Courtney- Afterward, when he was spent, lying atop her, he looked into
her face and saw that she was not Courtney, and he was angry. He felt
that he had been tricked. She had cheated him. And so he started
hitting her, slamming his hard fists into her face, over and over until
He blinked at the blue sky, white sand, gray-black road. “Well,” he
said to the girl on the seat beside him, “I guess I will skip Reno.
They won’t stay in the right motel, anyway. I’ll just go right on in to
Frisco.”
The golden girl smiled.
“Right on in to Frisco,” Leland said. “They won’t expect me there. They
won’t be ready for anything. I can take care of them real easy. And
then we can be together. Can’t we? ”
“Yes,” she said, just as he wanted her to say.
“We’d be happy again, wouldn’t we?”
“Yes. ”
“You’d let me touch you again.”
“Yes, George.”
“Let me sleep with you again.”
“Yes. ”
“Live with me?”
“Yes. ”
“And people would stop being nasty to me. if “Yes.
“You don’t have to worry about me hurting you, Courtney,” he said.
“When you first left me, I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to kill you.
But not any more. We’re going to be together again, and I wouldn’t hurt
you for the world.”
Twenty Courtney answered the telephone on the first ring, and she was
even more exuberant than usual. “I’ve been waiting for your call,” she
said. “I’ve got some good news.”
Alex was ready for a piece of good news, especially if it was delivered
in that warm, throaty voice of hers. “What is it?”
“I got the job, Alex!”
“At the magazine?”
“Yes!” She laughed into the phone, and he could almost see her standing
there with her golden head thrown back and her taut throat exposed.
“Isn’t it wonderful?”
Her happiness almost made up for everything that had gone wrong in the
last few days. “You’re absolutely sure it’s what you wanted? ”
“It’s better than what I wanted.”
“So . . . You and Colin will be old San Franciscans in short
order-and I’ll have to take a month off just to catch up with you.”
“You know what the pay is?”
“Ten dollars a week?” he asked.
“Be serious.”
“Fifteen? ”
“Eighty-five hundred a year. To start.”
He whistled. “Not bad for your first really professional job.
But look, you aren’t the only one with good news.”
“Oh?” Doyle looked at Colin, who was squeezed into the telephone booth
with him, and he tried not to sound like a liar when he told the lie:
“We got into Reno a few minutes ago.” In fact, they had never gone to
Reno at all, but to Carson City. And they had arrived early this
morning, not minutes ago. They had slept all afternoon, right through
the supper hour, and had awakened at half past eight, little more than
an hour ago. “Neither one of us is sleepy.” This was true enough,
though he did not want to have to explain why neither one of them was
sleepy, since they were not supposed to have been dozing in a motel all
day. “It’s about two hundred and fifty miles to San Francisco, so
“You’re coming home tonight?” she asked.
“We thought we might as well “Look, if you’re sleepy-sleep.”
“We aren’t sleepy.”
“One day doesn’t matter,” she said. “Don’t get in a big rush to finish
the trip. If you fall asleep at the wheel-”
“You’ll lose a new Thunderbird but gain valuable insurance money,” he
finished for her.
“That isn’t funny.”
“No, I guess it isn’t. I’m sorry.” He was irritable, he knew, only
because he did not like to lie to her. He felt cheap and somehow dirty,
even though he was only lying to save her unnecessary worry.
“You’re sure you feel up to it?”
“Yes, Courtney.”
“Then I’ll keep the bed warm.”
“That I might not feel up to.”
“You will,” she said. She laughed again, more softly this time.
“You always are up to it.”
“Bad joke,” he said. “Bad joke.”
“But one of those that just had to be made. So . . . What time can I