There she was.
She came out. She flowed down the steps with the sexy indolence of Susie and sauntered across the street behind me. She came up the sidewalk, and as she passed the car she turned her face and smiled. One eye closed ever so slightly in a wink.
One away.
I waited again. I was watching the parking meter now. It was getting close. I wished I had asked her to put a nickel in it. If the flag dropped I had to get out and do it. I didn’t want to get out. I felt in my pocket.
I didn’t have a nickel. I watched the meter. Sweat ran slowly down my face. It had three minutes left on it when I saw her cross the
street ahead of me and stand on the corner, waiting.
I picked her up. My shirt was wet. My hands trembled. I couldn’t wait for her to get the door closed. “Did you get it?” I demanded. “Was it all right? Did you have any trouble?”
She laughed softly. “Not a bit. Take it slowly, so you’ll miss that next light. I want to show you something.”
The light caught us. I stopped. “Open it,” I whispered. I felt as if I were being strangled. “Open it!”
She had the overnight bag in her lap. She unsnapped the two latches, smiling at me out of the corners of her eyes. “Look.”
She raised the lid just a couple of inches. I looked in. I forgot everything else. It was worth it. It was worth everything I had gone through. It was beautiful. I saw twenties, fifties, hundreds, in bundles. In fat bundles
girdled with paper bands.
I wanted to plunge my hands into it.
“Watch,” she whispered. She slid a white-gloved hand in under the lid and broke one of the bands and stirred the loosened bundle with a caressing slowness that was almost sexual. I watched, gripping the wheel until my fingers hurt.
She snapped the lid shut. I took the other key out of my wallet and gave it to her. We were still waiting for the light. When she had put the key in her purse I reached over and took her hand. I squeezed it. She squeezed back.
“Look,” I whispered, “after we’ve finished this last one, let’s go back to the apartment. Just for a few minutes, before we start. Susie wouldn’t mind, would she?”
She gave me a sidelong glance and said, “I don’t think she would. Not for just a few minutes.”
She had slid the bag back a little in her lap and she was straightening the seams of her stockings, doing it deliberately and very slowly, one long lovely leg at a time. She turned her face just slightly so her eyes were smiling obliquely up at me from under the curving lashes.
“After all,” she said softly, “it was Venus, wasn’t it, who breathed life into Galatea?”
It was wonderful. Oh, Lord, it was wonderful.
I could hardly hear her now. The whisper was tremulous, catching in her throat. “This is shameless, isn’t it? In brilliant sunlight, in the middle of town. I— I think Susie is going to be a revelation to both of us. Oh, won’t that light ever change?”
If she didn’t shut up and stop it I’d go crazy right there in the street. I had to look away from her.
It was terrific. If you lived twenty consecutive life times you’d never run across anything quite like it. I almost missed the light, just thinking of the beauty of it.
She had outguessed them all, and she thought she had outguessed me. And now we were going back to the apartment, we were going to launch the tremulous and smoldering Susie, and I was going to walk out when it was done with $120,000 I’d never have to divide with anybody. And not only that. The thing that made it an absolute masterpiece was the fact that now I wouldn’t even have any battle to get those clothes so I could throw them down the garbage chute. She’d help me. She’d help me all the way.
You would never beat it. You would never approach it again.
Horns were blasting behind us. I snapped out of it.
The street the Merchants Trust was on was one of the main drags, and I couldn’t turn left into it either. I had to go around the block again.
We were shot with luck. A man pulled out of a parking place less than fifty feet beyond the ornate, marble-columned entrance. I slid into it. She patted my hand and got out.
I turned my head and watched her. I watched the slow, seductive tempo of Susie’s walk. She went along the sidewalk in the sun looking like something the censors had cut out of a sailor’s dream. She went into the bank.
It was only a few minutes more.
I tried to light a cigarette. My hands shook. A cop came by on a motor tricycle, looking at meters. My whole back turned to ice. He went on, not even looking at me. I breathed again.
I set the rear-view mirror so I could watch the entrance without craning my neck. I put my hands down on the seat and clenched them tightly to stop the trembling. It was being so near that made it awful. I thought of the money. I thought of the apartment bedroom, the Venetian blinds drawn, and Susie. I tried to quit thinking of both, before I exploded.
It had to be less than five minutes now. She’d been gone—how long? I didn’t know. Time had lost all meaning. The whole world was holding its breath.
Then I saw her.
She came out of the bank. She walked down the steps and diagonally across the sidewalk toward the car. I could feel the sigh coming right up from the bottom of my lungs.
It was made now. There was only that short drive back to the apartment. I started the motor and reached out a hand to open the door for her. She saw me watching her,
and smiled.
But she didn’t stop.
She went right on by. The white-gloved left hand, which was carrying the purse down beside her thigh, made a little gesture as she went by the window. Three of the fingers waved.
Good-by!
I lunged for the door handle. Then I stopped, the absolute horror of it beginning to break over me. I was sick. I couldn’t move. I was empty inside, and cold, and somewhere far back in the recesses of my mind I thought I could hear myself screaming. But there was no sound except the traffic and the shuffle of feet along the
sidewalk.
She went slowly on down the street, her hips swaying.
I didn’t know what I was doing now. I yanked the wheel and lurched out of the parking place. A car behind almost hit me. The driver slammed on his brakes and leaned out to curse me. I was out in traffic. Everything was unreal, like a bad dream. I was abreast of her. I hit the horn. She strolled casually on. Somebody else turned and looked. I cringed. I wanted to hide.
I crawled ahead. Cars behind me were honking. I came to the corner. The light was red. I stopped. She stopped on the sidewalk in the crowd waiting for the light. I beeped the horn, hesitantly, timidly. It roared.
She turned her face slowly and glanced in my direction, cool and imperturbable and utterly serene. I formed the words with my mouth: Please, please, please... Her gaze swept on.
The light changed. She stepped off the curb. I started across the intersection. Then she stepped back on the sidewalk, and turned right, down the cross street. I had gone too far into the intersection to turn. I turned anyway.
I was being engulfed in madness. Everything was distorted, and dark, and wild, and I had the sensation of being caught and buffeted by some howling wind. My left fender raked the fender of a car stopped at the crosswalk for the light. A whistle shrilled. I swung on around. I crashed against the side of the car that had made the right turn inside me.
Whistles were blowing everywhere. I saw a cop running toward me from the opposite corner. I slammed ahead, tearing a fender from the car on my right. Both lanes were blocked by cars stopped for the light at the next corner. I saw her walking coolly along the sidewalk.
I slammed on the brakes and lunged for the door. I was out in the street. Two cops in uniform were coming down on me. Men jumped from both the cars I had hit. The whistles were blowing again. I lunged toward the curb. Running men were crashing into me, trying to hold me. But now it all faded away, and I could see nothing except her. There was nothing else in the world except a foaming, dark madness, and Madelon Butler walking serenely along the street, going away. She had the money. And if she got away they’d hang me. I was shouting. I was trying to point. I was raging.