Later in the morning after the sun had burned the mist off, I was spin casting with a dude and mono-filament line over a weed bed when they went by, heading in, their big outboard roaring, the bow wave breaking the glassy look of the morning Gulf.
Croy was at the motor, Betty up in the bow.
Betty waved at me and Croy gave me a sort of little nod as they went by. I waved back. Their swell rocked me and then they were gone in the distance.
She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. You could look at her all day and not find anything wrong.
You Can’t Trust a Man
by Helen Nielsen
It had been a long time, but now he was back. And he was going to get what he deserved for being so patient...
They were a couple of very special jobs, — the convertible and the woman. Blonde, streamlined, and plenty of fire power under the hood. The convertible was a later model, at least twenty-five years later, but it didn’t have any more pick-up and not nearly as much maneuverability in traffic.
She came across the parking lot like a stripper prancing out on the runway, a healthy, old-fashioned girl who believed that whatsoever the Lord hath cleaved asunder no Parisian designer should join together. She was wearing the kind of gown that’s called a creation and carries a three-figure price tag, and over it hung a pastel mink stole that could feed a family of six for a couple of years. She opened the door of the convertible and slid in behind the wheel over red leather upholstery as soft as a lover’s caress, and was just touching a gold-tipped cigarette to a jewelled lighter when the opposite door opened and a thin man in a shabby suit and a battered hat crawled in beside her.
For just an instant the flame in the woman’s gloved hand brightened her face like candlelight before a Madonna, and then the flame and the illusion died together.
“Faithful Tony,” she murmured. “I knew you would come.”
A spiral of smoke sought the open window like a released soul; then the motor throbbed alive and twin eyes cored holes in the darkness. The woman barely glanced at the shabby man. She was too busy steering that land cruiser out onto a street that was a lot more crowded at other hours when the little shops and the big markets were open for business. Now, only one place was still open, and business was fine. You could see the colored neons and hear the wail of a clarinet being tortured by an orgy of jungle drums, and out in front of a chocolate stucco building without windows you could see the bigger-than-life photo of a full-mouthed blonde who didn’t look at all Madonna-like under floodlights.
“Featuring Crystal Coe and her intimate songs,” the shabby man read aloud, as they wheeled past the billboard. “You’re big time now, baby. Real big time.”
There was no enthusiasm in the words. He didn’t sound like a press-agent, or an M.C., or a kid with an autograph book in his hand.
“Is that why you wanted to see me?” the woman asked.
“Did I want to see you?” A twisted smile slid across the man’s dark face. “I thought it was the other way around. I thought it was Crystal Coe who phoned my hotel and set up this cozy reunion.”
“After I read your threatening note.”
“Threatening?” The smile was wider now. “You’ve been imagining things, baby. That was just a fan letter.”
He wasn’t going to be offered one of those gold-tipped smokes, so the man poked around in his pockets until he came up with a crumpled pack of his own. The lighter on the instrument panel worked fine. Any time it didn’t this job would be traded in on a newer model.
“Just imagining things,” he repeated. “You always did have a big imagination. Remember that story you told me back in Cleveland seven years ago? It was a real heart-breaker... ‘I can’t take the rap, Tony. I can’t have our baby born in prison!’ ”
A deep drag on the cigarette and the man leaned back against the deep-cushioned seat. The way he did it, it was as if he hadn’t been so comfortable in a long time. It was as if he’d like to take off his shoes and stay a while.
“I never did get a birth announcement,” he added. “What was it, Crystal — a boy or a girl?”
“A girl can make a mistake,” the woman said.
“That’s right, baby. She sure can.”
His voice was as cold as the night air. The woman pressed a button with her left hand and the window hummed upward. Everything automatic. Press a button and the red carpet rolls out... as long as nobody turns off the ignition.
“No birth announcement, no letters,” the man mused. “Seven years is a long time to sit in stir without letters, but then I guess you were busy. Broadway... Hollywood... Hell, baby, I never knew you could sing. I always thought you had only one talent.”
Up ahead, a light turned red and the convertible stopped with a lurch. Gloved fingers snuffed out a gold-tipped cigarette in a tray that was already overloaded and then tightened on the steering wheel. It was so late the streets were like eyeless sockets in the face of the city. A diesel trailer job thundered up in the next lane, and a black and white prowl car sniffed past the intersection, but that was the only traffic in the time it took for the light to turn green.
“All right, Tony,” the woman said, as the convertible leaped forward, “what do you want?”
“Seven years...”
It might have been an answer, or it might have been just a man talking to himself. He wriggled down against the soft leather until the battered hat tipped down over his eyes.
“For me they were empty years, Crystal. For me no bright lights, no big time. At first I nearly went crazy wondering why you didn’t write. I thought may be that stupid gin mill operator got wise that it was your fingers in his till instead of mine. Then I thought maybe something went wrong with the baby. That’s a laugh, isn’t it? I’ll bet you’ve split your sides over it more than once.”
The gloved fingers tightened even more on the steering wheel, but still the woman didn’t turn her head. She was driving slowly and carefully. She never took her eyes from the street except to glance at the instrument panel now and then.
“... Empty years,” the man continued. “Then, all of a sudden, they weren’t empty any more because one day I saw a newspaper and guess whose picture? I didn’t recognize you right off, not with the blonde hair and the fancy clothes and that name — Crystal Coe. But the paper said you’d just changed your name by marrying that band leader. Whatever happened to him, baby? Was he the one who turned alcoholic, or was that the Hollywood agent?”
The light from the instrument panel caught the man’s twisted smile, but Crystal Coe’s face was like marble, cold, hard, and silent.
“No, I remember now,” the man reflected, “the agent was the one who shot himself. I read all about it in a fan magazine. ‘Crystal Coe’s Tragic Loves’ — that was the name of the story. But then it went on to say that you’d found happiness at last with an older man... old enough to own a few dozen oil fields.”
“All right, so we’ve had the story of my life!” Crystal snapped.
“Not quite, baby. I was thinking about that when I read that magazine story. They left out a few things. Maybe I should do a sequeclass="underline" ‘Crystal Coe’s Secret Love.’ How do you like that for a title?”
“It’ll never sell!”
“Why not? Because I can’t swim in oil?”
“Because you can’t prove anything!”
Marble shouldn’t get hot so quickly; it was liable to crack. The man shook his head sadly.
“You know better than that, Crystal,” he said. “No matter how many little pieces of paper you destroy, there’s always a piece left somewhere.”