I hardly heard what she was saying. She had moved closer, pressing against me, and then those white arms crawled around my neck and she turned her face up to me.
“Do you understand, Joe?”
The only thing I understood was the excitement that took hold of me when she touched me, as the softness of her seemed to melt against me, as I tried to capture that red mouth that kept slipping from one side to the other.
“Joe, do you understand what you must do?”
“I understand.”
She was a fire inside me, spreading through me, racing like flame. She was still talking as I forced her back. I tightened my arm around her, bowing her back, bending her knees, and suddenly both of us came crashing down on the bed. She was still talking.
“Joe, nothing must happen to stop this factory job! No one must know about it! No one!”
“I said I understood.”
“Promise, Joe, that you'll tell no one!”
“Great God, what do I have to say to convince you? All right, I promise!”
Only then did she stop squirming and fighting, only then did I capture that red mouth of hers. Her arms tightened around my neck in the kind of nervous excitement that is impossible to fake. Her dagger-sharp nails gouged into my shoulders as she pulled me down with her, then she took my hand in hers and guided it, and for a long while there was no sound in the room except that of our breathing.
“Joe...”
I wasn't sure how much time had passed. The bright, “clean fire was dead, and the stifling heat of the Oklahoma summer moved into the room.
“Joe...”
I said nothing. The thing to watch about climbing so high is the terrible fall to the ground. I laughed.
“Joe, what is it?”
“Nothing.”
I had no wish to touch her or look at her or anything else. After a while she got up and went to the window, again, and I guess Karl Sheldon was still busy with his burglary plans, because Paula seemed in no hurry to leave. She came back and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Joe, you meant it, didn't you? You won't do anything that might affect our plans?”
I looked at her then, amazed that she looked exactly the same as she had before—completely unruffled, as pale as the moon. Even then, at a time like that, with the heat in the room so heavy that it was almost impossible to breathe, all I had to do was look at her and that sure excitement began to take hold again. Instinctively I reached out for her, but she laughed softly and moved away.
She was waiting for an answer, for some assurance that I was going to keep my promise. I wasn't even sure what it was I had promised. I made another grab and she slithered away again, and this time she stood up and moved into the deep shadows on the other side of the room. It was almost as though a powerful field of magnetic attraction had been removed. Now that I could hardly see her, I could think again.
“Well...” she said. Not impatiently, not uncertainly. It was just an invitation to get on with the particular business at hand.
“I gave you my word,” I said. “I won't break up your husband's plans.”
Like hell I wouldn't break up his plans! What if something got fouled up and something went wrong with the robbery? Where would that put me? I knew where it would put me, if it ever came out that I had known about the robbery beforehand. It would put me in a cell right alongside Sheldon and Manley. Accessory before the fact— I wasn't so stupid that I didn't know what that meant.
I sat up and lit a cigarette to give my hands something to do while I thought it out. She was a hell of a woman, there was no doubt about it....
“I know what you're thinking,” she said, almost gently, and I imagined that I could hear that faint half-smile in her voice.
“Do you?”
“You were wondering if the payment was right for the job.”
“I was wondering what your husband would do if he knew I had listened in tonight.”
“That's easy,” she said. “He simply wouldn't go through with the job. That's how he is. If a thing isn't set up perfectly, he doesn't touch it.”
“And if he doesn't go through with this one, he goes back to prison?”
She nodded. “Or worse.”
I found an ash tray and mashed out the cigarette.
“You know,” I said, “this thing could be as dangerous for you as it is for your husband. You must love him very much, coming here like this....”
Nothing at all flustered her. She laughed. “As a matter of fact, I don't love him at all.” And she had already anticipated the next question. “Then why am I married to him? Maybe I'll tell you someday.”
She moved out of the shadows then and came across the room again. This time she didn't slip away when I reached for her. For just a moment the hard fire raged and she gouged her fingers into my shoulders as I kissed her.
“I like you, Joe!” The words came through her teeth, hissing.
Then she was gone. Holding her when she didn't want to be held was like trying to squeeze moonlight in your hands. She was out of my arms and out of the cabin before I could stop her. There was nothing I could do about it.
There was little sleep for me that night. My nerves were strung as tight as cat gut on a violin.
After a while the light went out in the Sheldon cabin and the night was completely quiet. There was not a breath of breeze to move the limp curtains, to relieve the heat. When I looked hard into the shadows I could almost see her standing there. I could reach out and almost touch her. And all I could do was lie there and sweat, giving myself plenty of good advice that I knew I wasn't going to take.
But all things end, if you wait long enough, and finally that night ended. I opened the station as usual around seven o'clock, and about thirty minutes later Karl Sheldon and Paula came around in the Buick.
I lifted my hand when Sheldon waved. “We're going down to Texas to see my wife's people,” he called. “On our way back we may be stopping with you again.”
“I'll be looking for you.”
Paula didn't even look at me. Which was just as well.
As the Buick pulled onto the highway and slipped into the stream of early-morning traffic, panic took hold of me. Christ! I thought. How are you going to explain this to the Sheriff, Hooper? What are you going to say when he asks why you stood here and let them drive away?
Then I thought: Now, wait a minute. There's nothing to get panicky about, because, as far as you know, they haven't done a damn thing that they could be arrested for. All they've done is talk. And there was no way in the world I could prove that.
Sure, I thought. That makes sense. The robbery doesn't take place for another seven days, so just phone the Sheriff and tell him what you know.
I didn't do it.
The first thing I knew, it was noon, and I still hadn't done anything about calling the Sheriff. Something seemed to happen every time I started to call. First it was a farmer wanting coal oil, then a flat to fix, then a lube job, and then the morning was gone. Once I had been putting gas in a car, and the driver got out and said, “What the hell do you think you're doing?” The tank had overflowed and gas had gone over his rear fender and was splashing onto the driveway. “What are you thinking about, anyway?”
I could have told him, but I didn't. I had been thinking about that blonde wife of Sheldon's.
That threw a scare into me. Well, by God! I thought. Are you still remembering that little blonde tramp, Hooper. Is it because of that promise to her that you can't find time to call the Sheriff's office?
Oh, she's quite a woman, all right, that Paula Sheldon, but you'd better be sensible about this thing, Hooper, or you're going to have more trouble than you can handle!