The Golden Gizmo by Jim Thompson Read Free Book Online

like that, and anyway it probably wouldn't be much fun for you, would it? I mean I'm so skinny I'd probably stick you with a bone."
    "Y-yes," nodded Toddy. He had the goddamnedest feeling that he was going to bawl!
    "Maybe I could wash some clothes for you," said Elaine. "That's an awfully pretty suit you have on. I could wash it real nice for you and hang it out the window, and it… would that be worth fifty cents?"
    Toddy shook his head. He couldn't speak.
    "Well"-her voice was humble-"a quarter, then?"
    "D-don't," said Toddy. "Oh, for Christ's sake…"
    Toddy hadn't cried since the night he ran away from home. He'd half-killed his stepfather with a two-by-four, bashed him over the head as he came into the barn. He'd tried to make it look like an accident, like one of the rafters had broken. But he was shaking with fear, with that and the bitter coldness of the night. He'd huddled down in a corner of the boxcar, and sometime during the night a tramp had crawled into the car also. Observing the proprieties of the road, the tramp had gone into a corner, that corner, to relieve himself. And Toddy had been soaked, along with his thin parcel of sandwiches. The stuff had frozen on him. He'd cried then, for the last time.
    Up to now.
    He was down on his knees at the side of the bed, and her arms clutched him in an awkward, foolishly sweet embrace, and she was talking to him like a child, as one child to another, and there had never been another moment like this in the history of man and woman. They cried together, two lost children who found comfort and warmth in each other. And then they started to laugh. For somehow in the extravagant and puppyish outpouring of her caresses, she had hooked the armhole of her nightgown around his neck.
    While she shrilled gleefully that he was tickling her, and while her small breast pounded his face with merriment, he lifted and stood her on the bed. Then, since there was no other way, he slid off the other shoulder strap and drew the gown off her body, lowering his head with it.
    He shucked out of it and turned around. She was still standing upright, examining herself in the wall mirror.
    She twisted her neck and gazed at her childish buttocks. She faced the mirror and bowed her back and legs. She raised one leg in the air and looked.
    She turned around, frowning, and nodded to him. "Feel… no, here, honey. That's where you do it, isn't it?"
    Toddy felt.
    "Not bad," he said gravely. "Not bad at all."
    "Not too skinny?"
    "By no means."
    Elaine beamed and put her legs back together. Pivoting, arms stiff at her sides, she did a pratfall on the bed. When she stopped bouncing, she lay back and looked at him.
    "Well," she said, puzzledly. "I mean, after all… hadn't we better get started?"
    Thus, the story of the meeting of Toddy and Elaine. Funny-sad, bitter-sweet. It put a lump in your throat; at least, it put one in the throat of Toddy, who lived it. Then, they flew to Yuma that night and were married. And the lump moved up from his throat to his head.
    Literally.
    They were in their hotel room, and Elaine was teasing for just one "lul old bottle, just a lul one, honey." All her charm was turned on. She pantomimed her tremendous thirst, staggered about the room hand shielding her eyes, a desert wanderer in search of an oasis. Then, she broke into an insanely funny dance of joy as the oasis was discovered-right there on the dresser in the form of his wallet.
    Laughing tenderly, Toddy moved in front of her. "Huhuh, baby. No more tonight."
    Elaine picked up the empty bottle and hit him over the head with it. "You stupid son-of-a-bitch," she said, "how long you think I can keep up this clowning?"

8
    Shake's headquarters were in a walk-up dump on South Main, a buggy, tottering firetrap tenanted by diseases-of-men doctors, a massage parlor ("cheerful lady attendants") and companies with uniformly small offices and big names. The sign on his smudged windows read, "Easiest Loans in Town." It was true