Taffy sat up straighter against her silk pillows, two small spots of color burning suddenly over her cheekbones. “What’s up, Frankie? You going someplace?”
He went to a chest of drawers, returned with pajamas and a clean shirt. “That ought to be obvious. As a matter of fact, I’m going to a hotel.”
“Why, Frankie? What’s the idea?”
He looked down at her, feeling the strong emotional drive. “The idea is that we’re through, baby. Finished. I’m moving out.”
Her breath whistled in a sharp, sucking inhalation, and she swung out of bed in a fragile nylon mist. Her hands clutched at him.
“No, Frankie! Not like this. Not after all the luck I’ve brought you.”
He laughed brutally, remembering the old man. “It wasn’t you who brought me luck, baby. It was someone else. That’s something you’ll never know anything about.”
He turned, heading for the chest again, and she grabbed his arm, jerking. He spun with the force of the jerk, smashing his backhand across her mouth. She staggered off until the underside of her knees caught on the bed and held her steady. A bright drop of blood formed on her lower lip and dropped onto her chin. A whimper of pain crawled out of her throat.
“Why, Frankie? Just tell me why.”
He shrugged. “A guy grows. A guy goes on to something better. That’s just the way it is, baby.”
“It’s more than that. It’s a lot bigger than that. You think I’ve been two-timing you, Frankie?”
He repeated his brutal laugh. “Two-timing me? I’ll tell you something, baby. I wouldn’t give a damn if you were sleeping with every punk in town. That’s how much I care.” He paused, savoring sadism, finding it pleasant. “You want it straight, baby? It’s just that I’m sick of you. I’m sick to my guts with the sight of you. That clear enough?”
She came back to him, slowly, lifting her arms like a supplicant. He waited until she was close enough, then he hit her across the mouth again. Turning his back, he returned to the chest and got the rest of the articles he needed. Just a few things. Enough for the night and tomorrow. In the morning he’d send someone around to clean things out.
At the bed he tossed the stuff into the overnight bag and snapped it shut.
Over his shoulder he said, “The rent’s paid to the end of the month. After that you better look for another place to live.”
She didn’t respond, and remembering his toothbrush, he went into the bathroom for it. When he came out she was standing there with a .38 in her hand. It was the same .38 he’d once considered killing himself with. That had been the old Frankie, of course.
Not the new Frankie. Death was no consideration in the life of the new Frankie.
“You rotten son of a bitch,” she said.
He laughed aloud and started for her, and he just couldn’t believe it when the slug slammed into his shoulder.
He looked down in amazement at the place where the crimson began to seep, and his incredulous eyes raised just in time to receive the second slug squarely between them.
And like the night the old man died, it was funny. In the last split second of sight, it wasn’t Taffy standing there with the gun at all. It was the old man again.
The old man with a memory like an elephant.
The old man who always waited until it really hurt.
FAIR GAME
Originally published in Manhunt, September 1953.
There were lots of advantages to being the mayor’s personal chauffeur and bodyguard. Ray Butler thought. For instance, besides earning you a small percentage in this and that, it gave you many excuses to see the mayor’s wife.
A maid told him that she was on the terrace, and he found her there in a sunsuit that almost wasn’t. She was stretched out on a chaise longue behind a pair of dark glasses. His eyes flicked over golden legs and torso broken briefly by scraps of thin fabric. The muscular action incidental to his smile didn’t disturb his face much. It was smooth and hard and brown, like the polished hull of an acorn. There was only a swift flash of white in a margin of red, a deepening toward black of eyes that were normally a shade darker than the face. A hard and handsome boy, Ray Butler. A lot of women carried him around in their heads a long time before they finally lost him in the confusion of things that come and go.
For the maid’s benefit, he said, “Good morning, Mrs. Cannon. I understand you have an errand for me.”
“Good morning, Ray.”
She swung her long, sleek legs off the lounge and stood up, stretching lazily in the sunlight. Her full, firm breasts were thrust up by a deep breath against the frail restraint of her halter. “It’s hot out here. Perhaps we’d better go inside.”
She shrugged into a thigh-length jacket that increased, by paradoxical design, both the coverage of her body and the impression of its nakedness, and he followed her through glass doors into a room that was cool and shadowed. She turned, then, and surged back against him with a little sound that was almost like a whimper, her face lifted and her eyes suddenly glazed.
“Ray,” she said. “Ray…”
The palms of his hands were damp with sweat that had nothing to do with the temperature, and he dried them in her honey-colored hair, dragging her head back savagely and talking into her throat.
“It’s been a thousand years, baby. A thousand long years!”
“I know, Ray, I know.”
Their bodies strained for maximum contact, groping hungrily with countless tiny receptors, and after a long time she relaxed with a sigh, hanging limply in his arms. Her voice was a spent whisper.
“How long, Ray, how long?”
“As long as it takes, baby. Until I say when.”
“Say it now. Say it right now.”
He laughed softly. “You didn’t read your fables when you were a kid. Don’t you remember the one about the goose
