Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye Read Online Free PDF Page B

usually get here?’ I asked Joe.
    ‘Oh around nine-thirty,’ he replied, starting to empty the box, putting the bottles of milk on a metal shelf just inside the door.
    ‘You deliver to that other market up the street too, don’t you? That – er – what’s the name…?’
    ‘You mean the A-One. Sure. That’s my last stop before coming here.
    ‘I thought I’d seen you at the A-One,’ I said. ‘Well, so long.’
    ‘So long.…’
    On the way out I picked up a package of Fig Newtons. I paid the cashier for the milk and the Fig Newtons, and walked back to the garage, taking my time, still feeling nice and comfortable, looking in the windows at electrical supplies and boats and fishing tackle and second-hand typewriters and adding machines, just like any other guy.
    At the rear of the garage there was a station wagon with the hood off and the motor removed and I opened the door and crawled inside. I put one bottle of milk on the floor and shook the cream off the top of the other one, and then opened the box of Fig Newtons and settled down to my picnic. I didn’t care if Holiday ever called. This was wonderful, being hemmed up in the station wagon nice and cosy and in the half-dark that felt vaguely familiar, vaguely reminded me of something and I sipped the milk experimentally, for the first taste of something you have craved for a long time is never what you have imagined it will be, but after the fourth or fifth sip I knew that this was finally the real thing, much too good for the common people. I ate some Fig Newtons, measuring them to last through the two bottles of milk and they came out almost to the last crumb.
    I stretched out on the seat, taking the thirty-eight revolver out of my pocket and putting it on the floor beside the empty milk bottles, making myself comfortable again, thinking about the market up the street. Mr. Hartford had a bundle of currency in his hand and two bank books and I knew where he was going. He had said to the milkman that they were both a little late this morning, and since the milkman had told me that he usually arrived around nine-thirty that meant Mr. Hartford didn’t start for the bank before nine-fifteen. That wasn’t chicken feed he was carrying, either. Well, I thought, I’ll meet that milkman at the A-One Market tomorrow between nine-five and nine-ten. I’ve got to make a start sometime.…
    I was just on the edge of dozing off when I got a whiff of something, something burning. It didn’t smell like fabric or anything familiar. But I sat up quickly, looking around, and then I got a good whiff of it. I still couldn’t define it or tell where it was coming from, but it was pretty strong. I got out of the station wagon and looked around and under it but it wasn’t here. Near by, in a corner, Nelse had the Zephyr on a hoist and was lubricating it. I picked up the pistol from the floor board, putting it in my coat pocket, going back to him.
    ‘What’s that smell?’ I asked.
    ‘The stuff Mason’s burning, I guess’
    ‘What stuff?’
    ‘Your stuff and hers. That prison suit.’
    ‘Oh,’ I said. I looked around. I still couldn’t see anything.
    ‘Where’s he doing it?’ I asked.
    ‘Over there,’ he said. ‘In the battery room.’
    I walked across the floor to the heavy tin door that was set in a side wall. The door was partly open. This was where the smell was coming from, all right. It was coming through the crack of the door like it had been shot out of a fire hose. I pulled the door open and went inside. It was a small, dark room with a single window that opened into the alley. Below this window, on the left, was a long bench on which there were several storage batteries and a charging plant and an assortment of electric cables. At the rear of the room was another bench, thicker, on which were several steel tire forms and slender pipes and a lot of vulcanizing and tire-patching equipment. On the right side of the room was a big anvil and what looked like