Gold Comes in Bricks Read Online Free PDF Page B

jittery, and I leaned over to put a hand on the wheel. A I ter a while, Alta came to a cross street just as the light changed. It gave us a chance to catch up and for me to run around the back of the car and let Bertha slide over.
    When the light changed, Alta shot ahead as though she’d been fired from a gun. The agency bus rattled on across the street, gathering headway. Somebody yelled at me to put my lights on, but I kept running dark, hoping we’d get into a snarl of traffic. After a while we did. I switched the lights on and started jockeying for position, trying to keep just a little on the left and behind.
    Bertha was full of apologies. “I should have listened to you, lover. You’re always right. Oh, why didn’t you make me listen to you?”
    I had a job to do driving the car, so I didn’t say anything.
    Bertha kept right on talking. She said, “Donald, I don’t suppose I can ever make you understand me. For years I had to fight my way. Every nickel counted. There were lots of times when I only allowed myself fifteen cents a day for eating money. Do you know, Donald, the hardest job I ever had was trying to learn how to spend money again after I began to make a little.
    “I’d draw a hundred dollars every month from my bank account and make up my mind I was going to spend it on myself, and I just couldn’t do it. I’d find myself at the end of the month with seventy or eighty dollars I hadn’t spent. When you’ve once been right up against it where money means so damn much to you, it does something to your morale. You never get over it.”
    “I’ve been broke,” I said.
    “I know, lover, but you’re young, and you have brains. Bertha didn’t have brains, not the kind you have. Bertha just had to stay in there and pitch, and it was tough sledding. You have something I’ll never have, Donald. You’re resilient. Put pressure on you, and you bend. Then as soon as the pressure is removed, you spring back. I’m different. Put pressure on me, and I put pressure back. If anything happens, and I can’t put any pressure back sometime, I won’t bend, I’ll simply break.”
    I said, “All right, forget it.”
    “Where’s she going, lover?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What’s she going to do?”
    “I don’t know even that. We’ve kicked ourselves out of a hundred — dollar — a — day job. There’s everything to gain, and nothing to lose. We may as well shoot the works.”
    “Donald, you’ve never failed me before. You’ve always worked out some scheme that let us wriggle through.” “Shut up,” I said. “I’m trying to do it now.”
    It was a tough job following her in traffic. All she needed to do was press her foot on the throttle. The motor would whisper a song of smooth power, and the car would whisk through an opening which would close up behind her. I had to keep my foot on the throttle of the agency car and hold it in second gear a good part of the time so I had the pickup I needed for traffic.
    She drove into a parking station. I didn’t dare go into the same station. The only open parking space was in front of a fire plug. I said, “All right, Bertha, we park in front of the fire plug. If you get pinched, you can charge it to Ashbury for taxi expenses. You go down toward Seventh Street. I’ll go up toward Eighth. Wait on the corner. When she leaves that parking lot, she’ll either turn toward you or toward me. If she comes toward me, don’t try to follow her. If she goes toward you, I won’t try to follow. Whichever one isn’t elected will come back and move the car.”
    Bertha was meek as a lamb. “Yes, lover,” she said.
    It was a job for Bertha to get in and out of the car. She had to twist around and squirm her way out. I didn’t wait for her, and I didn’t try to help her. I opened the door and walked down the street fast.
    Bertha hadn’t gone more than twenty yards from the car, when Alta came out of the parking lot. She turned toward me. I ducked in a