Immediately, and with a savage cry that was quite out of keeping with her dimpled demeanor, Shirley slammed the window down on his fingertips . . .
Two days later Mr. Simpell was pulling his rented car up to a Mississippi roadhouse, intending to have a few drinks and maybe size up the possibilities of female companionship before having his dinner. At the bar inside the roadhouse, Cora Sue Blisternape, honeypot churning, was nursing a tall gin drink and hoping some nice man would come along to buy her a refill. Half a mile away, on the riverbank, Rufus Blisternape was working out intricate patterns with his yo-yo in the dark. A little while earlier he’d painted the yo-yo with phosphorescent paint and now he was excited because if he used this gimmick creatively enough, he might be on the road to reclaiming his championship and his picture would be in the paper again and people—-maybe his wife even — would look at him like he was a celebrity and not just a bum.
Later that evening, Mr. Simpell and Cora Sue Blisternape, their intentions sealed by a large and quick amount of tall gin drinks for which Mr. Simpell had paid, unstuck their behinds from the barstools at the roadhouse, wrapped their arms around each other as much for support as in the anticipation of passion, and thigh-rubbed their way out the door. They went to Mr. Simpell’s rented car and were soon wrapped around each other with the fervor of salmon-riding centipedes struggling upstream-—which is to say their limbs were as mixed as the metaphor. But there were problems.
“This is the last goddam time I rent a goddam Volkswagen!” Mr. Simpell panted, summing up the problems.
“I know a spot not far from here . . . ” Cora Sue suggested, untangling her honeypot from the shift-stick and realizing for the first time—-and with some disappointment -- that it wasn’t what she’d been reacting like it was.
And so, a few moments later the Volkswagen stood at the riverbank while its former passengers sprawled on the grass a few yards away and frightened the fish with the unbridled outcries of their unleashed passion. Those grunts and such attracted the attention of Rufus Blisternape. Without losing the rhythm of his phosphorescently flashing yo-yo, he strolled over to investigate the sounds.
He paused at the edge of the clearing they had selected for their lovemaking. There was no mistaking his wife’s face in the moonlight. Her head was thrown back and she was yipping like a banshee with a fishbone in its throat. Rufus Blisternape knew the sound well. It was the sound she always made when the last of the honey in her honeypot was being drained. Rufus Blisternape watched for a moment, the phosphorescent yo-yo bobbing calmly, going through one smooth pattern after another, never missing an intricate finger-movement, never the slightest sign of the lack of control that makes a yo-yo jerk, or sharl.
Rufus was a real pro. This may have been his finest moment. It was too bad there was nobody there to see it.
A large cloud blotted out the moon. In the sudden darkness the phosphorescent yo-yo danced across the riverbank clearing. For a few seconds it hobbled slightly over the figures of the lovers. Cora spent her passion, her eyes cleaned, and they focused on the yo-yo. Her scream shattered the calm.
Even as she was scrambling out from under Mr. Simpell, the yo-yo was swinging smoothly into the figure of “The Spiro Spiral.” Before Mr. Simpell could turn his head, the yo-yo cord had looped around his neck and cut off the air from his windpipe. Eyes bulging, he gasped his last as Cora Sue fled screaming into the woods and Rufus calmly maneuvered the yo-yo through the movements of its dance of death.
When the dance was over, when the last spasm of after-death was over and Mr. Simpell’s body lay quite still, Rufus Blisternape relinquished control of the end of the yo-yo string and knelt over the corpse to unwind the cord from the neck it had strangled. But it wasn’t possible. The string was too deeply and firmly imbedded in the flesh to be freed of it. The intricacies of “The Spiro Spiral” simply would not lend themselves to being untangled under these circumstances.
Rufus Blisternape scowled and cut the yo-yo loose; leaving the strangler’s cord with the victim. Too bad. It meant he’d have to break in a new yo-yo. And buy more phosphorescent paint. He’d be out maybe as much as seventy-five cents. Seventy-five cents! Cora Sue was sure ’nuf going to take a whopping for that! Nodding to himself, Rufus slowly followed her down the trail leading through the woods.
And now the Fickle Finger was buried deep in its target …
The next morning Llona was lying in bed and thinking about further revenge for Archer. At that moment, a Western Union messenger was ringing Shirley Simpell’s front doorbell. She went to the door, but she made no move to open it.
“Gee whiz, Archer, don’t you ever learn?” she shouted angrily. She was wearing a housecoat and she stood in front of the closed door with her hands on her hips, her fury so great that it obscured her dimples. “If you don’t leave me alone and stay away from here, I swear I’ll shoot you and tell the police you broke in and tried to intimidate me to keep me from giving evidence against you and that I acted in self-defense! I mean it, Archer!”
The chimes ding-donged again. This time their sing-song was matched by the sing-song of the messenger caroling “Western Unionnnnnn . . . Telegrammmnnnm …”
Shirley opened the door and signed for the telegram. The messenger whistled down the walk on his way to the next delivery as she was tearing the envelope open. He was gone before she actually started to read it.
But he was replaced as Shirley’s eyes focused unbelievingly on the words of the telegram. Archer leaped from the concealment of the shrubbery beside her front stoop and confronted her. “Shirley, you’ve got to talk to me!” he pleaded. “Our love is too important to—”
He stopped speaking abruptly when she looked up at him from the telegram and he saw her eyes. She looked as if she’d been struck some awful blow—which, indeed, she had. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came. Archer caught her in his arms as she fainted.
He carried her into the house and laid her down on the couch. He removed the telegram still clenched in her blood-drained fist and read it. Then he closed the front door, went into the kitchen, wet a cloth, came back to the couch and wiped Shirley’s brow with it.
After a while she stirred and moaned. Her long-lashed, childish eyes fluttered open. She looked at Archer for a moment and then they clouded over as she remembered.
“I’m a widow,” Shirley said weakly.
“Shh. Take it easy. Rest."
“Oh, Archer! What am I going to do?” All of her hostility toward him seemed to have vanished. In her grief she clung to him as the only support available to her. She broke into sobs and buried her face against his chest and clasped her arms tightly around his neck.
Archer noted that her grief had washed away completely the vindictiveness she had been displaying toward him. After a long while her tears subsided. She got to her feet, intending to go upstairs and repair the damage they had wreaked on her appearance. But her knees buckled and Archer had to catch her again. He carried her up the stairs to her bedroom, laid her down on the bed, and went into the bathroom to run a bath for her.
She made no protest at the symbolic renewal of intimacies when he stripped off her housecoat, carried her into the bathroom and deposited her naked in the steaming tub. Automatically, she sprinkled some bubble bath into the water until it was frothy with suds. Archer sat on the toilet seat and kept her company as the hot water sapped the tensions from her body.
Shirley closed her eyes and sighed. “You really are sweet, Archer. Sweet and tender. I guess I never really appreciated you. But I appreciate you now. I’m sorry I've been so bitchy. I'm sorry I made you trouble with the law.”