Well, how do you feel and what can you do when a pal talks like that? You feel like a heel, that’s how, and you do whatever he asks to get him out of the trouble he’s in, that’s what, and that’s how I felt and what I did. Banty packed some things in a bag, and we went over to my place on Troost, a room over a secondhand furniture store, and I packed some things in a bag, and we started out together for Uncle Oakley’s farm in Banty’s ’56 jalopy. While we were driving south out of town, I counted the money I had, and it came to $98.63. Banty took it and put it in his pocket and said he’d pay me back every cent of it, even though I’d be using my share of it for food and cigarettes and things like that, and even though he was furnishing the car for the trip besides. It shows how Banty was. He was a free-spender and knew how to treat a pal.
We got out of town on a highway going south, and after a while we came to a service station, and Banty drove in and stopped at the pumps, because the car needed gas. There was a little restaurant attached to the station, a short-order joint for truck drivers, really, and this reminded Banty that he’d been on a bourbon diet for quite a while, until the bourbon ran out, after which he’d been on a diet of nothing at all, nothing being all he could afford after the stud game. We went inside and had hamburgers and pie and coffee, which took maybe half an hour, and when we came out again, the jalopy was gone, but the attendant said he’d only parked it off to one side, out of the drive. He’d parked it in an open space between the station and a place next door, and this place was one of these highway nightclubs, and it wasn’t any cheap dump, not by a long shot. It was built of gray stone and glass brick, and there was a formal hedge all around it, and a lot of green plants growing in stone urns along a curved drive coming up to the entrance from the highway. When someone opened the front door, going in or coming out, I could hear music for a few seconds, a classy jazz combo, and I wished Banty and I could go in there and have a few drinks and some fun, but we didn’t have the time or the money, and so we got in the jalopy and started south again for Uncle Oakley’s farm.
We drove along pretty fast for about an hour, and then I went to sleep. I must have slept for almost another hour, and when I woke up we were at least a hundred miles down the highway with maybe another hundred to go. Banty was smoking a cigarette and humming a little tune off-key. I listened to the tune for a while, trying to place it, but I kept thinking all the time that I could hear something else, another sound besides the engine and the wind and Banty’s humming, but I couldn’t decide what it was exactly, or if it was really anything at all besides my imagination. I kept listening and listening and trying to decide what it was and where it came from, if anything from anywhere, and finally I decided it was the sound of snoring in the back seat, which didn’t seem likely. I turned my head, though, to see if it possibly was, and damned if it wasn’t. The sound was snoring, and it was a girl doing it.
“Banty,” I said, “who’s that girl in the back seat? You know her?”
“What’s wrong with you?” Banty said. “You crazy or something?”
“Honest.” I said. “There’s a girl in the back seat, and if you’ll only listen you can hear her snore.”
Banty listened for a few seconds, his head cocked, and then he pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway and stopped the car and listened for a few seconds longer before twisting around slowly and looking over the back of the seat. I had a wild notion all of a sudden that I was seeing and hearing things that weren’t there, he seemed so unconcerned, but then he cursed softly under his breath and pinched the end of his nose, which was a gesture he had when he was puzzled by something, and I knew she was there, all right, and Banty saw her.
“Wake her up and throw her out,” he said.
That suited me fine, because I don’t mind saying that I’m afraid of strange women who turn up all of a sudden in places where they aren’t wanted or expected. I reached over the back of the front seat and shook her a little, but she only turned away on her side and made a little whimpering sound, and drew up her knees like a kid sleeping, clutching them in her arms.
I shook her again, harder, and said, “Come on, come on, you crazy dame, get out of there!” and pretty soon she came wide awake in an instant and sat up with a jerk. She yawned and rubbed her eyes and began to scratch in her short, tousled hair.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“You’re in the back seat of my car, that’s where you are,” Banty said.
“Really? Is that really where I am? Actually in the back seat of your car?”
“That’s what I said,” Banty said, “and what I want to know is how the devil you got there.”
She kept on scratching in her short hair, staring at us with wide eyes, but she didn’t seem to be scared or confused or anything like that. In fact, there was a little smile on her face that gave me a notion she thought it was all pretty funny, a good joke on someone, but I couldn’t see the joke. What I could see, now that she was sitting up looking at us, was that she was too pretty for her own good, and maybe mine and Banty’s, and I wished she would pull down her dress, which was one of these sheaths that keep riding up.
“Well,” she said, “I confess I’m a little vague about it, to tell the truth, but I must have simply come out of the Roman Gardens and crawled into your car and gone to sleep. I can’t think of any other way it could have happened, so that must be the way.”
“What’s the Roman Gardens?” Banty asked. “Is that the place back up the highway with all the hedges and plants and things growing around?”
“That’s it. It’s a nightclub, and I went there with a friend of mine named Tommy. I drank quite a few martinis, and so did Tommy, and he was getting some unacceptable ideas, and matters were complicated by all the martinis I had drunk, which made it impossible for me to be as clever defensively as I usually am. Finally, as I recall, I went to the powder room and then on outside with the intention of getting some air to clear my head. I was feeling dizzy from the martinis, and I thought I’d sit down for a while until I wasn’t dizzy anymore, and the back seat of a car seemed like a good place to sit. I got into one which was handy, and which now turns out to be yours, and it would have been all right, of course, except that I apparently went to sleep, and here I am.”
“Here you are, and there you go,” Banty said. “Get out of here and go back to Tommy.”
“How far have we come?”
“About a hundred miles.”
“In that case, don’t be absurd. A girl can hardly walk a hundred miles anytime at all, let alone on high heels at night by herself on a highway.”
“That’s your problem, sister. I didn’t invite you go crawl in my car and go to sleep.”
“Well, that’s no reason why you can’t be a gentleman about it. What was done is done, however unfortunate, and you will simply have to take me back where you found me.”
“This is where we found you, sister, and this is as far as we take you.”
She was looking at Banty with this queer little smile still on her face, as if she was still convinced that she was a good joke on someone, but I could have told her, knowing Banty, that the joke was on her, and it wasn’t a very good one, either.
“I promise to make it worth your while if you take me back,” she said.
“How much?”
“A thousand dollars.”
“Come off. Where would a tramp like you get a grand?”
“You might be surprised. Take me back, I’ll give it to you.”
“Let me see it.”
“You insist upon being absurd, don’t you? You must not be very intelligent. I don’t have it with me, of course.”