Death Trap Read Free Page A

move as she got up. I heard the rustle of her clothing.
    “Now what are you doing?”
    She turned on the light. She was dressed. I squinted into the light and pulled a corner of the sheet across myself. She looked down at me, and there were shadows under her blue eyes.
    She looked down at me for a long time and then tried to smile and said, “I love you.”
    It was on the edge of my tongue to say the same to her, but that was not in the rule book. I guess I smiled uneasily.
    “Will we be married?” she asked. It was a question so Victorian that I tried to laugh.
    “Is it funny?”
    “Vicky, honey, you don’t understand the kind of business I’m in. Hell, next month I could be sent to Spanish Morocco.”
    “That isn’t what I mean.”
    Her eyes made me feel guilty. You cover guilt with spurious anger. “No,” I said. “We won’t be married: Does that answer your question, darling?”
    Her face was very still. She folded her arms, hugging her breasts as though she were cold. “I hope you’re very proud,” she said softly. “Maybe you keep a diary. Be sure to list my every reaction before you forget.”
    “Wait a minute, honey.”
    “Could you please get dressed? I’ll wait in the car.”
    She had nothing to say on the way back. I do not mean that she made evasive answers. She would not open her mouth. After I got back to my place I could not get to sleep. I felt uncomfortable, and did not know why. After all, I had scored. Mission accomplished. She would get over being haughty. I told myself that I felt uneasy because she had been a virgin. I had not expected that and had, in fact, come very close to ending it when I found out. But in the dark room, in the dark bed, next to warmth and shivering eagerness tempered by fright, that brand of will power is an unusual commodity indeed.
    She would come around, I told myself. I would have to apologize, get a chance to talk to her. It would be all right.
    But I never heard another word from her lips, except when she would answer the phone. As soon as she recognized my voice there would be a soft decisive click and a dead line. I waited for her. I walked with her. I tried to talk to her. She walked with a lithe, even stride, never glancing at me or speaking. I could have been an invisible, inaudible man. She became visibly thinner and more pale. I wrote to her. There was no answer. I was certain she did not open the letters. I was still trying when I was transferred to the Spanish airfield job. And by then I knew what I had lost, what I had spoiled. Realization was a long time in coming; and when it came in all its intensity, I knew that the world seldom saw as great a fool as I. She had magic, integrity, passion and a rare loveliness. And I had gone at her the way you go at one of those coin machines where you try to pick up the prize with a toy crane. I could have had the whole machine, with all the prizes and all the candy. But I had settled for gilt and glass.
    Other girls became tasteless. The gusto had gone out of the game. One breast was too like another; hips could move in identical cadence.
    Time did not seem to soften the sense of loss. Had I come back from Spain sooner, I would have tried to see her. But I knew it would be the same; so I stayed away, forgoing my chances of quick trips back to the States until the sense of loss was dulled, until there were days and weeks when I could forget her entirely. Yet on the sour mornings, or during the nights I could not sleep—
    And this morning there was no need for depression. I forced Vicky out of my mind by thinking about Scotty, wondering about what he could provide. In Guaymas I would rent a cruiser after I learned the waters. Maybe about twenty-six foot, with good bunks, a decent galley. Anchor for the night. Go over the side in first light, down into the gray warm water.
    Then I went down to breakfast and found the clipping and went back up to the room. It was Alister Landy, her brother. I had met him; yet