Border Town Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

gave him a push. And the push just happened to shake Diana loose, right into his hands, after looking at her so long, and taking her lip, and seeing that contempt in her eyes.
    Without realizing it, he had grasped the handle on the inside of the cab door. When he remembered how she had looked at him his jaw clamped shut and he gave an almost effortless twist of his big wrist. The screws tore out of the metal and the handle came out in his hand.
    The driver gave a quick look back. “Hey, what the hell!”
    “It was loose.”
    The driver met his glance in the rear vision mirror. “Brother, that thing was on there solid and it’ll cost me at least three bucks to get it fixed.”
    Christy hunched forward. He put his hand casually on the driver’s shoulder. He smiled wetly. “I said, friend, it was loose.”
    “Watch whacha doin’!” the driver said shrilly.
    “It was loose.”
    “Okay, okay. It was loose. Leggo! Are you nuts?”
    Christy leaned back and laughed again. The gutless human race. Always ready to start something and always fast to back down. The best would be George. He had decided to save that until last. Maybe at the last minute George would find out why everything was going wrong lately. It was good to think of that last minute. He knew how he’d do it. Knock George out and take him down to the boat and wire a couple of cinderblocks to his ankles. Take the boat out and sit and eat chocolates until George came around. Then say, nice and easy, that it was time George joined a lot of his old buddies.
    He’d hoist him over the side, hold him there with his face above water and the cinderblocks pulling hard on his legs, and listen to George beg and promise and scream and slobber. Watch his eyes go mad. Hold him there until there wasn’t any man left, just a struggling animal. Hold him and think of him and Diana together and then spit in his face and let go. It would be night and the white face would be yanked down out of sight as though something from underneath had grabbed it. Maybe bubbles would come up like with the others. Then George would be down there, doing a dance in the river current, dancing right along in the chorus with all the guys who’d tried to cut a piece of the big pie and had run into Christy instead.
    The cab pulled up in front of the Sage House. Christy paid him the buck and a half rate, tipped him a solemn dime, and carried his bag inside.
    “You got a reservation for me,” he said. “A. Christy.”
    “Yes, Mr. Christy.”
    He had hurried all the way and now he wanted to go slow. Nice and slow.
    “There’s a friend of mine here, I think. Miss Saybree. Is she in?”
    “I believe she’s in her room. Three eighteen, sir. Shall I phone her?”
    “Skip it. I’ll surprise her.”
    Nice and slow and easy. The running was over. The girl was smart. She knew what was coming, but she hadn’t tried to run out on it.
    He barely noticed the room they gave him. When he was alone he stretched until the great shoulders popped and crackled. This was a hell of a long way from the carny, the garish midway, the thronging marks paying their two bits to see the Mighty Christy drive spikes with his fists, bend crowbars across his shoulders, twist horseshoes until they broke in his hands. George had seen him in the carny and seen his possibilities and had jumped in with smart expensive lawyers when there was that trouble about the girl. Temporary insanity, they had called it, and had cleared him, and from then on he’d done everything George said. Up until a year ago.
    He sat on the bed and wished he had some chocolate and thought about Diana. When you want something bad enough and long enough, you get it.
    When the thickness in his throat and the flame behind his eyes were too much to bear, he left the room and went up the stairs to the third floor. He passed a second-floor room where a typewriter rattled busily.
    He rattled his fingernails on the door panel of Room 318.
    “Who is it?”
    “An