She moaned as she awakened, opened her stunned eyes. Then memory flooded back. She sat up with a great gasp. She was dizzy and her neck throbbed with pain. She could remember dozing off, then hard hands that gouged at her, the knowledge of death...
Diana knew that a long time had passed. Some of the heat had faded. She climbed stiffly to her feet, stood for a moment, her hands braced against the wall, breathing deeply. She pushed herself away, nauseated with weakness.
It took all her strength to lift the bottom corner of the bed and pull out the caster. She poked a finger up the hollow metal leg and sobbed aloud as she felt the emptiness. She looked at her wristwatch. Three in the morning. Five hours had passed. The town was still. All she could hear was a truck droning in the distance. She looked at the ruined shoes, the slashed suitcases, the pictures crooked on the walls.
She shivered. Again she stretched out across the bed and picked up the room phone. The sleepy desk clerk intimated by the tone of his voice that this was a hell of a time to make a long distance phone call.
She lit a cigarette, waited for the phone to ring. It took twenty minutes.
There was no sleep in his voice. The name of the town from which the call was coming had alerted him. She sensed his anger at this violation of the rules he had made.
“George, honey? This is Diana. I just got lonesome and had to call you up.”
“That’s interesting.”
“I had hard luck today, George. You know I planned on buying you a present down here. Well, I put the money in a special place and darn if somebody didn’t steal it. Now what am I going to do?”
There was a long silence. “Maybe you were careless,” he said.
“No, George. I was real careful. It was just one of those things, I guess.”
“Any idea who took it?”
“Not the slightest.”
Again there was a long silence. He laughed harshly. “I’d hate to think, kid, that you just decided to spend the money on yourself and give up buying me a present.”
Her hand tightened on the phone. “Gee, George, I’m not dumb enough to make you mad at me.”
“I hope not. Having a good time?”
“As good as I can have away from you, George. Do you still want a present?”
“It would be nice.”
“You know, George, wouldn’t it be funny if you told somebody that I had the money with me to buy you a present and it turned out they decided to steal it?”
“Very funny, kid. Look, I’m glad you called. A friend of mine will be down that way tomorrow late or the next day. I’ve told him to look you up.”
“Who, George?”
“Christy.”
“Please, George. No!”
“He’s a nice guy, kid. I know you don’t like him, but he’s a nice guy. Show him a good time for me.” The line clicked as he hung up.
Diana walked the floor for an hour. She walked with her fists clenched and tears in the corners of her eyes. If she packed and ran, it would indicate to George that she had crossed him. George had a special way of dealing with such persons.
If she stayed — it meant Christy. George’s tone had indicated clearly that he was angry enough with her to throw her to Christy. Christy, with his queer twisted mind. She remembered how she and George had laughed about Christy.
George had kidded her, she thought, when he said, “If you ever make me mad, kid, I’ll hand you over to Christy.”
Now, suddenly, horribly, she knew that he hadn’t been joking. She realized what a fool she had been to think that because she had lasted longer with George than any previous girl, it was for keeps. With all her heart she wished she were back at Club Tempo, doing the five a night, whispering lyrics into the mike, swaying with the beat of Kits Nooden’s Midnight Five.
She turned out the lights and smothered her weeping with the pillow. Maybe George had spoken out of anger. Maybe he’d regret it, change his mind, call her back.
“George,” she called softly into the night. “Please, George.” For a long time she had felt that she was hard enough to bounce back from any blow. But now she felt like a frightened child, alone in the crawling dark.
Lane Sanson opened his eyes. The right eye felt clotted and stuck together. He raised trembling fingers and touched it, found that it was swollen shut, the skin around it taut and painful. It was daylight, and he looked at an adobe brick wall inches from his face. He felt extraordinarily weak, far too weak for it to be the result of a garden-type hangover. He sensed that he was indoors. When he moved he felt and heard a rustle underneath him.
There was an evil taste in his mouth. He listened, attempting to identify an odd sound. A drip and slosh of water and then silence. Then another drip and slosh of water. It came from behind him. With enormous effort he rolled over. He was in some sort of small shed effect with a sloping roof. He could see the blue sky through holes in the roof.
A large, sturdy girl stood by a pail made of a five-gallon gasoline tin and an improvised wire handle, scrubbing clothes. He stared at her with alarm. Her back was to him. In one corner was a wooden crate of clothes. In the other corner he could see, under a flat piece of metal, the red glow of coals atop a stove improvised of cinder blocks and bricks. The sun came through the roof holes and made golden coins on the packed dirt of the floor. The light gave her skin coppery glints.
He started to think that this was certainly one part of Mexico City that he had not seen before — and then he remembered that this was Piedras Chicas, the border town. He vaguely remembered a girl in a cantina, two men in an alley and a great explosion against his head. He dug down into the disjointed memories and came up with a name.
“Felicia,” he said in a half whisper.
She turned sharply. “Bueno!” she said, “momentito.” She dried her hands, came and sat beside him, cross-legged. Leaning forward, she put her hand on his forehead. “Ai!” she said. “Hot!”
He coughed, said in Spanish, “If you speak slowly, chica, I can understand. How do I come to be in this place?”
“Truly, it is like this. I was in the zocolo. Two strangers came to me and asked if I would wish to earn twenty pesos. They promised you would not be hurt. They wished me to bring you outside to the alley and hand you over to them. They talked to you and then they hit you a great blow and came out of the alley. They gave me ten pesos and said it was enough — and I spit on their feet. It appeared you were dead from the great blow and I knew that there would be much trouble.
“But I put my ear on your chest in the darkness and heard the poom, poom of your heart. You are truly heavy, Lane. But I am very strong because I worked in the fields. I dragged you through the alleys to this place, my casita. It is a question of pride, as they promised you would not be hurt. This, it is my fault and something I must do. There is a great wound in the side of your head, Lane. But I have prodded it with my fingers and I do not feel any looseness of the bone, so I think it is not broken.
“I washed it and poured in much of the dark red thing which is for bad wounds so that they do not rot. On it I have put clean cloth. This morning at dawn I lit a candle for you at the Iglesia and said many small prayers. Now I shall buy food for us. See?”
She reached under the edge of the serape on which he lay and pulled out his wallet. “Nothing is gone, Lane. I am not a thief. May I take pesos for food?”
“Of course!”
She took a five-peso note and put the wallet back under him. He tried to sit up and a great wave of weakness struck him. He sagged back and the flushed feeling went away. His teeth began to chatter violently.
She brought an ancient torn blanket and covered him. He tried to grin at her.
“Pobrecito!” she said. “Pobre gringo!”