Fade to Blonde

“Please,” she said.

“Becky,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I didn’t lie, really,” she said. “Everything important was true. From your end. I do need to get away from him. He did say he’d burn my face. The only thing different is that I didn’t just meet him because he wanted girls for his movies. The only thing is that I’ve known him, that we grew up together, in the same little town. And I loved him very much. And there was only him, and he loved me too. If you read the letter — back then he loved me too. He wrote such wonderful letters, and he was going to send for me, and he did send for me. And when I got here I couldn’t understand anything, because back home everyone liked us, and wished us well, because we were such nice kids. We were. We were athletes and we were nice kids. And for a while, when I was here, I thought everything he was doing must be all right, because it was him doing it. And then I thought, if the other things, if he wasn’t right according to those things, then I’d have to get rid of everything else that said he was wrong. Because I loved him. And I made movies for him. And I did other things. And I began turning, I’ve turned into something horrible. I had to get away. I have to get away. Because I don’t even have his love anymore. But he can’t stand to lose anything, even if he has all the others, and he said he’d ruin me if I went, and then I took some money to make a new start with, and that made it worse. Ray?” she said, tears trickling down her face. “Didn’t you ever have something so precious, what a stupid word. Something that seemed to justify the whole world, and it went ugly, so ugly. And afterward, you wanted to pretend it had never been. That you’d never been that wrong, or hurt that badly.”

“No,” I said. “I haven’t.”

“I did,” she said. “And I thought I was so lucky. And I still don’t know how it happened. And I don’t even believe it’s him anymore. You’re so surprised I want him hurt, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s already dead. He must be, dead for years, and now it’s somebody else, someone horrible. Because in high school he was so lovely and there was only each other.”

“And what high school was this?”

“Do you really need to know that, too?”

“Jesus Christ,” I roared, and lurched to my feet.

She shrank back against the wall.

“Too many goddamned stories,” I said, almost choking. “Too many goddamned people telling me too many goddamned things. Something so precious — you don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t know what you’re doing. Here.” I was digging money from my pocket. There was almost nothing left. I threw it all on the bed. “Here. Here’s what’s left. It’s what I’ve got left. For fifteen bucks a day I’m anybody’s chump, but not yours anymore. Not yours. Get yourself another. I’m out. I’m out.” I turned and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” she wailed.

“I’m out,” I said, and wrenched open the door.

“You can’t go,” she said, and was across the room and her arms were around me. She clutched at my shoulder and somehow got me facing her again, and got herself plastered against me like a windblown scarf, and got the door closed. We stumbled back against it. “Don’t go,” she said. “You can’t go.” Her voice was flat with terror. I couldn’t see her face. She was rubbing it, open-mouthed, against my neck, and hauling my shirttails out of my pants and scraping at the small of my back with her fingers. “You can’t go,” she hissed. “You can’t. You can’t. Don’t go.” She was rubbing the whole front of herself against me from chin to knees, back and forth, as if my name were written in chalk on a wall and she needed to rub it out, and I smelled again the scent of harsh white soap, the kind you wash the laundry with, not your own body.

Over her shoulder, I was counting the money on the bed. “It doesn’t figure,” I said thickly. “If a buck gets me one of them, and twenty-one bucks gets me two, are you telling me twenty-six dollars and forty cents buys the whole package?”

“Don’t go,” she said.

I shut up.

21

Difference

I never told Mattie what it was like. I wouldn’t have known how, anyway. Rebecca knew an awful lot, and she did an awful lot, and for a while I thought I must be a hell of a fellow. Then I saw that the noises she made and the things she said and did were just that, things she said and did. And then I saw they weren’t even meant to fool me. She was just trying to show me a good time. I stopped.

“What,” she said.

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t see her face in the shadows.

“I warned you,” she said softly.

“No. What you said was you weren’t very good.”

“I meant that I don’t want anything. I never want anything. It’s okay,” she said, touching my face. “Don’t stop. It’s okay.”

“Was it—”

“It’s never been any different with anybody. But I was happy when it was him. It’s okay. Don’t stop. Come here. It’s okay.”

What got to me most, I think, was that I couldn’t do anything to get her nipples up. They were just pale disks, sometimes a little nubbly. Of course, some women are like that, even if they’re having a fine time. Anyway, it was stupid to take it personally.

Shade tapped on the door once near midnight, softly calling Becky’s name, and once a few hours later. The first time Rebecca screamed at him to go away, and the second time she just made the noises she was already making, but a little louder. I heard him weeping and stumbling heavily away down the hall.

His hat was on the floor near the window, behind the bed. That’s why I hadn’t seen it earlier.

When I woke at dawn, Rebecca was on the other side of the bed and facing away from me, curled up in a C, all shoulder blades and lion-colored hair. Every now and again she let out a delicate little snore. They were lovely sounds. She didn’t smell like soap now. She smelled like bed. I had forty-eight hours left now until Scarpa sent his men, but it’s funny how lying with a woman makes you feel safe for a little while anyway. Still, forty-eight hours isn’t much, no matter how good Rebecca smelled, and I got up carefully, knelt down on the floor, and started going through her clothes. There was some pale light coming in under the blinds, and I held up each label and read it. They were just labels. I don’t know anything about women’s clothes. I didn’t think I could do her closet or dresser without waking her, so I got her purse off the night table, gripped the clasp in my fist to muffle the click, and slowly twisted it open. Her purse was nice and tidy. She had a clean lace handkerchief in there, a change purse with about a dollar in change, six singles held together with a paper clip, two shades of lipstick, and a compact I didn’t open. There was no driver’s license. There was a little chrome .32 automatic with a fake pearl grip. I could have hidden the whole thing in my hand. I broke it and sniffed, looked down the barrel, then popped out the magazine and counted six bullets. Full, and hadn’t been fired in a long while. I slid the magazine back in. It went home with a faint click, and I heard Rebecca stop mid-snore. She was watching me from her nest of fair hair. “Don’t you ever stop,” she said, without love.

“Morning,” I said.

“Morning. If you wanted to see what was in my purse, why didn’t you ask?”

“I’m shy.”

“I’ve given you this,” she said, patting the sheet over her middle. “I’ve given you all this. You think I wouldn’t’ve given you what’s in my purse? Go on. Take it.”

“I’d look pretty silly with a gun like this,” I said. “I’ve never understood why anybody would put chrome on a gun.” I pulled out a corner of the sheet and began wiping it down.

“What’re you doing?”

“Someday, when you do something stupid with this, I don’t want them to find any of my prints on it.”

“I thought I’d better get one,” she said. “You’re probably going to tell me I got the wrong kind.”

I examined the gun on both sides in the light from under the blinds, holding it by the sheet, then dropped it back into her purse and set her purse back on the night table. I flopped down beside her. She lay on her back with the blanket drawn up to her chin, the edge of it bunched loosely in her fists, but when I took hold of it myself she let