The Grifters

'I am not. Not by many times.' Under its surface firmness, her voice shook slightly. 'And now you will not like me any more.'

'Not like you? Why, of course, I do. I like you more than ever!'

'B-but-' She smiled tremulously began to glow with a kind of joyous incredulity. 'You really mean it? You would not tease about so important a thing?'

'What's so important about it? Now, come on, honey!'

Laughing joyously, she allowed him to pull her down against him; hugged him with laughing wonderment. Oh, my, she said. She was so happy. And then, with no real resistance, bubbling with the happiness, he had given her, 'But-shouldn't we wait, Roy? You would not like me better?'

'I couldn't like you any better!' He tugged impatiently at her white uniform. 'How do you get this damned thing-?'

'But there is something else you must know. You have a right to know. I-I cannot have children, Roy. Never.'

That stopped him, made him hesitate, but only for a second. She had an awkward way of phrasing things, twisting them around hindside-to and putting the emphasis in the wrong places. So she couldn't have children and that was all to the good, but he would have taken care of that, anyway.

'Who cares?' he said, almost groaning in his hunger for her. 'It's okay and it's okay if you're not a virgin. Now, can't you stop talking, for God's sake, and-'

'Yes! Oh, yes, Roy!' She clung to him in wondrous surrender, guiding his fumbling hands. 'Also, I want to. And it is your right…'

The uniform fell away from her; the underthings. The innate modesty, the fears, the past. In the drapedrawn dimness of the room, she was reborn, and there was no past but only a future.

The purplish brand still lingered on her outflung left arm, but now it was merely a childhood scar; time dulled, shrunken by growth. It didn't matter. What it memorialized didn't matter-the sterilization, the loss of virginity-for he had said it didn't. So the thing itself was without meaning: the indelible imprint of the Dachau concentration camp.

13

She came out of the bathroom, modestly wearing her underthings now; still flushed and warm and glowing. Primly protective, she drew up the sheet and tucked it over his chest. 'I must take care of you,' she said. 'Now, more than ever, you are most important to me.'

Roy grinned at her lazily. She was sweet, a lot of woman, he thought. And about the most honest one he'd ever met. If she hadn't told him that she wasn't virginal…

'You are all right, Roy? You do not hurt any place?'

'I never felt better in my life,' he laughed. 'Not that I haven't been feeling okay.'

'That is good. It would be terrible if I had given you hurt.'

He repeated that he was feeling fine; she was just what he'd needed. She said seriously that she also had needed him, and he laughed again, winking at her.

'I believe you, honey. How long has it been, anyway, or shouldn't I ask?'

'How long?' She frowned a little, her head tilted in puzzlement. Then, 'Oh,' she said. 'Well, it-it was-'

'Never mind,' he said quickly. 'Forget it.'

'It was there.' She extended the tattooed arm. 'There also I was made sterile.'

'There?' he frowned. 'I don't… What's that, anyway?'

She explained absently, her smile fixing; the tiltedup eyes looking at him and through him toward something far, beyond. Seemingly, she was speaking of the abstract, a dull and tenuous theorem scarcely worthy of recital. Seemingly, she was reading from a fairy tale, a thing so filled with terrors that they clung stagnating to one another; never advancing the plot or theme, physically motionless, merely horror piled upon horror until they sagged slowly downward, drawing the listener with them.

'Yes, yes, that is right.' She smiled at him as though at a precocious child. 'Yes, I was very young, seven or eight, I think. That was the reason, you see: to discover the earliest possible age at which a female might conceive. It can be very early in life, as young as five, I think. But an average minimum age was being sought. With my mother and grandmother, it was the other way; I mean, how old could the female be. My grandmother died shortly after the beginning of the experiment, but my mother…'

Roy wanted to vomit. He wanted to shake her, to beat her. Standing apart from himself, as she was standing from herself, he was furious with her. Subjectively, his thoughts were not a too-distant parallel of the current popular philosophizing. The things you heard and read and saw everywhere. The pious mourning of sin; the joyous absolution of the sinners; the uncomfortable frowns and glances-askance at those who recalled their misdeeds. After all, the one-time friends, poor fellows, were now our friends and it was bad taste to show gas- stoves on television. After all, you couldn't condemn a people, could you? And what if they had done exactly that themselves? Should you make the same regrettable error? After all, they hated the reds as much as we did, they were as eager as we were to blow every stinking red in the world to hell and gone. And after all, those people, the allegedly sinned-against, had brought most of the trouble on themselves.

It was their own fault.

It was her own fault.

'Now, listen to me,' he broke in on her angrily. 'No, I don't want to hear any more, damnit! If you'd told me about it in the first place instead of just saying that-letting me think that-that-'

'I know,' she said. 'It was very bad of me. But I too was thinking something else.'

'Well, now,' he mumbled, 'I don't want to put you in the wrong. I like you; I think the world of you, Carol. That's why I asked you what I did, told you it was important to me. I can see now how you might have taken it the wrong way, and I wish to God there was something I could do to square things up. But-'

But why did she keep looking at him that way, smiling that totally vacant smile; waiting for him to fill the vacuum with life? He had said he was sorry, apologized for something that was partially her own fault. But still she sat there waiting. Did she seriously expect him to give up his life, the only way of life acceptable to him, merely to correct a mistake? Well, she had no right to do so! Even if he could give what she had expected and apparently still desired, he would not do it.

She was a nice girl, and it wouldn't be fair to her.

'Now, I'll tell you what,' he said, smiling ingratiatingly. 'We can't change what's already happened, so why don't we just pretend it didn't happen? How will that be, hmm? Okay? We'll just forget this, and make a brand new start?'

She looked at him silently.

'Fine,' Roy said briskly. 'That's my sweet girl. Now, I'll skim on out of here, and let you finish dressing and-and, uh…'

He left, pulling on his robe as he went out of the room. Returning to the den, he flopped back down on the hospital bed, stared out unseeing at the panorama to the south; still seeing the girl in the bedroom. He'd put things very badly, he guessed. His usual glibness had failed him, just when he needed it most, and he'd sounded peevish and small-time.

What had happened to him? he wondered. What had gone wrong with his pitch?

It had been an honest mistake. She'd suffered no actual loss because of it. Why couldn't he make her understand that? Why, when he could so easily pull a real swindle without a kickback?

You can 't cheat an honest man, he thought. And was unreasonably irritated by the thought.

He heard her approaching, the starchy rustle of her uniform. Working up a smile, he sat up and turned around.

She was wearing her coat, a quaintly old-world garment. She was carrying her small nurse's kit.

'I am leaving now,' she said. 'Is there anything you want before I go?'

'Leaving! But- Oh, now, look,' he said winningly. 'You can't do that, you know. It's not professional.