Free Clemmie by John D. MacDonald Page A

was made out of pipe cleaners. There they come.”
    He heard the siren come through the night, growl to a stop fifty yards away. Clemmie sipped her coffee and wore an expression of mild interest. Soon the siren went away. She said, “Later we’ll phone Stoddard General and see how he is.” She looked and frowned. “Fitz, this is a hell of a bright place. It must be the brightest place in town. Let’s move along. Are you always so quiet?”
    “I haven’t had much—”
    “Don’t start now. Let me guess.” She took his hand, turned it over. “Nice hand. No manual labor. An office type. College man. Conservative. And reliable. Pay the girl, Fitzie, and let’s get out of this operating room.”
    They went out into the night. When she walked beside him she seemed quite small. He had felt conspicuous with her in the bright lights. He felt more at ease in darkness.The dulled feeling had left him. He looked down at her and felt a tingle of excitement. “Where to?”
    “Ah, some dim café, my love. With muted music. And people without faces. Where we can continue this mad affair between the innocent child and the conservative elderly type.”
    “Flattery will get you nowhere.”
    “I will use all my elfin charms to lead you on and destroy you. Former friends will avoid you. They’ll say poor old Fitz. The dangerous forties, you know. Fell in with a bit of fluff and they drummed him out of the club. Tore off his Rotary pin and broke his six iron. Pitiful thing for his wife. Poor Laura. Splendid girl. Salt of the earth.”
    “Maura, not Laura.”
    “Honestly? Brother, I’m hot tonight. All ESP.”
    “What happens to me after this mad affair?”
    “Isn’t it obvious? A broken man, slouching down shabby streets, begging on corners. Everything gone but the memory of me and how once we burned with a hard gemlike flame. Remember the night, darling, when you gave Fritz five thousand marks and the orchestra played for us until dawn?”
    “Hans, dearest, not Fritz.”
    She spun and walked backward in front of him, beaming at him appreciatively. “Hey, I think you could play my game too. Dewey always slobbed it up. No talent. Come on. Play some more.”
    He hesitated and said, “Do you remember how long I stood outside that hotel in Madrid in the rain, darling?”
    “And do you know, I can’t even remember that bullfighter’s name. His embroidery was all scratchy. I do remember that.”
    “How about this place?”
    She looked in. “Ideal. Time out on the game. It’ll be your lead next.”
    They found a dark corner, a padded bench with a low table in front of it. They drank. He was able to play her game. It flattered him that he could play it well enough to please her, to make her laugh, to make her eyes gleam with her pleasure.
    “That time in Spain,” he said, “it was a good and truething for us, because all brave things are good and true.”
    “But don’t you see, dearest? That was the beginning of the end. When you went with the countess to Malaga, expecting me to follow you.”
    “But you did follow me, remember?”
    “Certainly, you fool. But you were killing my love, little by little.” She sniffled. She was hamming it, but she was uncannily convincing. She sighed. “We had so much, my darling. So very much, such riches. But we squandered them madly. We threw it all away.” She threw her head back and looked at him through tiny thickets of black lashes. “But … still … perhaps … a tiny ember is left in the ashes of my heart. And it can be fanned back to life.”
    “I am too old,” he said, “to go through all that again. Too old and too weary. I have the missions, the soup kitchens, my broken shoes and my memories. I can’t walk back into your life.”
    “Do you ever hear from Maura, dearest?”
    “No. She married a wealthy industrialist named Paul Ober.”
    “I wanted only joy, excitement. I did not mean to ruin your life.”
    “You enriched it, Clemmie dear.”
    “And Paris