Dark Passage: A Library of America eBook Classic by David Goodis

Author:David Goodis [Goodis, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Noir, Crime, Mystery & Detective, Hard-Boiled
ISBN: 9781598534467
Google: 71zKBwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Library of America
Published: 2012-03-28T11:00:00+00:00

13

PARRY RAISED his arms to indicate that he did not understand.

She said, “It’ll be all right. You stay in the bedroom. He won’t know you’re here.”

Parry gestured toward the bedroom, then raised his arms again.

She said, “He won’t look in the bedroom.”

Parry lowered his head and shook it slowly.

“Please don’t worry about it,” she said. He looked up. She was smiling at him.

He shrugged.

She went back in the kitchen. When she was finished with the dishes she came in and straightened the living room. As she emptied an ash tray she said, “I know you think it’s a mistake, letting him come here. But it can’t be any other way. I’ve known him for so long, I’ve been seeing so much of him lately, it’s got to a point where I have a definite hold on him. I wish it wasn’t that way. But as long as it is that way, I’ve got to go along with it. I know what happens to him when I refuse to see him. I wish I knew some way to break it without ripping him apart. But there doesn’t seem to be any way to break it. All I can do is wait for it to die out.”

She emptied another ash tray. She looked at him and saw that he was looking at her.

She said, “It’s not physical. It never was. It never will be. It can’t be. What he likes about me is the things I say, and the things he thinks I think about, the feelings he thinks I have. All he wants to do is be with me and talk to me and look at me and get a picture of the things I’m thinking. Even when I have nothing to say he just likes to be there with me. I don’t know why I started it. I guess perhaps I started it because I felt sorry for him. He had no one to really be with.”

All the ash trays were now emptied into one big tray. She took the tray into the kitchen. Then she came out, she said, “I guess that’s what it was. I was sorry for him. I still feel sorry for him. But I can’t let it go on much further. Have you ever seen him?”

Parry shook his head.

“He’s a good-looking man,” she said. “He’s thirty-nine now, but he looks older. You can’t see the grey in his hair because he’s blond, but you can see the lines in his face. He has mild blue eyes, and that’s the way all of him is, very mild, even though he’s built heavy. And he’s not very tall. He’s a draftsman and he works at a shipyard. He likes expensive clothes. He likes to spend money. He and Madge had a baby but it died when it was less than a year old. Did she ever tell you about that?”

He nodded.

“Did she ever tell you about him?”

He nodded.

“I imagine she must have painted him badly. She did that when she spoke to me about him.

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