Pardon My Body by Dale Bogard

get. If you like to string along with me I can show you a helluva time. If you don’t like the idea, why, just press the bell and I’ll have a waiter show you to the nearest taxi. Okay—how do we go?’
    â€œI asked him what he wanted of me and he said, ‘You’re my sort. I also think you could look good in the right setting. I want you to live with me out on Long Island where I’ve just bought a place.’
    â€œYou wouldn’t be wanting me to marry you?’ I said. That gave him a big laugh. ‘No, I won’t marry you or any other woman,’ he said. ‘But you’ll have a better life than playing in burlesque, living in two-bit rooming-houses and trying not to go to bed with the manager.’”
    She paused again, then said quite simply, “I thought that one over for about thirty-five seconds and said ‘Yes’ again. I’ve lived out here ever since and haven’t been sorry. It was nice having everybody think I was Mrs. Grierson.” A tiny smile crossed her face and was gone.
    I said, “You never saw me before. Why tell me this?”
    â€œA lot of people are going to know it all pretty damn soon,” she said softly. “It’s easier telling you than seeing the sneers on the faces of some people I know very well indeed.”
    â€œAre you flat?” I asked brutally.
    â€œI don’t get his fortune, I guess. He never would make a will, said it gave him the creeps even to think about it. He fixed up an annuity for me, though, so I don’t have to look for any jobs. I’ll be comfortable all right, but not on this scale”—she gestured at the ornate room. “I can have a nice apartment in New York and play around a little if I feel that way. I never did while he was alive. Like I told you, I always played it straight.”
    Her face shadowed over fleetingly. “I guess that’s more than he did this last few months.”
    â€œToo bad…” I began uncertainly.
    â€œThat’s okay, brother—I didn’t expect it to last forever.” She uncrossed her legs and stared down ather toes. “Only he might have told me. I think he was getting ready to run out on me….”
    â€œMaybe he was just playing around,” I said.
    â€œYeah, maybe that was all there was to it. But I had the idea it was something more than that.” She shrugged. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now, does it. Nobody gets him. I don’t even know, as a matter of proof, that there was another girl. It was just a hunch—that and noticing little things about him. Men are such goddamn fools. Most of the time when they’re being smart they wouldn’t deceive a kid in the third grade. And now he’s gone—with a knife in his chest.”
    Suddenly, she said in a low, tense voice, “I’d like to have killed the bastard who did that—but he got his the same way, didn’t he?”
    I nodded. I also thought it was time to start talking.
    â€œWhy should anyone wish to kill your husband, Mrs. Grierson?”
    She picked up a cigarette and sat there tapping it on her bloodred nails.
    â€œHe was being blackmailed,” she said.
    I felt myself tensing. “Who was he laying it on the line for?”
    I reached forward and lit her cigarette. She drewon it for a moment. Then: “I don’t know—he never told me a thing.”
    â€œSo you don’t really know that he was in trouble?”
    â€œI know. He’d been worried for some time. He had also withdrawn heavily from the bank…and once I heard him speaking to someone on the phone…I only caught a few words, but he was promising to do something or other. He heard me coming close up to him and told me to get out. He had never spoken to me like that before. Afterwards, he apologized, but he wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. Then, a week ago, he seemed easier in his mind.”
    I said,