A Deadly Shade of Gold Read Free

been back since Christmas. Emotionally convalescent, sort of. Ragged edges."
    "Something rough?"
    "I came out of it with a little money, and absolutely nothing else, except a case of the flying twitches."
    "What in the world is that?"
    "When you try to drop off to sleep and all of a sudden you leap like a gaffed fish and start shaking. So you have a drink and try again. But now I'm having play time. Months of it, Nora."
    "Until the money gets low?"
    "Is this going to work into the lecture about ambition, security, reliability, the obligation to use Page 6

    all the talents God gives you and so on?"
    "No, darling. Not tonight. Not ever again. You are incorrigible."
    I parked in the vast emptiness in front of her shop. She is in a superior shopping center, multilevel, with walks, planting areas, piped music, a sprinkling of nationally known retail names.
    The two feminine dummies in the shallow window were silhouetted against her night lights. In a slant of gold script on the display window was written Gardino.
    I went with her while she unlocked the door, and stood inside the door while she went back to her office in the rear to get the letter. In the still air was the scent of perfumes and fabric. Out of some mild ironic impulse I reached into the shallow window and patted the hard plastic curve of the sterile rump of the nearest dummy, covered by $89 worth of cotton. I thought of what Meyer had said, and I murmured, "I dub thee Carol."
    She came swiftly and soundlessly back across the thick carpeting, the paleness of the letter in her hand and said, "I hate to be so stupid."
    "What's the most expensive thing in stock?"
    "What? We can get almost anything very quickly for special customers."
    "I mean right here, right now."
    "Why, dear?"
    "Aimless curiosity Nora."
    "We have some absolutely lovely suits at nine hundred dollars."
    "Would a woman buy one of those to please a man?"
    She patted my arm. "Don't be an ass, Travis. A woman buys a nine-hundred-dollar suit to prove to the world at large that she has a man willing to buy her a nine-hundred-dollar suit. It gives her a sense of emotional accomplishment. Come along. You're a drink ahead of me."
    As she checked the lock on the door behind us, I said, "How about the Mile O'Beach?"
    "Hmmm. Not the Bahama Room?"
    "Later, if we feel like it. But food and drink in the Captain's Room."
    "Fine!"
    It was a conversational place, a small dark lounge far from the commercial merriment, all black woods, dark leather, flattering lighting. We took armchairs at the countersunk bar, and I told Charles to bring us menus in about forty minutes, and told him what sort of table we would like.
    We talked very busily and merrily, right through the drinks and right into dinner, and then the conversation began to sag because there wasn't anything left to talk about except the way things once were. It brought on constraint.

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    I do not know if she ever actually realized, while things were going on, how it all was with me.
    Sam and Nora were so inevitably, totally, gloweringly right for each other, that the reflected aura deluded Nicki and me into thinking we had something just as special. A habitual foursome can work that kind of uneasy magic sometimes. When Sam Taggart and Nora broke up in that dreadful and violent and self-destructive way, Nicki and I tried to keep going. But there wasn't enough left. Too much of what we thought we were to each other depended on that group aura, the fun, the good talk, the trusting closeness.
    I waited until she had finished dinner and had argued herself into the infrequent debauch of Irish coffee.
    Not knowing any good way to do it, I waited until one line of talk had died into a not entirely comfortable silence, and then I said, "Sam is on his way back here. He wants to see you."
    Her eyes went wide and deep lines appeared between her dark brows. She put her hand to her throat. "Sam?" she whispered. "He wants...." The color drained out of her face abruptly.