On the Run by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online

help?”
    “We thought of one thing.”
    “Yes?”
    “Money can make a hiding place. A private island somewhere. Body guards. Alarm systems. You don’t have to be out in the middle of people.”
    He shook his head. “The mystery man of the islands, his personal radar searching the horizon day after day. Come off it, Nurse.”
    “Is your way better?”
    “I’m alive. Maybe if I inherit money and get my name in the papers, Wain can solve my problems. He can send some friends to kick my spine loose. You see, the unforgivable thing about it, from Wain’s point of view, was that it was a woman worth, at the most, a mild argument. She’s in the right business now.”
    “Was she really that bad?”
    He held the bottle to the light. “Enough of this and enough of the ice for one more apiece.”
    “All right. But you might have to help me find my room. Was she that bad, really, Sidney?”
    “A week after we were married I began to suspect I had nothing. A man who marries a showcase wife deserves just what I got. She came to Florida to get a divorce. I wanted to parade her around. I wanted the populace to drool. It’s a poor basis for marriage. She had the sexiest figure I ever saw. I wanted people to say, “There goes that successful young car dealer and his gorgeous wife.” I was climbing, and she was a status possession. A week after I married her, I began to realize that behind all that glandular equipment was somebody I didn’t know and didn’t even like, a bone-lazy, dull-minded, self-adoring woman. Greedy and empty and sullen. She could spend a whole day fixing her hair twelve different ways, trying on everything she owned, posing for herself and patting herself and caressing herself. She wanted passes made at her. Passes made her feel beautiful. But she was almost completely indifferent to what came after the passes. She could perform adequately, but it bored her. But I couldn’t stop wantingher. I couldn’t look at her without wanting her. She knew it. It was like a sickness. She used it, too, to get the things she wanted. It started to go sour when she got bored with getting all her reassurances from me. I knew she’d begun to roam. I couldn’t catch her at it. But I still wanted her. I had the idea that if I could catch her, it would cure the sickness and I’d be free of her. I found out she was meeting Jerry Wain. It took me three careful weeks to set it up so I could walk in on it. I caught them at a hotel at Jacksonville Beach. I learned later he owned a piece of it. It was a Saturday afternoon. Late. They were naked and a little bit drunk, and she was performing a little special service for him. When I came in, she jumped back away from him, her eyes rolling like a scared horse, and she was making a constant whining sound. As I was cornering him, I didn’t even know he was hitting me. I didn’t feel wild. I just felt careful and remote and workmanlike. I kept him in the corner and watched the way his face blurred and split and changed. I don’t know how long. When I let go of him he just slid down the wall and fell over onto his side. You wouldn’t have recognized him. I squatted and felt his pulse. When I knew he was alive, I yawned. That’s a funny thing, isn’t it? I couldn’t stop yawning. I went to the bathroom door. She’d locked herself in there. I could hear her gasping and whining and throwing up in there. I yawned again, because I knew I wouldn’t give a damn if I never saw her again. And I didn’t. I knew Wain had a very quietly rough reputation, but I didn’t think too much about it until that fellow tried to move my car, the day before they let Wain out of the hospital. Thelma must make a pretty fair whore. She’s got the build, and the dull mind and the greed. She isn’t evil. She’s just a stupid animal.” He drank half of his drink and looked at Paula. She sat with her face in her hands. “Too much of it?” he asked.
    She looked at him. “If you’d just turned