Free Color Him Dead by Charles Runyon

right back even though I don’t know them from Haile Selassie. A man pats me on the ass and asks, ‘When are we taking another cruise together baby?’ but he’s a stranger, everyone’s a stranger. And you’re the strangest one of all, but I never did anything to you….”
    He lowered his eyes to the gun, looking at it as though it were a pet mouse which had died in his hand. He spoke, and for the first time his voice was uncertain.
    “If you really had amnesia, you’d go back over your past and try to regain your memory.”
    “I did. My husband took me home to Texas—”
    His head came up. “You mean Nebraska.”
    “No, Texas. I visited the ranch where I was born, and talked to my mother and father—”
    “Your father! He killed himself when you were fourteen.”
    “Now really, this is too much. Wouldn’t a father know his own daughter?”
    He brushed that aside with a wave of his hand. “You left the farm the same day your father shot himself. You went to a town in Wyoming. You got knocked up by a traveling salesman who said he was a student. You followed him to Indianapolis, found out he had a wife and three kids and was damn near broke, so you settled for room and board and expenses until you had your kid. When it came you put it out for adoption and forgot it. You started to work for the store, and within two years you married the owner, old Nils Nisstensson.”
    She was laughing, great whooping shrieks of relieved, hysterical laughter. “But what a ridiculous name! You couldn’t have made it up.”
    “I didn’t.”
    “But it’s some other girl, isn’t that obvious to you by
    now? I may not remember, but I’ve got the proof, a birth certificate—”
    “Fake ones cost twenty-five bucks.”
    “—and a transcript of credits from Texas Christian. Can that be bought? And even if it could, can you honestly say that I act like some little illiterate off a Nebraska farm?”
    He was frowning at her, chewing his lip. The gun still lay in his hand, but she no longer feared it. She had a feeling the danger was past, and that she could move freely now without interference. Tentatively, she picked up her shorts and slid her feet into them. As she pulled them up, she saw that he was not even looking at her. He was rewrapping the gun, sadly, regretfully.
    “It had to be some other girl,” she said with a tentative kindness in her voice.
    He looked up quickly, but his eyes revealed nothing. “Yes,” he said.
    She put on her halter, then lit a cigarette. The smoke tasted sweet; the air smelled wonderful, the world looked beautifully clean and bright. She had been near death, but now the crisis was over and she felt an intense curiosity about the man.
    “Did she really do that to you, all that you said?”
    He nodded slowly, fastening the package around his waist. He rose to his feet and said: “I’ll put your boat back in running order.”
    She watched him move to the boat in his awkward, hobbling gait; He seems terribly disappointed, she thought, and then: He doesn’t have to be disappointed.
    “What are you going to do now?”
    He paused, then shrugged and bent over the boat.
    “Are you going to live on my island?”
    “No.”
    “Well … I could run you over to the mainland.”
    “I’ll swim.”
    She felt anger pinch her nostrils. She wanted to say: Look here, can’t you see I’m trying to wipe out this horrible scene? I’m willing to be friends. But the moment she thought it, she knew it was impossible. The pace of their relationship had been set; there could be no slow journey into friendship, only a breathtaking leap into fiery combative passion. She became aware of the moisture in her armpits and felt the dampness in the small of her back. She pulled at the band of her shorts, let the cool air find its way down. Why did the man make her so edgy? She found her lips dry and licked them. She watched him straighten from the boat and walked to the edge of the water. Wait, she thought. We