“You’d better stay away from Buford. The way he feels right now, about that girl being in here, he’d just as soon shoot you.”
She rattled the ice in her glass and shrugged. “God, men! What a bunch of muttonheads! Why don’t they let women write the laws?”
“How did all that fuss start anyway?” I asked.
“I don’t know, exactly. He was here all night, and as near as I can get it from Bernice—the girl he was with, the one who had his clothes—everything was all right and peaceful until this morning he opened the door and started out in the hall for something. I guess he must have seen this other little bag then—she must have been going down the hall. She’d been swacked to the ears all night in her room, and I guess he hadn’t seen her before. Anyway, Bernice said he let out a roar like a stuck pig and lit out down the hall, yelling at every jump.”
The maid brought in my drink. Abbie went out, leaving the door open, and in a moment I could hear her going along the hall on the upper floor. There was the sound of shrill feminine argument and after a few minutes she came back.
Picking up her drink from the table where she’d left it, she sat down, shaking her head. “She’ll be down in a minute. I’d tell you what she said you could do, but I can’t repeat it.”
I took a sip of my drink. “And that big kid’s completely off his nut about her. How do you figure a thing like that?”
“It’s men, I tell you. They should never let ‘em out alone.”
In a minute the girl came down the stairs and stood in the doorway. She had combed her hair, which was dirty blonde, and had on a blue summer dress with a wide, dark-blue patent-leather belt and high-heeled white shoes with no stockings. She might have been pretty if she hadn’t shaved off all her eyebrows except a thin line and painted them on with black grease or something. She had rebuilt her mouth, too, the upper lip an exaggerated cupid’s bow that went a third of the way up to her nose. She looked at me with edged contempt.
“Sit down,” I said. “We’ll be going in about half a minute.”
“Who says we’ll go anywhere?”
“I do,” I said, lighting a cigarette.
“Why, you stupid jerk! You know what you can do?” She told me what I could do.
Abbie smiled at me. “She’s a dear little thing, isn’t she?”
I got up. “Come on, kid. Let’s go.”
“And what makes you think I’ll go?”
I shrugged with elaborate indifference. “You either go where I’m trying to take you or go to jail. And you won’t care for our matron. She’ll like you, but you won’t like her,” I said, making it all up. The matron at the jail was all right.
“Oh.” She hesitated. “And where do you think you’re going to take me?”
“I’ll tell you all about it on the way. You going?”
“All right,” she said harshly. “It can’t be any worse than this dump.”
We started out. “Good-by, dear,” Abbie said, still smiling sweetly. The girl stopped in the doorway and told her what she could do.
“You are a dear,” Abbie said. The girl told her some more.
“How about knocking it off before we get out in the street?” I said. “There might be men present.”
We went on out to the car. I had it all pretty well thought out by this time. It was about seventy miles down to Colston, and if I remembered correctly, the New Orleans bus went through there around one in the afternoon. It was a little after eleven now. We could make it. I threw the coat with my wallet in it into the back seat and got in.
The girl climbed in, crossing her legs with her dress up over her knees. “How about a cigarette?” I gave her one and we started out. “God, what a jerk burg this is,” she said. “Anything would beat this.”
We skirted the back streets to hit the highway without going through town, and when we got out on the road I opened it up to about sixty. “Where’s your home?” I asked.
She took a drag on the cigarette and threw it out the window. “I haven’t got any.”