‘So how do I know her?’
‘She will be the only one released at eleven o’clock. She has red hair.’
‘That makes it easy. Why is she in prison... or shouldn’t I ask?’
‘No, you shouldn’t ask. It doesn’t matter, does it? She’s served her sentence...’
‘Yes. So where do I take her?’
‘She has a place off Highway 3. Her brother lives there. She’ll give you directions.’
The nurse came fussing in and said Jenny must rest. She was probably right. Jenny looked drained out.
‘Don’t worry about anything.’ I got to my feet. ‘I’ll be there at eleven o’clock. You haven’t told me her name.’
‘Rhea Morgan.’
‘Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon and tell you how it went.’
The nurse shooed me out.
As I walked away from the hospital, I realised I had most of the day ahead of me with nothing to do. Although I didn’t know it then, by tomorrow at eleven o’clock, when I met Rhea Morgan, the scene would change.
At 11.04 the grille guarding the entrance to the Women’s House of Correction swung open and Rhea Morgan walked into the pale sunshine that struggled with the smog and the cement dust.
I had been sitting in the Buick which I had had fixed, for some twenty minutes and seeing her, I nicked away my cigarette, got out of the car and went over to her.
It is difficult to give a description of this woman except to say she had thick hair, the colour of a ripe chestnut and she was tall, slim and dressed in a shabby black dustcoat, dark blue slacks and her shoes were dusty and scuffed. There are beautiful women, pretty women and attractive women, but Rhea Morgan didn’t fall into any of these categories. She was strictly Rhea Morgan. She had good features: a good figure, long legs and square shoulders. Her extraordinary deep green eyes made an impact on me. They were big eyes, and they regarded the world with suspicion, cynical amusement blatant sexuality. This was a woman who had done everything. As we regarded each other, I had a feeling she was years older in experience than I was.
‘I’m Larry Carr,’ I said. ‘Jenny is in hospital. She’s had an accident. She asked me to fill in for her.’
She regarded me. Her eyes took off my clothes and studied my naked body. This was something I had never experienced before. I reacted to her slow examination as any man would react.
‘Okay.’ She looked at the Buick. ‘Let’s get out of here. Give me a cigarette.’
She had a low, husky voice as deadpan as her green eyes.
As I offered my pack of cigarettes, I said, ‘Don’t you want to know how badly hurt Jenny is?’
‘Give me a light.’
Anger surged up in me as I lit her cigarette.
‘Did you hear what I said?’
She dragged smoke down into her lungs and expelled it, letting it drift down her thin nostrils and out of her hard mouth.
‘Is she?’
The indifference in her voice told me as nothing else could tell me what a sucker Jenny was.
‘A broken ankle, a broken wrist and a fractured collarbone,’ I said.
She took another drag at the cigarette.
‘Do we have to stick around here? I want to go home. That’s your job, isn’t it... to take me home?’
She moved around me and walked to the Buick, opened the offside door, slid in and slammed the door shut.
Cold rage gripped me. I jerked open the car door.
‘Come on out, you bitch!’ I yelled at her. ‘You can walk! I’m not a sucker like Jenny! Come on out, or I’ll drag you out!’
She took another drag at the cigarette as she eyed me.
‘I didn’t think you were. Don’t get your bowels in an uproar. I pay off. Take me home and I’ll pay the fare.’
We looked at each other. Then this sexual urge I had had the previous evening took hold of me. It was as much as I could do to restrain the urge to drag her out of the car and lay her on the dirty, cement-dusty road.
The emerald eyes were now pools of promise.
I slammed the door shut, walked around the car and got in under the steering wheel.
I drove fast down to Highway 3.
While I waited to edge the car into the fast traffic at the intersection, she said, ‘How come you got mixed up with that little dope? You seem to talk my language.’
‘Just keep your mouth shut. The more I hear from you the less I like you.’
She laughed.
‘Man! You really are my thing!’
She dropped questing fingers on my lap. I threw her hand off.
‘Shut up and stay still or you’ll walk,’ I snarled at her.
‘Okay. Give me another cigarette.’
I flicked my pack at her and started along the highway. Five minutes of fast driving brought us past the Plaza restaurant.
‘So that still exists,’ she said.
I suddenly realised this woman had been locked away for four years. This thought gave me a jolt. I eased up on the gas pedal.
‘Where do I take you?’ I asked, not looking at her.
‘A mile ahead and the first sign post to your left.’
Following her directions, a mile ahead, I swung the car off the highway and on to a dirt road.
I glanced at her from time to time. She sat away from me, smoking, staring through the windshield: in profile, her face looked as if it had been cut out of marble: as cold and as hard.
I thought of what she had said: I’ll pay for my fare. Did she mean what I thought she meant? My desire for sex sent wave after wave of hot blood through me. I couldn’t remember ever having this violent feeling before and it shook me.
‘How much further?’ I asked huskily.
‘Turn left at the end of the road and there we are,’ she said and flicked the butt of her cigarette out of the open window.
It was another mile up the road, then I turned left. A narrow lane faced me and I slowed the Buick.
Ahead of me I could see a clapboard bungalow that looked lost, broken and sordid.
‘Is this your home?’
‘That’s it.’
I pulled up and regarded the building. To me, there could be no worse place in which to live. Tangled weeds, some of them five feet high surrounded the bungalow. The fencing had gone, smothered in weeds; several oil drums, empty food cans and bits of paper lay scattered around the approach to the bungalow.
‘Come on!’ she said impatiently. ‘What are you gaping at?’
‘Is this really your home?’
She lit another cigarette.
‘My stupid punk of a father lived here. This is all he left us,’ she said. ‘Why should you care? If you don’t want to go further, I can walk the rest of the way.’
‘Us? Who is us?’
‘My brother and me.’ She opened the car door and slid out. ‘So long, Mr. Do-gooder. Thanks for the ride,’ and she started over the rough, debris strewn ground with long, quick strides.
I waited until she had reached the front door, then set the car in motion, pulled up when the road petered out and leaving the car, walked up to the bungalow.
The front door stood open. I looked into the tiny lobby. A door to my left stood open.
I heard a man say, ‘Jesus! So you’re back!’
A wave of cold, bitter frustration ran through me. I’ll pay my fare, had been a con.
I moved forward, and Rhea, hearing me, turned.
We stared at each other.
‘You want something?’ she asked.
A man appeared. He had to be her brother: tall, powerfully built with the same thick chestnut-coloured hair, a square-shaped face, green eyes. He was in something that looked like a dirty sack and soiled jeans. He would be some years younger than she: twenty-four, probably less.
‘Who’s this?’
‘I’m Larry Carr,’ I said. ‘A welfare worker.’
We regarded each other and I began to hate him as he gave a sneering little chortle.