“How about his teeth?”
“No work on them at all. Just like yours. I told him you were in town to the dentist, and he said he’d been lucky. Said he’d never been to a dentist in his life.”
“Neither have I. You’re smart, honey. Beautiful and smart. Where is this guy?”
“In the kitchen eating.”
“Okay. I’ll go look at him.”
She moved in against him, and the breath of her whisper was hot on his face. “Tonight, Steve. Make it tonight.”
They lost time, the way they always lost time when she came at him like that, but after a while he went up to the house and into the kitchen where the young drifter was sitting.
Like Ella said, he was perfect. Steve told him it was okay to sleep in the barn, and when he’d finished eating, he took him down there. Inside the barn, in the darkness, it was easy to slip a leather strap around the drifter’s neck, but it was a lot harder to hang on when the guy understood what he’d walked into. He threshed like a maniac and tried to twist around to get at Steve with his hands, but he couldn’t keep it up long with the strap cutting into his throat, and pretty soon he was dead.
Steve improvised some braces and managed to prop the body upright in the opening of the stall where Reuben was kept. Reuben was a horse, a vicious devil, a fine killer. Steve went into the adjoining stall and, reaching over the partition, rammed him brutally in the flank with the handle of a fork. The horse lashed out with his hind legs, and one hoof caught the body of the drifter in the chest. The body was hurtled all the way across the central aisle of the barn. It smashed against the planking on the other side and bounced half way back before it hit the ground. Steve left it lying there and returned to the house.
Ella was waiting in the kitchen. She had a bag already packed and sitting on the linoleum by the door. Her cheeks were hot, and her eyes were bright with excitement. She looked as if she were burning up inside with a high fever. It made her more beautiful than ever. God, she was beautiful.
“Okay,” he said. “It’s done.”
“You’d better get away, Steve. You’d better start the fire and leave.”
He took her by the shoulders and let his hands slip in upon her throat. “Don’t forget to come, honey. And just don’t forget to come.”
“I’ll come, Steve. You know I’ll come. Just as soon as everything’s settled.”
“Sure, honey, I know. But it’ll be a long time. A long, long time. Can’t you tell a guy good-by?”
So they said good-by in a way he thought would last him through all the time of waiting, and then he took the bag she’d packed for him and went back down to the barn. He scattered some kerosene around, putting quite a bit on the drifter’s body, and then lit a lantern. He smashed the lantern on the planking where the body had struck and let it fall. Flames leaped up like spits of hell. He went out to the back side of the barn and ran with long, regular strides down the cowpath to the pasture. Behind him, he could hear old Reuben raising hell, could hear the crashing of his hooves against the stall.
He ran through the pasture to the creek, and, walking then, he followed the creek a couple of miles to a three-lane highway. He caught a ride on a pickup truck into the city, and next day he caught a bus to another city, and not long after that he caught a boat to another country, and so here he was, one year, six weeks and three days later, sitting in a bar with a daiquiri in his hands and Ella upstairs and the long wait almost over.
In about half an hour, she came. He could see her enter the room behind him, growing larger in the mirror, and she crawled onto a stool with one empty between them. She ordered a daiquiri of her own, and he watched her from the corners of his eyes, all the details once more sharp and clear that had been blurred by waiting too long on a beach, the sleepy eyes and red, sulky mouth, the body that even touching hardly made credible, the long twin sheens of nylon crossed at the knees. He thought of the way they’d said good-by, and he began to think that it was time to say hello, and as he sat there thinking about it, his pulse accelerated, and his heart knocked painfully at his ribs.
After a while, a guy angling for a pickup, he turned on his stool and said, “May I buy you a drink?”
She glanced at him and smiled a little and shrugged her shoulders. “Why not?”
He shifted over onto the intervening empty and told the bartender
two more daiquiris. Understanding that business was going forward, the
bartender supplied them quickly and faded. He was a good bartender. A guy sensitive to a situation.
“It’s been a long time,” Steve said softly. “I thought you were never coming.”
“I almost missed you on the pier, darling. The beard makes you look older.”
“How did it go?”
“There was a hassle. An investigation. They thought it was funny, a guy walking in behind a vicious horse like that. They paid off, though. Double. Fifty grand.”
“Where’s the money?”
“Upstairs, darling. Hidden in my baggage in a way it could never be noticed. Up there waiting for us, like we’ve been waiting for each other. When the three of us get together, that’s when we start living.”
“That’s now, baby. There’s you and me and the money and nothing left between us.”
She lifted the daiquiri to her lips and her eyes to the mirror, and it was then he got the feel of something wrong. An unease in her manner, an uncertainty in her voice. A last remnant of left-over fear.
“I’m worried,” she said. “I’m worried to hell.”
“What’s the matter?”
She lowered her glass to the bar and sat looking down into it, twisting it slowly by the stem between the scarlet tips of her fingers. “A man. He came down on the boat with me. I’m positive he’s an insurance dick.”
“You mean he’s following you?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you think he’s a dick?”
“I saw him once before. I’m sure he’s the one. There was another dick out to the farm on the investigation. Later, in town, I happened to see him with this guy who came down on the boat. They were having some beers in a bar. I followed them when they left, and they went to the offices of the insurance company. I know damn well he’s a dick, Steve. I’ll swear he’s the same guy.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Look in the mirror, you can see for yourself. He’s at a table behind us. Tall. Black hair. Wearing a white suit.”
Steve lifted his eyes and sorted the dick out. He was concentrating on his drink, something in a tall glass with a peel curled over the edge, but Steve had the strange feeling that he was a guy trying too hard not to look at someone he wanted like hell to look at. A handsome guy. A tall, smooth, easy-to-look-at guy. Inside, Steve felt shrunken and icy cold, deadly with the pointed, purposeful deadliness of someone who’s waited too long.
“He shouldn’t have followed you,” he said. “He never should have come.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll have to kill him, of course. I’ll kill him fast, and we’ll move out of here.”
“No!” Her whisper possessed a desperate urgency. “No, Steve!”
“Why not? We killed once. This time it’ll be easier.”
“That’s just the point. Each time it’ll be easier. We can’t go on killing forever.”
“Who said forever? Just twice. After this one, nobody’ll ever find us.”
“Look, Steve. There’s another way. A better way. Give me a chance to convince you.”
“When?”
“Tonight. Just as soon as I can get to you after dark.”
He thought about the two of them on the dark beach after so long a time, and again his pulse was an acute and throbbing pain. “Can you shake the dick?”