And Hope to Die

Charbonneau

Chapter 1

You find a safe little niche off in a dark corner, and you build a wall around it. You make sure there’s only one small opening. You can look out, but no one can get at you.

You think you’ve got it made.

You’re wrong. What you forget is that you have to step out of your secure, dark closet—to get cigarettes, to eat lunch, to pay the rent. You go outside, you step off a curb. You open a door and walk in on a great big poker game, without knowing what kind of a game it is or how high the stakes are. There are wild cards you never even heard of. The dealer is doing tricks with the bottom of the deck. But you’re in the game whether you want to be or not, and you have to play your hand.

That’s the way it happened to me. I’d moved out to Los Angeles after the ugly business with Harriet was over. I found a quiet corner. Memories fade, and wounds heal. I began to feel safe.

Then one day I went outside and stepped off a curb….

I was on my way back from lunch, strolling along Sunset Boulevard. Ahead of me a tall girl in a turquoise bathing suit was walking a gray poodle on a leash. No one paid her any attention. Along this section of the Strip, crowded with talent agencies and production offices, you have to do something unusual to get attention. Just wearing a smile and a Jantzen is not enough.

Bargain Mart, where I worked, was at the intersection of Sunset and Hill. I paused on the corner across the street from the office. The only things I was really aware of at that moment were the sun, heavy and hot on my bare head, and the sting of smog in my eyes. I started across.

A sound warned me—the squeal of tires leaning flat against the hot pavement. I jumped for the curb. A white Cadillac convertible shot past me around the corner. I caught a glimpse of a girl in a parked car opening her door as the convertible bore down on her. She ducked back inside. The bumper of the big car grabbed her door and ripped it wide open. The door crunched in the way only automobile metal does, so you feel it through to your spine. Metal screeched and brakes screamed back. The Cadillac jolted to a stop in the middle of the street, bobbing up and down on its soft springs.

The sudden silence was louder than the crash.

If I’d been thirty seconds sooner or thirty seconds later, I would have kept right on walking. I guess I’m like most people. I don’t want to get involved. But I was too close to this, and I stood there just a little too long, gaping. By then the girl was scrambling out of the parked car, her young face thinned out with anxiety, and a tall man in lemon-colored slacks was striding around the Cadillac’s tail fin, thick black eyebrows bunched in a scowl. He spoke angrily, raising his voice.

What kind of a stupid stunt was that?

The girl flinched. But I was just—

Why don’t you just throw yourself under the wheels? You damn near did!

I didn’t see—

Why don’t you look? Is that too much trouble?

The girl looked around helplessly. Other people were gathering, emerging from nearby offices and pausing along the sidewalk. The girl’s eyes met mine in mute appeal.

Something in the girl’s bewilderment, a sense of her fright, reached me. I dealt myself in.

Take it easy, I said, stepping toward them. There’s no point in getting—

What?

The tall man measured me with eyes as gray and cold and hard as slate. He did it slowly, letting me see the contempt.

Who asked you?

My collar started to get tight. His whole attitude angered me. The way I saw it, he had no business slamming around the corner that fast, so tight to the curb he wasn’t able to clear somebody’s car door. Now he was trying to take advantage of the fact that the girl was young, scared and kind of helpless. I didn’t like that.

I just volunteered, I said. And if you want to get tough, maybe the lady will ask me to pinch-hit for her. And if that isn’t enough, maybe her lawyer will want to ask me, in court, to tell just what I saw.

The tall man’s body tightened like a spring. He looked as if nothing would please him more than to break me up into kindling. All of a sudden I was conscious of his size, four or five inches taller than me and a good twenty pounds heavier, with wide shoulders and heavily muscled arms that stretched the knitted sleeves of his shirt taut.

Abruptly he relaxed. He wasn’t going to start anything. Most people get a little wary when you mention lawyers.

We don’t need any help, he said, trying to keep from sounding nasty.

"Maybe you don’t."

I was still hot, but I was already beginning to regret my Good Samaritan role. There wasn’t going to be any fight, but I had visions of calls and visits from insurance investigators, and of being dragged downtown for a wasted day in a stuffy courtroom, all over a minor accident that was none of my affair.

She didn’t look, he snapped.

Who hit who? I turned to the girl, who was looking relieved and grateful. Don’t argue with him, I told her. Leave that to the insurance companies. Just get his name and address and his license number, and the name of his insurance company. And give him the same information. That’s all you need.

She nodded.

Oh, for Christ’s sake! the tall man said disgustedly. Wait’ll I get my car out of the street.

He stalked off. The rear deck of the Cadillac dipped powerfully as the wheels dug in and the car shot down the incline of the street toward a parking space below.

The girl’s eyes were still worried, and her mouth tightened as she glanced at her car door. I walked over and looked at it. The car was one of those handsome little Mercedes-Benz two seaters with a hard top and a wonderful smell of leather from the seats. The way the door was folded back, there was no chance of closing it. She’d need a new door. And the pressure of the door had put a crimp in the metal along the fender. That was the extent of the damage. She couldn’t drive the car the way it was, but it could have been worse.

I said that. It could have been a lot worse. It’s one of those lame things you always find yourself saying about an accident. I smiled at the girl. It could have been you.

She tried to smile back. I suppose it could.

You all right?

Yes.

Just get that information like I told you. You want me to call anybody for you?

No. You’ve been a big help.

It’s no trouble. I work right here, on the corner.

Automatically she glanced at the windows of Bargain Mart. I saw Ann Hollister watching us with interest from one of the side windows.

It’s all right, the girl said. I can manage now.

I shrugged, gave her another smile and turned away. I felt relieved to be out of it. But I had got no farther than the sidewalk before I heard her footsteps hurrying after me.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, she said quickly. I didn’t thank you properly. Not at all.

I think that was the first moment I really saw her. I mean, really saw her. You don’t look closely at most people you meet. A salesman comes into the office, and all you remember about him afterwards is that he had a sweaty hand when you shook it, or a tie with spots of food on it, or a loud voice when he told a story. You don’t see people; you see features, you get impressions. You let them slide in and out of your life like cars going by on the freeway. You might pay a little more attention to the big garish ones or the expensive ones or the ones that go too fast or cut in front of you. Most of them you don’t even see as individuals.

The girl was a silver blonde, her hair cut short and curling close to her head in a way that seemed both casual and flawless. Her skin had a natural olive tone deepened into gold by the sun. Against the smooth skin her coral-colored lips were as vivid as a tropical flower. She was small, about five-two, with slender legs and no waist, and small neat breasts as sharply defined under her white blouse as the facets in cut crystal. She looked familiar, but girls like her always look familiar along the Strip. It was her size and the innocent, steady gaze of her blue eyes that had made her seem very young. Now I saw that she wasn’t that young, she was probably twenty-five or so. And all of a sudden she didn’t seem that innocent either. A thin thread of a smile lifted the corners of her coral mouth. I felt a tingling sensation in my skin, like after-shave lotion.

Thanks for pinch-hitting, she said, in a voice that was no longer young or uncertain or scared.

Forget it.

No—I won’t. She hesitated, but not from uncertainty. She knew what she was doing, and I knew, and I didn’t mind at all. I ought to have your name—just in case I need you. About the accident, I mean.

It’s Carl, I said. Carl Davenport. And you can reach me anytime here at the office.

She gave me her name, which was Jean Fleming, and her phone number, which she thought I ought to have just in case, and that was it. The tall man was walking up to us by then with a pencil and a scrap of paper, and he had his wallet out to show his license. Jean Fleming held that final gaze just a little longer than necessary.

I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t come along, she said. It’s an old line, but I went back to the office tingling.

I guess it showed.

Well! Ann Hollister said. Aren’t you Johnny-on-the-spot though.

I needed something for dessert, I said.

Something as rich as that?

She was peering out the window, and there was a little smile on her lips. I grinned, putting down her remark to the natural feline tendency of women. Not that Ann was catty by nature, or guilty of that unhappy resentment unattractive women sometimes show toward any woman markedly beautiful. She wasn’t. What’s more, she didn’t need to be. She was pretty in her own right, a trim brunette on the leggy side, with nice warm brown eyes and a full, expressive mouth that laughed easily. We’d been out together a number of times, and she was fun to be with. No electricity. Being with Ann was like being outside on a sunny day with a fresh breeze blowing. You felt good.

I wondered what it would be like with Jean Fleming.

When I sat down at my desk I did something instinctive, without any real reason. I guess it’s because I’m an accountant. I work with figures, and paying attention to details is my bread-and-butter. I took a slip of paper from the note pad on my desk and jotted down two license numbers—the one on the girl’s car and the one on the Cadillac. I remembered the numbers. I didn’t have to look out the window. I could have remembered them forever, that’s the way my mind works, but I didn’t want them taking up space. Once I write something down like that, if I don’t need to remember it, I forget it. Maybe I thought the girl would make a mistake on the man’s number, or lose it or something. I dropped the note into the center drawer of my desk.

Who’s he? Ann was still looking out the window.

Who?

Handsome.

He’s a jerk, I said. I don’t know who he is. His name is Jack something-or-other.

He looks familiar.

Maybe you dreamed about him.

It was kind of a nasty crack to make to a woman who is crowding thirty and unmarried. I guess I resented her being impressed by the wavy hair and the shoulders, though it shouldn’t have meant anything to me. I remembered the insolence in the man’s eyes and mouth, and the almost too-pretty face. He was the kind of man who would never lack for willing females.

She rode with it. I’d remember it if I had, she said.

You can dream better dreams, I said, faying to make up. A girl like you.

What kind of a girl is that?

It was a light question, maybe fishing a little, but something in her tone made me glance at her quickly. She still had her face turned toward the window, but I could see enough of it to guess that there were lines of strain around her mouth. Before I could be sure she swung toward me. She was smiling.

The best kind, I said. The kind they don’t hardly make no more.

No demand, she said with a laugh. Which reminds me, we’re going to drop that bird feeder, the universal one that all birds love.

No demand?

Not enough.

The hummingbird feeder is still going strong.

Don’t ask me to explain it.

That’s one of the things that makes the mail order business so much of a gamble. It’s unpredictable. Bargain Mart tried out scores of new items every year. Maybe one out