Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye by Horace McCoy Read Free Book Online

soaked it under the running water and then wrung it out and turned and slapped her across the face with it. I felt faint at the stomach again, but nothing like the faintness I had felt before.
    ‘Please, don’t be sore,’ she said.
    I threw the towel into the tub and went out into the bedroom, drying my hands on my shorts.
    Holiday drifted in, standing by the bed.
    ‘Please, don’t be sore,’ she said.
    ‘I forgive you,’ I said. ‘Now, what do you intend to do about Toko’s body?’
    ‘Intend to do about his body? What do you mean?’ she asked.
    ‘I mean you ought to claim it. You’re his next-of-kin. They got records of your visits to the farm. If they can’t get in touch with you they’re liable to think you’re mixed up in this.’
    ‘ Think I’m mixed up in it?’ she said. ‘They know it. They know it already.’ She turned and went out of the room and in a minute she was back with one of the newspapers. ‘You better read this,’ she said, handing it to me. ‘Right there…’
    I took the newspaper, looking where she was pointing. ‘... Postal Inspectors have detained Bacon, the carrier who delivered mail to the Tokowanda girl’s apartment. He has confessed that he warned her when a letter from her brother in the prison camp was intercepted by the police. ’ I looked at her still holding the newspaper.
    She said: ‘The minute the postman told me the cops had intercepted the letter I knew Toko was a goner unless I moved fast. I had a friend who knew Mason, the guy out here. He telephoned him and when I got here everything was arranged. My only problem was to get Toko away from the farm before the cops showed up with the extradition papers.’
    ‘You got nice friends,’ I said, dropping the newspaper on the floor. ‘The postman, the fellow in Chicago, Mason – Yes, sir. Not an enemy in the world.’
    ‘There you go getting jealous again,’ she said.
    ‘You’re nuts,’ I said. ‘I’m not jealous. I never saw you until two weeks ago and after tonight I’ll probably never see you again. You’re nuts.’
    Her eyes narrowed a little and she took off the green-checkered coat and flung it over her shoulder with a cheap theatricality. Then with both hands she ripped off the shirt, pitching it, underhanded, into my face. I caught a fast faint flavor of woman-smell, and when I got the shirt from in front of my eyes she was unzippering her skirt, which she let fall to the floor. She wore no brassiere. She yanked at the top button of her shorts and kicked them clear over the bed. Then she moved a couple of steps in front of me, standing spreadlegged, her hands on her hips.
    ‘Tell me that again,’ she said. ‘Tell me you won’t be seeing me any more after tonight’
    I stood up slowly and slapped her across the face. Her mouth popped open and then it closed and she fell across the bed, sobbing. I trembled then and the color of it was pink turning to red, and I fell across the bed, having the thought as I fell that she was right, she was absolutely right.
    ‘Look’ – I said, reaching to turn her over. ‘Look …’
    She swallowed the rest of what I was trying to say, banging her mouth against mine, gnawing at my lips and dragging her hands across my bare shoulders. I could feel my skin piling up under her nails, and in the bathroom I could hear the water still running in the wash basin …

Chapter Five
    T HE BUS WAS CROWDED with people going to work. I dropped my dime into the fare box, moving to the rear, holding my lunch in the brown paper sack so that everybody could see I was on my way to work, too. I noticed that we were still on the front page, but the headlines went to the Navy disaster. The Akron had been beaten down in a storm off Barnegat, New Jersey, and seventy-three persons had been drowned, including the Aviation Chief, Rear Admiral W. A. Moffett. That was what everybody was reading and talking about. I had no use for the lunch wrapped in the brown paper sack.
    I picked a