Hamilton, Donald - Novel 02 by The Steel Mirror (v2.1) Page A

and I don’t want to bring that sheriff into it. He’s
apparently decided to keep his mouth shut since we weren’t stopped on the road.
I don’t want to do anything to make him change his mind.” He saw her smile
involuntarily at his predicament. “That’s all right,” he said grimly. “It’s
funny. You can laugh if you want to.”
                 She
stopped smiling. “Just the same, I don’t like it,” she said with weary
distaste. “That man knew perfectly well we weren’t married, and the boy, too.
It makes me feel a little… cheap.”
                 He
said, “For a girl wanted by the police, you worry about the damnedest things.”
                 “I’m
hungry,” she said after a long pause. “I think I’m going to faint if I don’t
get something to eat pretty soon.”
                 “I
doubt it,” he said.
                 She
looked up angrily.
                 He
said, “You’ll faint if you this and you’ll die if you that and you’ll kill
yourself if you do the other thing.”
                 “Do
I really sound like that?” she asked, looking up, startled.
                 He
did not want to like her, and he wished she would not persist in showing a
rather likable honesty and directness.
                 “Don’t
take it to heart,” he said, and pulled off his tie and threw it at the dresser.
He had changed back to his brown suit in a filling station, hoping to look more
like a young businessman vacationing with his wife. He could feel the
perspiration on his legs scratch stickily by the wool of his trousers as he
moved to the telephone. “What’s the time, please?” He put the instrument down
and set his watch back one hour. “Five thirty-five,” he said. “We gained an
hour back there, somewhere.”
                 Ann
adjusted the tiny platinum watch on her wrist. “Where are we?” she asked
without interest.
                 “Boyne,
Colorado.”
                 “Colorado?”
                 “Sure,”
he said. “We left Kansas a couple of hours ago.”
                 “I
guess I must have been half asleep,” she said, and looked up at him quickly. “You
must be dead. You didn’t get any sleep at all last night.”
                 He
shrugged his shoulders. After a moment he asked, “Do you mind if I look in your
purse?”
                 “Yes,
of course I—” She stopped herself and her shoulders sagged a little. “Oh, go
ahead!”
                 He
sat down on the bed beside her, she drawing away a little, and opened the
purse, emptied it piecemeal, and sat frowning at the accumulation of
commonplace items on the bedspread. He riffled through the roll of bills to
make sure it contained nothing but bills, glanced in the coinpurse, opened the
expensive compact, and tore the end off a pack of Philip Morris to see that it
contained nothing but cigarettes. He began to replace the things by the
handful.
                 “Please,”
she said stiffly. “I’d prefer to put them back myself, if you don’t mind.”
                 He
stopped and sat back, studying her face. It was drawn and shiny and tired, and
not very clean. There was not much lipstick left on her mouth, and what there
was seemed to be distributed in small flakes.
                 Her
gray eyes found him briefly and looked away. “Would it… would it help any if I
gave you my word that I really don’t know what it’s all about?”
                 He
turned away from her and rubbed his eyes. “No.” He got up and walked to the
closet and felt through her jacket, finding nothing but a forgotten wad of
cleansing tissue in one pocket. He took her hat from the shelf and examined it.
She was watching him when he turned around. She licked her lips, rising.
                 “Should
I… take my