Hot Spot by Charles Williams Read Free Book Online

for gamey babes, but she was beginning to be a little rough even for me. She had a lot of talent, but it was highly specialized and when you began to get up to date in that field you were wasting your time just hanging around for the conversation. You could do without it.
    In a few minutes she came back carrying what looked like a tray of ice cubes and another bottle of whisky. She set the ice cubes on the dresser and I could see her fumbling around on the top of it for something.
    “Harry, we’re going to have a drink,” she said thickly. “Good old Harry … Harry is a girl’s best friend … Oh, where’d I put those dam’ cigarettes? Harry, switch on that light, will you? I got to have a smoke.”
    I reached up and turned on the reading lamp. She found what she was looking for and turned around, the cigarette hanging out of her mouth and that gold chain around her ankle, looking at me with a lazy, half-drunken smile.
    “Harry, you don’t think I’m fat, do you?”
    Here we go again, I thought. “No,” I said.
    She smiled again. “Well, you sure ought to know.” She had the bottle of whisky in her hands and was trying to twist the cap off. She paused for a moment, apparently thinking hard about something, and laughed. “Say, you really had a nerve, didn’t you?”
    “Why?”
    “Coming into the house the way you did. And right into my room.”
    Maybe it was risky, I thought. I might have got caught in the traffic.
    “What would you of done if I’d screamed?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “Run, I suppose.”
    “But you didn’t think I would, did you?”
    “I didn’t know.”
    “But you was pretty sure of it, wasn’t you?” There was a little edge to her voice.
    “I told you I didn’t know.”
    “The hell you didn’t.” She quit working on the bottle and glared at me. “I know what you thought. And you know what?”
    “What?”
    “I don’t give a damn. What do you know about that?”
    “Oh, knock it off,” I said.
    “I know what you think, all right.”
    “You said that.”
    “Think I’m some lousy tramp that you can walk right into her room, will you? Well, I’ll tell you what you can do—”
    “You’re drunk,” I said. “Why don’t you shut up?”
    “Shut up, will I? Why don’t you make me?”
    “Who hasn’t?” I said.
    The bottle slid out of her hands. She picked up the tray of ice cubes and let fly. It bounced off my ribs and ice slid all over me. I got off the bed and started for her. She was a sight, arm drawn back and bristling with drunken rage and as nude as a calendar girl. I grabbed her arm and swung her, and she shot backwards and fell across the bed. All the fight went out of her and she crumpled and began to cry.
    “Harry,” she sobbed, turning on her back and looking up at me with her eyes swimming. “Where you going, Harry?”
    “Nuts,” I said.
    The moon was almost down now, and the streets were deserted and dark with shadow. Two blocks away on Main a car went past now and then, but here beside the old Taylor building there was no light or movement. I stopped and stared at it, trying to fight off the disgust and the headache and escape the cloying perfume.
    Across the weed-filled vacant lot on this side, next to the cross street, I could just make out the small window at the rear, the one I had unlocked. It might be weeks or months before anybody discovered it and fastened the latch. I had plenty of time to make up my mind about it, but what was I waiting for? Didn’t I know what was going to happen as surely as sunrise if I went on living in the same town with that sexy lush?
    Oh, sure, I’d stay away from her, all right. Didn’t I always? What was my batting average so far in staying out of trouble when it was baited with that much tramp? It was an even zero, and I didn’t see anything in the situation here that promised I’d improve very much. And the way she soaked up the booze, and as crazy as she was when she was drunk, she was about as