Meecham laid his brief case on the seat between them and started the car and switched on the heater. A cold blast of air gushed noisily from the heater.
Virginia reached over and turned the heater off again. “It makes too much noise.”
“All right.”
“Well, I did what you told me to. Didn’t I?”
“More or less.”
“I said that he looked familiar, that I’d seen him before. Isn’t that what you meant in the note you sent me last night?”
Meecham nodded.
“It’s not true though. I’ve never seen him before, not in Sam’s or any other bar or any other place.”
“You had quite a few memory lapses on Saturday night.”
“I remember talking to someone at Sam’s but it wasn’t this man. I’d have remembered him because he looks like Willett before Willett began to get fat.”
“Willett?”
“My older brother. When you meet someone who looks like your own brother, you don’t forget him, do you?”
“I haven’t got a brother.”
“You know what I mean. Don’t be so damned annoying, Meecham.”
“Me, annoying.” He turned left at the next intersection. The driver of the car behind him began to sound his horn furiously.
“You didn’t make a signal,” Virginia said. “If conversation interferes with your driving...”
“Your conversation interferes with my thinking,” Meecham said acidly. “You forget some things, you remember some things. The things you’re supposed to remember you forget, and the things you’re supposed to forget you remember.”
“I can’t help that.”
“Look, you just got out of jail ten minutes ago. Do you want to talk yourself right back in?”
“I thought you were my lawyer. Aren’t you supposed to be able to tell everything to your lawyer?”
“Theoretically, yes. But let’s get one point straight. What you told me just now — and very positively — was that you never saw Loftus before in your life. You may believe that, but I don’t. The evidence is against it. The fact that you’d been drinking heavily all evening makes your memory unreliable anyway. Then there’s Loftus’ own statement, and his report of some of your remarks to him. Loftus claims that you said among other things, God, this place stinks. One of the bartenders at Sam’s overheard it, and identified you as the woman who said it. He has a half-interest in the place, and I think you hurt his feelings. Well, are you still sure you never saw Loftus in your life until this morning?”
“I’m positive.”
“I know one definition of positive — being wrong at the top of your voice.”
“All right, I may be wrong.” She sounded depressed, listless. “It doesn’t matter much anyway, does it? When is Claude going to be buried?”
“This afternoon.” It was the first time he had heard her use Margolis’ first name or indicate in any way that she had been interested in him.
“I wouldn’t go to his funeral even if I could. I hate dead people.” She huddled, shivering, inside the big plaid coat. “I remember once when I was at school, the mother of one of my friends died, and I went home with the girl to cheer her up. Her mother was at the undertaker’s, they hadn’t quite finished — fixing her up. The girl combed her mother’s hair and fixed her glasses. The damned glasses kept slipping down that dead face, the girl kept putting them in place again. It was ghastly; I almost screamed. Do you have a cigarette?”
“Here.”
“Thanks. Shall I light one for you, too?”
“All right.”
She lit two cigarettes and gave him one. “Tell me, Meecham, are you on the level?”
“Ask a stupid question and you get a stupid answer. Sure, I am.”
“I don’t think it’s so stupid. You must get lots of opportunities and meet lots of funny people.”
“I do, indeed,” Meecham said dryly.
“Speaking of mothers, how much is my mother paying you?”
“For what?”
“She is paying you?”
“She offered to. I haven’t sent her a bill.”
“How much are you going to bill her for?”
“I haven’t thought about it.”
“Well, think now. How much?”
“What is this anyway?” Meecham said, turning his head briefly to look at her. “What’s up?”
“She owns quite a bit of real estate back home. Two apartment houses in Pasadena and one in Westwood, and so on.”
“Why tell me?”
“So that you’d know she could afford to pay — oh, quite a lot.”
“I’m supposed to bill her for quite a lot, eh?”
“She can afford it, I tell you.”
“Then when Christmas comes around in a couple of weeks I send you a nice little present, is that it?”
“Sort of.”
“It sounds nasty,” Meecham said. “And you sound nasty.”
“It sounds worse than it is. I like my mother. I’m not trying to chisel her on anything. I can get money from her any time, only I hate to ask her. She always has to know why and what for. This way it would be the same money actually, only I wouldn’t have to answer any questions.”
“It still sounds nasty. What do you want the money for?”
“Questions, questions. Nobody trusts me.”
“What do you want the money for?”
“To run away,” she said earnestly.
“Where to?”
“It wouldn’t be running away if I told you where. Besides, I haven’t decided, and it doesn’t matter where as long as it’s far away and the climate’s good.”
He glanced at her again. Her listlessness had gone, and she looked very sincere and hopeful about her new project of running away. But it was a childish hopefulness, without a plan behind it or a foundation under it. “Away” would be pleasant simply because it wasn’t “here.”
“It will be good for me, good for my morale, to get away,” Virginia said. “Carney thinks I’m bad, and Paul thinks I’m a fool. They’re both very good people, virtuous people. But it’s hard to live with anyone who sets up standards you can’t ever reach.” She paused to draw on her cigarette. “And now this. This business about Claude. I’ll never live it down. No one will ever believe that I wasn’t one of Claude’s women. You don’t believe it, Meecham. Do you?”
“I could.”
“I wasn’t, anyway. I went out with him a few times because he was a wonderful dancer.”
It wasn’t very convincing, in view of the evidence of the quarrel the two of them had had on Saturday night. But Meecham didn’t say anything.
They had come to a railroad crossing just as the signal turned red and the crossing barriers were being lowered into place. A freight train began to move very slowly down the track, heading west. Virginia strained forward in her seat and watched it intensely, watched each car roll ponderously past as if she was wishing she was on one of them, heading west to some place where the climate was good.
He felt sorry for her. The feeling disturbed him, so he turned his attention to the printing on the sides of the freight cars. Michigan Central. Rock Island. Burlington. Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. Union Pacific. Grand Rapids. C.P.R. Do Not Hump. And, in chalk, on the bulging belly of a tank car, Kilroy Was Here, followed by a spirited reply, Who Wasn’t, Joe and Howie.
A hundred cars — oil and lumber, automobiles and scrap metal and fertilizer, explosives and people — a vast jumble of everything, and always room for one more, Virginia.
The caboose slid past, the barriers rose and Virginia sat back in the seat, her eyes shining, her breathing accelerated. The train had excited her — its possibilities, its destination, its very movement. Impulsively, she raised her hand and waved at the caboose as it disappeared down the track.