Weep for Me by John D. MacDonald Page B

go see that girl’s mother.”
    “Were you ever sentimental over anyone?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Don’t you want to look up your brothers and sisters someday?”
    “For what? Laughs? I know that tribe. They’re like the old man and the old lady. The girls will be dropping brats once a year and the boys will be working in mines and mills and getting tanked every time they get paid.”
    “You sound as if they weren’t related to you.”
    “All the time I was a little kid I told myself they’dstolen me from rich people when I was a baby, and someday I’d find my real home. With marble and big trees and servants. I guess I never felt like one of the tribe. When I was fifteen I made a man take me away from there. He was a slob, but I made him send me to business school. I thought that maybe in an office I’d meet a bigger man. It worked out that way. I met Harry Shawn. He laughed at all the school business, that night-school stuff at the University of Chicago. Literature, English, sociology, psychology, anthropology, astronomy. Harry had some very fancy friends. None of them were going to look down their noses at Emmy from Carbondale. And after a while, they didn’t.”
    “And then you spoiled it for yourself.”
    She rolled onto her side, cheek on palm, supported by her elbow. “Harry spoiled it. He was going to New York. The damn flight was canceled for some reason, and instead of calling, he came home. He didn’t say a word. He just looked at Ralph standing there, and then Ralph ran into the bathroom and we could hear him being sick.”
    “That made it Harry’s fault.”
    “He should have called.”
    “Have you seen Beckler again?”
    “He phoned me at the bank. I had lunch with him. He told me that my working in a bank was like hiring a cat to work in a mouse farm. He wanted to know the angle. I told him there wasn’t any angle. I was just working for a living. He didn’t believe me.”
    “Why did you see him again?”
    “I could have refused. And then he would have come to the bank. I don’t want that. A man like Ralph, Kyle, you don’t just brush him off. I’m playing for time. That’s all. When we leave he won’t find us any easier than the law will. Why worry about it? I can handle it.”
    We went to bed. She said I could have the bed, or she’d take it, but she wouldn’t stand for the two of us sleeping in it. I made a bed on the floor, using the seat cushions from the two chairs and one of the pillows. When the shade was up and the room dark, light from a street lamp came through the window and made a pathacross the bed, leaving her face in darkness. I couldn’t sleep. Once I stood by the bed and looked at her. She slept flat on her back, the pillow bunched under her head to raise it, the sheet and light blanket pulled high, her arms outside, straight down by her sides, pinning the coverings tautly across her slim body. I could not hear her breathe. She slept nude. She seemed far away, outside of life, corpselike. I wondered about her dreams. They would have sharp edges, flat colors. She would wander through them, remote, unmoved—an impartial observer of herself.
    I was not in love with her. I knew that. I had told her the truth when I had said that I didn’t even like her. She was the alcoholic’s next bottle, the addict’s hidden hypodermic. I wanted to turn and run. It would be like a comic-strip sequence, where the clown runs, but his suspenders are hooked on a nail. He can run for a little way, but not far. And as he gets more weary, he can’t run at all.
    Toward dawn I fell asleep. I woke up and watched her without letting her know that I watched her. She stood in the middle of the room, bending, twisting, straining, reaching. She punished herself until her body was covered with the sheen of perspiration. And then she crossed the hall and I heard the roar of water filling the tub. When she came back, dressed, she was vibrantly awake.
    After breakfast she went with me