Universe Twister - Keith Laumer [98]
"He is your husband, isn't he?"
"You could call him that. We never had no magic words said over us, or even a crummy civil ceremony at the county seat, but you know how it is. It might remind somebody to put us on the tax rolls, he says, the bum, but if you ask me—"
"Almost finished?" O'Leary squeaked, screwing his eyes shut against a rising temptation to open them.
"Uh-huh. All done but my—"
"Please—I need my sleep if I'm going to cover all that ground tomorrow!"
"Where's the towel?"
"On the foot of the bed."
Soft sounds of feminine breathing, of brisk friction between coarse cloth and firm feminine flesh, the pad of bare feminine feet—
"Move over," a soft feminine voice breathed in his ear.
"What?" Lafayette sat bolt upright. "Good Lord, Swinehild, you can't sleep here!"
"You're telling me I can't sleep in my own bed?" she demanded indignantly. "You expect me to bed down in the goat pen?"
"No—of course not—but . . ."
"Look, Lafe, it's share and share alike, or you can go sleep on the kitchen table, silver piece or no silver piece." He felt her warm, smooth body slide in next to him, lean across him to blow out the candle.
"That's not the point," Lafayette said weakly. "The point is . . ."
"Yeah?"
"Well, I can't seem to remember the point right now. All I know is that this is a very chancy situation, with your hubby snoring downstairs and only one way out of here."
"Speaking of snoring," Swinehild said suddenly. "I haven't heard a sound for the last five minutes—"
With a crash of splintering wood, the door burst open. By the light of an oil lantern held high, Lafayette saw the enraged visage of Hulk, rendered no less fierce by a well-blacked eye and a lump the size of a pullet egg swelling above his ear.
"Aha!" he yelled. "Right under my roof, you Jezebel!"
"Your roof!" Swinehild yelled back, as O'Leary recoiled against the wall. "My old man left the dump to me, as I remember, and out of the goodness of my heart I took you in off the streets after the monkey ran away with your grind-organ or whatever that hard-luck story you gave me was!"
"I knew the second I set eyes on this slicked-up fancy-dancer, you and him had something cooking!" Hulk countered, aiming a finger like a horse pistol at O'Leary. He jammed the lantern on a hook by the door, pushed his sleeves up past biceps like summer squashes, and dived across the bed. Lafayette, with a desperate lunge, tore free of the confining coverlet and slipped down between the mattress and the wall. The impact as Hulk's head met the plaster was reminiscent of that produced by an enraged toro charging the barrera. The big man rebounded and slid to the floor like a two-hundred-pound bag of canned goods.
"Say, you've got quite a punch, Lafe," Swinehild said admiringly from somewhere above Lafayette. "He had it coming to him, the big side of beef!"
Lafayette, his arms and legs entangled in apparently endless swathes of blanket, fought his way clear, emerged from under the bed, to meet Swinehild's eyes peering down at him.
"You're a funny guy," she said. "First you knock him cold with one sock, and then you hide under the bed."
"I was just looking around for my contact lenses," Lafayette said haughtily, rising. "But never mind. I only need them for close work like writing my will." He grabbed for his clothes, began pulling them on at top speed.
"I guess you got the right idea at that," Swinehild sighed, tossing a lock of palest blond hair back over a shapely shoulder. "When Hulk wakes up, he's not going to be in his best mood." She sorted through the disarranged bedding for her clothes, began donning them.
"That's all right, you don't need to see me off," Lafayette said hastily. "I know the way."
"See you of? Are you kidding, Jack? You think I'm going to hang around here after this? Let's get out of here before he comes to, roaring, and you have to belt him again."
"Well—I suppose it might be a good idea if you went and stayed with your mother until Hulk cools down a little, so that you can explain that it wasn't what it looked like."
"It wasn't?"