If we had played at Ken’s house that first night, I would have been in New York a day later. There would have been no electric contact with Joyce Rogers, no job with Carver’s outfit, no dark mystery of frames and set-ups. Life is a hellishly iffy proposition from beginning to end. There are always a million sneaky little variables, and any one of them can send you spinning in another direction entirely.
We played, and I didn’t cheat. My restraint was not easy to maintain at first. But I managed, and at nine-thirty I was about fifteen dollars in the hole. I pushed back my chair, straightened up. “You’ll have to excuse me for about an hour,” I explained. “I’ve got a call I have to make, a plant foreman over on the East Side. This was the only time I could arrange to see him.”
“That’s a hell of a note,” Murray said. “We were just starting to take a few dollars away from you.”
“I’ll be back before eleven. I’ll lose in a hurry to make up for it.”
“A real go-getter,” Sy Daniels said. “Don’t you know the rules? No business on Friday nights. Just poker.”
I laughed, left and boarded the Corvair. I started the car and pulled away and headed back into town. There was no foreman over on the East Side. Correction—there were probably a few hundred foremen over on the East Side, but none of them interested me at the moment. I had other plans.
I drove the car, smoked a cigarette. That was a nice thing about my new job—it gave me a free and easy sort of schedule. I could knock off work whenever I pleased if I had something else going, and at the same time I could invent a business appointment whenever I needed an excuse. I needed one now.
The car seemed to know the way. I finished my cigarette and pitched out the butt. In the morning I would have to see about finding an apartment—the Panmore could run into money if I stayed there any length of time. And pretty soon it would be time to turn the rental back to Hertz and make a down payment on a car of my own.
I made a final turn, drove part of the way down the block. I eased the car over to the curb, braked, killed the ignition. I walked fifty yards or so to stand in front of a big brick ranch on a large plot. There were a few lights on. The garage door was open and I could see a Caddy convertible parked there. She was home.
The night was cool, clear. At the front door I poked the bell. My Dog Has Fleas, the chimes played.
Joyce Rogers opened the door. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened and she started to say something, but I pushed her inside and drew the door shut and stopped whatever she was going to say with a kiss. I held her close, felt the sweet warmth of her fine body against mine. I unpinned her chestnut hair and it fell free. I ran my fingers through it.
“We’ve got about an hour,” I said. “Let’s not waste it.”
8
“You’re crazy, Wizard. Insane!”
"Why?”
“Right here? In his own house? It’s not safe, Wizard.”
“He’s at the game,” I said. “He won’t be leaving. And the girls will be out for awhile yet.”
“How do you know?”
“He mentioned it during the game. Don’t worry about it, Joyce. Don’t worry about a thing.”
“But—”
“Or don’t you want me?”
“Oh, God!”
I reached for her, caught her by her shoulders. She held back for a moment, then fell against me, all warm and trembling. I ran my hands over her body and her flesh quivered.
“The bedroom—” Joyce started to say.
We never made the bedroom. There was a couch on the other side of the living room, but we didn’t reach there, either. I kissed her and she tossed her arms around my neck and clung to me like ivy to a stone wall. The stone wall melted and we sank to the floor and held each other close.
I put my hand under her skirt and touched the silky perfection of her thighs. Her legs opened and I stroked her high on the inside of one thigh until she was moaning hysterically. She pushed me aside and yanked her skirt up around her waist. I took her panties off. She fell back on the floor, her eyes rolling, her forehead dotted with perspiration.
“Now,” she moaned. “Now, now, right now, Bill, now, now”
No kisses, no sweet caresses, no little bits and pieces. I fell on her like a tree.
There was all that aching, all that need, and it exploded for us like a truckload of nitro on a cobblestone road. There was nothing soft or gentle, nothing remotely sweet about our love-making. What we had was something you couldn’t deny or postpone, something you could never push out of the way or ignore. And it was not the sort of blissful idyll that would evolve easily and naturally into a pattern of three or four pleasant bangs per week in the master bedroom of a split-level shack. Fires that burn with the Bill Maynard-Joyce Rogers type of flame don’t simmer down.
Which could have been a hint, a clue, a flashed card. But maybe I wasn’t looking.
Afterward she pulled on her panties and pulled down her skirt and we sat on the couch and talked. She had most of my story already from Murray. I gave her the rest and slipped her a quick summary of the plan of action. She liked it. Her approval showed in her eyes, bright and excited.
I lit a cigarette. “Of course,” I said, “we could forget it.”
She said nothing, and that noncommittally.
“I’m all set up in business,” I told her. “I even enjoy my work. I could just stick to my job and make enough money to keep me happy. And you could go on being Murray Rogers’ loving wife. We’ve both got it fairly soft, you know. We’re not in an especially desperate situation.”
“And keep seeing each other like this?”
“Why not?”
“And never try for the brass ring? And stay tied up like this? You like your work because it’s temporary, Wizard. It’s part of the act, not something you’d have to be doing for the rest of your life. You might not like it so much that way.”
I avoided her eyes. The whole routine had started out as a joke, but somehow or other I had been saying things I partly meant. After all, I did like the work. And the idea of jobbing Murray Rogers was becoming less attractive the better I knew him.
“It was just a gag,” I said.
“Was it?”
“Sure.”
“It’s a bad kind of joke, Wizard.” She took one of my hands in both of hers. “This is too big for me to joke about it, Wizard. I’m in this all the way. We’ve both got to be in it all the way.”
On the way back to the game I tried to concentrate on driving the Corvair. That wasn’t easy. I kept telling myself that my semi-pitch to Joyce about playing our future straight had just been a gag. I was no real estate syndicator. I was a sharp, a quick-money boy, a guy whose world spun faster than the rest of the planet Earth. I wanted the fast money and the fast action and the fast women. Hotel rooms, ashes on the floor.
Back at the game I complained about a stupid foreman who couldn’t understand anything no matter how long you hammered it into his skull. I played poker until the game broke up around two-thirty and I wound up forty-five dollars in the hole. Then I drove back to the hotel and slept.
I looked at three apartments before I found the one I wanted. It was on College Street—two rooms and a bath and kitchenette, all furnished in Early American ugliness. The wallpaper was floral and the rugs were imitation Orientals. What the hell, I was renting the place, not buying it. The apartment might not be designed to turn on an interior decorator but it was roomy and comfortable and convenient and that was all I wanted. I paid a month’s rent, talked my way out of signing a lease. I moved my stuff over from the hotel and I was in business.