You Live Once by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online

banking open to him, he had become a technical man. Works down at one of those new plants beyond the river, doing God knows what. It’s really charming that he could arrange to be sent back home. They ship them around like cattle, you know. That little wife he found somewhere or other actually seems rather sweet. And it seemed so dreadfully obvious that he would marry the Olan girl. Much as I was amused and irritated by the attitude of Old Warren, I was sophomorically delighted to become known and accepted.
    It was on my second date with Mary Olan that Nancy Raymond, inhibitions liquidated, bared her distressed soul. A woman with a top sergeant voice had phoned me at the office and given me my orders regarding a party she was giving at the Locust Ridge Club. I checked with Dodd and he said it had been his suggestion. I was to pick up Mary and the four of us could go together. When I phoned Mary I found out that she had been given her orders too.
    It was an April Saturday night, a cocktail party for about forty in a private room at the club, then dinner and dancing. My appearance with Mary Olan made it essential that each one of the other guests meet me, categorize me and put me on a mental list for future parties should I pass inspection.
    Nancy looked charming in a dinner dress that was exactly the right color and cut for her—a slate blue that enhanced her eyes and emphasized the incredibly fine texture of her skin. After I had been punted from group to group with rugby precision, I found myself in a restful corner with Nancy.
    “The man who mixed these martinis belongs at White Sands,” I said.
    Nancy was looking beyond me at Dodd, standing with Mary Olan in a group of eight. Mary, laughing heartily, had taken Dodd’s arm.
    “Skoal,” Nancy said and thumped two-thirds of a cocktail down her throat in two gulps and handed me her glass. “Please, mister.”
    I brought her a new one. She took half of it, said, “To White Sands,” and downed the second half.
    “Easy, my lady. These can be poison.”
    “Hah! Fade me again, Clint boy.”
    “I will not be a party to self-destruction, Nance.”
    “I’ll get it my own self.”
    “Okay, okay.” It was not happy to watch. I wondered if our Nancy were a lush. I decided no. Female lushes carry the mark on them. Their faces coarsen, their features thicken, they grow fur on the larynx. So it had to be the Mary Olan situation, and an intensification of the strain I had noticed on the first date.
    The four of us ate at a table for six with another couple. I was between Nancy and a hollow-eyed brunette with a staccato bray of a laugh which made her husband, across the table, wince visibly each time she tinkled the chandeliers with it. Nancy had somehow managed to get a double martini at the table. When Dodd reached over for it, she wrapped her hand around it. She had reached the glazed state, monosyllabic, practically inert. After too many awkward holes in the conversation, Mary Olan began to carry the ball. She did it well, too. Conversation bounced and pranced, passing back and forth in front of the dead eyes of Nancy Raymond. Mary kept hauling me in by the heels, but I still found time to whisper to Nancy that she should eat something. Her great slab of rare roast beef arrived and was removed untouched.
    We were on coffee when she stood up abruptly. The conversation stopped and Dodd started to stand up too.“Not you,” she said to him with great clarity. “Have to walk. With Clint.”
    He gave a little nod and I went off with Nancy. She walked with rigid dignity until we were outside and then clung tightly to my arm. There had been a misty rain earlier. The stars were covered and the grass was wet. We could see by the light from the club.
    “Special service,” she said. “Walking drunk ladies.”
    “Where do we walk?”
    “Round and around. Hooo. Dizzy as a bee.”
    We walked in silence back and forth across the wide grounds near the tennis courts. She kept