McNally's caper

blame you. Hyme and I will keep the car, the rocks, and split. You call the cops and take your chances.’

Dick and I stared at each other.

‘No, Jack,’ he said, looking at Donohue. ‘We’re in this as deep as you are. We’ll stick.’

‘It’s your ass,’ Black Jack said with a mirthless grin. ‘Let’s pack up and get moving. This place gives me the creeps.’

Dick drove down to Baltimore, staying on Route 95. Hymie Gore sat beside him, Jack and I in the back.

‘These short trips are no good,’ Donohue grumbled. ‘But we’ve got to pick up another car and maybe some more cash in Baltimore. Once we’re south of Washington, we’ll make time. Hell, we could even drive straight through if we want to, taking turns at the wheel. No more motels until we hit Miami.’

‘I’d like that,’ I said. ‘I can do without any more motels.’

‘Yeah?’ Donohue said, in a low voice for my ears only. ‘Last night I thought you were having the time of your life.’

But as he spoke, he was watching the cars that whizzed by, turning to look through the back window, leaning forward to keep an eye on cars we overtook and passed.

I started talking to him about Project X, the manuscript he had been lugging along since we left my apartment in Manhattan. I told him I knew why he wanted it, and that was all right with me. What wanted was to keep it up to date, record what was going on.font>

‘Look, Jack,’ I said, ‘it can’t do you any harm. At least if I write what really happened, they can’t get you on a kidnapping charge. You can carry the manuscript under your arm, for all I care. All I want to do is add to it as we go along. I’ll need a portable typewriter and some paper. Give me something to do in the motels. Or, if we decide to drive straight through, I can even use the typewriter on my lap in the car, while we’re on the road.’

‘The typewriter is definitely out,’ he said. ‘Just more junk to lug along. Also, that’s all we’d need: someone next door hearing you typing and remembering, or complaining to the desk.’

So I settled for a bunch of ballpoint pens and a stack of long yellow legal pads. I’d bring Project X up to date in longhand. I could always rent a typewriter in Miami, or buy one, and transcribe the written record into an acceptable manuscript. Jack promised to pick up pens and paper on our next shopping trip.

I won’t describe the motel we stayed in just east of Baltimore. What I can tell you — it was a motel. Drinking glasses in little paper bags, a strip of paper across the toilet seat, an oil painting of geraniums bolted to the wall, a plastic bucket for ice cubes, the smell of pine-scented disinfectant, and mattresses that had been pounded by a thousand strangers.

This time, in our little game of ring-around-the-rosy, I shared a room with Dick Fleming, while Donohue and Gore bunked together. I figured Jack wanted to get some sleep. He sure as hell didn’t get much the night before. He had been a wild man.

‘You think he’s doing it deliberately?’ I asked Dick as we undressed.

‘Doing what?’

‘Schlepping me around. One night with Hymie, one with him, one with you. What am I — the Sweetheart of the Regiment?’

Dick laughed. ‘I don’t think he’s doing it deliberately. What would be the point?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, perplexed. ‘But that lad never does anything carelessly. He’s thought these sleeping arrangements through, and it’s all part of some deep, dark, devious plot.’

‘Oh God,’ Dick said, sighing. ‘Can’t you ever forget you’re a novelist?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I can’t. You like him, don’t you, Dick?’

‘Yes, I like him. I admire him. He’s very strong. A man of action. Takes what he wants. Does what he wants.’

‘Uh-huh,’Isaid. ‘Your bed or mine?’

‘It makes no difference.’

But he wasn’t ready for the traditional scrabble in the hay. I tried, but he backed off. He wanted to talk. All my men wanted to talk. Except Hymie Gore, and he wanted to snore.

‘I don’t know what’s happening to me,’ Fleming said. ‘I didn’t know I could do these things. Taking part in a robbery, running from the cops, learning to use a gun. It’s like it’s all happening to someone else. Someone I don’t know. I can’t believe it’s me. Jannie, how can you live with yourself all your life and not know yourself?’

‘We all do it, kiddo,’ I said. ‘Enjoying it?’

‘Am I ever! It’s like being born again. A second chance. I’m scared witless most of the time, but that can be exciting too. Like, I’m on the edge, the very edge. Jack and Hyme talk so casually about killing and death. “Should I step on him?” “We should have killed the cocksucker.” Like that. But they’re used to it. To me it’s new and scary. But it’s a high, a real high.’

I asked the question I had wanted to ask and thought I

never would. But lying naked in bed with him, with the intimacy that darkness lends, I asked it:

‘Dick, did you have, uh, sex with him?’

‘Yes,’ he said, almost casually. ‘And that’s another thing: Where the hell did that come from? I mean, I’ve never swung that way before. Never had any desire to. Consciously or unconsciously, I swear it. But with Jack, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. How do you feel about my making it with him, Jannie?’

‘Jealous.’

He laughed again. ‘No reason to. It doesn’t affect at all the way I feel about you. But it’s part of my whole life turning inside out, of becoming a new person. We could get killed, couldn’t we?’

‘Easily,’ I said. ‘Any day. And hung up on meathooks to dry.’

He shivered and moved closer to me.

‘I know it,’ he said. ‘Maybe that’s why I did it. The plague moves closer and everyone copulates like mad. You think that’s it?’

I thought a moment.

‘Part of it,’ I said, stroking his soft, velvety skin. ‘And maybe you j ust love him.’

‘Admire him.’

‘Love him,’ I insisted.

if you say so,’ he said, sighing.

We moved closer, held each other tighter.

‘Doyou love him?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I really don’t. I’m as mixed up as you are. Why am I doing all this? The book is just an excuse now; I know that. But here I am wearing a crazy wig and running for my life. Why? Maybe, like you, I was just bored and wanted theater.’

‘Maybe.’

‘And maybe, like you, I wanted to discover just what I’m capable of. I suppose those nutty novels I wrote were a kind of sublimation. But this is the real thing. I wanted to see if I can handle it.’

‘You’re doing great so far.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Can I kiss you here?’

‘Yes. That’s nice. I like that. My turn now …’

And in a few minutes we were at it again: our ritual of lickings, nippings, strokings, pinchings. Ended before it went too far. He snuggled down in my arms, huddled in my arms. He smelled so sweet, so sweet.

‘You know,’ he said drowsily, ‘I would like it to go on forever.’

I knew what he meant. I had the same irrational hope. I thought of what a strange person I was to myself. I searched for clues to my character and couldn’t find them. I seemed to be acting from hidden motives, buried passions, I couldn’t glimpse an outline of me.

Is everyone in the world like that? I mean, do we plan careers, make out budgets, plot craftily how we will live our lives, and all the time we are being turned and twisted by forces we don’t recognize? I don’t mean outside forces: chance and accident. There’s always that, of course. But I mean powers, surges, whims deep within ourselves, drives we aren’t conscious of until we find ourselves wearing a fright wig and running from retribution?

The next day, a Monday, we had a council of war over a late lunch. The main project was obtaining new