The Third Victim by Collin Wilcox Read Free Book Online Page A

waiting for the money in return.
    She glanced at her watch. The time was ten after one. In twenty minutes, she must be back at her drawing board, painstakingly inking in the last of the chafing dish. The deadline was coming closer.
    Still, she was entitled to an hour’s lunch. And her coffee cup was still half filled. The lunch-hour crowd was thinning. She could sit. Relax. Retreat. She could think—decide.
    But decide what?
    By what effort of will could she change the future? How many tears would it take?
    How many tears…
    It could be a film title. Not one of Kevin’s, of course. How Many Tears? would be a commercial film. And as long as she’d known him, Kevin had disdained commercialism. When she’d taken the job at Gorlick’s— begged for the job at Gorlick’s—Kevin had protested. Once tainted, he’d said, never again pure. It was bad enough that, out of necessity, he’d become tainted. Perhaps they should go back to San Francisco, he’d said, where he still had “connections.” They could even go back to New York—all the way back. In both cities he’d taught filmmaking, but only part time. Yet, somehow, they’d always managed. Until they’d made the move to Santa Barbara, they’d always managed. But Santa Barbara had sunk them—Santa Barbara and the recession and the flu bug. First the filmmaking company Kevin had come to join had suddenly gone bankrupt. Then they’d all gotten the flu—one, two, three. Kevin had finally found a part-time job writing continuity for local sustaining TV shows. The salary was only seventy-five dollars a week, sometimes less. At the end of three horrible months, deeply in debt to doctors and druggists and grocers and the landlord, they’d finally asked her father for a thousand dollars. A loan, not a gift.
    And they still owed that thousand. All but eighty dollars, paid back during the first few months she’d been working.
    Had her father borrowed that thousand too—as he’d borrowed the first thousand, to send her to New York? She’d never asked. She didn’t want to know.
    What would have happened, she’d often wondered, if there’d never been that first thousand dollars? Her life would have been different. She’d never have been at the Thompsons’ party that New Year’s Eve. She’d never have been standing in the middle of that huge converted loft, rapt with wonderment—staring around like a skyscraper-struck tourist. Finally she was in New York. She was part of it all. She would make it. She’d been sure of it.
    Kevin had materialized at her side, a whole head and a half taller, smiling down at her. She knew that, whatever happened to her, she’d never forget that first moment. He’d had a beard then, and she’d thought that he looked a little like a pirate—a slim, raffish, good-looking pirate with a style all his own. Even then—even at age twenty three—his smile had twisted sardonically. His quick brown eyes had been bold and knowing. And when Kevin talked, people listened. Because, at age twenty-three, Kevin was a success. While he was in college, he’d written a three-act play that had been produced by the college repertory company. The year after he’d graduated, a small off-Broadway group had staged the play. Kevin’s total royalties had come to less than five hundred dollars, but the play had gotten good reviews. Plainly, a brilliant career had been launched. Kevin was a winner.
    When he’d taken her to his tiny apartment after the Thompsons’ party, she’d felt almost suffocated by excitement and anticipation. It had been more than simply a sexual quickening—more than merely an ego trip, leaving the party with its star performer. She’d somehow felt that Kevin was part of her future—someone she’d been expecting. That night, for the first time in her life, she’d pretended nothing—no maidenly misgivings, no coyness. Caressing her, Kevin’s hands had moved deftly and confidently, yet subtly. His whispers had had the