Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [51]
“He hasn’t got any more money, and he’ll be in the hospital for quite a while,” he told her. “So you better go back where you came from.”
“You bastard,” she said. “I really hate you. You didn’t have to do that. You’re a boxer.”
“Well, you can stick around if you want,” he said. “But on your own money.”
He went back to Mona. She had done a strange thing the night before, after everything was all over and they were in bed. She had kissed him and said, “You’re really a killer, aren’t you.”
He said nothing. He felt odd. It had been so quick, so thoughtless, and so stupid. He was not paying much attention to Mona, or what she was doing.
“You’re a real man,” she murmured; “You’re what I want, I always knew it, I love you. I truly love you.” She pulled the covers back and said, “This is what you want me to do, isn’t it?” But it was no use. Even for this, Jack could not rouse himself, and Mona seemed, if anything, pleased. She stopped trying after a while, and lit a cigarette.
“I’m glad we’re rid of Sue,” she said. “That’s good. They been holding us back. Now we can do stuff. I always thought Denny was a dumb guy anyway, and I’m sick of that Sue. She’s so dumb. She had eyes for you. She told me what you did that night she came in here with you. I was so mad. I could have killed you for it. But I guess that’s when I found out I loved you. She was so mad when you lied to Denny. She hates him. I bet she’s glad you beat him up. He’s so silly sometimes. All he wants to do is drink and lay around. He’s got no ambitions at all. Let’s go to Hollywood or Las Vegas or something. I really want to get out of this dumb town. I always used to think San Francisco was such a groovy place. We came down here once when we were supposed to be in a cabin at Rio Nido and spent two days running around and I never saw anything like it, so when we took off we came here. But it’s so dumb after a while, don’t you think? I want to go to Hollywood. We could get an apartment. Not another crummy hotel room. A nice apartment in one of those big motels where they have a swimming pool and bars and everything, and I can go out and take sun-baths. San Francisco is so cold all the time. We could even buy a car and go racing around and go down to the beach and everything. Maybe we could go to Mexico. Do you want to go to Mexico?”
She poked him. “Do you?”
“Huh?”
“Want to go to Mexico. We could see a bullfight and everything.”
“Where do we get all this money?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Money. You can get money. You can go out and box some more, can’t you?”
She snuggled down next to him. “Oh, we can have such a great time.”
The next morning, after he had told Sue to leave, he settled down in the room with a bottle of whiskey and started drinking. He wanted to think. Mona was fussing around in the room, the radio on to a rock-and-roll station, and she began to bother him. He couldn’t get any thinking done. Finally he asked her to go out and leave him alone.
“Are you going to give me any money?”
He handed her a twenty.
She looked at it distastefully. “That’s not enough to do anything with.”
“Go to a movie.”
“I’m sick of movies. You’re drinking too much. When are we going to leave?”
“Go on, get the fuck out of here.”
“Don’t you swear at me.”
“Get out of here before I knock you on your ass.”
She stared at him murderously. “Don’t you talk to me like that!”
He took another drink, and continued to stare out the window.
“I hate you!” She stamped out and slammed the door. After a moment, Jack got up and turned off the radio, and then went back to staring out the window.
He drank all morning and all afternoon. The whiskey was not leading him anywhere. He kept drinking it just to keep from going backward. Everything seemed quite clear except the first step. He did not know what to do first. He was buried inside his skin, bones, and nerves, and he would have to get out of there if he was to understand his pain. If it was pain. He knew people suffered agony, and he wondered if what he felt was agony. It did not seem like the descriptions of agony. He wondered