“Yeah?”
“You think you’ll ever marry?”
“I don’t know.”
“You wouldn’t marry me? If you could?”
I shook my head. She felt my chin going back and forth against her hair.
“No?” she said.
“You’ve got the best little jungle-gym in the world, honey. But I’d get bored climbing around on it all by myself.”
“And yesterday you thought you loved me.”
“What if I do? Love doesn’t help boredom.”
“What does it help?” she said. “You’d think it’d help something.”
I kissed the tip of her nose. It was delicate and finely made. I thought again how, if someone had really punched her there last night, it would’ve been swollen twice the size now, and too painful to touch. I supposed she’d poked a stick or something up there to make it bleed. And Shade’s shirt had been powder-scorched. I couldn’t see him letting Halliday in close enough for that. But getting in close would be no problem for Rebecca. I could see her taking Shade by the hand, leading him round back of the pump house, looking up at him soft-eyed, the way she was looking at me now. Her gun, when I’d checked it last night, had been freshly cleaned. That morning, it’d been full of crud. I guessed there wasn’t much doubt that she’d killed Shade herself. There probably wasn’t too much doubt as to why, either.
“Becky?” I said. “You sure you want to go through with this?”
She said, “I’ve never been so sure.”
I kissed her hair and closed my eyes. We kept dancing.
Rebecca said she was hungry again that evening and, like I said, I made us a big spaghetti dinner, but she didn’t do much to it. She chewed her lip as much as she chewed anything else. She was getting nervy. I wasn’t too pleased with things myself. I had fourteen hours left, about, and no traveling money to speak of. I did the washing up and then sat her down beside me and said, “Look. If we’re going to do this, we’d better do it.”
“Oh, now he’s in a hurry,” she said airily. “I guess he’s tired of this.”
She was coming unraveled, all right.
“Are you sure this is what you want?”
“Don’t keep asking me that.”
“If it’s what you want, sooner is better.”
“You’re tired of me. You’re all tired out. You’re a tired old man,” she said, climbing into my lap and making herself small.
“When’s the next time the safe will be full?” I said, and kissed her shoulder.
“I could find out,” she said.
“Could you find out tonight?”
She thought. “Yes. Sure. I know who to see. I’ll go see them tonight. I guess you want to get me out of here and get some sleep.”
“I’m going to find a car we can use.”
“You’ve got a car,” she said.
“I’m not going to use my own car, Rebecca.”
“Where are you going to get a car?”
“There are a lot of cars in Los Angeles.”
“You know how to do that?”
“It’s not hard.”
“What if somebody notices it in the lot?”
“Rebecca, it’s not going to be in the lot. Let me earn my money, all right?”
Clothes were a problem. All she had left was that brassiere. It had a few speckles of blood on it, but it was a real work of engineering and I don’t know what you’d have had to do to really hurt it. I offered to drive over to her room and fetch her some clothes, but she said no. She put on the brassiere and posed.
“There,” she said. “Now I think I’m all ready to go out. I think I look very nice now. Very stylish. How do I look?”
“Overdressed.”
I picked my old shirt off the floor and buttoned her into it as she beamed up to me.
“Now,” she said. “Now I know I’m ready to go out. What, you don’t like it? You want to put more clothes on me? Mister Corson, I wonder if you really like girls.”
“Why don’t I go get some of your clothes?”
“No. No, I’d rather you didn’t go back there.”
I got out a pair of my dungarees. She was pretty much all legs, so the length wasn’t a problem once we’d cuffed them, but each pants leg was big enough for all of her. I had a coil of rope in my closet next to my tools, and I cut a length and slipped it through the belt loops and pretty much tied her into my clothes. There was nothing to do about shoes. I gave her a few pairs of heavy socks and she put them on. “How’re your feet?” I asked.
“They’re fine,” she said.
They were pretty torn up, but she’d forgotten about them. Her body was just something she hauled around like a suitcase. She went over to the mirror on my dresser and twisted around, trying to get a good look at herself.
“This is wonderful,” she said. “I’m like a scarecrow. It’s like Halloween. Look, you can’t see anything,” she said, and gave herself a little shake.
“Pretty good,” I said.
“This is wonderful. I’m going to dress like this all the time from now on.”
“Think so?”
“I’m sure of it. I’ve decided.”
“I’m going to miss you,” I told her.
“Well. I wish you hadn’t said that. I don’t know what to say to that.”
“I didn’t say it for you to say anything back to,” I said, getting a little hot.
“I’m sorry, Ray.” She lay her palm on my cheek. “You were good to me. You’ve been good to me.”
So I figured I had those two things now: that kiss from before, and her hand on my cheek. And maybe the dance. Three things.
She kissed me again when the taxi came, like I was her best beau but she had other things to think about, and gave me a little toodle-oo wave from the back window as the cab pulled out. I went back in, packed a suitcase, and put it in the trunk of my car, along with my tools. I took my gun from the desk and put it in my holster. I looked around the room. The dishes were still stacked up in the drainer by the sink. I put them away in the cabinet and left. This time I didn’t bother locking the door.
The place I wanted was on Sunset. I remembered it as just a couple blocks west of Western, but they’re never where you remember them and I spent a while cruising back and forth before I clicked. The sign just said SUPPLIES & NOVELTIES. The show window was a little on the empty side. In front of a purple velvet curtain someone had set out a row of different-shaped candles in holders, a row of goblets set with glass jewels, and a figurine of a kneeling woman with a cat’s head.
Inside the place was a lot cheerier. The woman at the cash register was a little witchy-looking, which might have been what gave her the idea to get into the business. She was in her thirties somewhere, dressed in beat chick clothes, a black turtleneck and a peasant skirt, and she smiled when I came in. The place smelled pretty strong of incense.
“Quite a place here,” I said.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Pretty good business?”
