Mrs. Goodwin called me the next morning around
seven-thirty. Would I come over and just talk to
Goodwin? He’d been up all night, waiting for a call from
Nothing in Her Way — 63
Caffery, and there hadn’t been any. Maybe I could help
her calm him down before he collapsed.
I went over in a hurry, knowing Charlie’d be there at
eight. Goodwin was on the telephone again, haggard
and hollow-eyed. He had the hotel at Ludley, but
Caffery had checked out. He put the phone back in its
cradle, let out a long, hopeless sigh, and put his head
down in his hands. He was whipped.
I was looking out the window when the mudspattered
car drove up in front of the house. I saw
Charlie get out, and put my hand on Goodwin’s
shoulder. “Say, is this your man?” I nodded toward the
street.
He came alive as if I’d prodded him with a highvoltage
cable. “Hell, yes,” he said excitedly, springing
up. “But you’ll have to get out of sight. We don’t want
to make him any more suspicious than he is now. I’ll
tell you. Go up there at the head of the stairs.”
I made it just as the doorbell rang. By peeking around
the corner of the landing, I could see them. Charlie was
wearing khaki pants and boots and a leather jacket
with mud on it, and he looked as if he hadn’t shaved for
three days or slept a week. His eyes were red, and
there were lines of weariness around his mouth.
Charlie was a perfectionist.
He was magnificent. Watching him and listening, I
was conscious of thinking what an actor the stage lost
when Charlie became a crook. He was being crucified.
Nobody kept faith with him. Goodwin was taking
advantage of him. He’d bought the lease in good faith,
and now Goodwin had found out some oil company
wanted it, and his creditors were hounding him, and…
He could make you cry.
He said eighty thousand. Goodwin, recovering a little
of his business sense now that there was hope, said
thirty. They went at it again. Charlie came to a dead
standstill at sixty-five thousand, and Goodwin finally
had to meet it. Then Charlie said it had to be in cash,
and he had to have it within an hour so he could get
started back to the well. Goodwin agreed, but said it
Nothing in Her Way — 64
would take two hours. The bank wouldn’t be open until
ten.
Charlie nodded. “All right,” he said wearily. Then he
went on, with great bitterness. “Don’t think I don’t
know what you’re doing to me. Some big oil company
wants to put down a well out there, don’t they? Well,
brother, you couldn’t have beat me if we hadn’t lost a
bit in that hole last week.”
To calm him, Mrs. Goodwin asked him to come out in
the kitchen and have a cup of coffee. I sneaked down
the stairs and left as soon as they were out of the room.
When I was out in the street I let out a big sigh. I was
weak myself.
Back at the motel I started throwing things in the two
bags. She’d be here at twelve. I stopped, thinking how
it would be now, with nothing to keep us apart. On our
way to San Francisco, to hunt down Lachlan, we’d stop
off in Reno as we’d planned. We would be married. I
looked at my watch. It was only nine-fifteen. Keep your
shirt on, I thought; Charlie hasn’t even got the money
yet.
At a quarter to eleven Goodwin called. He was almost
hysterical with joy. “I’d ask you to come over, if it
weren’t that you’re probably worn out too. I’d like for
you to see this lease burning up in the fireplace.”
“So it’s all set?” I asked.
“He just left, five minutes ago. Boy, talk about your
photo finishes! And, say, Reichert, don’t think I’m going
to forget you for all you’ve done.”
No, you probably won’t, pal, I thought, as I hung up—
any more than I’ve forgotten you. It’s going to be a
little rugged around nine-thirty tonight when nobody
gets off that train.
I was all packed. By eleven-thirty I was straining my
ears for the sound of tires on the gravel outside. About
ten minutes to twelve I heard a car come swinging in. I
jumped up and threw the door open. It was somebody
else. I sat down again, feeling the impatience mount.
By twelve-thirty I was chain-smoking cigarettes and
wearing a path in the shabby rug. God knows she’d
Nothing in Her Way — 65
never been anywhere on time in her life, but she
couldn’t be late today. This was the day we’d been
looking forward to for nearly a month. We had to get
going.
She didn’t come. It was two o’clock. It was three. I’d
long since passed the stage where I could sit still at all.
I felt as if all the nerves in my body had worked
through and were on the outside of my skin. She was
dead. She’d been killed in a wreck. I couldn’t keep
Donnelly out of my mind. She wouldn’t listen to me, so
he had gone back and found her. He’d killed her. I
thought of that ten-gauge shotgun, and shuddered. He
was capable of anything. Why hadn’t I made her listen?
No, how did I know where she’d been? She’d said she
was going to be in San Antonio, and still that was her
voice over the phone from Houston.
How could I even find out what had happened? I had
to get back there some way. It wasn’t until then that
the whole thing balled up and hit me. I sat down on the
bed, feeling the weakness and the sick feeling come up
through me. I’d been worried only about her, but what
about myself, too? I couldn’t go anywhere. I was
trapped. She might be all right, but I was a sitting
duck.
The bus had gone through twenty minutes ago, and
there wouldn’t be another one in either direction until
eleven o’clock tonight. And by nine-thirty Goodwin
would know he had been taken.
It was about as near to complete panic as I’d ever
been. For a few minutes I couldn’t think at all. The only
thing my mind could get hold of was that I was the
sucker, the fall guy, the one they’d thrown to the
wolves. They’d gone off and left me. No, I tried to tell
myself, she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t have left me
stranded like this. But that meant, then, that something
had happened to her.
I tried to calm down. I was in danger enough, without
losing my head completely. There’d be the westbound
train through at nine. But what good would that do me?
Goodwin would probably already be at the station,
waiting to meet the eastbound. Or if he wasn’t, at least
Nothing in Her Way — 66
a dozen people would see me get on it. As soon as they
told him, he’d know the truth, and police would be
waiting for me at some station up the line before I got
to El Paso. Even if there were a bus through, the same
thing would happen.
Time went on in its slow crawl around the rim of my
watch. There was no hope now that she was coming. It
was four-fifteen. I watched the small oblong of yellow
sunlight from the window creep up the wall as the sun
went down. It was like sitting in a cell. I shuddered.
I couldn’t just sit there and wait for them. I’d have to
snake a run for it some way. Maybe I could hitch a ride
if I got out on the highway. Then I thought of it—that
freight, the one I’d put Donnelly on. It would be along,
westbound, a little after seven.
But I had to get away and get on it without being
seen. The only way to do it was just to fade, and let
them wonder afterward when I’d left and which way I’d
gone. The only trouble, however, was that there was no
way out of here except the drive and archway in front.
The cabins and garages were joined in a solid wall all
the way around. I’d have to leave the bags. No, there
was a way to do it. The bathroom had a small window
that looked out onto the open prairie to the east.
I sweated out another hour and a half until it was
dark. I looked carefully around the harsh little cubicle
to be sure I hadn’t left anything that would identify me.
The only things were the .22 rifle and the rest of the
sand boxes. I put on the topcoat, carried the bags into
the bathroom, and cut the lights.
I opened the window and then waited while my eyes
became accustomed to the darkness. Two or three
cabins up the line there was light pouring from a
window, and I could hear a radio playing. When I could
see a little in the faint light from the stars, I eased out
the window feet first, and then lifted the bags out. I
closed the window very gently and slipped away,
angling a little to my right to stay clear of the highway.
It was slow going, dodging the clumps of mesquite
and prickly pears, but I was in the clear and nobody
had seen me leave. After about two hundred yards I
Nothing in Her Way — 67
swung toward the highway again. It was frosty and still,
and in the cold starlight I could see the fog of my
breath. I waited beside the road until no cars were in
sight, then hurried across and into the desert on the
other side.
It was about a half mile to the tracks. The suitcases
were heavy, and I stopped once or twice to catch my
breath. I tried not to think about Cathy. Every time I
saw her I saw Donnelly swinging that murderous
shotgun and I’d feel sick. I thought of Charlie and
Bolton, safe in El Paso with $65,000 in their pockets,
laughing probably, while I struggled through the cactus
to catch a freight that might get me out of town before
the whole thing caved in on me. Rage would come
boiling up and take me by the throat. I’d done the job,
and now they’d run out on me.
It didn’t make sense. Sure, they didn’t care what
happened to me, but didn’t they have brains enough to
know I’d talk if the police caught me? Talk? I’d scream.
I’d sing like a nightingale. But then, what difference
would it make to them? They’d be gone, and you can do
a lot of traveling with sixty-five thousand dollars.
I set the bags down for a minute and thought about it
very coldly. If I didn’t get caught, they were going to
need a railroad ticket a lot longer than that.
When I hit the old work train, I swung around the end
of it. I walked up to it about where I’d boosted Donnelly
onto the freight, and ducked in between two cars. I set
the bags down and flipped the cigarette lighter to look
at my watch. It should be along in about a half hour.
Nothing in Her Way — 68
Eight
It was a night that would never end. I sat on the
suitcases in a dusty boxcar that rattled through cold
darkness and then jolted and screeched to interminable
stops every thirty or forty miles. When I couldn’t stand
the cold any longer I’d get up and walk back and forth,
swinging my arms and blowing on my hands. I ran out
of cigarettes. I tried to keep the worry about Cathy
from driving me crazy. The terrible part of it was that
maybe I’d never know what happened. I had to run, and
I couldn’t look back or wait.
I thought of Bolton. And I thought of Charlie.
Maybe it was the anger that kept me from freezing.
Just at dawn we slowed for the yards at El Paso. I
tossed the two bags out and jumped. After I’d picked
them up I hurried out of the yards. Nobody saw me.
There was an all-night cafe open on the second street. I
went in, ordered some coffee, and bought a package of
cigarettes. I called a cab.
“Bus station,” I said when it came. The sun was
coming up now. Maybe the bus and railroad stations
were being watched, but I had to take a chance on it.
There was no other way. I’d already thrown away the
steel-rimmed glasses, which helped a little, and I was
dressed differently than I had been in Wyecross. There
weren’t many people around this early in the morning. I
Nothing in Her Way — 69
shot a quick glance around, ready to ease out, but there
wasn’t anybody who looked like a plain-clothes cop. I
checked the bags and went into the washroom to clean
up a little and beat some of the dust out of my topcoat.
I counted the money I had left. It was less than two
hundred dollars. I had to get to Reno. Manners would
give me a job, dealing dice. And Reno would be far
enough away.
There would be a westbound bus leaving in an hour
and ten minutes. I’d better not hang around the bus
station, though, in case they were shaking it down now
and then. I went out in the street and thought of Bolton
and Charlie again and felt the rage take hold of me.
There wouldn’t be a chance they’d still be here, but I
went into a drugstore telephone booth and started
calling the hotels.
After I’d called three I gave up. Even if they were
here they wouldn’t be registered under their own
names. The thing to do was forget them until I got out
of this jam. I tried to. It wasn’t much good.
It was too early to get a shave. I went into a hotel
coffee shop to try to eat a little breakfast before bus
time. I’ve got to quit looking behind me, I thought. The
way I was acting was enough to make a cop suspicious
even if he’d never heard of me.
The waitress at this end of the counter was slow
getting to me because she was working on an order a
bellboy was waiting for. I started to get up to go out to
the newsstand for a paper while I was waiting. Maybe
there’d be something about it in the papers. Then I
looked back at the waitress for some reason I couldn’t
figure out. What was it? I saw it then. It was the order.
It was the two halves of a Persian melon and a big
silver pot of coffee.
What if the odds were a thousand to one against it? I
didn’t even stop to think. I followed the boy across the
lobby and into the elevator. When he got out on the
fourth floor I went in the other direction, pretending to
be looking for a number, until he was halfway down the
corridor. I turned then and watched him. He knocked at
a door and in a minute it opened and he went in. I
Nothing in Her Way — 70
walked past it and looked at the number, and went on
around the corner. When I heard him come out and get
into the elevator again I went back.
It was dangerous. It was a stupid thing to do. We
were all wanted by the police now, and the surest way
in the world to bring them down on us was to start a
brawl. But there wasn’t room in my mind for thought. I
knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” someone asked.
“Room Service,” I said. “I forgot...” I let it trail off.
The door opened a crack. I saw the baby-blue eyes
and the pink jowls, and I shoved, hard. Charlie was still
off balance when I got in through the door and I put a
hand in his face and pushed. He shot back into the
table the boy had set up. The whole thing crashed
down.
I kicked the door shut and swung at Bolton. He made
an agonized sucking noise as the fist slammed into his
stomach, but he was tougher than Charlie. He dropped
the cup of coffee he was holding and belted me. I shook
my head groggily as I slammed back into the door.
Charlie was trying to get up, tangled in a white
tablecloth with his hand in the melon. Bolton hit me
again and I went down. He was a terrific right-handed
puncher. I saw the foot coming for my face and grabbed
at it. I got an arm around the other leg and heaved,
straining with all the strength I had left. He came down
on top of me.
Somewhere in all the wildness I could hear Charlie
crying in an outraged and quivering voice. “Mike! What
is the meaning of all this stupid violence?” I rolled and
got Bolton off me, and when he started to get up I hit
him. The shock numbed my hand. I hit him again. Blood
trickled out of his mouth. He swayed dizzily and fell
backward onto the floor. He wasn’t knocked out, but all
he could do was keep picking at the rug, trying to get a
handhold on something to pull himself up. I was wild,
and almost as groggy as he was. I stood up. Charlie was
still trying to say something. I pushed him and he fell
over Bolton.
Nothing in Her Way — 71
I looked around. Their bags were all packed, standing
by the door with their folded overcoats on them. In
another few minutes they’d have been gone. Mexico
City or Acapulco, I thought. I pulled a leg off the
wreckage of the table and said, “All right, we’re going
to have a meeting. We’re going to elect a new sucker.”
I didn’t get what it was at first. The next time around,
I did. It was a knock at the door. I don’t know why I
opened it, unless I was still a little punchy. My head
cleared then, very fast. It was Cathy. She was just
standing there, white-faced, and when she looked at me
she didn’t say anything at all. She didn’t have to. When
I looked beyond her I knew I had waited too long.
There were two of them and they were wearing white
frontier-style hats and gun holsters, and one of them
was holding her by the arm.
They came on in, pushing her ahead of them. They
looked around, and then at each other, and grinned.
“Well, this is a cozy little group,” the tall one with the
pale eyes said. “Looks like His Royal Highness, Prince
Charlie, and the one with the bent face must be Judd
Bolton, alias Major Ballantine.”
He swung his eyes around to me. “Drop it, friend.” He
meant the table leg. I dropped it. I couldn’t say
anything.
“All right, boys, on your feet,” he said to Charlie and
Bolton. “Shake ‘em down, Jim.”
The other cop came over behind us and patted us
under the arms and down the sides. “They’re clean,
Shandy.”
Charlie made a try at the outraged taxpayer. “I
demand to know the meaning of this. And who is this
young lady? I’ve never—”
Cathy turned on all of us, her eyes blazing with
contempt. “You stupid, blundering idiots!”
Bolton lashed at her. “Why, you little fool! Why’d you
bring ‘em here?”
“All right, all right. Simmer down, boys and girls,” the
one called Shandy said. He was a great kidder, but
Nothing in Her Way — 72
none of it ever got as far as his eyes. “Keep an eye on
‘em, Jim, while I go through the suitcases.”
I collapsed into a chair and tried to light a cigarette.
My hands were shaking. The whole thing was just a
nightmare, and maybe I’d wake up in a minute.
Shandy had all the suitcases open and clothes
scattered around on the floor. He grunted and came up
with two big Manila envelopes. He took them over to
the bed and emptied them. It was the money. There
was a lot of it. “Let’s see that list, Jim,” he said.
The short cop passed it to him, and he sat down on
the side of the bed with it. “If everybody was as sharp
as that banker, we’d get these birds out of circulation,”
he said, more to himself than to anyone else. “Hmmm.
Here we are.” He lifted a bill out of the welter of
currency and set it aside. There was terrible silence as
he went on. “And here’s another one. Numbers match,
all right.”
He looked across at Charlie and gave him that cold
grin. “You should have stayed out of the sticks, Charlie,
my boy. Looks like the wise guy slept in the hoosier’s
barn.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking
about,” Charlie said.
“They never do,” Shandy said. He turned to the other
cop. “I better call in, Jim. Just keep ‘em happy, and
don’t let ‘em sell you anything.”
He got up and walked over to the telephone on a
table in the corner. He picked it up, with his back to us,
and turned, watching over his shoulder. “Police
Headquarters,” he said. “Boy, what a bunch of sadlooking
wise guys!” Then he chuckled. “No, I wasn’t
talking to you, Operator. Extension Two-seven, please.”
He tapped a foot on the floor and whistled softly.
“Hello, Sarge? Say, if you’re interested in buying some
stock in a sausage mine or a Pepsi-Cola well, I think we
can fix it up for you…What? Yeah…Yeah. All four of
‘em. It’s Charlie, all right. And Ballantine. We even got
the girl. She was asking for ‘em at the desk. Yeah, the
same one the motel man in Wyecross described.
Nothing in Her Way — 73
Redhead. The Caddy was parked right out in front of
the hotel.”
Well, if it meant anything now, I thought with weary
bitterness, that explained how they’d got her. She’d
come by for me, after all. Just about ten hours late—
after the roof had fallen in.
This was the end of everything. They had us dead to
rights. Goodwin could identify the three of us without
any possibility of doubt, and they had the money with
the serial numbers. We didn’t have a prayer. Cathy was
the only one who might beat it, with a good lawyer—if
she kept her mouth shut.
And what would be the use in trying to explain who
Goodwin was and what he’d done? The fact that he’d
broken the law in some banana republic sixteen years
ago wasn’t going to cut any ice with a judge. It didn’t
excuse our taking the law into our own hands. That’s
fine, I thought bitterly. It’s nice to think about now.
I looked up. Shandy had finished with the telephone
and was talking to the other cop. He nodded toward
Bolton.
“This guy’s face is pretty banged up, Jim. Maybe you
better take him on in so they can get a doctor or nurse
to patch him up. I tell you. You take him and Prince
Charlie and start booking ‘em. Sergeant’s sending over
a couple of men, and they ought to be here by the time
you get down front. One of ‘em can go back with you,
and the other one can come up here and help me finish
checking this money and gathering up their stuff, and
then we can bring in the girl and this other guy. How’s
that?”
“Oke,” Jim said. “You want me to put the cuffs on
‘em?”
Shandy shook his head. “Nah. These con men never
get rough. Give the hotel a break. Looks like hell, guys
going through the lobby in handcuffs.”
“Yeah,” Jim said. He jerked his head at Bolton and
Charlie. “All right, boys. Let’s go.”
They went out. I lit another cigarette and walked over
to the window to stare out because I couldn’t look at
Nothing in Her Way — 74
her. I just couldn’t. We’d been so near to making it. If it
had broken the other way...
“Mike,” she said behind me.
“I’m sorry, Cathy,” I said. I didn’t look around. Earlymorning
sunlight was golden in the street. I saw the
three of them come out onto the sidewalk below me.
The other two policemen weren’t anywhere in sight yet.
The cop called Jim said something to Charlie and
Bolton, and they walked over to a black Ford sedan
parked at the curb. Bolton got in front, and Charlie got
in the back seat. The cop went around and got in
behind the wheel. I saw the exhaust fog in the chill air
as the motor started.
And then the cop got out again. He came around the
rear of the car and up on the sidewalk, apparently
looking for the men from Headquarters. He must be
stupid, I thought. It had become strangely silent behind
me in the room now, but I still didn’t look around. I was
fascinated with the idea of his going off and leaving
Bolton in the front seat of the car with the motor
running. Then it happened so fast I could hardly follow
it. There was a scream of rubber, and the Ford leaped
ahead into the street. It must have been doing forty-five
by the time it passed the corner. The short cop ran a
few steps after it, waving his arms and yelling. He
could have saved his breath.
I heard something behind me, and turned. Cathy was
sitting on the bed with the pile of bills in her lap,
laughing at me. The cop called Shandy was laughing
too.
There had been too much. I couldn’t absorb any
more. I just stared at them as she counted out some
bills and handed them to him. “Here’s his, too,” she
said. “Five hundred each. And you can keep the guns.”
I sat down weakly and watched them. It could have
been a play I was seeing. I didn’t seem to have any
connection with it yet.
He quit laughing and was looking at the money a
little hungrily. “That’s a lot of dough, Red,” he said.
“Mebbe we ought to have a bigger slice.”
Nothing in Her Way — 75
She quit laughing too, and the brown eyes became
very cold. “You know what you’ll get a bigger slice of if
you try to squeeze me,” she said. “Impersonating an
officer is a penitentiary offense.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Wouldn’t I?”
He looked at her again, and must have seen the
answer. “O.K., O.K. Don’t strip your gears. I’ll see you
around.”
He was out the door by the time I’d digested what she
had said about impersonating an officer. But he had
called the station! I’d seen him and heard him. It hit me
then. How stupid could you get? He’d had his back to
us, and it was the simplest thing in the world to hold
the other hand on the hook.
I was beginning to get up to date at last. Charlie and
Bolton hadn’t double-crossed me at all. She just hadn’t
come by to pick me up because she had other things to
do. She couldn’t be bothered. She was too busy cooking
up this act to double-cross them and take all the money.
I could get out from under any way I could. I thought of
the whole night in that boxcar sick with worry over
what had happened to her.
She smiled. “I’m sorry I had to scare you like that,
Mike, but...”
I got up off the chair and walked over to her. The
whole room was going around in a dark whirlpool of
rage. I reached down a hand and caught the front of
her fur coat and yanked her up. I pulled her toward me
and she looked at my face and tried to cry out. I opened
my mouth, but there were no words. I threw her back
across the bed with money scattering everywhere, and
went out and slammed the door.
Twenty minutes later I was on the bus, going west. I
didn’t feel anything at all, and I didn’t think about
anything. I didn’t want to.
Nothing in Her Way — 76
Nine
It was snowing when I got off the bus in Reno, dry
powder swirling down out of the Sierra and softening
the harsh blaze of neon along streets plowed out and
drifted again. I left the bags in the station and walked
over to Calhoun’s, feeling the wind search through my
clothes. In the late afternoon the place was jammed
with the crowd that seems to go on forever, and full of
the whirring clatter of slot machines and the click of
chips and a dice man chanting: “Here we are, folks. Get
‘em down. New gunner coming out.”
Wally Manners was in his office. He’s tough, but a
good friend, and he was glad to see me now. After we’d
shaken hands and I refused one of his cigars, he said, “I
got your wire. You still want to go to work?”
“Yes,” I said.
“All right. Start tomorrow, after you’ve had some
sleep. You look pretty beat.”
“Two days on the bus,” I said.
“How you fixed for money?”
“I’m all right.”
“Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow, then. And Belen. Stay
out of here on your time off.”
“O.K.,” I said.
Nothing in Her Way — 77
“We’re not interested in winning back your wages.
And if you get a hot streak, get it somewhere else.”
I thanked him and walked back to the bus station.
After calling half a dozen rooming houses I finally found
a place to stay and walked across town carrying the
bags. It was a shabby, two-story mansion a little down
on its luck. I paid a week’s rent, and after the landlady
had brought me up to date on all the other tenants I
managed to get away from her long enough to locate
the bathroom. I took a shower and scraped off three
days’ growth of beard. The cut on my face where Bolton
had hit me had healed pretty well, and most of the
puffiness was gone from my hand.
It was a stage set for a boardinghouse room. I sat
down on the slab of a bed and lit a cigarette and stared
out the window. It was night now, but I could see snow
eddying silently in the darkness beyond the glass and
farther away the reflected neon bonfire of Virginia
Street. I tried to remember if I’d eaten anything lately,
but it didn’t seem to make much difference. Nothing
did. After a while I got into pajamas and turned out the
light.
I’d been riding too long and the bed rocked the same
way the bus had. I couldn’t go to sleep. I was empty
and washed out and beyond caring about anything, but
I couldn’t keep my eyes closed. They’d fly open and I’d
be thinking about things, but the crazy part of it was
that none of them seemed to make any difference. They
didn’t matter in the slightest. The police were looking
for me. I was practically broke. I’d never find Lachlan
now. Who cared? I was through with her at last, once
and for all, wasn’t I? After twenty-three years I’d got
the last of her out of my system and she could go to
hell, or Donnelly could use her for a clay pigeon, or she
could find somebody else to double-cross.
So I’d been afraid Charlie would pull a fast one on
her and take it all. I wanted to laugh, but there didn’t
seem to be any laughs in me either. I was going to
protect her from Charlie, because Charlie was a crook.
It was a shame about the laughs, because there might
never be another masterpiece like that. It was a classic.
Nobody would ever top it. Charlie, I suspect you of
Nothing in Her Way — 78
being dishonest, so unhand our little Nell. And tell her
to give you back your arm.
I’ll come by and pick you up at noon, dear, in my little
Cadillac. But don’t hold your breath.
I cursed and threw the blankets off and got up and
dressed. The snow was slackening a little as I walked
across town toward the lights. I remembered a little bar
on a side street off Virginia and went in and sat down
on a stool. A couple of shills nursed drinks at the
blackjack table, the girl at the roulette wheel dribbled
chips through her fingers, and a half-dozen people were
shooting craps. Down at the other end of the bar four
divorcees in slacks and fur coats were chattering over
their drinks.
The barman remembered me, and nodded as he
mopped the bar. “Haven’t seen you in a long time.”
“I’ve been away,” I said.
He studied me. “Let’s see. Bourbon, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “With plain water.” I always drank
Scotch, but it wasn’t worth the effort.
He peered down the bar toward the covey of quail
and shook his head. He hated women in bars. “One
Planter’s Punch, one Golden Fizz, one Orange Blossom,
and one Alexander. And you know what?”
“No,” I said. I knew what, because I’d heard it before,
but maybe I’d get my drink sooner if I went along with
him.
“Every damn one of ‘em will pay for her own drink.
With a fifty-dollar bill.”
“It’s tough,” I said. I sat for a long time with the drink
and then had another, but they seemed to have no
effect on me at all. If anything, I felt worse. I got up and
walked over to the table to watch the crapshooters.
They were mostly women, making two or three passes
in a row and betting fifty cents each time as if they
were playing a slot machine. I waited until they came
around to me, put five dollars on the line, and picked up
the dice.
I had no business in a crap game now, and I knew it. I
had about fifty dollars to eat on until payday, and I
Nothing in Her Way — 79
hadn’t even started to work yet. If you have to win,
don’t gamble. That’s not a sermon; it’s a brutal piece of
truth. It doesn’t mean you’re going to regret it if you
lose; it simply means you probably will lose. Gamblers
have another way of saying it, which implies the
psychological basis: A scared buck never wins. They
call luck a lady, and gamblers found out a long time ago
that scared indecision gets you about as far with one as
with the other.
I tried to tell myself now to stay out of it because I
needed the money if I was going to eat. The only
trouble was that I didn’t care whether I ate or not—or
very much about anything else that I could think of. I
shook the dice and threw.
They came up aces. Craps.
I put down another five dollars and bounced the dice
against the end of the table. It was eleven this time. I
let the ten lie on the line and rolled. I read four. Three
rolls later two deuces came up and I shot the twenty.
The stickman changed dice on me and I rolled two
sevens in a row. I had eighty dollars on the line, got six
for a point, and made it on the next throw. I was
warming up, but when the stickman shoved them back
he shook his head.
“You’ll have to pull down sixty,” he said. “Hundreddollar
limit.”
I handed the chips over. “Cash me in. I’ll come back
and match pennies with you some other time.”
You can feel it when it’s like that. I don’t know how to
explain it except that there’s an uncanny certainty
about the whole thing. You couldn’t lose if you tried. I
felt that way now as I walked up the street through the
snow, but it meant nothing at all. It just didn’t matter.
This was a gambling house instead of a bar, and there
was a table with a limit you could work with. When the
dice came around to me I dropped forty dollars on two
straight craps and then started throwing passes. I
banged into the limit on the sixth one, pulled part of it
down, and then threw two more before I lost the dice.
When they came around again I racked up five passes,
bumping the limit every time, before I fell off.
Nothing in Her Way — 80
It was crazy. It was the wildest, most erratic streak of
luck I’d ever run into in my life. They changed the dice
on me until they got tired of it. I made wild bets—the
field, on elevens, hard-way sixes and eights, and
nothing made any difference. I won just the same. The
crowd started to gather. I cashed in, went outside, took
a cab to shake them, and moved on to another place.
I lost a thousand dollars there before I made a point;
then I got hot and ran out a string of nine consecutive
passes. My clothes, even the coat pockets, were full of
money because I kept cashing in and moving around.
The crowds made me angry. The word had spread now,
and there was no getting away from them. Sometime
around midnight I hit a run of bad luck and started
losing heavily. I cut down the bets and zigzagged up
and down for hours before it started running my way
again. And it didn’t seem to matter whether I was
winning or losing. I felt just the same. It was just
something I was doing to pass the time because I
couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t remember when I’d slept.
It must have been around five in the morning. I was
no longer conscious of anything but a blur of faces
ringing the deep-walled pit of the dice table and of the
dice themselves rolling out, bouncing, and spinning,
and then being raked back. My eyes hurt. There was a
tense quiet except for the stickman singing the point. I
was trying to make a nine, and had five hundred dollars
riding on it. Every number on the dice except nine and
seven rolled up, over and over, until my arm grew
numb. I wanted to take the dice and throw them
against the wall or into the sea of blurred, white faces
staring at me. I had just picked them up and
straightened a little to ease the kink in my back when I
saw her. Her face swam slowly into focus, straight
across the table from me. I was going crazy. She
couldn’t possibly be here.
I shook the dice and threw them. They bounced, and
one caromed off another cushion and came to rest six
up. The other was spinning on one corner. I watched it.
It stopped. It was the three.
I pushed in the chips. Everybody wanted to talk at
once, and they all wanted to talk to me. I stuffed the
Nothing in Her Way — 81
money in my pockets and shoved impatiently through
the crowd. I wanted to get outside in the air and just
walk through the snow.
“Mike, please!” She had hold of my arm. I turned. I
wasn’t going crazy. The collar of the gray coat was
turned up against her cheek and her eyes were very big
and pleading. And they were very tired. She must have
been driving all the time I was riding the bus.
“I’ve got to talk to you,” she said.
“Sure,” I said. “Pick me up sometime. Bring your
knife.”
I turned away. She held onto my arm. “Mike, will you
listen?” she pleaded desperately.
People were beginning to stare at us. And you never
knew what she might do next. She was just as likely as
not to start screaming and accuse me of wife-beating or
poisoning her mother.
“Come on,” I said, “I’ll buy you a drink. You can tell
me your little story, and then you can beat it. Or I will.”
We went over to the bar, but people were still
following me. She looked helplessly around at the sea
of faces and begged, “Mike, can’t we get out of here?
What I’ve got to tell you is very important.”
“All right,” I said. Anything to get it over with. I’d had
enough for one lifetime. I could get used to being dead
if she’d just quit digging up the corpse.
We went out into the street. The snow had stopped,
and beyond the glare of neon you could see stars like a
million pin points of frost. A car went past with its tire
chains slapping, and snow creaked under my shoes.
She slowed. “The car is right here.”
We got in. There was just enough reflection from the
neon signs for me to see her face very faintly. It was as
lovely as ever, but it was awfully tired.
“All right, get with it,” I said. “It’s cold out here.”
“Couldn’t you do anything about that?” she asked
quietly.
“No,” I said. “Let’s have the sob story.”
Nothing in Her Way — 82
“You still think I double-crossed everybody, don’t
you?”
“Why, of course not,” I said. “How could I ever think
a thing like that?”
“Mike, darling,” she said almost tearfully, “haven’t
you guessed yet what actually happened?”
“Sure. Everything just went black. And you only did it
because you loved us.”
“Mike! Please stop it. And listen to me. Don’t you see
yet? They double-crossed us. It was supposed to be
Saturday.”
“What?” I swung around and caught her by the arm.
“No. Don’t give me that. It was Friday. And you didn’t
come, so if it hadn’t been for that freight train—”
“Mike, it was Saturday. Remember? Nine days after
the beginning date of the option, which was Thursday.”
She was right. They’d moved it up a day, knowing
that if she didn’t come by to pick me up they could
ditch us both. I wanted to shout. I wanted to grab her
and just yell. I wanted to—crawl under something out
of sight, I thought.
“I’m sorry, Cathy,” I said. “I’m sorry as hell.”
“It’s all right, Mike. You don’t have to apologize.” She
smiled a little. “But it’s still cold in here.”
We found that together we could do something about
it. Those two awful days ganged up on me all at once
and I held her very tightly, trying not to think about it.
After a while she stirred a little and we got back to
what had happened.
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