Read Online Cloud Nine by James M. Cain - Free Book Online

her to New York, to have the surgery done, if that’s what you have in mind. And yet—”
    “Well, say it! What’s your mysterious objection?”
    “I can’t say it! Not with her standing there!”
    “You act like I had a past or something.”
    “If you haven’t a past, that’s what frightens me.”
    “You make it clear like mud in a wineglass.”
    “When are you having it done?”
    “Monday, by the deputy clerk in Rockville.”
    “Am I invited?”
    “Well I hope to tell you you are.”
    “You’ll keep me posted on the details?”
    “I certainly will, you bet.”
    When she’d hung up, Sonya kept studying me. “What’s with her?” she asked me. “She seems to like me, she said she liked me, and yet something about it is bugging her.”
    “Well after all, she’s my mother.”
    “Are you promised to somebody else?”
    “Not even slightly, no.”
    “Well there’s something.”
    “Listen, I’m her Sonny-Boy. Isn’t that enough?”
    “I guess.”
    The Pocohontas is beyond the honkey-tonks, up the beach where the boardwalk ends, and I spotted it by the neon sign on top. But when I pulled in to the parking lot, she made me sit in the car with her, while she made herself up once more, twisting her hair into a knot, pulling the wig over it, and marking her face again with the pencil she had in her bag, or “liner” as she called it. Then at last she said, “Okay,” and I handed her out, getting the bags out of the trunk, and locking the car. She preceded me to the desk, wearing the little spring coat, which was beige in color, and walking in a way that seemed strange, heavy on her heels, as though she were slightly tired, without a trace of her usual hop-skip-and-jump. She looked like a woman of thirty, and the clerk never once doubted her. He was all smiles for us both, and gave me the card to sign, first pushing the pen-stand at me. I wrote:
Mr. & Mrs. Graham Kirby,
    College Heights Estates,
    Hyattsville, Md.
    He blotted it, said, “Okay, Mr. Kirby your suite’s on the second floor, facing the sea—I think you’ll find it in order. Extra blankets in the lower bureau drawer—if you need anything, call.”
    Carrying your own bag in a motel is a feature I can’t get used to, but if that’s how it is, it is. I picked up our two and followed her upstairs. She found our suite and unlocked it, and I took our bags in. She followed and closed the door. I was up tight with the moment I’d dreaded, being alone with her, due to spend the night, and perhaps the rest of my life.

Chapter 9
    D ID I REALLY DREAD it as much as I thought? I can’t say, but I was so nervous I could hardly speak, as just being around her, to see her and hear her and touch her, excited me more than anything ever had. I watched as she took up kind of a survey, first of the kitchenette, which was at one side of the living room, with a chrome-steel sink, very pretty, and a little electric stove; then of the living room, of the bedroom, and of the bathroom, which was beyond the bedroom. She came back and said, “They’re in a row, all four rooms, the little ones on the ends, the big ones in the middle, with windows facing the ocean. I like it. Do you?”
    I said I did, and then screwed up my nerve to talk of the night, and how we were going to spend it. I told her: “What we’ll do is you take the bedroom, and I’ll tuck away here, on one of these pull-down things.”
    I reached for the turnbuckle that held up one of the beds, but suddenly she burst into tears. “Well what the hell?” I snapped. “What have I done, what is it?”
    “I thought you loved me.”
    “...Well, I guess I do, but—?”
    But at that she just wailed like a banshee, with tears squirting out of her eyes, first rocking on her feet, then flopping into a chair, where she buried her face on her sleeve and went on with the crying jag. I snapped, “Hey, cool it! And answer me what I asked you: What have I done?”
    “Putting me in by myself.”
    “Well