The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online

know—one keeps trying. Actually, that's why I had her come here this time. More bad reports. But it might not do any good. She seems totally rebellious."
    "Bad reports?"
    "We try to keep track of her, discreetly. Darling Kirby, I don't want to bore you with family problems. But she is really terribly—unstable. She acts out her own fantasies."
    "Oh?"
    "She has accused me and Joseph of truly horrible behavior, and I haven't known whether to laugh or cry. Unscrupulous men have taken advantage of the way she seems compelled to act out the dreams in her strange mind."
    "I beg your pardon?"
    "She seems very erratic this time. She may approach you, Kirby. And she may try to make you a key figure in one of her fantasies. And when she does, she will probably throw herself at you."
    "Throw herself at me?"
    "It will just be another little drama she is constantly writing for herself in her mind. If it should happen, I can't tell you what to do. You seem like a most decent person, Kirby. If you refuse to play the male lead opposite her paranoid heroine, she'll probably find someone who will. She's reasonably attractive. Maybe it would be best if you—humored her. You would be gentle, wouldn't you?"
    "B-But—"
    "Thank you so much, dear. Just indulge her. Say what she wants to hear. I'll be trying to find another opening for her. I have some good friends in the entertainment world. Don't you think it is better for her to be free than to be shut away somewhere?"
    "I guess so."
    "One doctor suggested that it is a sublimation of something she does not want to face. By accusing me of vicious, horrible, incredible things she seems to ease her own feelings of guilt. To her I am some sort of dream figure living amidst monstrous conspiracies. Joseph and I joke about it sometimes, but it is, a heartbreaking kind of humor. We're really not complicated. Perhaps we like to live too well, but we can afford it—even though we are always being cheated somehow. And maybe you will be taking that worry off our minds, dear."
    "I haven't really—"
    "They gave you an impossible room and I made them change it. Tomorrow you and I are going shopping. I know exactly the sort of clothing you should be wearing. And that haircut is really tiresome if I may say so. It's as if you are trying to sneak through life without being noticed, Kirby. And you have so much possibility. When I'm through with you, you'll walk through the world as if you own it and women will turn to stare at you and their eyes will go wide and their little hands will get moist and they'll make sly little plots to meet you."
    "I don't think I exactly want that kind of—"
    "You'll relish it, believe me. Come on now, dear. Joseph will be waiting for us in the suite. We'll have some drinks there, and the limousine will pick us up at seven-thirty and take us to a perfectly fabulous restaurant."
     
    By ten-thirty that evening, Kirby Winter found himself taking particular pains to enunciate clearly. And sometimes, if he closed one eye, he could keep Joseph in better focus.
    "Nice of you to invite me on a cruise," he said. "But I don't want to feel—"
    "Obligated?" Joseph cried. "Nonsense! It is our pleasure!"
    Kirby carefully turned his head and said, "Where'd she go?"
    "To freshen her make-up perhaps."
    "I don't dance often, Joe. I didn't mean to come down on her foot like that."
    "She forgave you."
    "But I keep remembering that scream."
    "She is just unusually sensitive to pain, Kirby. Her nerves are closer to the surface than most. But since she is equivalently sensitized to pleasure, I imagine it is a characteristic she would not willingly give up."
    "'Mazing woman," Kirby said solemnly. "'Mazing."
    "I was just thinking, my boy, if you should feel you might be leading a parasitic life on the Glorianna , if it would offend your instincts, there is one project you might take on. And a worthwhile one I would say."
    "Like what?"
    "You were close to Omar Krepps. A fantastic man, fantastic career.