Free Fade to Black by Ron Renauld

remained in the doorway, looking at the shower and trying to figure out why he felt so determined to keep up this relationship. He didn’t come up with an answer, but he thought up a plan.
    Stepping into the bathroom, he took a bottle of shampoo off the top of the toilet bowl. Unscrewing the cap, he reached over the top of the shower door and emptied the shampoo into the tub.
    “What are you doing?” Anne demanded.
    Moriarty slid open the shower door and quickly plugged up the tub. Suds were already beginning to billow in the water around Anne’s feet.
    “Bubble bath for two?” Moriarty asked impishly. “No questions asked?”
    Anne looked at him, the anger draining slowly from her face. She finally scooped up a handful of suds and tossed them in Moriarty’s face.
    “Come on in, you silly ass,” she said, sitting down in the tub of bubbles. “The water’s fine.”

CHAPTER • 10
    Eric got out of work at five. Berger had chewed him out again for taking too long on his errands, and both Richie and Bart had razzed him about their bet, trying to bump up the stakes. He had let it all roll off him. He had more important things to think about.
    He only had until six-thirty.
    He jogged up to Hollywood Boulevard and Larry Edmunds’ shop, his framed picture of Marilyn from The Prince and the Showgirl tucked under his arm. Like most of the old book and film stores lining the boulevard, Larry Edmunds’ had the feel of a setting in a forties movie. Cramped racks had grown upward over the years for lack of another available direction, and the air was pungent with the smell common to some antique shops and old libraries.
    Eric went to the back counter, where one of the clerks was supervising a client sorting through a file of one-sheets and publicity stills featuring Humphrey Bogart.
    “Hello, Eric,” the clerk greeted. She was old, her face a network of kind lines, like a character actress who’d made a life of playing sweet grandmothers.
    Spotting the poster from Passage to Marseilles that the customer was looking over, Eric cringed. “Terrible movie,” he reviewed. “If they did it today they would have just gone ahead and called it Casablanca II instead of trashing it up to make it seem original.”
    “Oh, I don’t know about that,” the customer, a Britisher the clerk’s age, argued. “I rather liked it. I’d prefer Michelle Morgan to Ingrid Bergman any day. More my cup of tea.”
    “What do you have there?” the clerk said, noticing the photo under Eric’s arm.
    Eric set the picture on the counter.
    “I’m in a real hurry,” he explained. “Can I leave this as collateral for that Let’s Make Love poster I gave you a downpayment for Saturday?”
    “Oh, Eric, I don’t know . . .”
    “Please,” Eric pleaded, “it’s important.”
    The clerk smiled. “Very well, Eric. Preferred customer that you are . . .”
    While she went back to get the poster from the black file, Eric tapped his fingers nervously on the countertop, looking over the other man’s shoulders at the Bogart prints.
    “Say,” Eric asked. “Do you know what Bogart’s last name was in Casablanca?”
    “I should think it was still Bogart,” the man said after some thought.
    “That’s not what I meant.”
    “I know, I know, young man. Just a joke. It was Rick . . . Rick . . . I’m afraid you’ve stumped me on that one.”
    Eric smiled, gratified.
    The clerk returned with the poster, rolled up inside a used mailing tube.
    “Here you go, Eric,” she said. “Just try to bring the rest of the money around by the end of the week, okay?”
    “Oh, thanks. Thanks a lot.” Eric slid his framed picture across the counter toward her. “Here, aren’t you going to take this?”
    “No, Eric, that’s okay,” she said. “But tell me, what is your big hurry—”
    “I can’t explain,” Eric said, dashing back down the main aisle toward the front door.
    “Wait!” the other man called out after him. “You didn’t give me the