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

lifting her head high and breathing deeply. We must have walked for fifteen minutes and then she said, “Sit down now. Over there.”
    We went over to some benches beside the tennis courts. In the faint light the nets had a forlorn sag, the asphalt courts gleamed wetly. I used my handkerchief to wipe the dampness from a bench. We sat down and I lit our cigarettes.
    “Clint, you ever try to … to match yourself against a great tradegy, tradegy … hell, tragedy.”
    “Can’t say that I have.”
    “That Olan bitch. Her mother went crazy. Murdered her father. Dodd told me all about it when we were married. He wanted to marry her. No she says. Can’t do. Insanity. Very tragic. I ask Dodd if he still loves her. No, no, no. Kid stuff. All over. Sure. Loves me. Just me. We’re fine. Good marriage, Clint. It was. Then he starts wondering if he can get back here. Mother all crippled up. Lots of old friends. Me, damn fool me, I say why not. So a year ago he starts working angles. Pulls strings. Real careful. Back we come. Warren! I hate it. Oh, how I hate it. You see, she’s here. And it isn’t dead. It never was. Not with her and not with him. Oh, I got the picture. She won’t play. She won’t sneak. Very noble. He wants to see her, it’s got to be right out in a open. Like this. Where she can work on him. Make me lookbad. Pat the little wife on the head. Take him back just so she can show her muscles. Lots of money but a cheap bitch anyway, you know?”
    “I don’t think it’s like that.”
    “Oh you don’t! What do you know anyway? You’re the patsy. You don’t take her out. You just make her handy so she can work on him. And I can’t do a damn thing. I can’t say we don’t go out with you two. That makes me look worse even. I have to stand still for it. I have to just wait and watch everything blow up. Good sport. Good old Nancy. Fine! Clint, you could fix it. If only she’d just … If you could make her … No, I can’t say that. Won’t say that. Won’t ask you to do anything like that.”
    “Want to walk some more?”
    “It was so wonderful. We had our kind of friends. Everywhere we went. Not like these people. They act like his job stinks. Like it’s a … a hobby. These aren’t my kind of people. You know what? He won’t let me tell anybody here. It was okay to tell it other places where we lived. Big joke. We could laugh. Here he hasn’t got any sense of humor. Know how I met him? Want to bust laughing? I cleaned his teeth. Dental hygienist. Kept coming back to get his teeth cleaned. Had the cleanest teeth in the country. Had to marry him before I wore ’em right down to the gums. Other places we could tell that. Not here. Here it would be like dirt. Like I’m something to be ashamed of. Gee, it isn’t something you can just
do
. You have to study for it. I studied hard. I was good. What’s wrong with that?”
    She sounded so lost I wanted to take her in my arms. I wanted to anyway—even drunk she was a desirable woman. And I wanted to smack Dodd Raymond right in the nose. There wasn’t a damn thing I could say to her.
    She stood up suddenly and said in an awed voice, “I’m going to be sick.”
    We went over to some bushes. I held her and held herhead as she was wrenchingly ill. Then I went up to the men’s room at the club and got a wet towel and a dry towel and took them back down to her. She bathed her face and then used the towels on the spattered front of her dress. As she bent over, working on her dress, she said, “How awful, Clint. How perfectly awful.”
    “It happens to the carefullest.”
    “I wasn’t very careful. You’re sweet, Clint.”
    “Friend of the family.”
    “Would you do me one more thing?”
    “Sure.”
    “Drive me home. Don’t tell Dodd you’re doing it. Tell him when you get back. If you tell him now he’ll insist on taking me home. He won’t say anything later but he’ll have that damn patient look that will mean I spoiled the party.