There was no sound except the dark purling of the water and the slow wind in the pines. High in the pines. I thought I saw something. I moved on down along the riverbank, calling her name, feeling the panic.
She had said something about a yellow car. Only what? There was one yellow car. Grace’s.
“Shirley?”
She didn’t answer. I kept moving along the riverbank.
Then I remembered, all right. She had said she’d seen a yellow hardtop Buick when I was over at Wilke’s Corners.
And she had said something about knowing it was Grace.
It couldn’t have been.
But I wouldn’t put anything past Grace.
If it had been Grace, then we had to get out of here. We had to leave right away.
I turned and looked back toward the cabin. Smoke was coming out of the chimney.
“Shirley?”
She didn’t answer.
I started back toward the cabin. I don’t know what made me run, but I did. I ran back along the riverbank, my feet sliding in the grass and mud. You could hear the black water pulsing against the banks. No other sound. Just my breathing and my feet pounding.
“Shirley?”
The cabin door was open.
I went up on the porch and inside.
She was in front of the fireplace, naked, and she was very drunk. You could see that right away. She didn’t stagger, but she was wild-eyed drunk.
The fire was the biggest we’d had, the flames leaping savagely up the chimney. The whole fireplace was a blazing sheet of white flame.
“Shirley?”
“Yes, Jack?”
She stood there in front of the fireplace. I looked over at the shiny white leather suitcase, at the pile of money.
The money wasn’t there. I looked around. The money wasn’t in sight anywhere. She must have put it in the suitcase.
“Where’s the money?” I said.
“I burned it.”
“In the fireplace,” she said. She turned and pointed at the flames. “In there, Jack. I burned the money. See it? It’s burning right now....” I went straight out of my head. I ran to the fire and sprawled across the hearth. I heard myself cursing, and above the cursing I heard the way she laughed. It was something terrible to hear. Then she didn’t laugh anymore.
I lay there on my belly, with my face thrust into the flames, scrabbling with my hands. The fire seared my hands and wrists and arms, but I kept snatching and scraping at the flames.
There were a few loose bills strewn around the hearth. But you could see all the rest of them in there, curling and seething and shriveling in the white flames. Crisping and roaring up the chimney flue. The chimney roared and shook, and it was a kind of wild laughter, too.
The heat drove me back. It became more intense.
I turned in a crouch.
“Don’t Jack. Don’t come near me.”
She stood across the room, facing the fire and me, and she had the P-38 in her hand.
I heard myself say it, but it didn’t really sound like me at all. “What are you trying to do?”
There was no expression in her voice, and none at all on her face.
“You don’t love me,” she said. “I know that now. If I’d only known it before, this would never have happened. You don’t love me. You love the money.”
“You’re drunk—you don’t know what you’re doing.”
