The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything by John D. MacDonald Page B

key work for hell. Figured on you changed the lock, and I would truly kill you dead, you'd done that to Bonny Lee one time. Then it worked and I come a-mousing in, felt the bed, looking for two pair of feet. I find two pair, Bernie-boy, there be the gawddamnedest fracas around here you heard ever."
    "Uh."
    "You doan talk much to a gal missed you so bad, honey. Don't you get the idea now I could be hustling you for any piece of that TV crud, on account of you just use them sick-looking broads you brang down here like always. I come here because you're just the most there is anywhere, and I love you something terrible, and it was real wild and nice, hey now?"
    "Um."
    She ran her fingertips across his upper lip. "Hey! You gone and shaved it off! Now what in the world you look like, I wonder."
    She scrambled away from him. She fumbled with the headboard control panel for a few seconds and then a bright overhead spot blinded him. He shut his eyes tightly, opened them a little bit and squinted at the girl.
    She was kneeling, staring down at him, a deeply browned leggy girl. Her brown eyes were huge and round. Her mouth was shaped into a round shocked circle. She had big round brown breasts with a startling white stripe across them. She had a flat tummy, smooth muscles of a swimmer, and under a tight tangled cap of white curls, a lovely, delicate, angelic face, bronzed and innocent.
    "Who you, you tow-head son of a bitch!" she yelled. "What kinda smart-ass trick you pulling anyways? I'm gonna rip the face right offen you!" Her fingers curled dangerously.
    "Now hold it!"
    "For what? What do you think I am anyhow? Where's Bernie?"
    "I don't know."
    "You were supposed to be him, gawddamn it!"
    "I don't know about that."
    "Anybody pull what you pulled, mister, somebody ought to take a rusty knife to em and plain—"
    He sat up and glared at her. "What the hell is the matter with you?" he roared. "I was sound asleep! I didn't know who you were, and I don't know who you are. I was so sound asleep I didn't know even what you were."
    A corner of her mouth twitched. "You could have got the general idea I was a girl."
    "That occurred to me!"
    "Don't you roar at me, you sneaky bassar! You woke up, all right, soon enough, and you could have figured it out, being in Bernie's bed, maybe some mistake was happening. But did you say a damn word?"
    He stared at her. "When? And what was I supposed to say? My God, girl, it's like a man falling off a building; you'd expect him to tie his shoes and wind his watch on the way down."
    Her mouth twitched again. "Real something, wasn't it?" Without warning her eyes filled and she put her hands over her face and began to sob like a child. She toppled sideways and lay curled up, shivering and weeping.
    "Now what?" he said with exasperation.
    "S-S-Sneaky b-b-bassar!"
    "Why are you crying?"
    "What you d-done to me. In my whole l-life I never had no affair with s-somebody I din even know. Makin' me feel like a slut girl. Makin' me feel all cheap and r-r-r-rotten. Oh, oh, oh."
    "You hush, whatever your name is."
    "Doan even know my name !" she wailed. "Bonny Lee Beaumont, gawddamn you!"
    "My name is—" He hesitated. "Uh—Kirk Winner." He pulled her right hand away from her face and grasped it and shook it. "Now we're introduced. For God's sake, stop blubbering."
    "But I din know you then !"
    "But if you'd known you didn't know me, then it wouldn't have happened would it?"
    She stopped abruptly and looked up at him, sidelong and wary. "Huh? How does that go?"
    "As far as you were concerned, I was Bernie. Right? So there's no reason to blame yourself, is there?"
    She was silent for a moment. Then she sat up, snuffled once, nodded at him. "I guess I got to think on it the way you say. But I broken a secret vow to myself, made when I was fourteen, how never in my whole life would I sack out with no man I din feel love for. Even it's an accident, it still counts, sort of. I even feel funny you lookin' at me, and it