Assassins Have Starry Eyes Read Free Page A

relaxed and closed my eyes, suddenly very tired. Into my mind, unbidden, came a picture of the two youngsters riding by in their battered jeep. One of them had wished me luck and both had waved, I remembered. There are probably few hunters who, watching the odd specimens who head into the woods with guns each fall, haven’t said to themselves: If some trigger-happy moron opens up on me, he’d better not miss, because I won’t. But having the thought is a little different from acting on it…
    When I opened my eyes again, she was standing there, holding the door open to show that she was prepared to leave if she was not welcome. She was wearing the mink coat she had had when we were married and the small hat she had bought on her last trip back east.
    “Hi, Princess,” I whispered. “How was Reno?”

THREE
     
    SHE LET THE door swing closed under its own power and came forward. I noticed belatedly that she was carrying an armload of flowers wrapped in tissue paper—it was difficult to see how I could have overlooked it, since the package was almost three feet long. Perhaps I had been thinking of other things than flowers.
    “Ring for the nurse, will you, darling?” she said. “So I can get rid of this stuff. My God, they’ve really got you wired for sound.”
    I found the buzzer and pressed it, saying, “They’re planning to fit me with the proper connections so that when I get home I can just shove the laundromat to one side and hook myself up to the Albuquerque water and sewage systems. Make a fine husband for some woman. She can plug me in the wall socket when she wants my company; switch me off and roll me back in the corner when she doesn’t. A great improvement over the old-fashioned kind of husband that’s always taking off for the office or duck blind or what have you.” A young nurse’s aide put her head in the door. I whispered, “Bring a bathtub or something, will you, please? We’ve got flowers.”
    There followed the usual confusion that seems to be inevitable when a couple of females get involved with a bunch of flowers. They tried three different pots before the girl found a glass pitcher deep enough to hold Natalie’s contribution, and then they had to get the bouquet organized. The flowers were gladioli, of that red-orange shade that went nicely with the light-green living room walls back home. I told myself the color had no particular significance, although it was the color I had usually tried for when I figured we had fought long enough and it was time to quit.
    Finally Natalie thanked the girl, saw her out the door, and turned to look at me again. “You don’t have to start right out being unpleasant,” she said. “You might appreciate me first, just for a minute or two. I’ve driven eight hundred miles since yesterday morning to get here.”
    I shuddered at the thought. She had the quaint idea that a car was barely moving until the needle registered eighty. “Who’s being unpleasant?” I whispered.
    “I didn’t like that crack about husbands and laundromats and other conveniences.”
    “Sorry,” I whispered. “Meant to be funny. Consider it withdrawn. Thanks for the flowers.”
    She remained by the door for a moment longer; a slight girl, no taller than average but somewhat straighter, with dark hair that she still wore quite long despite the current whacked-off styles. With her big eyes and big red mouth, the shoulder-length dark hair gave her the look of a prematurely sophisticated schoolgirl. She had been twenty when I married her; she was twenty-three now. The whole thing had been a mistake, of course, but I could still think of arguments in its favor.
    She made a little gesture that covered the bed, the apparatus, and me. “How bad?” she asked.
    “Think nothing of it. I can wiggle my toes and everything.”
    “The paper said you were in a critical condition. It was last Sunday’s Albuquerque Journal somebody’d left in the hotel lobby; I was looking through it