Serenade - James M. Cain [81]
She didn't say anything, and then I felt she was crying. I went over there. "What's the matter?"
"Hoaney, Hoaney, you leave me now. You go. We say goodbye."
"Well--what's the big idea?"
"You no know who that was? Who sing? Just now?"
"No. Why?"
"That was you."
She turned away from me then, and began to shake from her sobs, and I knew I had been listening to one of my own phonograph records, put on the air after the main program was over. "...Well? What of it?"
But I must have sounded a little sick. She got up, snapped on the light, and began walking around the room. She was stark naked, the way she generally slept on hot nights, but she was no sculptor's model now. She looked like an old woman, with her shoulders slumped down, her feet sliding along in a flat-footed Indian walk, her eyes set dead ahead, like two marbles, and her hair hanging straight over her face. When the sobs died off a little, she pulled out a bureau drawer, got out a gray rebozo, and pulled that over her shoulders. Then she started shuffling around again. If she had had a donkey beside her, it would have been any hag, from Mexicali to Tapachula. Then she began to talk "...So. Now you go? Now we say adiós."
"What the hell are you talking about? You think I'm going to walk out on you now?"
"I kill these man, yes. For what he do to you, for what he do to me, I have to kill him. I know these thing at once, that night, when I hear of the inmigración, that I have to kill him. I ask you? No. Then what I do? Yes? What I do!"
"Listen, for Christ's sake--"
"What I do? You tell me, what I do?"
"Goddam if I know. Laughed at him, for one thing."
"I say goodbye. Yes, I come to you, say remember Juana, kiss you one time, adiós. Yes, I kill him, but then is goodbye. I know. I say so. You remember?"
"I don't know. Will you cut it out, and--"
"Then you come to boat. I am weak. I love you much. But what I do then? What I say?"
"Goodbye, I suppose. Is that all you know to say?"
"Yes. Once more I say goodbye. The capitán, he know too, he tell you go. You no go. You come. Once more, I love you much, I am glad...Now, once more. Three times, I tell you go. It is the end. I tell you, goodbye."
She didn't look at me. She was shooting it at me with her eyes staring straight again, and her feet carrying her back and forth with that sliding, shuffling walk. I opened my mouth two or three times to stall some more, but couldn't, looking at her. "Well, what are you going to do? Will you tell me that? Do you know?"
"Yes. You go. You give me money, not much, but little bit. Then I work, get little job, maybe kitchen muchacha, nobody know me, look like all other muchacha, I get job, easy. Then I go to priest, confess my pecado--"
"That's what I've been waiting for. I knew that was coming. Now let me tell you something. You confess that pecado, and right there is where you lose."
"I no lose. I give money to church, they no turn me in. Then I have peace. Then some time I go back to Mexico."
"And what about me?"
"You go. You sing. You sing for radio. I hear. I remember. You remember. Maybe. Remember little dumb muchacha--"
"Listen, little dumb muchacha, that's all swell, except for one thing. When we hooked up, we hooked up for good, and--"
"Why you talk so? It is the end! Can you no see these thing? It is the end! You no go, what then? They take me back. Me only, they never find. You, yes. They take me back, and what they do to me? In Mexico, maybe nothing, unless he was político. In New York, I know, you know. The soldados come, they put the pańuelo over the eyes, they take me to wall, they shoot. Why you do these things to me? You love me, yes. But