Sin Hellcat by Lawrence Block & Donald E Westlake (as Andrew Shaw)

Author:Lawrence Block & Donald E Westlake (as Andrew Shaw) [Block, Lawrence & Westlake, Donald E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

I’ve never been to Brazil before,” said the moppet.

“Golly,” I said.

“Harvey, I’m sorry,” said Jodi, of the furrowed brow.

“My name’s Everett,” said the urchin.

“Who asked you?” I asked him.

“Now, Harv,” said Jodi. “It isn’t his fault.”

“Everett Whittington,” said the talking albatross.

“Hail and farewell, Everett Whittington.” I told him and, to Jodi: “Remember me to the gang.”

“Harvey, please!”

My hand on the doorknob, I made the biggest mistake of my entire life. I turned about, and I looked at them. I looked into the trusting innocent saucer eyes of the five-year-old kiddie kargo, and I looked into the pleading promising deep-well eyes of Jodi, and I was lost. Lost lost losterooneyed.

I undid my fingers from around the doorknob, and I sighed an all-is-lost-anyway sigh, and I went over to the nearest chair and I sat down. “All right,” I said. “All right.”

“You aren’t going to run out on me, Harvey, are you?”

“No, Jodi, I suppose I’m not.”

“You’re a funny man, mister.”

“Contraband,” I told him, “should be seen and not heard.”

That broke him up. He thought that was the funniest thing since the Three Stooges. He slapped his little knee and whooped in his little falsetto and generally overacted all over the room.

“You know,” I said into the racket, “if I’d had a child five years ago, he’d be just about your age now. And that’s the strongest argument for celibacy I’ve ever heard of.”

But I was lying. There was an even stronger argument, had he but known it. And the argument’s name was Helen.

Helen. I married her, if you recall. I recall, worse luck.

Bermuda bound we were, on one of those Technicolor cruise ships, with a crew entirely composed of gigolos, and passengers from Central Casting. The Captain was a humdrum middle-aged fag, than which there is nothing sadder, and the third night out I saw Charon pass us, smirking up his sleeve.

But I wanted to tell you about the first night out, though I hardly know why. Some masochistic desire within me for public humiliation, I suppose. Herewith, therefore, the tale of my virgin bride and I upon our wedding night, heading southward through the glistening seas o’er the turning orb toward the beauteous pearl of the Atlantic, Bermuda, tourist trap of the British Commonwealth, where wealth is common and so are the British. Very common. In more ways than one.

But I digress. Perhaps I don’t really want to tell you about my wedding night. Nevertheless, I’ve promised, and so I’ll do it. I really will.

That day, our wedding day, had been hectic from dawn to dusk, with split-second timing being the rule throughout. The wedding had started at precisely such-and-such—attended primarily by office friends from her office and my office—and had finished at exactly thus-and-so, in order for the reception to commence here and end there, so that the two of us could whisk away to the pier and board our vessel of delight specifically at then, milliseconds before the gangplank was taken away and the vessel of delight drifted

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