I Could Go on Singing by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page B

you for delicious Scotch and a place out of the rain, but I better be heading back.”
    She stood up also, smiling politely, saying, “Thanks for telling me about how it must have been for her. I understand now.”
    They went to the door and he turned toward her. They both started to speak at once, and both stopped. They smiled at each other, and suddenly her smile was crooked and uncertain. Asking himself what the hell he thought he was doing, he reached clumsily at Lois Marney and pulled her into his arms. He kissed her. She felt bulky and resistantin his arms. Her lips were firm and still. He felt that he had blundered into an impossible situation. Then suddenly her arms slid quite shyly around his waist, her mouth turned warm, soft and responsive, he heard her deep shuddering breath, and through some miracle of compliance her body was suddenly smaller, closer, more pliant and useful. He kissed her and held her for a few moments, and let her go at her first stirring toward release. She backed away and looked at him somberly and he was astonished to see her eyes were full of tears.
    “A rainy night in London town or something,” he said.
    “Please don’t get all humble and apologetic, Jason. I think I asked for it.”
    “Then it was a splendid idea.”
    “Was it? I don’t know. I don’t know how vulnerable I am any more. I don’t know what I want. But I think I know what did it.”
    “Do you?”
    “What we were talking about, directly and indirectly, was loneliness. And I think we made each other aware of our own loneliness.”
    “But don’t cry about it.”
    She smiled. “I feel sorry for myself on rainy nights. Go home, Jason.”
    “At the moment, it’s an unpleasant suggestion. But valid. If I tried to stay, if you let me stay, I’d talk it to death. It’s one of my specialities.”
    She raised a mocking brow. “Dialogue?”
    “Exactly. Good night, Lois.”
    “Good night, dear Jason.” He turned and opened the door. “Jason?” she came to him, put her hands on his cheeks, kissed his mouth with precision, emphasis and a brief and startling hint of passion. “If we ever find another rainy night,” she said, “we’ll have to find some way to muzzle you.” She pushed him gently and firmly into the corridor and closed the door.
    Jason Brown stood mildly in the corridor, shaking his head. He put on his topcoat as he walked to the elevators. He put his shapeless hat on the back of his head. He fumbled for his pipe and hummed a tuneless tune.
    The rain had slowed to a gentle drizzle, and he walked to the Dorchester. Twenty after two on a Monday morning in London. Though he seldom felt attuned to his environment, at this time he felt particularly unreal. Jenny Bowman hadrun through his life once before, like an unattended bulldozer, and when the dust had settled, he was married to Joyce. There I was, he thought, in the room Betty fixed over for me, sweating out the novel, fretting about the anemic bank account, wondering how soon I would have to phone Sandy and needle him to get me a television script, just for walking-around money. And then the past, in the form of Jenny Bowman, reaches out and snags me, yanks me across one continent, drops me on another, and has me kissing a splendidly structured and sturdy blonde secretary the first time I ever see her.
    As he prepared for bed, he wondered if Jenny Bowman would ever know, could ever know the inadvertent disruptions she had caused in a thousand lives. The elemental force and persuasion of talent. He turned off the bed light and thought of Jenny Bowman. The eyes wide set, deeply brown, expressive, constantly changing, and all the breadth of the face across the eyes, tapering to the hearty yet vulnerable mouth, and the small and incurably wistful chin.
    (They had come in out of the Acapulco sun, and he had been stretched out on the bed reading a script she had brought along, something they wanted her to do, and he had looked up and seen her measuring