Read Online A Flash of Green by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online

tables at that restaurant down the block there, on the other side. Gee, it’s good to see somebody from home.”
    “I’m covering a meeting. I have to stay over, and I was about to find a place. Can I buy you a drink, Frannie? Dinner, maybe?”
    She looked thoughtful, glanced at her watch. “Sure. I guess so. But I’d like a chance to get a bath and get fixed up. You work in that place, you smell like grease all over. How about you pick me up at six-thirty?”
    She told him where it was and how to get there. He went over and checked into a motel on the north end of the beach. On the off chance, he rented better and larger accommodations than he had planned to, feeling sly and semiguilty as he did so. She was ready when he stopped for her, and she did not ask him in. She looked very good to him. She wore a sleeveless dress in a fuzzy pumpkin wool, and a beige wool coat and a pillbox hat in a paisley pattern. He took her to one of the big, quiet, shadowy restaurants on the beach, a place for food and talk. They spent a long time in the cocktail lounge. She was obviously pleased to be taken out and happy to be with him. After three drinks they talked about Dick and she wept. And after that, he told her about Gloria, about this last nightmare visit, and how, after he had taken her back, they had told him it was unlikely they would ever be able to give her visiting privileges again. He told Frannie he was looking for a buyer for their house, the home she would never see again, and did not know he was weeping until his voice clotted and he felt the tickle of tears on his face. Frannie reached out to him and closed her hand around his wrist with great strength.
    “Please don’t, Jim, honey.”
    He looked at her with a great earnestness. “But don’t you see, the terrible thing about it is the way it’s all so phony. I’m not crying about her, Frannie. I can’t seem to cry about it as a great loss. I’m … crying about me. I’m crying at the great phony tragic figure I’m making of myself. And I think I’m crying because I want to touch your heart.”
    “Let’s eat now, Jimmy. We’ve had enough drinks. Let’s get amenu and order from here, please, and let them tell us when it’s ready, and not have any more drinks.”
    At dinner they had talked of trivial things which would not trigger either of them. Over coffee, awkward as a schoolboy, he said, elaborately, “I … uh … found a pretty nice place to stay. We could have a nightcap there and I could show you my view of the pool.”
    When she didn’t answer, he looked directly at her and saw her looking at him with an expression he could not read. Her head was tilted slightly. She looked sad, rueful, slightly ironic, but with an undertone of tenderness.
    “Yes, Jimmy. Yes, I suppose we have to go look at the pool. There’s really nothing else we can do, is there?”
    She was very quiet on the way out to the motel. They went in. He turned two subdued lights on. She threw her coat and purse on a chair, and they stood by the sliding doors and looked out at the pool. He put his hand on her waist and, after a little while, he turned her into his arms. After they had kissed with an increasing hunger, she backed away from him, sighed, smiled, took her purse and shut herself in the bathroom. He knew it would happen, and he knew it would not be very important or very good. He drew the draperies, turned out one of the lights, opened up one of the two double beds. The long fiasco of Gloria had made him jittery about all emotional relationships. He heard water running. He felt very tired. He wished he had not started it. He wished she had said no. He felt almost certain he would either be impotent, or it would all be over for him in a humiliatingly brief time. That was what had been happening to him lately.
    She came out of the bathroom with her dress over her arm. She gave him a broad, friendly almost casual smile and said, “Hello, there!” and went to the