The Bitch Read Online Free Page B

edge on one leg and small waves lapped about its foot. It too was watching the horizon.
    I walked along the wall until I heard the sound of bubbling water from nearby. I jumped down into the grass and walked over through some palmetto and cabbage palms, in under the shade of a tremendous live oak. There was a small spring, the water whitely frothing beside a narrow plank that reached across the depression in green grass. I walked along the plank and knelt down, breathing the sulphur and tasted the cold spring water. It was really rank, but refreshingly cold.
    I knelt there for some time, not exactly cursing—just thinking what a bitch she was. Because she’d got me thinking her way, thinking how it would be with her—out there someplace with all that money. It would be possible to have all that money. Currency. Green leaves. So I had that to think about along with everything else, too—because she was a beautiful woman. Only you knew it would be good for a time, and then she would be beautiful to someone else, too.
    There was a rushing, pounding noise and I stood up. The crane I’d seen down by the water slanted past overhead, its shadow flushing dark across the ground. It vanished, veering tight up against thicker jungle growth and then straight into the jungle.
    It was a sick house, that house. I wondered how it would all turn out? She knew that if she got a divorce, she would never get alimony out of him. He could pad a lawyer well enough for that. She was taking a chance.
    I stepped off the plank and started over toward the car.
    I was taking a chance, too. Only it didn’t matter anymore with me. I had to have that money. I’d settled that long enough ago to know all the arguments against it. None of them weighed in heavy enough to count.
    “Sam’s smart,”
Janet said.
“Why can’t you be like him? Tate, Tate—I love you, but you’re not doing anything with yourself. I can’t stand knowing you’ll never get anywhere. I’m used to nice things—my family—and I married you and got nothing. Because you won’t try! We can’t keep on and on like this, don’t you see? Your brother really owns that agency, he’s made good. But you—where are you, Sam?”
    Yes, where was I? I loved her, I wanted her for keeps. I’d never succeeded at a damned thing. I’d never made it any damned way. I was a failure in her eyes. Sometimes she’d try to buck me up, and now that was great, wasn’t it? My life was a thick volume of glorious errors, of hurt to other people, of angry mistakes. With Sam always around to right things, to ease Janet’s pain. To smooth everything nicely.
    Didn’t he know I felt it all? Did he think I was blind to feeling?
    I opened the car door and stood there. It was a little past noon. The sun was white and hot. Out on the Gulf the mists seemed to sizzle in the glare. A flight of teal cut inland, high and sloping.
    Didn’t he know?
    I would go on and on with his damned agency, and what would we ever have? “Why can’t you be like Sam?” she would say, every other night out of the year, until she went away. Because sooner or later I’d pull some damned thing. And nobody understood that, either. They pile up and pile up on you, and you get down and down, until all you can do is fight, or quit. And if you quit, you’re dead, and I wasn’t ready for that yet, either.
    I put my forehead on the window-ledge of the car door, laying it hard against the metal. The metal was hot, but it felt cold against my head. It was good. I pressed hard down, feeling the car give.
    I had to do it—there was no other way.
    Tonight….
    With those sons-of-bitches who thought it was sharp, who thought they were pulling something funny, who thought sharp and clear and cool—and wrong. Johnny Morrell. Al Gunnison. I could see them, like those pasteboard cut-outs, standing in movie-house lobbies, with their forty-fives and their belly-guns, and their slick hair, their sharp, cool, clean-cut, tight-lipped