“Who’s in there?” Ginny asked.
“Couple of hungry truck drivers,” he said, and chuckled at his own humor.
“Are you holding up the diner?” she said. “Is that it?”
“Now, do I look like a holdup man?” he said, and grinned at her.
“Yeah,” she answered, “you do.”
There was something odd about this one. He had never met a woman like this one before. He could scarcely sit still beside her. He couldn’t understand this because she wasn’t all that pretty, except for her legs maybe, and besides she was old enough to be his mother. In fact, he wondered why he was bothering with her at all when there was good young stuff right down the beach in the Stern house, waiting for his pleasure. Harry had told him to get back down there, hadn’t he? Hadn’t Goody told him to get back down there? All he had to do was meander into the house and tell Flack to take a walk or something and then go right over to that bed and have his pleasure with her, that was all. Only thing was that this one, this Ginny McNeil here in the car with him, she looked at him kind of funny. Well, she looked at him like she admired the way he carried himself, you know? Or admired what he was saying or doing, you know? Like she tried hard to make believe she didn’t want him saying the things he kept saying to her, or looking at her legs that way, but he could tell she really did want him to. This was going to be something, he just knew it. And this was part of what it was all about, wasn’t it? Wasn’t this part of what Jason had meant when he’d told them about the greater glory, all that stuff? Wasn’t this what he’d meant, didn’t some of it come down to picking up a woman with a fine set of legs and taking her someplace where you could have your pleasure with her?
He took his right hand off the wheel and dropped it onto her thigh. She didn’t move. She just kept looking through the window on her side of the car as if he hadn’t put his hand on her leg at all. But he could tell she knew it was there. He could feel a trembling in her leg and in her body, like a high-tension wire singing in the wind, a high thin hum of excitement running through her and touching his fingers and setting his hand to shaking so that he had to grip her harder. Right then she said, “Where are you taking me?” and reached down and picked up his hand as if it was a dead fish or something bad-smelling, and dropped it on the seat between them so that he had to laugh out loud.
He didn’t answer. He pulled into the driveway to the left of the bait and tackle shop, glancing up the road to see if the phone booth could be seen from here, but it couldn’t. He nodded, pleased. That meant he couldn’t be seen from the phone booth either. He yanked up the parking brake and cut the engine, and then put one knee up on the seat so that it accidentally on purpose was against her thigh, and he said, “We’re gonna get out of the car now, Ginny.”
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“We’re gonna go around back of the shop here, and to the other side where there’s a door. You know where I mean?”
“You mean where Bobby lives?”
“Where the old wino lives, that’s right.”
“Do you know him?” she said.
“Why sure, we’re old buddies,” he said, and chuckled. “You know you got the damn’est legs I’ve ever seen?”
“Yeah,” she said, and moved slightly away from him, closer to the door on her side.
“Now, when we get around to the other side of the shack here, we’ve got to be real careful,” Willy said. “There’s a phone booth just outside the marina office — oh, maybe two hundred yards up the road, you know where I mean?”
“Yes,” she said.
“There’s somebody in that booth, and I don’t want him to see us.”
“Why not?”
“Well, honey, he’d just spoil the party if he did, that’s all.”
“What party?”
“The party you and me are gonna have.”
“Don’t count on it,” Ginny said.
“Honey,” he answered, “I could get rich counting on it.” He paused, and grinned, and then repeated, “Rich.”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Come on.”
They got out of the car and walked over the packed gravel in the driveway to the rear of the shack, and then around it parallel to the ocean. He stopped at the corner of the shack and peeked around it toward the phone booth two hundred yards away. Goody Moore was sitting there, just like he was supposed to be, waiting for them five-minute-apart calls from every house on the beach; there was such a thing as carrying things too far, Willy thought. He kept watching the booth, wondering how he could get the woman around the side of the shack and into the room without Goody seeing her. He held her tightly by the wrist. He could feel a pulse beating there. He was sure the old wino had a bed in his room.
Goody was reaching into his shirt pocket for a cigarette.
“As soon as he starts to light that cigarette,” Willy whispered, “you go, you hear me?”
“All right,” she said.
“Get right inside there just as fast as you can.”
“All right,” she said.
“I’m gonna do you fine, baby,” he said. He looked over toward the phone booth. Goody had put the cigarette between his lips. He took a book of matches from his pocket, struck one, and ducked his head to the flame.
“Go,” Willy whispered.
He supposed she could have run away from him right then, but he knew she wouldn’t, or at least was hoping she wouldn’t. She did just what he’d told her to do. She ran as fast as she could around the side of the shack, and then opened the door and ducked inside, and closed the door again, all before Goody had got his cigarette going and shaken out the match.
He had to wait five minutes more for his next opportunity, and that didn’t come until somebody in khakis (it looked like Clay Prentiss; he couldn’t be sure because he’d come up to the booth from the marina side) stopped to pass the time of day with Goody. Willy just sauntered out from around behind the shack with the rifle in his right hand, and walked to the door and opened it, and went into the room, and closed the door behind him, and then turned.
She was on the bed waiting for him.
She had taken off the white work dress and the flat-soled white shoes and the torn stockings. She was on the bed wearing only a white slip. Her face was turned to the wall. Her back was to the door. She did not turn to look at him.
He put the rifle down inside the door and went to the bed and sat on the edge of it, and said in a very soft voice, “Hey. Ain’t you even gonna turn around to make sure it’s me?”
“I know it’s you,” she said. Her voice was muffled.
He put his hand on her backside, just resting it there, not moving it. “How do you know it’s me?” he said.
Without turning, her voice still muffled, she said, “Are you going to kill me?”
“No, honey,” he said. “I’m gonna love you.”
She rolled toward him suddenly, the slip riding back over her knees. She looked up into his face and then she said, “I have the feeling...”
“What feeling do you have, baby?” he said. His hands were moving on her thighs now, sliding over the nylon, gathering the nylon, bunching the nylon up over her thighs, pushing the slip up and away from her long white legs, “What feeling do you have, sugar?”
“That... kill me or love me... it’s the same with you.”
He eased her onto the pillow gently. The room stank of booze and staleness. Later, they would drink. He wanted to drink with her. He could see Ava Gardner’s picture tacked to the white wall. He wondered what it was like to lay a movie star. She had taken off everything under the slip. He moved the slip high up on her thighs and looked at her and then touched her, and she moved toward him wet and waiting and gave a small moan and said, “Honey, honey.” He let down the straps of the slip. He kissed her breasts, and felt her hands on him and opened his eyes and saw Ava Gardner’s picture again. He remembered suddenly that he had killed a man early this morning.