You Live Once by John D. MacDonald Page B

made me gasp.
    “Key to the car,” he said. I dropped my keys on the sidewalk. I thought he would let go of me to pick them up. I intended to run; he looked too muscle-bound to be able to run as fast as I intended to. But he bent me over with him as he picked up the keys. He opened the car door and shoved me in, past the steering wheel, and climbed in after me.
    “Don’t try to get out,” he said.
    “What do you want?”
    “I want to talk to you, Sewell. But not here.”
    “How about my place?” I suggested.
    He thought that over. “Who’s there?”
    “There’s nobody there.”
    He found the right key and drove my car. I gave him the directions. I didn’t know what I should do—he had started with painful violence, but he sounded reasonable. Maybe he just wanted to talk. I sensed that I could get the door open and get out of the car before he could grab me. We turned into my drive. He turned off the lights and motor and caught my wrist again. He forced me out my side of the car, following me. He looked toward the apartment door. I had left the lights on. He marched me over into the darkness of the side lot, twisted my wrist up into my back and cursed me again.
    “What do you want?” I asked, fighting to keep my voice level and unafraid.
    He didn’t want to talk with me, he wanted to tell me.He told me I had taken her away from him. He told me she was dead and it was my fault. He kept his voice low, his mouth close to my ear. I sensed that he was losing control. He told me I had to keep away from her. I felt lost and helpless. In his increasing excitement he was close to breaking my arm. I groaned with pain, wishing I had tried to get away from him while we were in the car. I knew my arm would snap. I tried to yell for help, hoping to arouse somebody, hoping to frighten him, or startle him back to relative sanity. He caught my throat, choking off the yell, his heavy forearm across my throat, big knee digging into the small of my back. I managed to turn in his grasp and we both fell. He grasped my throat in his big hands. My right arm was useless. Red pinwheels circled behind my eyes and somebody turned the night off, the way you turn off a light.
    When I recovered consciousness I was flat on my back in the night, on the grass, looking up at stars through the May leaves of the elms, my throat hurting with each breath. I could hear heavy breathing close by. After a long time I sat up. Yeagger was beside me on his face, blood on his cheek shining black in the faint starlight.
    I massaged my right arm; it felt weak and limp. I wobbled a bit when I stood up. I felt as though someone watched me from the deep shadows under the trees. I managed to roll Yeagger over onto his back. He grunted and threw a big forearm across his eyes. After a long time he sat up and stared at me blankly. I helped him to his feet. He leaned on me heavily and I took him into the apartment. He sat in a chair, elbows on his knees, eyes closed. I moved the light so I could see his head. Above his left temple there was a split in the scalp about an inch long. The area around it was badly swollen. I wet the end of a towel in the bathroom sink and brought it to him. He wiped the blood from his face and held the towel against the slowly bleeding wound.
    “What happened?” I asked. I had to ask him twice before he looked directly at me.
    “I … I guess I was trying to kill you. I heard somebody behind me. I started to turn and … that’s all.”
    “It’s a damn good thing somebody stopped you,” I said.
    He looked at me and frowned. “I … Everything is shot. Everything. Mary was the one thing that meant anything. You were the one who …”
    “I didn’t do a damn thing. She was a tramp, Yeagger. You were just temporary fun and games. If it meant a hell of a lot to you, that just made the game more interesting. Blame yourself, don’t blame me.”
    He looked away from me. “I guess I know that. I guess I knew it all along.