What's Better Than Money Read Free Page A

policemen in New York. He was lucky they didn’t die. He’s a great little stabber.”
    “He certainly must be.”
    Sam, the waiter, came up and looked enquiringly at her.
    “You’d better order something,” I said to her, “or you’ll get thrown out.”
    “Is that an invitation?” she asked, lifting her eyebrows at me.
    “No. If you can’t buy your own drinks you shouldn’t come in here.”
    She told Sam to bring her a coke.
    “While we are on the subject,” I said to her, “I don’t reckon to have attachments. I can’t afford them.”
    She stared at me blankly.
    “Well, you’re frank even if you are stingy.”
    “That’s the idea. Frank Stingy, that’s the name, baby.”
    I began to play Body and Soul.
    Since I had got that lump of shrapnel in my face, I had lost interest in women the way I had lost interest in work. There had been a time when I went for the girls the way most college boys go for them, but I couldn’t be bothered now. Those six months in the plastic surgery ward had drained everything out of me: I was a sexless zombie, and I liked it.
    Suddenly I became aware that Rima was singing softly to my playing, and after five or six bars, I felt a creepy sensation crawl up my spine.
    This was no ordinary voice. It was dead on pitch, slightly off-beat on the rhythm as it should be, and as clear as a silver bell. It was the clearness that got me after listening for so long to the husky torch singers who moan at you from the discs.
    I played on and listened to her. She stopped abruptly when Sam came with the coke. When he had gone I swung around and stared at her.
    “Who taught you to sing like that?”
    “Sing? Why, nobody. Do you call that singing?”
    “Yes, I call it singing. What are you like with the throttle wide open?”
    “You mean loud?”
    “That’s what I mean.”
    She hunched her shoulders.
    “I can be loud.”
    “Then go ahead and be loud. Body and Soul . As loud as you damn well like.”
    She looked startled.
    “I’ll be thrown out.”
    “You go ahead and be loud. I’ll take care of it if it’s any good. If it isn’t, I don’t care if you are thrown out.”
    I began to play.
    I had told her to be loud, but what came out of her throat shook me. I expected it to be something, but not this volume of silver sound, with a knife edge that cut through the uproar around the bar like a razor slicing through silk.
    The first three bars killed the uproar. Even the drunks stopped yammering. They turned to stare. Rusty, his eyes popping, leaned across the bar, his ham-like hands knotted into fists.
    She didn’t even have to stand up. Leaning back, and slightly swelling her deep chest, she let it come out of her as effortlessly as water out of a tap. The sound moved into the room and filled it. It hit everyone between the eyes: it snagged them the way a hook snags a fish. It was on pitch; it was swing; it was blues; it was magnificent!
    We did a verse and a chorus, then I signalled to her to cut it. The last note came out of her and rolled up my spine and up the spines of the drunks right into their hair. It hung for a moment filling the room before she cut it off and let the glasses on the bar shelf settle down and stop rattling.
    I sat motionless, my hands resting on the keys and waited.
    It was as I imagined it would be. It was too much for them. No one clapped or cheered. No one looked her way. Rusty picked up a glass and began to polish it, his face embarrassed. Three or four of the regulars drifted to the door and went out. The conversation started to buzz again, although on an uneasy note. It had been too good for them; they just couldn’t take it.
    I looked at Rima and she wrinkled her nose at me. I got to know that expression of hers: it meant: “So what? Do you think I care?”
    “Pearls before swine,” I said. “With a voice like that you can’t fail to go places. You could sing yourself into a fortune. You could be a major sensation!”
    “Do you think so?”