A Tan & Sandy Silence Read Online Free PDF Page A

usually brown and good at games, dresses youthfully and talks amusingly. But he drinks a little too much. And completely trained and conditioned, he is ever alert for his cues. If his lady unsnaps her purse and frowns down into it, he at once presents his cigarettes, and they are always her brand. If she has her own cigarettes, he can cross twenty feet in a twelfth of a second to snap the unwavering flame to life, properly and conveniently positioned for her. It takes but the smallest sidelong look of query to send him in search of an ashtray to place close to her elbow. If at sundown she raises her elegant shoulders a half inch, he trots into the house or onto the boat or up to the suite, to bring back her wrap. He knows just how to apply her suntan oil, knows which of her dresses have to be zipped up and snapped for her. He can draw her bath to the precise depth and temperature which please her. He can give her an acceptable massage, brew a decent pot of coffee, take her phone messages accurately, keep her personal checkbook in balance, and remind her when to take her medications. Her litany is: Thank you, dearest. How nice, darling. You are so thoughtful, sweetheart
    It does not happen quickly, of course. It is an easy life. Other choices, once so numerous, disappear. Time is the random wind that blows down the long corridor, slamming all the doors.
    And finally, of course, it comes down to a very simple equation. Life is endurable when she is contented and difficult when she is displeased. It is a training process. Conditioned response.
    "I'm used to the way I live," I told her.
    "The way you live," she said. With brooding face she reached and ran gentle fingertips along the deep, gullied scar in my thigh, then leaned, and touched the symmetrical dimple of the entrance wound of a bullet. She hunched closer to me, bent, and kissed the white welt of scar tissue that is nearly hidden by the scruffy, sun-faded hair at my temple. "The way you live, Travis. Trying to trick the tricky ones. Trying to make do with bluff and smiles and strange lies. Filching fresh meat right out of the jaws of the sharks. For how long, dear, before finally the odds go bad and the luck goes bad once and for all?"
    "I'm sly."

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    "Not sly enough. Maybe not quick enough anymore. I think you've been doing it for too long, darling. Too many years of getting things back for silly, careless people who should not have lost them in the first place. One day some dim little chap will come upon you suddenly and take out a gun and shoot you quite dead."
    "Are you a witch? Do you so prophesy?"
    She fell upon me, hugged me tight. "Ah no, dear. No. You had all the years when that was the thing you had to do. Now the years belong to me. Is it such a sickening fate you can't endure the thought of it?"
    "No, Jilly. No, honey. It's just that . . ."
    "Give us a month. No. One week. One insignificant little week. Or else."
    "Or else?"
    She burrowed a bit, gently closed her teeth onto the upper third of my left ear, then released it.
    "I have splendid teeth and very strong jaw muscles. If you say no, I shall set my teeth into your ear and do my best to tear it right off your head, darling."
    You just might at that."
    You love to bluff people. Try me."
    "No, thank you. One week."
    She took a deep breath and let it out. "Lovely! Time in transit doesn't count, of course.. Can we leave ... day after tomorrow?"
    "I don't know."
    "Why don't you know?"
    "I just found out that an old friend might be in trouble. It just seems to me that if she was in trouble, she'd come to me."
    Ally wiggled and thrust away from me and sat up. "She?"
    "Frowning makes wrinkles."
    "So it does. She?"
    "A respectable married lady."
    "If she's so respectable, how is it she knows you?"
    "Before she was married."
    "And I suppose you had an affair with her."
    "Gee, honey. I'd have to look it up."
    I caught her fist about five inches from my eye. "You bahstid," she said.
    "Okay. An affair. A mad,