“You did,” he admitted. “Now put that gun down.”
“I’m giving the orders,” she continued. “Tucson!” She spat the name. “You’re just plain stinkin’ Sam Slocum to me. Some name. And you can even thank me for writing a fan letter to 4-Square and getting all the people I knew to write also that we liked your new name and the part you were playing. That’s what a friend does.” She was mournful. “That’s why it hurts so much.”
The girl from San Marino prided herself on punctuality. People looked so alike, she said, with all the luxuries available for purchase on five down and five when you were dunned, and credit cards handed out to anyone who asked for them, that it was well nigh impossible to identify people that really mattered except by little secret habits, and she considered punctuality as one of the more important contemporary identifications. Which meant she would be pressing the button in fifteen minutes and when the chords of his theme music would sound, she would expect him at the door, promptly, smiling, leaning forward to kiss her gently; ardor would come later.
“Some hero,” she wept. “Lets my hand go when I needed a lift. When I’m scraping bottom so hard all the skin’s rubbed off.”
“It wasn’t me but my agent,” he protested. “And I’m not with that galoot any more. I’m sorry, honest. So why not take this and we’ll talk tomorrow?” Carefully, but calling upon his shy, lonesome grin, the one that made so many women want to mother him, he removed all the money from the clip, then put back a ten, and kneeled to place the money on the carpet where Rhoda could reach it. Once she stretched an arm, and if she lowered the gun, he would make his move. And for sure he was going to call the police, and if San Marino objected, then the hell with her, because a man faced with a shootin’ iron capable of putting a hole through him the size of a fist couldn’t be concerned with too many niceties. “That’s almost five hundred.” He pointed at the money. “Count it.”
Her kick at the money fluttered the bills. “Don’t have to. You’re honest Tell me” — she looked at him — “tell me the secret.”
“Of what?”
“Your luck.” She looked surprised at his unawareness of good fortune. “Is that the secret? That you didn’t push yourself and other people always did? You know what the kids say about you?”
“Your friends?” he asked.
“Once they were your friends, too.”
“Sound another note, will you?” he told her flatly. One of her kind was too many, but he was willing to go along until she got out of the apartment. Then would he fix her wagon! First, he would prefer charges, then as an act of charity which would be well applauded, would withdraw them. But the police wouldn’t let her go because she had threatened him with a gun. “Any time the sponsors get a letter saying how lousy my show is, I wonder which one of my friends has been using his poison ballpoint. Look, Rhoda, I’m trying awfully hard to keep things amigo between us. If I haven’t seen you recently—”
“More’n a year!”
“... it’s because I’ve been busy. Thirty-nine shows and personal appearances to keep the small fry happy don’t give me much time for friendlyizin’! You’ve been here. Had time to look around the spread and see what’s to be seen.” Again his arms swept the apartment. “And you didn’t find girl things around? So there.” He spread both arms in a gesture of nobility. “I haven’t picked up any new friends.”
“Liar.”
“Acquaintances, yes. But side kicks, no.” He was gently didactic. “Now look, Rhoda—”
“You look.” She pointed the heavy gun at him and held it steady with both hands. “I’ve just got to test that luck of yours.” For a moment, she stared at him along the sight and Tucson felt his palate and lips become dry as cold beads of perspiration began to dot his lips. “I’ve just got to see how lucky our big Western star really is. So we’re gonna play Russian roulette.”
“You’re crazy!”
“Say that again and you’ll find your luck’s run out,” she warned him. Now she stood to point the gun at his middle and moved to place a sofa between them. “I’m taking out five bullets,” she said as she broke the Colt. With the airy grace of a princess, she dropped five bullets on the sofa and warned him not to approach by raising the Colt. “Who goes first?”
“Me,” he said too quickly.
Her laughter was contemptuous of the obvious: if she had agreed and given him the gun, there wouldn’t be any game. Still laughing, she spun the cylinder and locked the gun with a hard snap before she retreated toward the bedroom.
“We’ll play in there,” she said. “It’ll be like old times.”
“Rhoda—”
“Before, neither one of us amounted to anything but I meant more than you. I had a chance” — she beckoned to him with the big blue gun — “because I had some luck. But I gave it all to you. All to you,” she repeated dully. “I let it pass from me to you and you never said thanks.”
“All right, thanks!” He pounded the upholstered back of the sofa. “Now take the money and get out and call me tomorrow if you want to get put on as an extra or want to try writing. But get out, you goddamn pig! Out!”
Her eyes were half closed in an expression of pity as she used the gun to compel him to follow her into the large bedroom, where she turned for a quick look at the bed before she yanked the candlewick spread half off and flopped against one of his monogrammed pillows.
“I’ll try it first,” she said. “Now, if I were playing by myself, I’d be sure to blow my head off. Do you know where the bullet is?”
“Are you— I wish you’d cut it out!”
Her reply was to kick both flats across the room. “Come over here,” she ordered. “And sit right here. Nearer.” She smiled.
“Rhoda, listen—”
“Such a pretty Western shirt.” She cooed and laughed as she grasped a pocket to tear it free down one side. “You can afford it.”
She saw his terror, the heavy sweat that ran down his cheeks, saw the dryness of his lips and the quick movements of his eyes.
“I’m ready.” She pointed the gun at him. “Ready for you to pull the trigger for me.”
“No—”
There was no strength left in him, her moist, nut-brown eyes bordered in blue and black were wide and staring, the gun was pointed at his head, and with her lips parted in a bloodless smile, she reached for his right hand to fit the gun into his palm, and as the coolness of the bone grip made him shiver, Rhoda put his finger on the trigger. As he cried out, she turned the gun toward her forehead and squeezed hard. The gun went off with a roar to split her face in two as the chimes of his theme music for “Saddle-Sore” sounded through the apartment and Tucson rose slowly, the gun b his hand, realized that the dead girl on his bed would wash him out with Miss San Marino.
Rhoda’s luck had been bad, as always; sobbing, he wondered if his would hold out, for his prints were on the grip and trigger guard, and the way things looked, well, Rhoda might have put up a struggle.
Game
by Herbert D. Kastle
Ed Gaines was a man in his thirties, tall and slim, who had lost the excitement, the drive, the verve of life during the past ten years. Working in Margaret’s father’s shoe store had done it; living with Margaret herself had done it. So he was running, fleeing down the two-lane highway which stretched over the Texas Big Bend country like a dark ribbon.
He’d left the Fort Worth store at one, saying he had an appointment at the doctor’s after lunch. That would hold his father-in-law. And the call he’d made at 5 p.m. from the gas station on the highway would hold Margaret. “I’ve run into an old friend, dear...”