The pilot squatted on his haunches under the wing, a cigarette squeezed between his yellowed fingers. The co-pilot had gone into the building for the initialing of the manifest
The pilot looked at the two passengers who got off. One of them was easy. Local cattleman, right from the cream-colored Stetson down to the hand-sewn boots. The other one was harder to figure. The pilot decided he wasn’t the sort you’d want to strike up any casual conversations with. Brute shoulders on him. Stocky, bowed legs. Long arms. Damned if he wasn’t built like one of them apes.
But it wasn’t an ape’s face. Rimless glasses and that half-bald head. Some crack-pot probably. The zaney little blue eyes beamed around at the world and the mouth was wide and wet-lipped, set in the kind of smile that made you think of the time the high school psychology class went over to the state farm and got a look at the real funny ones.
Only, the pilot decided, you wouldn’t want to laugh at this one. He wasn’t dressed right for the climate in that heavy, dark, wool suit, but you wouldn’t want to laugh at him.
The two suitcases were off-loaded and the new passenger was put aboard. The pilot flipped away his cigarette and went aboard. The steps were wheeled away. The hot motors caught immediately and he goosed it a few times. He trundled old Bertha down to the end of the runway. He glanced back. The funny-looking stranger was just getting into a cab. He looked like a big dark beetle, or like a hole in the sunlight...
Inside the cab, Christy leaned back. The trip from New York had been like walking across a dark room toward one of those little tinfoil wrapped chocolate buds on the far side of the room. You wanted it and you knew it was there and you were thinking about it so you didn’t see anything in the room or think of anything except feeling it between your fingers and picking it up and peeling off the tinfoil and putting it in your mouth.
And Christy was never without chocolate buds in his side pocket. He took one out, but already the climate had gotten to it. It pulped a little between his fingers. He got a look on his face like a child about to cry. All the others were soft too. He dropped them out the window of the cab. His hands were very large, hairless and very white. The network of veins under the skin had a blue-purple tint.
He thought of Diana and he thought of George. He threw his head back and laughed. It was a high, gasping, whinnying sound. George was done. You could see that coming for a long time. So, when it looked right, you gave him a push.
And the push just happened to shake Diana loose, right into his hands — after looking at her so long, and taking her lip, and seeing that contempt in her eyes.
Without realizing it, he had grasped the handle on the inside of the cab door. When he remembered how she had looked at him, his jaw clamped shut and he gave an almost effortless twist of his big wrist. The screws tore out of the metal and the handle came out in his hand.
The driver gave a quick look back. “Hey, what the hell!”
“It was loose.”
The driver met his glance in the rear vision mirror. “Brother, that thing was on there solid and it’ll cost me at least three bucks to get it fixed.”
Christy hunched forward. He put his hand casually on the driver’s shoulder. He smiled wetly. “I said, friend, it was loose.”
“Watch whacha doin’!” the driver said shrilly.
“It was loose.”
“Okay, okay. It was loose. Leggo! Are you nuts?”
Christy leaned back and laughed again. The gutless human race. Always ready to start something and always fast to back down. The best would be George. He had decided to save that until last. Maybe at the last minute George would find out why everything was going wrong lately. It was good to think of that last minute. He knew how he’d do it.
Knock George out and take him down to the boat and wire a couple of cinderblocks to his ankles. Take the boat out and sit and eat chocolates until George came around. Then say, nice and easy, that it was time George joined a lot of his old buddies. Hoist him over the side.
Hold him there with his face above water and the cinderblocks pulling hard on his legs and listen to George talk and beg and promise and scream and slobber. Watch his eyes go mad. Hold him there until there wasn’t any man left, just a struggling animal. Hold him and think of him and then spit in his face and let go.
It would be night and the white face would be yanked down out of sight as though something from underneath had grabbed it. Maybe bubbles would come up like with the others. Then George would be down there, doing a dance in the river current, dancing right along in the chorus with all the guys who’d tried to cut a piece of the big pie and had run into Christy instead.
The cab pulled up in front of the Sage House. Christy paid him the buck and a half rate, tipped him a solemn dime, and carried his bag inside.
“You got a reservation for me,” he said. “A. Christy.”
“Yes, Mr. Christy.”
He had hurried all the way and now he wanted to go slow. Nice and slow. “There’s a friend of mine here, I think. Miss Saybree. Is she in?”
“I believe she’s in her room. Three-eighteen, sir. Shall I phone her?” the clerk asked.
“Skip it. I’ll surprise her.” Nice and slow and easy. The running was over. The girl was smart. She knew what was coming, but she hadn’t tried to run out on it.
He barely noticed the room they gave him. When he was alone, he stretched until the great shoulders popped and crackled. This was a hell of a long way from the carny, the garish midway, the thronging marks paying their two bits to see the Mighty Christy drive spikes with his fists, bend crowbars across his shoulders, twist horseshoes until they broke in his hands.
George had seen him in the carny and seen his possibilities and had jumped in with smart expensive lawyers when there was that trouble about the girl. Temporary insanity they called it, and cleared him, and from then on he’d done everything George said, up until a month ago.
He sat on the bed, wishing he had some chocolate, and thinking about Diana. When you want something bad enough and long enough, you get it.
When the thickness in his throat and the flame behind his eyes was too much to bear, he left the room and went up the stairs to the third floor, passing a second-floor room where a typewriter rattled busily. He rattled his fingernails on the door panel of three-eighteen.
“Who is it?”
“An old pal, sweetness.”
She opened the door. He grinned at her. He’d almost forgotten what a very classy dish she was. She was pale and she spoke without moving her lips.
“Come on in, Christy.” She walked away from him. She walked as though she were on eggs and if she stepped too hard they’d break.
He shut the door. She had gone to sit in a straight chair. She sat with her ankles and her knees together, her hands folded in her lap. Like a new girl at school.
Christy smiled placidly at her. “George is sore,” he said.
“I didn’t want to do this in the first place,” she snapped.
“George figured nobody would be looking for you. Anyway, he wanted you out of town.”
“Why?” she asked, white-lipped.
“You’ve moved. You aren’t living there any more. He had your stuff packed up and put in storage. You can get the claim check from him.”
“Is... is anyone—”
“You ever meet old Bill Duneen? The horse player? He died of a stroke last year. Now George and Bill were great pals. George feels a sort of obligation to look out for Bill’s daughter. Cute kid. Nineteen, I’d say. You could call her a kind of protégé. Did I get the right word?”