Read Online The Crossroads by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online

maybe it would be illegal. So Sylvia and Pete got married, with the mariachis playing bullfight music in the big gloomy building.
    The next day that crazy Pete suddenly gave out. He just folded. She went to bed too. She woke up toward evening with a terrible headache. Pete was still sleeping. She went down and ate alone. When she came back he was still sleeping. She went to bed too. When she woke up the following morning she could hardly believe that she was in Mexico. It didn’t seem possible. And a little later she suddenly remembered she had gotten married. She gasped and sat up. Pete was sitting on the edge of the other bed in his underwear shorts, staring gloomily at her.
    “Good morning, I think,” he said.
    “Good morning, Pete.” He didn’t seem crazy at all.
    “Sylvia. I have the name right?”
    “Yes.”
    “I have been sitting here with the nasty suspicion that you are now the first Mrs. Peter Drovek. Is that right?”
    “Yes,” she said in a tiny voice.
    He shook his head sadly. “God damn!” he said. Hegot up and went over to his clothes, began to take crumpled bills out of the pockets, smooth them out and put them on the bureau, U. S. currency in one pile and Mexican in another.
    The slow sad tears filled her eyes and began to run down her cheeks. He saw her in the mirror. He turned and stared at her for a moment, then came to her bed, sat on the edge of it and took her hands. “Hey now!” he said gently. “Hey now!”
    She tried to smile but the tears still ran. “I … can’t help it. It wasn’t so m-much my idea. You were the one. You wanted to get married. Nobody could stop you. I don’t even know anything … about you!” She gave a wail of despair, tore her hands away, and plunged her face into the pillow, her back toward him, sobbing.
    “That makes us even, Sylvia. What’s your name? I mean, what was your whole name?”
    “Sylvia Marlowe,” she said, her voice muffled and sulky.
    “How old are you, dear?”
    “Twenty-two.”
    “Ever been married before?”
    “N-no!”
    “What do you do for a living?”
    “I’m a model.”
    “Dear Jesus.”
    She whirled and looked at him with a contorted face. “Don’t you say that! I’m not a whore. I’m a real model. I’ve been modeling for years!” She whirled away again.
    “All right, dear. No offense meant. Where did we meet?”
    “At a party in the Village.”
    “Oh. Barney’s pals. I remember it vaguely.”
    “I wish I was dead,” she said.
    “They used to arrange marriages. And they seemed to work out. You might be quite a shock to the clan, baby.”
    “We can get it all canceled maybe. Everybody was stinking.”
    He was silent for a long time. She didn’t know what he was thinking. The tears still ran.
    “Sylvia, baby, has this marriage been consummated?”
    “What? Oh. No. I mean I don’t think so.”
    The bed shifted under his weight. He slid under the covers beside her and his arms went around her. In a little while the tears stopped.
    When it was over that first time, Pete held her in his arms. They lay side by side, looking into each other’s eyes. Pete stared at her with an odd thoughtful expression. “Honeybundle,” he said finally, “this mixed-up marriage may turn out to be one big fat drunken mistake. But in one department, commonly considered essential to bliss, things seem to be supernifty.”
    “You talk funny,” she said, putting her fingers to his lips to be kissed.
    “Hand me that phone, chunky stuff, and I shall set up a mild celebration around here. Brides love to wallow in champagne.”
    And that seemed to be the last time that Pete ever talked to her in a real serious kind of way. That crazy Pete. He thought he was running out of money but it turned out Barney had picked his pocket for safekeeping. So there was enough for the three of them to go to Acapulco. From there Pete wired his people that he was married. They’d put Woonsocket on a plane back to the States. Barney found a new