Five
It was quite a tableau. There was Saralee Jenkins, flat upon her lovely back and reaching up with curving fingers for Vince. And there was Vince, naked as a jaybird, lowering himself to those waiting arms.
And there was Bradley Jenkins, standing in the doorway and staring at them both.
The next second just went on and on, while everybody stared at everybody else. And then that second was over, the next second had started, and everybody was in motion. Saralee gave a shriek and squirmed into a little ball, in a silly attempt to cover herself. Vince dove for his pants, on the chair beside the bed.
And Bradley Jenkins fell over in a faint.
That surprised Vince so much he missed the chair and went sailing into the wall. He clambered around, knocking things over, and when he got his balance and his footing back, he looked over at the door to be sure he’d seen right. Because he couldn’t possibly have seen right. The husband who catches his wife in bed with another guy can do any number of things, from gunning the two of them down on the spot, through beating the guy up, to racing for his lawyer. But the one thing he doesn’t do is faint.
But there was Bradley Jenkins on his face, passed out cold.
Vince thought fast. That was one thing he could do at least, he could think fast. And it was a good thing, because one thing he couldn’t do was stay out of trouble.
The thoughts went flashing through his mind as he pulled his pants on. Number one, the husband was unconscious. Number two, he’d seen Vince for only a second, while in a state of shock, and while looking primarily at his wife, so he probably wouldn’t even remember very clearly what Vince looked like. Not his face, anyway. Number three, if he moved fast enough he could get the hell out of here before the husband woke up again, and be out of town before Bradley Jenkins could figure out just what the hell was going on. Number four, Saralee knew his name, but she didn’t know where he was from. Nobody in town did, not even Mrs. Sharp.
Which meant, number five, that with a little bit of luck and a lot of speed, he could get away with nothing worse than a bad scare.
Pants, shirt and shoes went on, and the rest of his clothes got stuffed into pockets. Then he jumped over the unconscious hubby and headed for the door.
Saralee grabbed him by the elbow as he was going through the doorway, swinging him around and practically slamming his nose into the jamb. She’d been busy, too, and was wearing blouse and skirt and loafers. “Take me with you!” she cried, and her eyes were wide with desperation.
“But— but—” He tried to slow down long enough to figure out the question, and the answer to it. “Your husband,” he said.
“I’m through with him,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to get out of this town for years. Take me with you.”
“But— I’m only going home.” The thought of going back to the lake, walking in to his mother and father, pointing to Saralee and saying, “She followed me home, can I keep her?” was a very strange one indeed.
She came up against him like a vibrating pad, jabbing him with the controls. “You don’t have to go home,” she said, seductively. “You can go anywhere you want, with that car of yours. And you could take me with you. We could go to New York.” She vibrated some more. “We’d have a great time, Vince.”
“But — I don’t have any money. I don’t have enough money to go to New York.”
“Don’t you worry about money, Vince,” she said. She smiled and kissed him, and the vibrations got stronger and stronger. “Don’t you worry about a thing, baby.”
So there they were in Vince’s car, driving hell for leather out of town. Saralee Jenkins, shed of her husband, sat very close beside him on the front seat. Vince’s suitcase was in back, and so was Saralee’s hastily packed overnight bag, and so was Saralee’s bulging purse. The purse was stuffed with bills, ones and fives and tens and an occasional twenty, taken from hiding places all over the Jenkins house. “He didn’t think I knew where he hid all this stuff,” she’d said, grinning wickedly. “Brad underestimated me in every way, he did.”
And now they were heading southeast in Vince’s car, and Vince was having some second thoughts. Some very gloomy second thoughts.
What the hell is the use, he wondered, of being able to think fast in an emergency, if all of your thinking simply throws you pell-mell swell-hell into another emergency? No use, that’s what use.
Question: Is it better to be caught by a husband with that husband’s wife, or is it better to be caught by the police with the husband’s wife and the husband’s money? Don’t answer.
It had all seemed so easy at the time, so simple and clear. Vince wasn’t in any hurry to go back to Lake Lousy, and here was a chance for a trip to New York, all expenses paid, with a hot and willing female tossed in as an extra premium. Not an offer to pass up. That’s the way it had seemed at the time.
So now Vince drove southeast through the night, and every pair of headlights reflected in the rear-view mirror shouted COP and every pair of headlights that shone through the windshield shouted TROOPER and Vince was beginning to get very very nervous.
Not Saralee, though. She wasn’t worried at all. In fact, she was snuggling beside him and telling him all about her life in Brighton, and how she had happened to get tied up with a clunk like Bradley Jenkins.
“It seemed like such a good idea at the time,” she was saying. “Mom was always after me about security, about how I shouldn’t marry some randy bum who wouldn’t support me. I should find some nice steady guy. And Brad had had the hots for me from the time I was fourteen and just beginning to push out my sweaters. So when I found out I was pregnant, two summers ago, and I wasn’t sure who’d done it — and none of the possibilities would have made very good husbands — it seemed like a hell of a good idea to marry Brad. Security, you know, and a steady income, and a name for the kid.”
“I didn’t know you had a kid,” Vince said. More complications, he thought. I’m not only stealing a wife from her husband, I’m stealing a mother from her child.
But Saralee said, “I don’t.” She curled her lip. “That’s what made me so goddam mad,” she said. “I had a miscarriage two months after I got married. So I didn’t even have to marry the old jerk after all.”
“Oh,” Vince said. Well, that was a relief. Vince felt he was due for some relief.
Apparently, so did Saralee, for she suddenly said, “You know, we never did finish what we set out to do.”
“I know,” said Vince. At the moment, he wasn’t thinking about things like that. He was thinking that the more distance he put between himself and Brighton, the better off he was going to be.
“Boy, you know how to get a girl ready.” She rubbed herself against him, and nibbled on his earlobe a little.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m driving.”
“Well, stop driving,” she said, reasonably.
“I don’t know if we ought to take the chance.”
“Don’t be silly. Brad doesn’t know who you are, or what kind of car you’ve got, or where we’re going or anything.”
“Yeah, well—”
“You know,” she said, “I got dressed so fast back there I didn’t even have time to put on a bra or panties or anything. See?” She pulled her skirt up.
He saw. And he saw the light gleaming in her eyes, and he saw her hand reaching out for him, and he knew if he didn’t stop the car pretty soon he’d run it off the road and into a tree. “Hold on,” he said desperately. “Wait’ll I find a side road or something.”
“Hurry,” she whispered, and her hands were not a devil’s workshop.
Driving all over the road, Vince managed to turn left onto a side road, jounce off among the trees, stop the car and turn the engine off.