experience. We’d been expecting a Technicolor and Cinemascope musical.
What we’d gotten was a nice, lusty B second feature in black-and-white on a regular-size screen. And no reassurance.
And I think we both needed reassurance.
“You’re not telling me I am a great lover and I’m not telling you you are a great lover.”
“Yeah, but you did say I was pretty good, Kylie.”
“Oh, you were pretty good, all right. In fact, you were very good.”
“Well, that’s what I meant to say to you, too. Not that you were merely pretty good. But that you were very good.”
“And so were you, McCain. Not just very good. Very, very good.”
Now, that was more like it. Two verys.
“You got a smoke?” she asked.
“I thought you only smoked filters.”
“I’m being European tonight, McCain. Like Simone Signoret or somebody like that.
European movie stars never smoke filters.”
“There’s nothing more alluring than lung cancer.”
I got us cigarettes and got them going and gave her hers.
“God, that breeze feels good,” she said, inhaling with epic depth.
We lay inches apart on the bed. Letting the breeze balm us.
“I ever tell you what he did to me the first time I ever met him at a dance?”
“I guess not.”
“Could you stand to hear about it?”
“Sure.”
She rolled over and kissed me on the cheek. Her breast felt swell against my arm.
“Thanks for putting up with me.”
“So tell me.”
“Well, we met at this dance in
Manhattan, see. And we danced like every other dance together. Fast and slow. And it was obvious there was something going on. You know? So I said, “Be sure and save the last dance for me.” And he kissed me. Right there in the middle of the floor.
This big dramatic kiss. An Mgm kiss.
And then you know what the asshole did? He started dancing with this blonde who came in. Very Vassar, if you know what I mean. Vassar or Smith. One of those real bitch schools. And then all of a sudden he forgot me entirely. He not only danced the last dance with her, he took her home.”
“So how’d you meet him again?”
“Luckily-or unluckily, as things turned out-we’d already exchanged phone numbers by that point. I called him the next day.”
“What he’d say about the Vassar chick?”
“Said she was an old girlfriend and he was taking pity on her.”
“That Chad, always thinking of other people.”
We then proceeded to nuzzle, snuggle, cuddle, grope, bite, nibble, lick, groan, gasp, and giggle. I was almost ready but first I said, “Need to go to the can.”
“Don’t be long.”
“Thought I’d take a paperback in there with me.”
“Har-har.”
I got up and walked to the john and-since I have to reconstruct the thought process here-I guess the next few seconds went this way.
I walked into the john.
And stepped on a piece of glass we hadn’t swept up. Just a sliver. But it cut me enough to remind me of the glass I kept my toothbrush in.
And when I thought of the glass, I thought of it slipping out of Kylie’s hand.
And then I knew who had killed Muldaur and Courtney. Things work out that way sometimes.
She watched me as I yanked my clothes on.
“But where’re you going?”
“I’ll be back in less than an hour.”
“You’re forgetting something, McCain.”
“What?”
She was already throwing herself off the bed.
“I’m a reporter, McCain. And I’m going with you.”
“You don’t even know where we’re going.”
She grinned. “Doesn’t matter.”
Twenty
On the way out there, we stopped at the Nite Owl grocery store and bought a can of lighter fluid. Then we were back on the road and I was explaining everything to her.
Fifteen minutes later I pulled off the gravel road.
“This is the part you won’t like.”
“What part is that, McCain?”
“I’m going in there alone.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“I’m acting as the investigator for Judge Whitney. You’re a reporter. If Cliffie wanted to make a stink about me taking you along, he could.”
“So I wait till you wave a white flag?”
“Something like that.”
She leaned over and kissed me.
“I guess that makes sense.”
Which made me suspicious. She took her reporter’s job very seriously.
I got out of the ragtop. The moon was riding high. The prairie gleamed with moonlight. A John Deere tractor with lights in a distant field looked like a giant alien insect, like the mutated kind you always see on drive-in movie screens.
The garage resembled a jungle ruin in the shadowy light. A lost race of auto mechanics had once thrived here, sacrificing virgin Fords to the motor gods until the very degeneracy of their actions caused them to vanish utterly from the earth. There was a good chance they’d gone to Atlantis.
There was light and mountain music coming from the nearby trailer.
First, to do my good deed for the day. The Boy Scout ethic was not lost on me, even though I’d been tossed out for smoking a cigar in the back of a troop meeting. Somebody had dared me to do it and in those days a good dare was a bracing and irresistible spur.
The snakes were inside the church now. I could hear them hissing from the makeshift altar. And, as my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, see the outline of their cage.
But the snakes didn’t interest me-or even especially frighten me-now.
What I wanted was the corner where all those flyers were stacked. You know, John Kennedy, Secret Rabbi.
The stack sat right next to a window. I was hoping the folks in the trailer would see the fire and come running. And there I’d be with my. 45 and my accusations.
I took my can of Ronson lighter fluid and went to work. I did those babies up proud. By the time I was done, the entire four-foot stack of flyers glistened. And I was out of the giant-size can of fluid.
