Recoil by Jim Thompson

undressed.”
    “No-o!” she said. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want to do that.”
    I poured coffee and sat down on the bed with her. She’d put on a pair of slacks and a sweater and was propped up on the pillows, her knees drawn up.
    “Good,” she said, nibbling on an orange slice. “Very good.”
    For the first time since I had met her, I found it difficult to talk. To respond to her aimless, impish chatter. It was grotesque in the light of what I had just seen. I had the impression of being drawn into a game while a flood tide rose around my neck.
    She finished eating, and I lighted a cigarette for her. My hand trembled a little as I held out the match, and she steadied it with her own hand.
    “What’s the matter with you this morning, Pat?”
    “Matter?”
    She didn’t say anything. She merely lay back, waiting, her brown eyes inscrutable.
    “I’ve been a little worried,” I said. “Maybe that’s it.”
    “Worried about what?”
    “About what’s going to happen to me. About what is happening to me.”
    “Is?”
    “Yes,” I said, and I told her about the car and my talk with Myrtle Briscoe. At some point in the telling, she suddenly sat up and gripped my fingers.
    “Pat,” she said. “Had you thought about telling Myrtle?”
    “Yes,” I said, looking squarely at her. “I’ve thought about telling her everything. About everyone and everything. It might send me back to Sandstone, but I think I’d have plenty of company on the trip.”
    “You might”—she released my fingers—“Why don’t you do it?”
    Her voice was flat, her gaze as steady as mine. I’d made a threat and what it had got me I didn’t know. Advice—or another threat.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re the only person I know to turn to, and turning to you doesn’t seem to do any good. There’s no reason why it should, of course, why you should help me—”
    “Do you really believe that, Pat?”
    “I don’t know,” I said, “what to believe.”
    “No,” she nodded, “and there’s your answer to everything. You don’t see anyone’s problems but your own. You don’t trust anyone but yourself. The fact that I won’t tell you everything I know is interpreted to mean that I’m against you. That’s all you can see.”
    “I don’t think that,” I said.
    “Yes, you do, Pat. And you’re wrong in doing it. I haven’t told you any more than I have because it isn’t a good thing for you to know it. You’d blunder into something that you’re not big enough to handle.”
    “I’m supposed to sit still and do nothing?”
    “That’s about it.” Her face softened. “That has to be it for the present, honey. Whenever there’s anything to be done, I’ll let you know.”
    She squeezed my hand, and then she sat up and put her arms around me. She drew me down to the pillows, her cheek against mine, her lips moving against my ear.
    “Poor red-haired Pat,” she whispered. “He mustn’t worry any more. In just a little while now…all his troubles will be over.”

18
    T he trap was snapping shut, I could feel it; a sensation of things rushing in on me from every side.
    On Monday morning I stopped by the capitol to leave a bunch of the survey forms for Rita Kennedy. They were meaningless, of course, but appearances had to be kept up. Firmly entrenched as the highway department crowd was, even they were not taking unnecessary chances in an election year.
    Rita Kennedy wasn’t in, and she’d left word that she wanted to see me. I passed the day reading and driving, and went back to the capitol again that evening.
    Rita took the forms I handed her with a crisp smile.
    “I hope I didn’t inconvenience you by not being here this morning, Pat?”
    “Not at all,” I said.
    “I’m glad to hear it. Is it raining out?”
    I said it was. “At least, it’s starting to.”
    “Oh, damn,” she said. “I’ll never be able to get a taxi this time in the evening. And, of course, this is one day when I