Read Online Weep for Me by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online

“Don’t spend time talking.”
    She was the agressor, sweeping both of us up into anincredible and brutal climax that was, for both of us, like being at last broken on a great wheel.
    Her breathing took a long time to quiet, and then she left me. I watched her walk quickly by the lamp, her shoulders drooping, head lowered, body impossibly white, breasts sharply conical silhouetted against the lamplight, and I saw that in profile, the line from the nape of her neck to her ankle was one long flowing curve.
    I dressed. I felt a long way away from myself. I picked her clothes from the floor, stood stupidly with them for a moment, put them carefully on a chair. Then I stretched out on the day bed, lit a cigarette.
    She came out after a time, wearing a dark robe with wide lapels and heavily padded shoulders. She came to the couch and I moved my knees over to give her a place to sit. She took a cigarette from my pack. I saw her hand tremble as she lit it, but her face had regained its impassivity.
    “That’s what they sense about me,” she said tonelessly. “Now you know.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Don’t they write books about physical love? A nice dreamy floating. Tender stuff. Drifting on big woolly clouds. I wonder how that kind would be. You know what my kind is. Like a kind of dueling I read about. Where two men stand, each with the corner of the same handkerchief in their teeth, and a knife in each hand. Then they turn out the lights.”
    “Maybe your way is better.”
    “This wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t going to let it happen.”
    “What did I do that made it happen?”
    She gave me a quick look. “I won’t tell you that.”
    “Because I’ll use it again.”
    “Yes.”
    I reached down and caught her wrist. I twisted it slowly. I watched her face, saw her mouth begin to change. I released her.
    “
Damn
you,” she said. “
Damn
you for learning how!”
    “It was pretty obvious, wasn’t it?”
    “You know what you’ve done. Now I’m going to have to leave. Leave the apartment, and the bank and the city.”
    “Because I can’t buy cars and clothes and diamonds and all the rest of it.”
    “And that’s what I want, Kyle.”
    “A matter of money,” I said contemptuously.
    She turned her head slowly and looked at me. She kept her eyes on mine for a long, long time. This was a new kind of tension.
    When she whispered, I could barely hear her. “You handle money all day, Kyle.”
    My mouth slowly turned dry. Lying there, I could hear the big drum that was my heart. “You don’t mean that.”
    She turned away, “No, I guess I don’t mean it.”
    What was left in the shaker was warm. She took it out and put ice cubes in it. She brought it back, swirling it, filled the glasses again. She didn’t speak.
    I said, too loudly, “That’s for damn fools. They never stop hunting for you. How can you live? What good is that kind of money?”
    “I didn’t mean it. It’s easier for me to go away, Kyle.”
    “I won’t let you go. Not now. Not after this.”
    “There’s no way to stop me from leaving, Kyle.”
    I dug my fingers into her shoulder. “No way but one. Is that it? Is that the way you’re putting it up to me?”
    She pulled away. “Why try to give me the responsibility?”
    “I asked you your price. Now you’ve let me know what it is.”
    “If that’s the way you want to say it.”
    “And that’s the choice you’re giving me. Be a thief and be with you, if I’m lucky, for thirty days before they catch us.”
    She moved up along the couch, put her hands on my shoulder, and forced me back. She looked intently down into my face. A long strand of the dark hair swung below her cheek. “Suppose it were a year, Kyle. A full year. Just for us. Would that be worth it?”
    “Where do we hide for a year?”
    “Would it be worth it? Answer me!”
    I traced the line of her swollen mouth with my fingertips. “If it were just thirty days, it would be worth it. You know