safe enough here, at least for the moment, and we’ve got to get some luggage and I need another suit. Today, though, we’re going to take you shopping. We’re going to buy you some clothes, and I don’t mean cheap junk.” I sat up in bed and looked at her, aware that I was beginning to sound like a wild man and that I probably didn’t make much sense to her. “Do you know what I’m going to do? What I’ve wanted to do for a long time? What I’ve wanted to do every time I thought of you going barefoot like a sharecropper’s child and thought of those misfit abortions of dresses you wore around that house? I’m going to see you dressed in the kind of clothes you should have. We’re going to start at the bottoms of those feet. Let me see your feet. Where are “they?”
“Well, Jack, where would they be?”
I slid down along the bed and gathered them up in my hands, turning them inward and pressing the soles together the way I had once before. “We’re going to start right here with the sheerest nylons ever made and the most expensive shoes in town and gradually work up.”
I looked up and she was watching me with an amused tenderness in her eyes. “But Jack, what are we going to use for money?”
I had forgotten it again. Leaping off the bed, I went over to where I had left the coat. Slipping out the envelope, I took it over to her, pulled out the thick sheaf of hundreds and fifties and twenties, and spread them along the sheet in front of her.
She looked at it, dumfounded, and then up at me. “Jack, where on earth did that come from?” I could see the fright and anxiety begin to come back into her face and she went on, “What have you done?”
As rapidly as I could, I told her all that had happened. She listened quietly, not even touching the money, and when I had finished all she said was I’m glad it’s all over. There won’t have to be any more of that, will there? I know it’s too late now to think about the way it could have been, but at least we can try to live the way other people do, can’t we? We can both get jobs and we’ll get by all right. I used to work in an office.”
“Yes,” I said. “Only you won’t have to any more. I can get a job without much trouble. We’ll go to Washington—the state, I mean. I was there when I came back from the Pacific in 1945. It’s beautiful country, and you’ll love it—mountains and rivers and green forests. ...” I happened to think then that perhaps she’d already seen all the green forests she’d ever want to, and went on hurriedly, “And Seattle is a nice city. You’ll love it.”
“It sounds wonderful. But I don’t care where we go, Jack. Just so we’re together, and maybe we’ll be able to live in peace.”
“Yes,” I said. I bent down, placed a hand alongside her cheek, and kissed her. “All that other is finished now. It’s past and gone.”
Her arms went up around my neck, softly at first, and then they tightened and she cried out, “Oh, Jack! I hope it is. I hope so!”
“Of course it is,” I said. “We’re in the clear now. They’ll believe I’m dead, and they’ll never bother to look for you except as part of the hunt for him. There isn’t a chance that anything will go wrong. But we can’t sit here all day moping like a couple of old women. We’ve got to get started shopping.” I stopped a minute, thinking, and then went on. “Look. Here’s what we do. Today and tomorrow well go on just as we are now, not even knowing each other as far as anyone else is concerned. That may be a little overcautious now that everything has turned out so well, but it’s just in case our descriptions are broadcast. Two people answering a general description are a lot more likely to attract attention than one alone. So we don’t want to be seen together around the hotel. I’ll meet you—” I looked at my watch. “I’ll meet you at ten-thirty in the cafeteria up in the next block. We’ll have breakfast together and then start buying your clothes.”