driven a picket into his mouth and that was the last we heard of Joe Marshal.
I messed the food around in my plate. Ruth kicked my shin.
“That man over there,” she said.
“What about him? He looks like a stuffed shirt.”
“I know him,” she said. “He's a doctor.”
“If you know him don't tell me about him.
All I need to know about somebody is that you know them.”
“He has some pictures of me. They're not very nice pictures. He took them at a party.”
I put down my fork.
“Will you talk to him about them?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“What do you say about pictures like that?”
“I mean, will you try to get them.”
“By pretending to be your husband, perhaps? 'Sir, I'll trouble you for those photographs of my wife's moment of indiscretion.' I don't think so.”
“Please, Bill, try to get them,” she said. “You're a lot bigger than he is. You can probably get them without any trouble.”
“How many of them are there?” I asked.
“I don't know. He'll know, and if it's done right I don't think he'll keep any back. I'll go powder my nose to make it easier for you.”
She disappeared. I just sat there at the table until she came back.
“He wants to talk to you,” I said.
Ruth walked to the table and the man stood up, smiling, and she sat down there. I forked my food around and thought of what a guy Joe Marshal had been. Pretty soon Ruth was back.
“You didn't talk to him at all,” she said.
“I didn't have to talk to him to know that he wouldn't just hand them over.”
“He wants us to go up to his house now and he'll give them to me.”
“Us? What the hell do you mean, us?”
“If you're not going to finish your dinner we can go up right away.”
I took the check and Ruth and I went to the man's table and she said my name and his name. We went out of that place, then, the three of us, and got into a taxicab.
“Wait a minute,” I said.
I got out of the cab and went into the place next to the restaurant and bought a pack of cigarettes. They were still there when I came out, and that surprised me some. I got in the cab and we started off.
“Did you say you wanted to be dropped off at Uncle's?” Ruth asked me.
I looked at her. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, drop me there.”
The cab stopped after not very long.
“I'll be back in time to get the bus,” Ruth said.
“That's fine,” I said. “You'll be back in time to get the bus.”
I didn't go into Uncle's when they went on. Nobody was in Uncle's that early in the evening. I hadn't done any bowling in a long time, so I went down the street and went into a place and bowled until it was late enough to go someplace else.
I was back in Uncle's when Ruth got there. It was after two when she got there, and I had begun to wonder whether she would get there at all. She was drunk when she came in, and she was carrying a big bunch of roses.
“Look what he gave me to have on our trip, Bill.”
“I don't suppose you remember what you went up to get, do you?” I said.
She had an envelope in her purse, and the negatives and some prints were there.
“I don't think he kept even a single print,” Ruth said. “And you'd never guess where he had them. Guess, Bill.”
“Oh, he had them shoved up his ass, I suppose.”
“He had them in a file. He must have hundreds of pictures like these. It's sort of a hobby. Don't you think this one is a good likeness?”
It was a picture of Ruth and two men. One of them seemed to have most of his hand in her cunt and she was holding his prick. The other one was sitting on the other side of her and she had her face turned to that side and his cock was in her mouth.
“I thought I remembered all about that night,” Ruth said, “but I don't remember about those two men. I must have liked them though. Here's one of me I wouldn't recognize at all, but it was in the file and he said it was me.”
“It doesn't matter that you were supposed to be with me tonight,” I said. “You couldn't have found him any other night, could you?”
“I had to get them back.”
“And I wanted to be dropped at Uncle's. Balls.”
“Anyway, I won't see him again.”
“You were there long enough so that I should imagine you wouldn't have to see him again. Why didn't you just give him what he wanted and get out?”
“There might have been something I wanted too. You keep forgetting that I've been ready for it all day and haven't gotten any.”
“You got it from him, though, didn't you?”
“You can't be sore about that.”
“I can be sore about hanging around all night with nothing to do while you were up there being screwed.”
“We'll have to hurry to get the bus,” she said. “It will be nice in the country.”
“Oh Christ, yes,” I said. “Everything will be dandy in the country.”
On the bus, after we got out of the city, she wanted to go down on me. It was dark in the bus and we were in the back where no one would have seen us, and she asked me several times and tried to get me by lifting her dress and putting my hand on her cunt. I wouldn't let her, and after a while she fell asleep and the flowers dropped to the floor. I put them back on her lap and she woke up long enough to smile at me. Then there was no sound but the noise of the bus and the coughing of the old man who sat up front.
Chapter III
The farm was about five miles out of the town where the bus stopped, and the man who owned it ran a small store there. He closed the store to drive us to the farm, and on the way out there I began to wonder how we were going to get around, and I asked him about that. He said that his brother-in-law had a car that he would probably rent because he had just broken his leg and couldn't drive it. He said that it wouldn't cost us very much, and if his brother-in-law wanted to rent it he would bring it over to the farm later in the day. Then he asked us if we would want a girl around the place. That was another thing I hadn't thought about. Ruth said that we could tell about that better when we had seen the place. As soon as we got in sight of the house she said yes. It was an awfully big place.
We looked the house over, and after the man had shown us around and showed us where everything was he drove away, and there Ruth and I were, alone in the country. It was very quiet when the man had gone. I thought that it would be a good idea for me to get some sleep, and Ruth said that she could use some more sleep too. We picked out one of the bedrooms and unpacked our bags and got the bed ready. Then I sat down to smoke a butt and watch Ruth undress.
“You take off your clothes like someone doing a strip tease,” I told her.
“That's funny. That's what my friend said last night. He didn't say it just that way, but that's what he
