Free On the Run by John D. MacDonald Page A

Jacksonville. I was getting too heavy. A little soft. Wore my hair a lot longer.”
    “Do you wear contact lenses now?”
    “No. There was a fair amount of correction in the lenses. It bothered me for a couple of months, being without glasses. Then it stopped bothering me. I think my eyes adjusted some. Things are hazy way off, but not enough to matter. I think Wain could walk right by me on the street. I mean, I like to think he could. I’m not about to test it.”
    “Nobody should have to
live
that way!”
    “Go to any big city at random and go up behind ten strangers, one after the other, and clap them on the shoulder. One out of ten will try to run right up the side of a building. When somebody wants you dead, you make a choice. You kill, or you run, or you build a fort, like Trotsky. Anyway, save your indignation. Name somebody with complete freedom of choice. I feel sorry for myself, but not all the time. I’m alive. I’m healthy. I can make a living anywhere I go, a good living.”
    “So can a nurse,” she said thoughtfully. “Not a good living. But get along.”
    In a little while she began to yawn. He stopped and she got into the back. He’d arranged the bed on the right side of the car. He found he could sit tall and get a quick glance at her. When he was up to speed he said, “How is it?”
    “Golly, it’s awful jiggly. Like some kind of therapy.”
    “Will you be able to sleep?”
    “I don’t know yet.”
    A few minutes later there was a sudden warmth of her breath against his ear, a nearby fragrance of her hair, a hand light on his shoulder. She was kneeling behind him. She kissed his cheek. “Thanks for not letting me be gloomy, Sid.” She chuckled deep in her throat. “That damn thing will jiggle me to sleep if it doesn’t get me too excited first.”
    “Think pure thoughts, Paula.”
    “Are there any other kind?” She patted his shoulder and stretched out again. He smiled. Her bawdy little remark had been another peace offering, and a token of trust that he would not take it in any sense of offer. Andit also told him something important about her. To be truly desirable, he had learned, a woman has to have a quality of animal playfulness about her sexuality. The broody ones who try to make of it a dark and solemn magic are trapped by their own dramatics. She would have that too, but at the right time and right place. The essential woman has the wisdom to know that it is a romp, a joy, a play, a game for grownups.
    When he looked back at her again, she slept there in sweet trust, prone, her hands wedged under the small pillow, face turned away from him, long legs sprawled at rest. The sun was low when he went through Texarkana and headed northeast on 67 toward Little Rock.
    When he pulled into a service complex on the far side of Little Rock and stopped by the pumps, under the night glare of the white fluorescence, she sat up slowly, blinked at the glare, arched her back, screwed her face up and stretched and yawned with lioness luxury.
    “Sleep all right?”
    She got out of the car and reached in and got her purse. She pawed her hair back and looked at him with slightly puffy eyes. “Talk to me before I’m awake and I bite.” She went trudging off in search of the ladies’ room. She came back with her hair tidied and wearing a fresh mouth.
    “I slept like a bear in January,” she said.
    “We can leave it here and go across to the restaurant. The man says it’s okay.”
    “Can we keep going a little while until my stomach wakes up, too?”
    “Sure.”
    “Should I drive now?”
    “After we eat.”
    Thirty miles further he found an attractive roadside restaurant. It was almost empty. They had a corner booth. After the waitress had gone off with their order, and with their thermos to fill it with coffee, Paula leaned toward him slightly, smiled in an odd way and said, “The invisible man.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “You’re big. You have a very strong face. You can look