Grifter's Game Read Online Free PDF

do the two of you do for kicks?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You have a lot of friends? Congenial companionship? Bridge parties on Saturday nights and steaks in the back yard?”
    “Stop it, Lennie.”
    “Are you going back to Cheshire Point with him? To share his bed and have his kids and spend his money? Are you—”
    “Stop it!”
    I stopped it. I wanted to reach for her, to roll her up in my arms and tell her that everything was going to be all right. But I didn’t believe it myself.
    “I’ll have one of those cigarettes now, Lennie.”
    I took out two, straightened them out, gave her one and kept one for myself. I scratched a match for her and cupped it in my hands. She came over to accept the light and I looked down at the top of her head and thought how beautiful she was. I envied Keith and realized that he would envy me. It always works that way.
    “It probably doesn’t mean anything anyway,” she said. She was talking to herself now, not to me. “It was just once. It happened, we were both ready for it, it was good. But it didn’t mean anything. I can forget you and you can forget me. In a week we would forget each other. It doesn’t mean a thing.”
    “Do you really believe that?”
    Silence for a moment.
    Then, bitterly, “No, of course not. No, I don’t believe it.”
    “Would you leave him?”
    She smiled. “I’d leave him in a minute,” she said. “But that isn’t what you mean. You mean will I leave his money.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “Do you have any money, Lennie?”
    “Fifty dollars. A hundred, maybe.”
    She laughed. “He spends that much on a whore.”
    “What does he need one for? He’s got you for a wife.”
    I didn’t realize how that sounded until I heard it. I watched her face fall. “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “He doesn’t need a whore. He’s married to one.”
    “I didn’t mean that. I—”
    “But it’s true.” She took a deep breath, then let it out. She stuck her cigarette in the sand and straightened up. “I can’t leave him, Lennie. I’ve got all that money and I can’t let go of it. It wouldn’t work.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “Two years,” she said. “Why didn’t I meet you two years ago? Why?”
    “Would it have made a difference?”
    “A big difference,” she said. “Money is funny. That rhymes, doesn’t it? But it’s true. I wasn’t born this way, Lennie. I could have lived without money. People manage. If I had met you before I met Keith—”
    “If this blanket had wings we could fly it.”
    “Or if it was a magic carpet,” she said. “But don’t you see what I mean? Now I’m used to money. I know what it’s like to have it. I know what it’s like to be able to do anything I want and buy anything I want. I couldn’t go back to the way it was before.”
    “How was it before?”
    “It wasn’t that bad,” she said. “I wasn’t deprived. We didn’t starve. We owned our own home, never worried about eating regularly. But we didn’t have money left over. You know what I mean.”
    I knew what she meant. And I wondered what I was doing, trying to convince her to throw it up and marry me. So we could starve hand in hand? So we could raise children and live in a frame house in Yahooville? So I could carry a lunch pail to work and owe the bank and the finance company and everybody else in the world? For what? For a girl who didn’t even know my real name?
    But I heard myself say, “It could work. We could make it work, Mona.”
    She looked at me, her eyes very bright. She was about to say something that never got said. I wondered what it was.
    Instead she got to her feet and began to put clothes on. I watched her while she dressed.
    “I’ll leave the blanket here,” she said. “The hotel won’t miss it. It would look funny if I came in carrying a blanket.” She was looking at me now. “I have to go,” she said. “I really have to go.”
    “Do I get to see you again?”
    “Do you want to?”
    I