The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything

Chapter Twelve

Betsy Alden lay in the bunk on her back, her eyes wide open, her face expressionless, while Kirby Winter prowled the stateroom. It was fifteen feet long by eleven feet wide. There was an alcove with a sliding door containing a head, a small stainless steel lavatory, and a medicine cabinet. He inspected the two sealed portholes, too small for escape even if he could find something to shatter the heavy glass. He located the air-conditioning inlet and the exhaust vent. Twice he put himself into the red world of stasis.

One idea began to seem more and more feasible. He sat on the bunk and said, “I think I’ve got something.”

“Nothing will work,” she said listlessly.

“Listen to it, at least.”

“We’re whipped, Kirby.”

He yanked her up and slapped her face sharply. “Damn you, Betsy. At least listen!”

She listened. She thought the plan was madness. But she could think of nothing better. Once she had accepted it, her help was efficient. They soaked blankets in water, getting them as saturated as possible. They spread them in one corner. She helped him heap all the other bedding and combustibles near the door. The fire started slowly at first, but when they were certain it had caught, they crawled under the sodden blankets, and had wet towels ready to wrap around their faces. Smoke became thick in the cabin.

Suddenly Charla spoke, with anger in her tone. “Very clever, dears, but it won’t work, you know. Are you holding rags by the outlet?”

When the hiss stopped, Kirby began to cough, trying to sound as if he were choking to death. The furniture was beginning to crackle, and he hoped she could hear that. He felt heat on his face. He prodded Betsy. She was ready for her cue. She gave a scream of such convincing agony he wondered for a moment if the fire had somehow reached her. “Help!” she screamed. “Help me! Let me out!” She screamed again, and faded it off into a grisly bubbling sound.

He heard the commotion in the corridor. He knew what would happen next. They would feel the steel door, and feel the heat coming through it. The blankets were beginning to steam. There were shouts and a sound of hammering and then the door which he had unlatched was burst open, and just as he worked the watch to stop it all, he saw something aimed toward him in the murk, heard a sharp cracking sound. The flame stopped. The steam was motionless. The heat was gone. The blankets felt like slabs of molded oak. He worked his way out. Joseph stood just inside the door, almost in the static flames, aiming a long-barreled pistol with a rigid little tongue of flame protruding from the muzzle. Staying below the layer of smoke, Kirby searched the air between himself and the muzzle, and found the small slug suspended at the midway point. Assuming, he thought with a hollow feeling in his belly, a velocity of a thousand feet per second, and it had another seven feet to go before catching me squarely in the face, had I been seven one thousandths of a second slower—

Suddenly, to his astonishment, he saw that the bullet had a perceptible movement. He glanced at the gold watch and saw he had given himself a little over a half hour. It was the first thing he had seen move in the red world. He went close to it and timed its velocity, and it seemed to him that as he counted off ten seconds, it moved almost one full inch. It was a clue to the ratio between the two worlds. Two minutes per foot. Or a ratio of two minutes to one one thousandth of a second. Thus, one full hour of red time equalled three hundredths of a second of objective time. Suddenly he stirred out of his speculative trance. When he moved his face into smoke it felt like thick rubbery cobwebs. He pulled the girl up to a convenient height and, crouched below the smoke, pulled her past Joseph and into the corridor. Charla stood beyond the door, her expression anxious. The emotion he felt toward her was not fear or hate or anger, but merely a vast impatience, an irritability. He left Betsy suspended and went back in and plucked the lead snail out of the air and took it out into the corridor, aimed it at Charla’s bland honeyed forehead and pushed it as forcefully as he could, releasing it an inch from the center of her forehead. He went back toward the flames, slowly bent Joseph’s golden arm until the muzzle was directly under Joseph’s chin, aimed upward, the silent tongue of blue flame a half inch from the jowl. He gave the trigger finger a forceful tug. He towed the girl along the corridor to the steps up to the cockpit hatch. It was ajar. He pushed it open and went back and got her and forced her out into the night. The sun had set over the land and the sky was like a banked fire but it was not as difficult to see as he had anticipated.

As he towed her along the dock he staggered with his weariness. He did not know how long he could continue. He had to find a safe place. He moved off the dock and into deep shadows and set her upright and leaned her against a tree. He peered at the dial of the gold watch and found there were a few minutes left. He put his thumb on the watch stem and he knew it was a trigger. They deserved to die. Yet he had the curious feeling that he would also be destroyed if he pressed it. Why should he pass ultimate judgment?

Suddenly, in all his weariness, he had a feeling of antic pleasure, of a wild exhilaration. Bonny Lee was free. Wilma was safe. Betsy was safe. The world was new again, and there was nothing able to stop him. He turned and ran through the bloody twilight as fast as he could. He went back into the yacht. The lead slug was touching her smooth forehead. He pulled it away, pushed it toward the flames. He pulled the muzzle away from Joseph’s chin. He stepped back just as the red time ended. The pistol cracked, the flames crackled, Charla’s face was changed by a look of vast alarm. He spun the world red again, stilling the flames. He looked at them as he now knew his uncle must have looked at them in times past. Ridiculous people. Fair game. A mildly interesting irritant in a greedy world. Death had too much stature, too much dignity, to be awarded them now. The watch could provide more suitable punishments. But at the moment he was too exhausted to follow through. He found a cabin and stretched out, set the watch to a full hour, suspended a heavy ashtray a few inches over his chest and went peacefully to sleep.

He awoke much refreshed, stopped objective time again and went to see what he could do about Charla and Joseph. He took Charla off the yacht. When he was near where he had left Betsy, he took a breathing space and walked over and looked at her. She had taken three steps away from the tree, and she looked terribly confused.

He tugged the stubborn burden of Charla all the way to the nearest intersection, stopping frequently to look around for something suitable. He found it at the intersection, waiting for the light to change. It was a big gray truck with Navy markings. He peered in over the tailgate. About thirty men sat on the benches that ran along either side of the truck. They were not recruits. They had that bronzed competent look of career men, who, when faced with any unusual situation, would not be at a loss.

Sadly, slowly, he bent the short robe off the suspended figure of Charla. After the fevered dreams of performing this very act, it seemed wasteful that it had to be done with so little emotion. Regretfully he admired the exquisite structure and texture of her. He pushed her into a handy position, clambered over the tailgate and hauled her inside. He stretched her out across five military laps, pressed her down solidly, and climbed back out of the truck. It would give her, he thought, some unforgettable moments. He looked into the truck at the tableau in red marble, the bored male faces unaware of the rich burden. If he had gauged their reactions properly, the very first response would be the firm clasp of a bronzed hairy hand, right over her startled mouth.

It had taken twenty minutes to dispose of Charla. He went back after Joseph. He was not only a more difficult burden, but it was troublesome to think of some situation which would be as memorable to him as Charla’s awakening would be to her. He pushed and tugged and floated Joseph all the way to the intersection, then left him suspended in air while he scouted a nearby cocktail lounge. It was doing an excellent business. He walked through to the back beyond the rest rooms and found a storeroom. The door was ajar. The key was in the lock. He went back among the throng and selected three women. He picked three mature ones without wedding rings, three who looked glossy and competent and somewhat virulent. They had style, prominent jaw lines and a few well-concealed traces of erosion. He trudged them back to the hallway outside the storeroom, one at a time. As he undressed them, one at a time, in midair, and levered them into the small dark room, it occurred to him that he was becoming so adept at it he could apply for a position fixing department store windows. The third one gave him pause. She had a truly astonishing tattoo.

By the time he plodded in with Joseph, time was growing short. He stripped him hastily, shouldered him in with his new acquaintances and slowly pulled the door shut. Clothing was suspended in the air all around him. He tried to turn the key, but he could not. Time had almost run out anyway. He switched the watch to normal time, turned the key and took it out of the lock and immediately switched back to enough red time to leave and get back to Betsy. The second touch on the watch stem cut short the very beginning of a scream. The clothing had fallen to the hallway floor.

He walked back to Betsy. He stood beyond her line of vision and turned the world on. She turned and saw him and gasped. “This — this is something nobody could ever get used to! But the damned thing works!”

He looked toward the intersection. The light changed. The Navy truck started up and moved slowly away through the dusk. He looked over and saw the billowing of smoke against the dark sky. He heard a distant sound of sirens approaching.

“It worked,” he said.

“We came within an inch of getting murdered or fried and you stand there grinning like a moron! What’s the matter with you?”

“Murdered, fried or shot.”

“Shot?”

“You missed that part of it, Betsy dear.”

She looked at him with a haggard, accusing face. “And you carried me right past them?”

“Yes indeed.”

“And they just — stood there?”

“Like statues.”

She moved closer to him. “Could you have killed them?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t?”

He thought her mouth had an exceptionally ugly look. They were in a small park area sheltered from the flow of headlights and the blue glare of the mercury vapor lights on the avenue. Her damp stained orange coveralls smelled of smoke. Her hair was tangled and her face was smudged.

“I had that idea, to tell you the truth.”

“You fool! You do it again, you hear? Make everything stop. Go back aboard and kill them. Who could ever prove anything? Go kill both of them. They’ll never give up. They’ll never give up until they’re dead.”

He studied her. And he remembered how close he had come to doing just what she now suggested. Nothing would have ever been the same again. The watch, Bonny Lee, all would have been changed. And he would have lost one of the most precious attributes of this unique ability to make time stand still — the additive of wry mischief, of ironic joy. Bonny Lee had understood that instinctively. Murder would have turned the watch into a perpetual solemnity and a perpetual guilt — because, regardless of provocation, the owner of the watch was beyond the need to kill.

“Betsy dear, Charla and Joseph are too busy right now.”

“Busy!”

“Aunt Charla is sort of riding around enjoying the evening. And Joseph is making some new friends.”

“You act as if this is all some kind of a joke!” she said furiously.

He heard men shouting on the dock. The fire trucks arrived. He took Betsy by the arm and walked her away from there, staying in the shadows and on the darker sides of the streets. When they came to a shopping area where a cut-rate department store was open late, he left her in a shadowy place and went into the frozen silence and stillness of the store and found fresh clothing for himself, taking care to select the lightest weight sandals he could find. He changed, selected clothing for her, packed it into a lightweight suitcase and towed it on out. He realized he had been careful not to take anything that anyone was looking directly at. He was acquiring the habit of a basic ethic of using the time-stop. Do not frighten the innocent unnecessarily. With Charla and Joseph he had violated this concept. The sailors were the innocents, and he did not imagine they would seriously question the origin of the gift. And there was enough subjective phenomena in cocktail lounges to make objective magic almost unnoticeable.

When he returned to Betsy he did not bother to reappear in the same place and position. She started violently. They walked further into a small park. He opened the suitcase on a bench. She went behind bushes and changed to the cotton dress and Orlon cardigan he had brought her, and stuffed Charla’s sodden playsuit under a bush. At a drinking fountain under a street lamp he held the mirror he had brought her while she wiped the smudges from her face and used the hair brush he had brought her, and used the stolen lipstick.

He risked a cruising cab and had the driver stop a block away from the Hotel Birdline. She went in with the money he gave her and rented a room, using a name they had agreed upon. He loafed in the shadows for ten minutes, and then halted time and went into the hotel. He looked at the register and saw they had given her room 303. He went up the stairs. She had left the door ajar as agreed. When he materialized instantaneously in front of her, her leap of surprise was smaller than before. He closed the door and said, “You’re doing better, Miss Betsy.”

“I think I’m just too tired to react. What is the world like when you’re — doing that?”

“Absolutely silent. Red light. No motion anywhere. It’s like being in a strange kind of a dream.”

“Does it seem evil? Or is that a silly question.”

“It could be evil. I don’t think it’s a silly question. I guess it would depend on the person using it. I guess it would sort of — multiply whatever you are by ten. Because it’s absolute freedom. You can make your fantasies come true. And if your fantasies are — sick, then that’s the way you’ll use it. Maybe it’s just like any other kind of power. I haven’t really had time to think about the implications. And not much time now. You’ll be safe here and I have a girl to find.”

“Just any girl?”

“Not exactly.”

“Your face is dirty.”

“I’ll use guest rights on the shower.”

“Of course. Go ahead.”

He showered and put the stolen clothing back on. He reached into his pocket and found the watch gone. He ran out of the bathroom. She was sitting huddled on the edge of the bed. She held the watch out to him at arm’s length. Her eyes looked haunted. “I didn’t have the guts,” she whispered.

“What did you have in mind?”

“Please don’t be angry. I just wanted to try. But I couldn’t. Maybe — I was afraid of my own fantasies. They aren’t — particularly nice.” She lifted her chin with a kind of tired defiance. “I would have killed them.”

“I know.”

“For many many reasons. But you didn’t. So maybe you have the right to use that magic, and I don’t.”

“You had the sense not to try. That’s something.”

She stood up and sighed and moved into his arms. She turned her mouth up to him and he kissed her without passion.

“Will you come back here?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll leave money in case I can’t. I’ll phone at least.”

When she looked up at him her eyes seemed softer, more gray than green. There was a faint smell of smoke caught in that palomino hair. Her back was hard and slender under his hands. “I owe you lots,” she said. “And I think you are quite a guy. If you can make any use at all of a sort of neurotic but very grateful girl, and you want to come back here, feel free.” She pushed herself away. “Have I said something so terribly amusing?”

“I’m sorry. It isn’t you. It’s me. I was thinking of all the other nights I spent in this pleasure palace. It was just sort of ironic for the moment. Betsy, you are very tired and very sweet and very desirable.”

“Desirable in general. Nothing specific.”

“I’m sorry. Nothing specific.”

“Then I’m sorry too, because I do feel sort of specific.” She sighed and smiled and touched his check. “Go find your girl.”

Two blocks from the hotel he suddenly came upon a disguise which would render him completely invisible in nighttime Miami. It was a little past nine o’clock. He removed the disguise from a man who was in no condition to realize he was being robbed. Kirby donned the disguise and looked at his reflection in a store window. A comedy derby, a bright red plastic cane and a big round beribboned badge on which was printed “Eddie Beeler — Lubbock, Texas.” He lurched slightly, faked a soft hiccup and nodded at himself with satisfaction.

He hailed a cab and asked to be taken to Rio’s in North Miami.

The driver said, “You wanta go where the action is, you don’t wanta go there, sport.”

“Going to meet some buddies there.”

“Okay, so what you do, you go in and bring them out and I’ll take you where the action is.”

The driver started up. He had the news on. Kirby asked him to turn up the volume. “... were involved in the search for Kirby Winter and Wilma Farnham when police traced a shipment of Winter’s personal possessions to the yacht. Prompt action by area firefighting units prevented serious damage to the luxury vessel. The scene of the fire looked like attempted arson, but the three crew members aboard at the time can shed no light on the matter. The stateroom was occupied by Betsy Alden, actress niece of Mrs. O’Rourke, and as yet the police have been unable to locate either Miss Alden or Mrs. O’Rourke. While the fire was being brought under control, Joseph Locordolos, owner of the Glorianna, was being apprehended in a nearby cocktail lounge. Locordolos, severely battered and lacerated by the women upon whom he was forcing his attentions, and in a semi-hysterical condition, was booked for assault, exposure and lewd behavior, and is reported as not yet being in condition to be questioned regarding the two women who were aboard or the origin of the fire.

“A further element of mystery concerns the other two members of the crew of the Glorianna, Rene Bichat and Raoul Feron, who were apprehended earlier today in the Hallandale home of Professor Wellerly of Florida Eastern. When Metro police went to the house in response to an anonymous phone tip, they found considerable damage to the house and found the two seamen in the shuttered living room, bound hand and foot. The two men have refused to explain their presence there and are being held.

“Evidence collected on the scene indicates Wilma Farnham may have been hiding out in the Wellerly home. Professor Wellerly and his family are in Europe, and he is a friend of Roger Farnham, Miss Farnham’s brother, who denies any knowledge of his sister’s whereabouts.

“Another factor, as yet unexplained, was the presence of a sports car behind the Wellerly residence, registered in the name of Bonny Lee Beaumont, a night club entertainer now working in the Greater Miami area. As yet police have been unable to contact Miss Beaumont.

“It is now believed that there was a closer connection between the people aboard the Glorianna and Kirby Winter and the Farnham woman than was first presumed. But an aura of mystery thickens around the millions embezzled from the estate of the late Omar Krepps.”

The news ended. The driver turned the radio down and said, “Why the hell do they have to make it sound so hard? This Winter had it all set up for his buddies to bring that Glory Annie here and take him off with his broad and the money. But it’s so much money and so much heat, everybody wants a bigger cut, so they start fighting among themselves and they screw up the whole deal for everybody. Why is that so hard to figure?”

“So where are they now?”

“Who knows, sport? This town has a million transient rooms, and there’s so many ways to get out of it, you can’t seal it off. Right? And there’s enough confusion going on, how can anybody find anybody? It’s like the whole town is going nuts. Beach riots, crazy traffic jams, people all over claiming they’re seeing spooks. What it is, it’s the humidity. It gets just to the right place and this town always starts to unravel. I seen it before.”

When they reached Rio’s, Kirby told the driver there would be no point in his waiting. The structure looked as though a pagoda had been mated with Mount Vernon, then boarded up and used as a proving ground for neon tubes. It sat in the middle of an asphalt field half full of cars. At intervals, a little worm of blue neon would appear way over on the left, out of total blackness. It would start to move across, picking up speed, picking up more width, additional colors until, when it reached the far right, it occupied the whole height of the building. Then it turned into a huge white waterfall. Then it said RIO’S — in red — big enough to drive a truck through the O. And, as it was shouting RIO’S, three banks of floodlights flicked on, one after the other, illuminating three plywood girls, thirty feet tall. The first one was a brunette labeled Perry Meson. The middle one was Bonny Lee. The third was a redhead disastrously named Pooty-Tat O’Shaugnessy. They were all smiling. They were bare, except for the strategic placement of their name signs. They were all of a height, standing elbow to elbow, reproduced by some color photomural process, and the six breasts aligned, big as bushel baskets, had a fearsome implausibility which induced, rather than lust, a feeling of inadequacy. This peculiar vision of his love gave Kirby a feeling of petulance and indignation, like a small boy discovering he is expected to share his candied apple with the entire first grade. It was but a minor compensation to note that the incredible Pooty-Tat made the other two look immature. RIO’S flickered off and the lighted cutouts lingered another two seconds. The building was in total darkness for a moment and then the little blue worm reappeared.

When he hauled the heavy door open, he was assailed by a blast of noise so tangible he wondered that it did not push him back out. He went through the hat check foyer without relinquishing funny hat or cane, and moved into the smoky gloom. Waiters pounced, scurried, slid through tiny spaces between the shadowy tables. Everyone seemed to be yelling to be heard over the brass din of a small and exceptionally noisy group of musicians on a cantilevered shelf playing an accelerated version of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” with the compulsive, crashing beat of a twist number. A lot of people seemed to be yelling “Go!” in time to the beat. At the far end of the large room, on a small platform stage, bathed in a hot pink spotlight stood Miss Pooty-Tat O’Shaugnessy wearing nought but a drowsy smile, a sequined G-string and two little silk tassels. She had her fingers laced at the nape of her neck and seemed totally relaxed, except that one little red tassel was revolving clockwise, the other counterclockwise, each completing one revolution exactly on the smashing beat.

“Parm me!” a waiter snarled and shoved Kirby out of his trance. He went to the crowded bar and found a four-inch space between two beefy men. The service was fast, the drink small, weak and expensive. When the harried bartender brought his change, Kirby tried to ask when Bonny Lee would be on, but the barman was gone before he could get the words out. At the final thump of the last bar, Pooty-Tat added a bump to the other activities, and the pink spot went off.

“She ain’t on tonight,” one of the beefy men said.

“Cop trouble, somebody said,” the other man said.

“How come?” the first man said.

“Her car got used on a B and E that went sour and they made her through the plates, but she should have showed and said it was borrowed. You fade and they nail you every time, like accessory.”

When the bartender started to snatch Kirby’s empty glass, Kirby grabbed him by the wrist and said, “How can I get in touch with Bonny Lee?”

The man yanked himself free and said, “Try a classified ad, doll.”

Five minutes later, as Kirby was wondering what to try next, there was a tap on his shoulder. He turned and saw an old waiter with a face like a tired bulldog. The waiter moved away, giving a little jerk of his head for Kirby to follow him. Ten feet from the bar the waiter stopped.

“I play a little game, okay? Like I say a front name and you give me the rest of it, okay? Bernie?”

Kirby stared at him blankly. As the waiter shrugged and started to turn away, Kirby said, “Sabbith?”

“Slow thinker, huh. Come on with me.”

Kirby followed him along the side of the big room, through a door, down a corridor and past a noisy kitchen to other doors. He knocked on one of them. “Yes?” a high clear voice called.

“It’s Raymond. I got with me maybe the guy you wannit.”

“Let him in, love. And thank you so much.”

Raymond opened the door and let him in. It was a small, incredibly cluttered room, harshly and unpleasantly lighted. Pooty-Tat sat on a ratty couch eating a steak sandwich, sharing the couch with a precarious pile of clothes, cartons, magazines, empty Coke bottles, paper editions, phonograph records and other debris. She wore a blue denim smock.

“Do sit down,” she said. The dressing table bench was the only place available. She had a high voice, a rather chilly and precise English accent, with that special clarity of tone English girls often have.

“Actually, love, I hardly expected such a festive look. But the little scar is just where she said it would be, so you must be the one. Do take off that insane hat, Mr. Winter.”

“Is she all right?”

“You do ask that rather nicely. Concern, anxiety. As far as I know, she is perfectly all right.”

“Where is she?”

“In due time, Mr. Winter. I have been wondering about you. We are all terribly fond of Bonny Lee. A limited background of course, but marvelous instincts. Sometimes her instincts fail her, though, and she does become involved with some horrid sod. Then we do what we can, you see.”

“I would like to know where—”

“Are you quite certain you are good for her, Mr. Winter? You do seem to have involved her in some sort of stickiness. And you’re even more of a fugitive than she at the moment. I can’t pretend to know much about it, but haven’t you made off with rather a lot of money? Don’t look so alarmed, love. I trust her completely, and she trusts me. I wouldn’t turn you in.”

“I didn’t mean to get her into any trouble or danger.”

“You certainly seem harmless enough. You have quite an earnest look. You see, I was just getting up when she rang me up, and I had to scurry over to the Beach and pick her up. She’d cadged a dime to phone me, and she was in a drugstore, absolutely sopping wet, terribly busy fending off a randy little clerk. But she would not take time to change. She was frantic with worry about you. I couldn’t even drive fast enough to suit her. We went to the health school and picked up three of my friends. I have this ridiculous letch for horribly muscular men. They’re invariably dumb as oxen and sexually not very enterprising, but sometimes they are useful if one anticipates a brawl. So then we went scooting to Hallandale, with Bonny Lee on the edge of the seat using rather bad language, but the place was crawling with police officers. We parked a block away and I sent my brightest oaf to go find out what was up. No sign of you, he said, or of some girl Bonny Lee was asking about. Just two rather bitter and surly fellows, low types apparently, being led into a police vehicle. So then we took my fellows back to their muscle flexing. Bonny Lee was wondering what she should do about her poor little abandoned car. She had stopped fretting about you. In fact she seemed awfully amused about something, but wouldn’t give me a clue. I took her to that horrid nest amongst those squadrons of tireless old ladies, but quite suddenly she scrooched down and hissed at me to go right on by. It seems two unsavory types were parked on her street, the two she had apparently eluded by plunging into a canal. She was all for our gathering up my friends once more and returning to give them a bashing about, but I must say I had begun to have quite enough of this darting about, and I became a bit cross, so I took her back to my place where at last she had a chance to get out of that dank clothing and rinse the salt out of her hair.”

“Is she there now?”

“You are an impatient fellow. She was going to come to work until we heard over the radio that the police wanted a chat with her. She had a perfectly reasonable impulse to turn herself in and explain, but the more she thought about how she would explain things, the less she wanted to try. And she thought that if they did happen to hold her for questioning, you might hear about it and do some utterly idiotic thing like dashing to her rescue. She seemed to assume you would be searching for her, and when I expressed small reasonable doubt, she became quite ugly about it. She was afraid you might go to her place, and there was no way to warn you. We made arrangements about how I might contact you and identify you should you come here.”

There was a muffled roar, a concerted shout. Miss O’Shaugnessy tilted her head. “Dear Perry. She always gets that same response to that part of her act. The child is incredibly flexible.”

“I’m anxious to see Bonny Lee.”

“Of course you are, and I would have sent you dashing to my place if you’d arrived earlier. But it is after eleven, you know. And I had a dear friend arriving at my place at eleven to nap and wait for me, an absolute bronzed giant of an airlines pilot, with the most astonishing external voluntary muscle structure I’ve ever seen. The deltoideus, triceps brachia, latissimus dorsi and trapezius are like great marvelous wads of brown weathered stone. The poor lamb has just enough awareness to push all his little buttons and levers to get his aircraft from here to there and back, and he crinkles charmingly when he smiles, but it would be too confusing to him to find Bonny Lee at my place. He wouldn’t know how to react, and it would upset him. So it was arranged that she would leave before eleven. She has my little car and she is wearing some of my clothing, and she will be at Bernie Sabbith’s apartment at midnight. She hopes you will meet her there, but in the event you don’t, she’d planned to enlist the help of Bernie and his friends in whatever gruesome difficulties you two seem to have gotten into. Actually, I think all Bernie can contribute to any situation is additional confusion, but perhaps some use can be made of that. So, you see, you have time to spare. And you’ve been watching every morsel of this sandwich, you know.”

She went to the kitchen. A few minutes after she returned, a sandwich and coffee was brought to her little dressing room.

“Does — uh — Bonny Lee do the same sort of act you do, Miss O’Shaugnessy?”

“My name is Lizbeth, love. Lizbeth Perkins, actually. You are a rather stuffy fellow, aren’t you? What if she did exactly the same routines? Would it make her unworthy of you?”

“I just wondered,” he said, miserably.

“Have no fear, love. The degree one is required to strip is in inverse ratio to one’s other talents. Your darling has a lovely voice, and she’s getting better all the time with those bongos. And she moves about well. I suspect the pictures outside upset you? Bonny Lee was upset too, and if you look closely, you’ll see that though Perry and I are as nature made us, some clever wretch with an airbrush removed Bonny Lee’s little frivolous bandeau. But she wasn’t agitated about the exposure, love. She was jealous of her category — entertainer rather than stripper. You men are such dismal creatures, really, beset with Edwardian scruples. I can’t sing a note, and as a child I trained for ballet, but whoever heard of a prima ballerina measuring forty-one, twenty-five, thirty-seven? What those slack-jawed idiots out there fail to realize is how many hundreds and hundreds of sweaty hours of brute labor it has taken for me to develop the skill to flex all the muscles of my body, singly or in any desired sequence. It’s not what one could call a skill of any historic significance, Mr. Winter, but it pleases the fools, supports me well, and keeps me in a condition of astonishing health. Is it somehow more reprehensible than being able to bash a small ball a long distance with a club? Dear me, I do hope Bonny Lee hasn’t become emotionally involved with a dingy little moralist.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Hush, love. I’m merely educating you to a proper level to appreciate Bonny Lee. She is a dear child, loving and honest and gay. And you must enjoy her for exactly what she is, the way one enjoys sunshine and gardens. If you try to confine her or restrict her or change her into what you think is a more suitable image, she will very probably break your heart. She’s terribly young, you know. Old in some ways, young in others. In time she might well become very famous, if clods like you can keep from making her feel coarse and insecure.”

“I think I see what you mean.”

“I hope you do, love. If I didn’t suspect you have possibilities, I wouldn’t have wasted the time and the words.”

“I’m not very — deft about girls, Lizbeth.”

“So much the better. Deft men fall into dim patterns. And the dreadful clue to all of them is that they seem to feel they are doing the girl some enormous favor. I like a man to feel grateful, and bloody few of them do. And the worldly ones seem to feel obligated to prove their skill by showing off a whole arsenal of nasty little tricks which they seem to feel should induce an absolute frenzy. My word, I’ve had it up to here with being compared to a cello or a sports car. I’m a rather direct woman, Mr. Winter, and I like love to be direct and pleasant and on the cozy side, and as comfortable as one can make it. So don’t fret about being unaccustomed to girls. I suspect Bonny Lee finds it all rather sweet. And don’t you dare brood about her other affairs. You’ll merely poison your own mind and spoil it for both of you. She will be totally, absolutely faithful to you for as long as the game will last, and that is all you can expect or should hope for.”

He finished the last of the coffee and put the cup aside. “This is all very interesting, and I suppose you are an unusual woman, and maybe you can’t help being so damned defensive, but I am getting Goddamned well tired of listening to a lot of little lectures from women. I am tired of having my head patted, and I am sick of a lot of over-simplified little bite-sized pieces of philosophy about life and love. I just happen to think the world is a little more complex than that. And with your kind indulgence, Lizbeth, I shall go right on making my own stuffy and sentimental and unreasonable mistakes in my own way. I have had a very long day, Lizbeth. The mind of man cannot comprehend the kind of a day I have had. Mentally and emotionally, I am right at the frayed end of the last bit of string there is. I do not defend or attack your right to flex muscles I never heard of. I make no attempt to typecast you, so please do me the same favor. I appreciate your assistance to Bonny Lee, and your concern for her. But my attitudes and responses are, I am afraid, my personal business. If I have annoyed you, I’m sorry. But I do have to be leaving.”

She looked at him very thoughtfully. She nodded. “Now didn’t she just come up with something! Possibly the hat and the cane and the badge warped my judgment, love. You might come back one day, Mr. Winter. If you’re free. But spend some time on the weights and bars first. No more lectures. Not a word of advice. You do seem quite able to cope. All I can do is wish you luck.”

She put out her hand. It was a small hand, rather plump, but implicit in the quick squeeze she gave him was the warning that with an effortless twist she could probably sail him over her shoulder like a quoit.