Someone Is Bleeding Read Free

examples. In my own family I can give you four examples of happy marriages.”
    She shook her head. She read some more. And her jaws were held tightly. I sat there looking at her sadly. Wondering if there were anything I could do to ease that terrible tension in her.
    The night seemed to disappear, Houdini-like. The first thing I knew we were walking back on the block off Wilshire. It was a nice, starry night. The street was dark and quiet. Peggy took my arm as we walked.
    “I do like you,” she said. “You talk my language.”
    We talked of different things. Nothing important.
    “I should work,” she said, a little ashamed. “It’s not very honorable to live on . . . my alimony. But . . .” She looked at me as if almost pleading, “I don’t know how to do anything, and I dread the idea of working in a ten cent store or something. I did that when I was married. It’s . . . awful.”
    I patted her hand.
    A little later. “Where does your ex-husband live, Peggy?”
    “Do we . . . have to talk about it, Davie? Please.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said.
    It was when we were walking past the little park between 24th and 25th Streets.
    “Would you like to sit in the park a while?” she asked me.
    “Sure,” I answered.
    So we sat on the grass looking over the mirror-like pond. Watching the moon saucer that floated on the water surface. Listening to a basso frog giving out a roundelay for his lady love.
    We didn’t talk. I listened to her breathing. I glanced at her and saw her looking intently at the pond. Felt her hand on the ground and covered it with mine. And, naturally, without forcing it, found my head resting against hers. Her cheek was firm, soft. The cologne she wore was a delicious, delicate fragrance.
    And, then, in a moment, casually, I drew back her hair and kissed the back of her neck. Long.
    She didn’t move. She shivered. Didn’t struggle. But her hands tightened on the grass and pulled some out. I wondered what her lowered face was like.
    I took off my lips. Her breath stopped, then caught again. In time with mine? I wondered.
    Her throat moved. “Wow,” she said.
    I guess I laughed aloud. Of all the words in the world, it was the last I expected.
    Peggy looked hurt, then offended. I quickly apologized.
    “The word seemed so odd right then,” I explained.
    “Oh,” She smiled, a little awkwardly. “No one ever kissed me like that,” she said.
    I looked at her in amazement. “What? No one?”
    She shook her head.
    “But . . . your husband?”
    Her lips tightened.
    “No,” she said. She shuddered and her hands tightened into hard fists. “No,” she said again.
    “I’m sorry,” I said.
    She shook her head. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “You just don’t . . . realize. What it was like.”
    I put my arm around her.
    “Peggy,” I said, softly.
    When we reached the front of her house I took her in my arms and kissed her. Her warm lips responded to me.
    I left her three times. Then, each time, turned to look back. And saw her standing by the picket fence that glowed whitely in the moonlight. And she was looking after me. The way a frightened and lonely child looks after its departing parent.
    I kept going back. Holding her. Feeling her press her face against my shoulder. Whisper. “Davie. Davie.”
    And trying to understand that childlike look, that hungry, wistful look in her eyes.
    It was while I was walking away the third time that the big car passed me, I didn’t notice it. At least not any more than I’d notice any car that passed me on a dark street in the early morning. We’d sat talking till way after midnight.
    But at Wilshire I stopped to go back again.
    And found the car parked in front of her house. Right behind Albert’s old Dodge. I saw a man at the wheel wearing a chauffeur’s cap. He was slumped down, staring at the windshield.
    Another man was at the door. He had on a top coat, a homburg.
    At first I thought, Oh my God, it’s her husband and he’s a