Free Contrary Pleasure by John D. MacDonald Page B

how he knew. She glanced at him quickly, but she did not ask.
    He pulled up in front of the rooming house. The rain was beginning to
diminish and he was afraid he would lose her without having said anything. She
put her hand on the door handle, and he felt despair. And then the rain
suddenly increased again. The dash lights glowed green. The wipers swept back
and forth. He could not hear the motor. They were shut in a small private world
in a dark city and the rain hammered the canvas and the steel, and the cement
around them.
    “Relax. Wait until it lets up a little.”
    “I don’t want to hold you up. I’m wet anyway.”
    “I’m in no hurry. You’re not as wet as you’ll get running for the porch.”
    She took her hand slowly from the door handle. “All right,” she said. She
leaned back tentatively. Her voice was small.
    They sat there and he felt the silence between them grow into an electric
and monstrous thing. He did not dare turn and look at her. He did not know what
to say. She sat in stillness. He felt ancient, helpless, grotesque, soiled. The
rain slackened again and suddenly it was gone, dragging a white curtain down
the street and away into the east. She slid forward and opened the car door and
turned toward him and said with quaint formal courtesy, “Thank you very much,
Mr. Delevan, for—”
    He put his hand on her arm, quickly, and shut his fingers hard on the
thin aliveness of that arm under the bulky damp wool of her coat, and the
quickness stopped her words with a small gasping.
    He looked at her then and her eyes shifted away and he said, “I’ve got to
see you again, Bonny.” He cursed his own clumsiness, knowing that this would
invite down upon him a twittering coyness, an alarmed coquettishness. He
released her arm quickly. And she turned and looked directly at him.
    “Why?” she said. It was a child’s question and she gave it the gravity
and dignity children have.
    “I don’t know. No, I mean I wish I knew. I keep walking into the mill
just to see you.”
    “I thought that. I thought you did that. I wasn’t sure. But I pretended
that was what you were doing.”
    “I just want to see you again.”
    “It’s not right. I mean it’s something I can pretend, Mr. Delevan, and
that doesn’t hurt anything. Just to pretend. To make up things. But it
shouldn’t happen for real.”
    “I’ll come here tomorrow night and I’ll park down there beyond the
streetlight. At eight thirty. I’ll wait for you right there.”
    “Don’t. Please don’t. It makes me feel almost sick inside. No, not sick.
Dizzy inside, sort of. Please don’t, Mr. Delevan.”
    “I’ll be there tomorrow night.”
    “I won’t come out,” she said. And she got out quickly and swung the door
shut. He watched her go up the steps and into the shabby house. She did not
look back. The next evening he lied to Bess and drove to the city and parked
where he said he would park. He arrived a little before eight thirty. He left
his parking lights on. She did not come out. He had kept away from her in the
mill that day, staying close to his office. She had not come out by nine
o’clock. He decided to wait fifteen minutes more. At nine fifteen he said he
would give her until nine thirty. At nine thirty he said five minutes more. At
twenty minutes of ten she pulled the car door open and slid in beside him and
yanked the big door shut and she was crying. He did not speak to her or touch
her. She sat there and he felt her sadness. He felt as if they were both
involved in tragedy not of their making, like passengers on a plane that
falters inevitably toward a wide wild sea.
    The tears ceased and she leaned back. In the faint light her face looked
thin and white. “I wasn’t going to come down.”
    “I know.”
    “I saw the taillights. I pulled the shade down. I walked and walked in my
room. Then I would look and tell myself each time before I looked that you
would be gone. But you weren’t. And the last time I was