Read Online All These Condemned by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online
Authors: John D. MacDonald
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lake and stopped laughing.
It’s a good thing to cry like that. And even as I was enjoying the floating, drifting feeling of release, my mind was nibbling at the situation, trying to turn it and twist it into something usable, something that could become a routine. Perhaps a thing where I’d do three or four women, the way they cry … a duchess, a lady wrestler, an actress from the old silent movies, with different background music for each one.
How fake can you get? Can’t you even cry honestly? I wondered what was left of me. Just a strange device for turning everything into the grotesque. Like a machine that eats up tin, paper, and beans and spews out an unending column of cans of soup.
O.K., chalk it up to sudden death, sirens in the night, black water, and feeling alone. Not the tears. What happened next. Happened his hand rested on my left shoulder. He was behind the wheel. Happened his hand felt good. Happened I tilted my head to the left, laying my cheek on the back of his hand. Happened I turned my head a little so my lips touched the back of his hand. Should have been then an awkwardness. Too many elbows in the way, and noses in the way, and no place for your knees. But it was as if we had practiced. His arms opened up and I switched around so that my back was toward him, and then I lay back into his arms, my feet up on the seat toward the car door, and there were good places for all our arms as his lips came down on mine.
To me there has always been something contrived about love. It goes like a pendulum. I start enjoying myself and then the pendulum swings the other way and I get a look at myself and I want to giggle. Because there is something ridiculous about it, darn it. People pasting their mouths together. People sighing and panting as if they’d been running upstairs. Hearts going poomp-poomp. But this time the pendulum swung over and caught on a little hook and stayed over there and there wasn’t anything ridiculous at all.
A very rocky Judy Jonah untangled herself and sat up very straight and stared right ahead at absolutely nothing. I had pins and needles from my ankles to my ears. “My goodness,” I said. I sounded as prim as a maiden aunt. He touched my back and I went up on wires and landed a foot farther away from him.
“What’s the matter?”
“If you don’t know, brother …”
“I know. I mean I think I know. Once when I was a little kid my grandfather was up on a stepladder. I kept running up and giving it a little shake and running away, screaming with delight. He got tired of it and flailed away at me with his coat. He forgot he had a small wrench in the coat pocket.”
I turned around, my back to the door like Captain Hammer standing off nine Chinese bandits. I said, “I’m going to talk fast and get it all in and don’t interrupt, please. In spite of several grave mistakes, I am a very moral-type moral lady. That little kiss tore my wings off and I am highly vulnerable. You touch me and I shall shatter like they do to the wineglass with the violins. But being an entertainer, small print, doesn’t mean I play games. You are a married guy and thusly you are poison and so this is something I’d write in my diary if I kept one, but for the record it rocked me, if that pleases you, and now I leave on these rubber legs, full of chastity and regret.” I opened the door and got out.
He said, “Something can be done about the obstacle, Judy.”
“Don’t talk about it. Don’t think about it. Give me a ring next Decoration Day, at my apple stand.”
I got out of there. I looked back. I saw the red end of his cigarette. I went down onto the pier, onto the one that had nobody else on it. I sat cross-legged in the dew. I heard one of the men say, “Got a hell of a nice bass right there off these rocks three years ago. Went a little over four pounds. Got him on a frog.”
And the other man in the boat said, “Can’t use frogs, myself. They hold onto the line with
It’s a good thing to cry like that. And even as I was enjoying the floating, drifting feeling of release, my mind was nibbling at the situation, trying to turn it and twist it into something usable, something that could become a routine. Perhaps a thing where I’d do three or four women, the way they cry … a duchess, a lady wrestler, an actress from the old silent movies, with different background music for each one.
How fake can you get? Can’t you even cry honestly? I wondered what was left of me. Just a strange device for turning everything into the grotesque. Like a machine that eats up tin, paper, and beans and spews out an unending column of cans of soup.
O.K., chalk it up to sudden death, sirens in the night, black water, and feeling alone. Not the tears. What happened next. Happened his hand rested on my left shoulder. He was behind the wheel. Happened his hand felt good. Happened I tilted my head to the left, laying my cheek on the back of his hand. Happened I turned my head a little so my lips touched the back of his hand. Should have been then an awkwardness. Too many elbows in the way, and noses in the way, and no place for your knees. But it was as if we had practiced. His arms opened up and I switched around so that my back was toward him, and then I lay back into his arms, my feet up on the seat toward the car door, and there were good places for all our arms as his lips came down on mine.
To me there has always been something contrived about love. It goes like a pendulum. I start enjoying myself and then the pendulum swings the other way and I get a look at myself and I want to giggle. Because there is something ridiculous about it, darn it. People pasting their mouths together. People sighing and panting as if they’d been running upstairs. Hearts going poomp-poomp. But this time the pendulum swung over and caught on a little hook and stayed over there and there wasn’t anything ridiculous at all.
A very rocky Judy Jonah untangled herself and sat up very straight and stared right ahead at absolutely nothing. I had pins and needles from my ankles to my ears. “My goodness,” I said. I sounded as prim as a maiden aunt. He touched my back and I went up on wires and landed a foot farther away from him.
“What’s the matter?”
“If you don’t know, brother …”
“I know. I mean I think I know. Once when I was a little kid my grandfather was up on a stepladder. I kept running up and giving it a little shake and running away, screaming with delight. He got tired of it and flailed away at me with his coat. He forgot he had a small wrench in the coat pocket.”
I turned around, my back to the door like Captain Hammer standing off nine Chinese bandits. I said, “I’m going to talk fast and get it all in and don’t interrupt, please. In spite of several grave mistakes, I am a very moral-type moral lady. That little kiss tore my wings off and I am highly vulnerable. You touch me and I shall shatter like they do to the wineglass with the violins. But being an entertainer, small print, doesn’t mean I play games. You are a married guy and thusly you are poison and so this is something I’d write in my diary if I kept one, but for the record it rocked me, if that pleases you, and now I leave on these rubber legs, full of chastity and regret.” I opened the door and got out.
He said, “Something can be done about the obstacle, Judy.”
“Don’t talk about it. Don’t think about it. Give me a ring next Decoration Day, at my apple stand.”
I got out of there. I looked back. I saw the red end of his cigarette. I went down onto the pier, onto the one that had nobody else on it. I sat cross-legged in the dew. I heard one of the men say, “Got a hell of a nice bass right there off these rocks three years ago. Went a little over four pounds. Got him on a frog.”
And the other man in the boat said, “Can’t use frogs, myself. They hold onto the line with
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