You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up by Richard Hallas

Author:Richard Hallas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2013-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 25

WAY past midnight I was on my way home from the chute concession, crossing Shore Front Boulevard, when I saw the swimming girl again. She was all dressed this time. She looked different but I knew her. I could always remember her face. She was sitting in a Packard roadster, not saying anything; just sitting there watching me. I went over.

“Hello,” I said. “Been swimming lately?”

She didn’t pay any attention to that. She said: “I’ve been looking for you.”

“I was looking for you, too, the other night,” I said. “Where did you go?”

“Home,” she said.

“Fine,” I said. “I went and got you some clothes, and when I got back you’d blown. How’d you get home?”

She didn’t say anything. So I said: “You went home in my suit?”

“I’ve been trying to find you to give it back to you. I couldn’t find where you lived.”

“Oh, I moved,” I said.

I kept looking at her. She just sat in the car, looking straight ahead. She had clothes on, but she looked just the same—as if they didn’t mean anything. She had on a blue beret and a white roll-neck sweater and flannel trousers. But she didn’t look like the chippies who go up and down the pier wearing those things and showing everything they’ve got. She looked like they didn’t mean anything any more than when she had no clothes on at all.

She just sat there, not saying anything.

“It doesn’t matter about the suit,” I said. “It was just an old one.”

She took a breath, then she said: “I wanted to return it. It’s home now, if you want to come and get it.”

I got in beside her, and she turned the car round.

“Where do you live?” I asked her.

She pointed down the shore.

“Not out there?” I asked, and I pointed out to the ocean.

She didn’t answer. She just went on driving, looking steady at the road. I could see her face by the dash-light. She looked sort of frightened, and I knew she knew I was looking at her.

We went way down the shore and then started climbing up over Palos Verdes. She turned on a dark side road and then into a drive and stopped the engine. It was quiet then, and in the dark I could smell the place, the wet grass and dampness underneath eucalyptus trees.

“Funny, how when you live by the sea, you can smell green stuff so much clearer,” I said.

She looked at me almost for the first time and smiled.

“You know that, too?”

“Sure. I know a lot of things,” I said.

She didn’t answer then, but snapped off the headlights and started down a path. I followed her. Now the head-lights were gone it was darker still, but I could hear her heels and I followed the sound.

I didn’t know how to jolly along a girl like this, so I figured I’d better say nothing.

We went through an archway, and round a long path and then over a flagged walk up onto a big verandah.

“Wait here,” she said, and went in.

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