Читать книгу Kiss Me Hard - Thomas B. Dewey - Страница 5

You know these Midwest towns: the long, wide main street—eight or ten blocks of stores—with the railroad cutting across it at one end and maybe a park with a bandstand at the other; with tree-lined streets stretching away on both sides, past high, old-fashioned frame houses; and all around, the flat, green-brown farmlands: and somewhere, between a couple of stores, a tavern, serving light wines and beer and maybe hard liquor too, depending on the local customs and the latest election.

A tavern like this might have, for entertainment, a television set, a jukebox and a handful of local wits. Hardly ever would it have a live musician, a piano player. A really good, self-respecting piano player has it tough enough in a city, with a saloon in every block. And a guy running a small-town spot doesn’t make enough to pay half the union scale for a keyboard hack who can play “Beautiful Ohio” so it sounds like “Hearts and Flowers” and accompany the local quartet in “Tie Me to Your Apron Strings Again.” So you don’t find piano players in the small-town taverns.

But at one time, this particular tavern in this particular town in “Beautiful Ohio” did have a piano player and I was it. I’d been there a week. I’d done pretty well the first week—eight bucks in the kitty and the boss never let my beer glass get empty. I carried a small bottle of my own besides and with the beer, I got along all right, which is to say I would be in a deep, comfortable fog by one A.M., my normal condition.

The work was easy. The customers weren’t hard to please. I gave them straight stuff, cut very square, without riffs, runs or razzle-dazzle. Sometimes I felt guilty. But most of the time I just kept the beer going down and relaxed. It might have gone on for a long time, if it hadn’t been for this redhead…

She’d been in the joint every night for a week—a girl with red hair, a bold-faced girl with a ripe bosom pushing through the summer dress, with fine legs and well-turned ankles and her hips pleasantly rounded on the bar stool. I’d noticed her, the way you notice certain girls, but I’d only taken a look now and then and minded my own business. She was a local girl and I was a stranger, playing the piano in a tank-town tavern.

Sometimes she would be alone, stay for an hour or two, drinking beer, listening to the music, and sometimes she would be with a guy. It was always the same guy, a big bruiser with a thick neck, and hands like a gorilla’s, with stiff, black hair all over the backs of them. He never paid any attention to the piano and he didn’t pay much attention to the girl. You could see they were together and that he was the guy in her life, but they didn’t have much to say to each other. He had a few cronies he hung around with and sometimes he wouldn’t speak to the girl until it was time to go home. Even then it might be only a nod or a shake of the head.

So I didn’t stick my nose in. I had this good thing and I wanted to keep it. Once in a while I would glance up and the girl would be staring at me, listening to the music. I would throw her a professional smile and then get my eyes back on the keyboard—not that I had to look at it, but I felt safer that way.

Then, this particular night, the girl decided she didn’t want it like that. She had come in early and sat at the bar for a while. Later she moved to a table twelve inches from the treble end of the keyboard. It was too early for a crowd and besides the bartender and me there were only the redhead and one skinny, bookkeeperish type character, who sat at the far end of the bar, nursing a short beer.

The girl sat alone at the table, drinking beer, and the scent of her perfume came over strong and sharp. I’d slept most of the day and hadn’t had a chance to drink much yet, so I was a little edgy. I kept my eyes off her. It was bad public relations, but it was easier on my nerves. After a while she leaned forward and asked for a match, though there was a packet stuck in the ash tray on her table. When I reached across to hold the light for her, she held my hand steady with both of hers and as she dragged in on the cigarette her eyes went over my face slowly.

“How do you like our town?” she asked through a smoke ring.

“O.K.,” I said and went back to the job.

She raised her voice.

“What’s your name?”

“Chris,” I said. “Chris Cross.”

She laughed. Naturally. Funny thing is, that’s my name. Christopher Cross. My old man had a hell of a sense of humor.

The redhead leaned forward.

“You don’t look like a piano player,” she said. “You look more like a stevedore.”

“That’s what they told me at the conservatory.”

The bartender came over to replace an empty glass and he left two instead of one. When I lifted my eyebrows, he nodded toward the girl. I raised my glass in thanks and she smiled and moved onto the bench with me. It was a small bench and her left thigh pressed hard against my right one.

“You want to play too?” I asked.

“Not on the piano.”

Right along in there I began to get scared. In spite of the legends and all the books about it, there aren’t many women who go after you like that, straight and direct, and when it happens, if you’re leery of women anyway, it scares you off.

The bartender went to the back room and the girl pressed closer and spoke into my ear.

“My name’s Hazel,” she said.

Since she was a customer and a native, I couldn’t very well spit in her face. I had to brush her off, but cool and slow, so it wouldn’t make trouble.

“I’m a little shy,” I said. “Also, I have to work.”

“You’ll get off sometime, won’t you?”

“Sure. Midnight.”

When the bartender came back, she got off the piano bench and went back to her table. Some more customers came in and after a while she got up to leave. The big guy with the hairy hands hadn’t shown up. On her way out, she paused long enough to stick something in the kitty—a beer glass on top of the old upright. What she put in was a couple of bills wrapped around a piece of white paper. She flashed a deadpan at me and went out.

Between numbers I snaked the piece of paper out of the kitty and looked at it. She’d written:

“615 East Chestnut Street. Hazel.”

I put it in my pocket, took a short break and went back to the piano. It was a slow night and I fooled around for a while with some arrangements I’d been working on for a dozen years. But they didn’t go so well. I had stopped being serious about music a long time ago and a lot of it I had forgotten. What I tried only sounded sloppy, and nobody in the joint cared anyway. I went into the straight, easy stuff and tried to relax.

I couldn’t get Hazel off my mind. I couldn’t forget the rich, red hair, the breasts pushing through the summer dress, the generous hips, the good legs. I couldn’t forget the scent of her when she leaned close to me on the piano bench. I said I’m leery of women. But I’m not made of wood. I’m not immune.

Take it easy, I kept telling myself. She’s a local girl. She’s married. Let her play with somebody else.

By the time we closed for the night I had pretty well talked myself out of it. I hung around for a while and helped the bartender put the tavern in order for the next day. Then he locked up and I walked up the street a couple of blocks to the run-down hotel I was living in.

It was after one o’clock and the town had folded up for the night. The stores and houses were dark and there was nobody on the streets. The hotel was a four-story brick building on a corner. There were two entrances, one on the main street and another around the corner on the side street, the one I used because it depressed me to go through the lobby, past the ancient, feeble night clerk who always went to sleep standing up.

When I rounded the corner I saw a cream-colored Ford convertible parked at the curb opposite the small side entrance with the yellow light bulb over the door. I didn’t pay much attention at first, because the car lights were out and I couldn’t see that there was anybody sitting in it. I headed for the door and had turned into it when the car lights blinked a couple of times. I glanced around and saw somebody behind the wheel. The lights blinked again and I walked slowly to the car.

I guess I really knew all the time who it would be.

The top of the convertible was down and I leaned on the door and looked across the seat at her.

“Surprise,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” I said. “I got your invitation, but I couldn’t make it.”

Earlier, in the tavern, she had worn her hair up, very fancy and neat, with a high pile of it across the top. But now she had let it down and it was spread out around her face and over the back of the seat behind her head. The scent of her perfume was stronger than ever.

I was carrying a perfect load. I felt sure of myself and untouchable. At this point, I would be hard to scare. It was not the same now as it had been in the joint when she’d sat beside me at the keyboard.

Her eyes were looking at me through the dark, out of her beautiful pink and white face.

“Is there something about me you don’t like?” she said softly.

“Two things,” I said.

I could see her jump slightly.

“What?” she said.

“The ring you’re wearing,” I said, “and that big bastard I’ve seen you with.”

She looked away from me. Her left arm was resting on the wheel and her fingers played with the spokes in it. Her perfume was filling the whole street—or maybe it was just filling me.

“That ‘big bastard,’” she said, “is my husband. Let’s say—he doesn’t understand me.”

“And you, what do you understand?”

“Let’s say I’m a music lover.”

I looked up and down the street.

“Isn’t it risky for you to sit here talking to me, this time of the night?” I said. “In a little town like this?”

She shrugged.

“It would be safer if you’d get in and we’d go for a ride,” she said.

I figured I’d done my duty. I’d played hard to get as long as any man could be expected to. I twisted the handle of the door, opened it and slid in beside her. She straightened behind the wheel.

“You want to drive?” she said.

“Better not,” I said. “I’m loaded.”

She looked at me quickly.

“How loaded?”

“Just enough,” I said, “which is too much to drive.”

I knew I would need another drink before long, but I had some left in the bottle in my pocket. It wouldn’t be safe for me to drive, but I was all right for everything else, for a couple of hours anyway.

She got the car started and pulled away from the curb, heading for the main street. She turned left into it and drove slowly toward the north end of town. We crossed a bridge over a small creek and then we were in the country, with flat fields and occasional farm buildings on both sides of the road. She drove faster now and in the rushing night air the odor of her perfume was mingled with the smell of clover and alfalfa in the fields along the road.

You can’t talk much in an open convertible and I didn’t have much to say anyway. It was her party. So I leaned back in the seat and let the wind beat me in the face and watched her thick, red hair blowing as we rode.

After about ten minutes she slowed suddenly and turned off the road into a narrow lane that wound upward among trees. The trees grew so close to the road they brushed the car as we passed. The air smelled damp, as if we were near a river or as if the ground were wet. The ruts of the lane were deep and I held onto the door handle as we lurched up the low hill.

The car bumped heavily as Hazel turned into a clearing, drifted to a stop and turned off the lights. There was a bright moon and looking across the seat, I could see her clearly—her beautiful face, surrounded by that hair and the rich, ripe swelling of her breasts. She was truly a gorgeous pile of woman.

We sat there for a while, neither of us speaking. The night was quiet. The white moonlight filled the small clearing. I took a deep breath and sprawled in the seat.

“Los Angeles was never like this,” I said.

“That’s where you’re from?” Hazel asked.

“Some time back.”

“What made you stop in a hick town like this?”

“I got hungry,” I said. “Even a lush gets hungry once in a while. Also thirsty.”

Hazel’s fingers were worrying at the steering wheel again. Her eyes stared off somewhere. After a while she clenched her right fist and began to pound it on the wheel, steadily in a light, thudding pattern.

“At least you got away,” she said.

“No,” I said. “You never get away.”

“You must have got away from something—or somebody—whatever it was eating on you.”

“It was myself eating on me.”

I felt her shudder.

“Did we come out here to be philosophers?” I said.

I turned in the seat and looked at her face. She let me grab and hold her eyes. We stared at each other.

“No,” she whispered.

Her face moved toward mine. I reached for her and she came against me. Our lips met and hers were quivering. She made a low sound in her throat.

I ran out of breath and pulled away. I drew her across my lap and held her in the crook of my arm. She lay with her head back, her eyes closed, her thick hair tumbled against the door of the car.

“Chris—” she said. “Take me away from here—from this damn town.”

“Sure,” I mumbled. “Anything you say.”

My mouth was on hers, my lips searching. She held my face in her hands, staring at me.

“I mean it, Chris,” she said. “I’ve got to get away. It’s been in the cards a long time, but I never had the nerve, not by myself. I need help.”

“O.K.,” I said, trying to free my face, but she held it more tightly.

“I’ve got a little money—this car. We could start out and keep going. They’d never find us. If you’ll help me get away, Chris, there won’t be any strings. You can come and go as you please—” She had lifted her head and her eyes were boring into mine. My brain was foggy and I wanted to get on with what we had started. I kept thinking, what a thing to hold out for. If you want to leave, why don’t you take your car and go?

I guess she read my mind.

“I’ve been alone too long, Chris,” she was saying. “I’m afraid of the lonesomeness. If I went away by myself, I’d be more alone than ever. I can’t stand that. Not at first. I’ve got to have somebody help me over the hump.”

I tried to pull myself together.

“You know how it feels to be on the run?” I said.

“I don’t care. It can’t be any worse than this—living with a pig, in a dead, narrow-minded town where nobody ever has a new idea—it’s like living in a closet.”

I looked down at her face, straining toward mine, at her pleading eyes, wide and clear now as they watched mine, and partly because she was getting under my skin, but also because I wanted her to stop talking, I said, “Sure, honey. We’ll go.”

“Tonight, Chris? You mean it? We’ll go away?”

“Yeah, tonight. After—” She sighed and her eyes closed again.

“All right. Yes. After—” She relaxed into the crook of my arm and the fever started in me. She turned and buried her face in my arm. I felt her tremble slightly and then she looked up at me again. We kissed a long, hard, sweet kiss that drove through me, making a music you could never hear, only feel. But you knew it was there. You both knew.

She spoke muffledly into my arm. “…feel shut in…” she said.

She twisted her body and groped behind her for the door handle. I reached across and opened it. She pulled herself off my lap and climbed onto the ground. She turned from the car and ran across the clearing toward a clump of low trees, her dress fluttering and billowing behind her.

She stopped among the trees. There was grass, deep and cool. She sank down into it, gazing up at me. She shrugged free of the dress and held out her arms. I knelt beside her. Her hands touched my neck, moved along my back. I felt the music: the graceful, heady figures of Mozart, the plaintive, singing melody of Tchaikovsky, the surge of Beethoven, and then, drowning out all the rest, an insistent, throbbing beat—half jungle, half civilized…