The grifters by Jim Thompson

Author:Jim Thompson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9789197688116
Publisher: Kaliber
Published: 2007-12-15T04:31:32.164000+00:00

13

She came out of the bathroom, modestly wearing her underthings now; still flushed and warm and glowing. Primly protective, she drew up the sheet and tucked it over his chest. "I must take care of you," she said. "Now, more than ever, you are most important to me."

Roy grinned at her lazily. She was sweet, a lot of woman, he thought. And about the most honest one he'd ever met. If she hadn't told him that she wasn't virginal . . .

"You are all right, Roy? You do not hurt any place?"

"I never felt better in my life," he laughed. "Not that I haven't been feeling okay."

"That is good. It would be terrible if I had given you hurt."

He repeated that he was feeling fine; she was just what he'd needed. She said seriously that she also had needed him, and he laughed again, winking at her.

"I believe you, honey. How long has it been, anyway, or shouldn't I ask?"

"How long?" She frowned a little, her head tilted in puzzlement. Then, "Oh," she said. "Well, it—it was—"

"Never mind," he said quickly. "Forget it."

"It was there." She extended the tattooed arm. "There also I was made sterile."

"There?" he frowned. "I don't ... What's that, anyway?"

She explained absently, her smile fixing; the tiltedup eyes looking at him and through him toward something far, beyond. Seemingly, she was speaking of the abstract, a dull and tenuous theorem scarcely worthy of recital. Seemingly, she was reading from a fairy tale, a thing so filled with terrors that they clung stagnating to one another; never advancing the plot or theme, physically motionless, merely horror piled upon horror until they sagged slowly downward, drawing the listener with them.

"Yes, yes, that is right." She smiled at him as though at a precocious child. "Yes, I was very young, seven or eight, I think. That was the reason, you see: to discover the earliest possible age at which a female might conceive. It can be very early in life, as young as five, I think. But an average minimum age was being sought. With my mother and grandmother, it was the other way; I mean, how old could the female be. My grandmother died shortly after the beginning of the experiment, but my mother . . ."

Roy wanted to vomit. He wanted to shake her, to beat her. Standing apart from himself, as she was standing from herself, he was furious with her. Subjectively, his thoughts were not a too-distant parallel of the current popular philosophizing. The things you heard and read and saw everywhere. The pious mourning of sin; the joyous absolution of the sinners; the uncomfortable frowns and glances-askance at those who recalled their misdeeds. After all, the one-time friends, poor fellows, were now our friends and it was bad taste to show gas-stoves on television. After all, you couldn't condemn a people, could you? And what if they had done exactly that themselves? Should you make the same regrettable error? After all, they hated the

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