eager, and hungry for life. It made her more vital to me, and I knew I would go through a lot to have that always. I didn’t care what she was.
“Why me?” I said. “I’m a stranger to you.”
“You’re very quaint, dear.”
“All right. How can you trust me?”
“What is there to trust? You mean I should be afraid of you going to Victor with what you think? Or perhaps suggesting things to the police?” She turned on the seat, regarding me coolly. “That would be a laugh, Victor would very likely hit you over the head with an oxygen tank.” She paused and a smile touched the corners of her lips. “Besides, if he didn’t, I would.”
“No hokum. This is serious.”
She said nothing for a moment. Her eyes were steady and cool. “Listen,” she said. “I’m going to be serious. I think we understand each other very well, Jack. I mean by that, I don’t believe either of us have any illusions concerning morality. Am I right?”
“Let’s say you’re right.”
“I am right, darling—so very right. Tell you something, now. I did want the TV sets, and the speakers, the intercom units, for the house. But I’m not going to lie. I wanted the other, too.” She leaned slightly toward me and there was a shade of bitterness in her tone. “I’ve been through hell with that man, taking care of him—I won’t go into that now. It’s too damned sordid. Suffice to say the past few years have been a prison for me. I’ve had very few acquaintances, none of the kind I’ve wanted, let alone anyone I could call a friend. I’ve been lonely. I don’t have time for anything but taking care of him.” Her voice tensed. “Alone all the time, like that, you get to doing things, thinking things, and sometimes you actually believe you’ll go crazy.”
“I can understand that.”
“Yes. Can you understand this? I like to lie on my back with a man on top of me.”
“I sort of guessed that the other day.”
She showed me her teeth, gleaming and white and maybe even predatory, between the red lips. Sometimes the things she said seemed to come from movies she might have seen, or novels she might have read. But it didn’t matter. She said, “That’s one of the things I like about you. We’re a pair, Jack. It’s hot and it will stay hot.” She hesitated, then said, “So I wanted the TV sets, but I counted on the other, too. I planned for it. I thought of a lot of ways, and it seemed the best. Lots of things could always go wrong with the TV sets, or other things I’d buy. I didn’t give a damn who it was. A man, that’s all, see?” Her face wasn’t pretty when she said that. You didn’t want it pretty, either. She breathed shallowly, her eyes clear and young and bright. “If it didn’t look as if it would work out right, then I’d try another place, until I found what I wanted. I didn’t imagine it would be too difficult, if I made things obvious. Only you were different. I would have waited a long time.”
“Oh, sure.”
Her voice was low and tight. “You looked me over and liked what you saw, and you thought about it. You listened to every word I said, and thought about that. You considered every angle till I thought I’d go crazy. Like how old I was, and everything.” She gave me that sly look along her eyes. “I told you all about Victor, so you’d know how it was with me. His having an attack when he did was timed just right. You think I needed your help, taking care of him? I could do that in my sleep. But I knew you’d be sure then that I did have it tough, and maybe I’d like to play around.”
“You’re really nuts, you know that?” She awed me. “You and Victor both should be in the hospital. You belong there.”
“You laugh at me,” she said, “and I’ll dig your eyes out. I’m telling you, so you’ll know.”
“Okay.”
Her voice softened. “I knew what you were thinking. There’s only one thing, Jack. Now I don’t want anybody else—ever. I just want you.”
“Sure.”
“I’m in love with you, Jack.”
We sat there like that, watching each other.
Something coarse came into her tone. “I mean all I said. And don’t try to kid me—you’re as bad as I am.”
“How do you mean, bad?”
She ran the tip of her tongue across her lips until they gleamed, and the excitement was in her eyes. “The other part of it,” she said. “Victor. You were right. I thought all the things you said.” She gave a quick sigh, straightened in the seat, and began looking at the windshield again. “But I could never do anything like that. I think about it—but it’s just dreaming.”
“The snow’s getting pretty heavy now, Shirley. You’ll have us drifted in if you don’t watch it.”
She slowly turned and frowned at me. “Just what do you mean?”
“I mean you’re going to do it, Shirley. Someday you’d have to do it, you couldn’t help yourself. So it’s going to be now.”
She stared at me, still frowning. She didn’t speak.
“We’re going to do it together,” I said. “You know that.”
Her lips moved very slightly, and there was no expression on her face at all.
“You mean you would help me?” she said.
“Yes.”
The word hung there between us.
She slid across the seat and knelt on one knee, and put her arms around my neck, and pressed her mouth against mine. She shivered in my arms. I held her that way, then let go, and she slid back on the seat. Dim fright lurked in her eyes.
“I didn’t know what you would say,” she said. “I couldn’t be absolutely sure.”
“How do you feel now?”
“Good—crazy good.”
She was wearing a fawn-colored dress of some slippery material that clung to her shape. Her eyes were very bright now, almost like glass. Her hair was thick and soft and full of light. The hem of the dress had worked far up on her thighs, past the rims of sheer, gartered stockings, twisted into the plump milk-white flesh.
I reached for her. She gave a little gasp and arched her back against the pressure of my hands, her breasts filling with the way she breathed as I pulled her up to me.
“You were here early,” she said.
“So were you.”
And then were locked together, and the car was shuddering in a storm of lust.
Much later we sat far apart and talked. Or Shirley talked.
“Mother was only married to Victor a year and a half before she died. Sometimes, when he’s very ill, he gets the two of us mixed up. He thinks I’m his wife. But, anyway, everything comes to me when he dies. One thing that’s worried me is the way he gives money away.”
“How?”
“Don’t get in a stew. There’s plenty left.” She reached over and patted my lips with her fingers, smiling. Then she got serious again. “Maybe there’s more left now than he figures on giving me, even. He sold out for a frightful sum. But he makes these damned donations, it’s like a disease. He gives to charities. It really scares me.”
“For three years you’ve lived with this?”
She nodded. “Plus the year and a half before mother died. When she died, he just seemed to fall apart. Mother was his secretary for a while.”
“He likes you a lot.”
“He had nobody. I had nobody. It was one of those things.” She smiled from the corners of her eyes. “I always sort of worked on him a little. It looked good to me.”
“I can imagine. How much you figure he has right now? I mean cash in the bank?”
“Three—maybe four hundred thousand. I don’t know exactly. About that.”
“About—” I started to say something else, then stopped. I just sat there. It was my turn to stare at the windshield. It came to me how much money that was. I actually got a chill. In the back of my head, I’d had something like fifty, seventy-five thousand, and a split was there, too—twenty-five, maybe thirty for me. I hadn’t
