faint.'
Mitch sat down in the living room and picked up a telephone. A parade of servants began to arrive: A maid (she went with the apartment and he was to ring whenever she was wanted); bellboys with morning papers, blooms for the flower vases, and an assortment of liquors for the bar; a waiter with breakfast.
Signing the various checks, with suitable tips penciled in, Mitch estimated that their total at about one hundred and fifty dollars. He sighed, unconsciously. He summoned Red, now dressed in a form-fitting housecoat, and they went out on the terrace to breakfast.
Her hair blazed in the morning sun. Her skin seemed as delicately transparent as the porcelain cup that she lifted to her lips. She ate delicately, but enthusiastically, the food reacting like a tonic to her. Food did to her what drink did to other people. The brown eyes sparkled joyously; the high-cheekboned face seemed to glow with contentment.
Mitch smiled, watching her. She smiled back at him, a little defensively.
'So I'm a pig. There wasn't too much food around when I was a kid.'
'Do you remember our first meal together?'
Red pointed to her mouth: speech was impractical at the moment. She chewed, swallowed, and shuddered ecstatically. Then, she said of course she remembered, how could she ever forget a thing like that- adding casually that it was about five years ago, wasn't it?
Mitch laughed. 'Stop trying to trap me. You know damned well it's over six years.'
'Six years, three months, twelve days,' she nodded, and smiled dreamily. 'Wasn't it funny the way we met, dear? Strange, I mean.'
'What was funny about it?' Mitch said. 'I was looking for you.'
'You mean you were looking for someone to work with.'
'I mean I was looking for you,' Mitch said.
And that was true.
But he hadn't known it until he'd seen her.
Red stood up abruptly, and silently held out her hands. Mitch took them and kissed them, then picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.
4
One of the world's worst trains-the absolute worst in the belief of many people-runs from Oklahoma City to Memphis. It has no diner. Its cars are of pre-World War I vintage, without air conditioning or other common comforts. Its schedule is presumably the product of a comic-book writer. The many and prolonged delays are variously attributed to such causes as holdups by Jesse James, impromptu hunting and fishing parties by the crew, and funerals for passengers who have advanced into and died en route of old age.
Most of those who ride it do so because they must. The occasional exceptions are usually sufferers from semantic insanity, interpreting discomfort as quaint and the insufferable as interesting. Mitch had boarded the train because it was the quickest connection out of Oklahoma City, and he needed to get away from the city fast.
He was feeling very despondent at the time, having just fired his assistant. He was afraid that if he lingered around her he might weaken and hire her back. Which would have been very bad for both of them.
She was a very good kid, in his book. A former model and bit-actress, she had enough class and looks for two women. She had, in fact, almost everything going for her but one thing-she was a sucker for the sauce. The weakness hadn't showed up for quite a while; probably it was the strain that brought it out. But there it was, and it kept getting worse.
Mitch talked to her like a father. He scolded her. Unhappily, he spanked her, pointing out that she should be ashamed to need such punishment at her age. Nothing did any good. She continued to louse him up, invariably getting drunk just when he needed her worst.
The realization came to him finally that she just couldn't help it, that if she was ever to get better it would not be around him.
So she wept heart-brokenly, and he got a little blurry-eyed himself. But there was only one thing to do, and he did it, and jumped town on the first thing he could grab.
He may have been very tired-he had been up with his ex-assistant for two nights running. Or he may have simply fled into sleep to escape the nightmare of the train. At any rate, it was around sunset when he returned to wakefulness and found this red-haired babe sitting next to him. Her duds were obviously discards from a rummage sale, and she was eating some horrible guck out of a paper sack.
She turned abruptly, looking at him out of the coolest, steadiest eyes he had ever seen. And suddenly he pieced those eyes and the hair and that complexion together with the rest of her, and he saw her as she could be. At the same time, he realized how he must look to her; unshaven, red-eyed, his suit rumpled, his shirt sweaty and soot-stained.
She added him up, item by item, and sympathy came into her face. 'Eat something,' she said, proffering the sack of guck. 'You'll feel better.'
Mitch said no, no, he was just fine; but Red knew he wasn't. Papa had been like that a lot, and he always felt better after mama gave him a cold sweet potato and some pone.
Mitch did a little nibbling. The conductor came through, taking orders for box lunches to be telegraphed ahead to the next stop. But the girl grabbed Mitch's hand as he started to reach for his wallet.
'They charge a dollar a piece for those things! You just save your money to get straightened out with!'
'But, really-'
'The idea! Throwing money away, and you with barely a stitch to your back!'
She was unaware, obviously, that baggage could be checked on one's ticket. Born and raised in a jerkwater community, a village dying with the cropped-out land around it, there was much that she did not know. But she did know, oh, how well she knew, a jobless propertyless drunk when she saw one.
'You'll feel better in the morning.' She patted his hand. 'Papa always does.'
She went on talking, apparently trying to cheer him up with papa's unceasing miseries and the concomitant troubles of his family. Things had been pretty nice for a while, what with her two older brothers joining the army and sending home allotments. But they kind of had papa's talent for messing themselves up, and had soon messed themselves into death as a result of their own misconduct. So there was not only no more allotment money, but also none of the emoluments usually associated with service deaths.
Of course, everyone at home worked when they could, chopping and picking for others as well as cropping their own. But when land wouldn't even make a quarter-bale an acre, well, where were you? Particularly where were you when you had a force (
'I worked in the library until they closed it down, and then the general store until it closed, and then the telephone exchange until it closed. There just wasn't any reason for them anymore, you know. Everyone was leaving who could. But papa was ailing again, and mama was pregnant again,'-
She, Red, had been elected to go to Memphis. To get a job immediately and promptly send some money home. 'And don't think I won't!' she declared, her chin jutting out. 'Uh, what kind of work do you do- uh-'
'Mitch. Mitch for Mitchell. Do you mind being called Red?'
'Why should I? Uh, what kind of work did you say you did, Mitch?'
He decided to level with her; she seemed to be the kind you could do it with. 'I'm a gambler.'
'Oh? I guess you're not very good at it, are you?'
'What if I told you I was very good? That I had ways of winning almost all the
