“No, honey. I’m not mad and there’s no other woman.” I laughed, and kept it up until my stomach ached. She joined me.
“I stood outside this door for over ten minutes trying to decide what to do,” she said, her laughter giving way to tears. “I was about to walk away, but when I heard you start laughing I was sure you were in here with another woman. I had to open the door.”
“I’m glad you did, honey. It gave us the chance to clear the air.” I don’t know why I was kidding her. I had no choice about what I had to do. I had to take care of Bert Debbles today while he was still in Colorado. Once he was back in Nevada he’d be off-limits. I couldn’t risk going back home to Carson City to deal with him.
I wished Marge had never followed me. I’d have given just about anything to have her still stranded in Mexico. At least she’d be safe. But I guess if she had to have followed me here, I should be thankful she’d opened the door instead of walking away. Otherwise she’d be able to make the connection between me and Bert Debbles when she read about him in the papers tomorrow. Now though, she was not going to have that chance.
Marge took an awkward step towards me. “I’ve been feeling so bad, Johnny. Please hold me.” She buried her head into my chest and started bawling like a baby.
I lifted her head and gave her a long hard kiss. A kiss goodbye. During it she sobbed and laughed and held me as tight as she could.
“I love you, Johnny.”
“I know you do, baby.”
“It probably sounds crazy after all the grief you gave me in Mexico, but I’m miserable without you.”
“It doesn’t sound crazy at all.”
“I don’t want to live without you, Johnny. Let me spend the rest of my life with you. Promise me that, please.”
“You’ve got a promise, baby.”
She buried her head hard into my chest again, and I stood silently holding her, feeling the warmth of her small body. She pulled away from me weakly, and gave me a sad smile. “Let’s get out of here and go someplace nice. Okay, Johnny?”
“Soon. Not right now, baby. Let’s just hold each other a little bit longer.”
She pushed herself back into me. “Johnny, this might sound funny, but when I first came into this room you had such a strange look on your face. Like you were going to kill someone. It scared me.”
“You’re right, baby. It does sound funny.
She chewed on that for a minute. “Johnny?”
“Yes, darling?”
“Is anything wrong?”
“Now why should anything be wrong?”
“I don’t know. It’s just that when I was following you here, you seemed kind of odd. Are you sure you’re not in any trouble?”
“No trouble at all.”
“Why are you wearing those gloves?”
“Well you see, darling,” I said, “I put them on before entering the building so I wouldn’t leave any fingerprints.”
“Come on,” she sort of laughed. “What are you doing here?”
“I have to kill someone. I’m going to bash his brains out with that gin bottle.”
“Quit kidding me. Really, why are you here?”
“Okay, baby,” I said, stepping back. “It’s kind of like this.” I cocked my arm and threw my weight forward, catching her smack in the middle of her face. Her head snapped back and she hit the floor hard. She sat there blinking her eyes stupidly. Somehow she got to her feet and stood wobbling in front of me.
“Sorry, baby,” I said. “But I got to do what I got to do.”
“Joddy,” she said-and I’m not trying to make fun of her. Anyone with a flattened nose and a mouthful of blood would sound like that, and well, that’s the way she sounded and that’s the way I’m telling it. “Please Joddy, I g-gluv you. Dod J-Joddy.”
She took a step towards me. “Oh baby,” I said. “I love you too, honey.” I reached back and gave her an uppercut to the chin, lifting her feet off the ground. Before they came down, I followed up with a one-two combination, catching one eye with a left jab and the other with a haymaker. The haymaker drove her to the floor.
She was lying on her stomach. Somehow she lifted her head. Both her eyes, almost swollen shut, were open to cracks and pleading with me. Her mouth was moving, as if she were trying to say something. I knew what it was-”love you always.” Something inside me must’ve snapped because I started laughing like a crazy man.
“Don’t you never stop.” I bent down over her. “Remember our first night how your neck got so stiff? Let me fix it for you.” I grabbed her head with both hands and twisted, putting my shoulder into it.
CR-RACK
“Sorry darling,” I said, falling down beside her. “Must’ve twisted a little too hard.”
I sat there laughing until I was empty inside, until there was nothing more to let out. Marge didn’t look too good anymore. Her head resembled a battered pumpkin more than anything else. And even though she was on her stomach, she was nearly facing the ceiling.
“You can see them coming and going, can’t you baby?” I stood up and sat on the bed. “I kept my promise. You can’t say you didn’t get to spend the rest of your life with me.”
I talked with her a little longer, explaining how I did the only thing I could to keep my promise. She couldn’t hear me but I was sure she understood. I closed my eyes and tried to think things through.
It was supposed to be just an old gin rummy who got rolled a little too hard for his pocket change. In flophouses like this, broken-down drunks like Bert Debbles regularly get conked over the head for nothing more than a bottle of cheap hooch. The cops wouldn’t be too concerned about it. Just another body for the pauper’s grave, and another drunk off the streets. Bert Debbles wouldn’t be worth their effort.
Marge changed things, though. A beautiful girl like her found dead with Bert Debbles’ corpse would cause a stir.
I tried to think how it could be explained, how it could make sense. I racked my brains, and all I could come up with was it didn’t make any sense at all. I guess there are things in this world that are unexplainable, and her death would be one of them. The cops would have to accept it.
Marge kept me company while I waited for Bert Debbles. It turned out I had him sized up pretty well. At three thirty I heard a key turn in the door. Whoever it was stopped, wondering why the door was already unlocked. That’s right old man, I thought. You must’ve forgot to lock it. Come on in and say hello.
The door opened and Bert Debbles stepped in. I smiled to greet him, swinging the gin bottle against my leg.
Debbles jumped when he saw me, and then his face folded into an ugly frown. “You think I’m afraid of the likes of you? You don’t scare me none you little-” And then he caught sight of Marge.
It took a few seconds for him to comprehend why her head was facing the way it was, and when it hit him his mouth formed a tiny circle and he started making the most godawful noise. Like he was imitating a train.
He turned and headed towards the door, still making his wooing noise. I jumped over Marge’s body and reached past him, shoving the door shut. I spun him around and showed him his gin bottle.
“You shouldn’t be drinking this stuff, old man,” I said. “It will kill you.”
I brought the bottle down against the side of his head and he hit the floor like a sack of guts.
He was still conscious. I prodded him with my boot, and he curled into a ball, his eyes rolling with terror as they stared at me. I crouched next to him and could hear he was still making that wooing noise. It now sounded more like a broken-down garbage disposal than a train. Or maybe it still sounded like a train, but one that was running out of steam.
I started telling him about my poppa. I told him everything, and after a while the two of us started feeling close ourselves. Kind of like father and son. Maybe I got mixed up, and at times confused him for my real poppa. I asked him some awful crazy things, like why he had treated me so poorly, and why couldn’t he have been proud of me. Well, it was only natural, him being so much like Poppa, and anyways, he didn’t complain. Saying all those things out loud made me think about them. And thinking about them-thinking about what I’d suffered through as a child, well, it just didn’t seem possible. At least it didn’t seem possible they could’ve happened to me. Because no one could’ve lived through that and grown up normal. No one could’ve . . . .