The Rip-Off (12 page)

I started to rear up, but she pressed me back upon the pillows. I stammered nonsensically, "What why where how…" and then the jumble in my mind cleared, and I said, "How did I get up here? Who brought me up?"

"Shhh," said Kay. "I-we made it together, remember? With me steering you, and hanging onto you for dear life."

"Mrs. Olmstead helped you. I wouldn't have thought the old gal had it in her."

"Mrs. Olmstead isn't back yet. She's never around when you need her for anything. Now, will you just shut up for goodness sake, and tell me how-Doggone it, anyway!" Kay scowled, her voice rising angrily. "It's just too darned much! I have to follow that woman around, do everything over after she's done it! I have to watch you every minute, to keep you from doing something silly, and all I get is bawled out for it! I have to-"

"Oh, come on now," I said, "it really isn't that bad, is it?"

"Yes, it is! And now you've made me lose control of myself, and act as crazy as you are! Now, you listen to me, Britt Rainstar! Are you listening?"

She was trembling with fury, her face an unrelieved white against the contrasting red of her hair. I tried to take her hand, and she knocked it away. Then, she quickly recovered it and squeezed it, smiling at me determinedly through gritted teeth.

"I asked you if you were-oh, the heck with it," she said. "How are you feeling, honey?"

"Tol'able, ma'am," I said. "Tolerable. How are you?"

She said she was darned mad, that's how she was. Then she told me to hold still, darn it, and she tested the strip of adhesive bandage on my forehead. And then she leaned down and gently kissed it.

"Does it hurt very much, Britt?"

"You wouldn't ask that, if you were really a nurse."

"What? What do you mean by that?"

"Anyone with the slightest smattering of medical knowledge knows that when you kiss something you make it well."

"Ha!" She brushed her lips against mine. "You were told not to leave this house, Britt. Not under any circumstances. Why did you do it?"

"It wasn't really going out," I said. "I just saw Miss Aloe to her car."

"And you got shot."

"But there was no connection between the two events. She'd been gone for, oh, a couple of minutes when it happened."

"What does that prove?"

"I'm sure she had nothing to do with it," I said stubbornly. "She told me she was sorry for what she'd done, and she swore that there'd be no more trouble. And she was telling the truth! I know she was, Kay."

"And
I
know you got shot." Kay said. "I also know that I'll get blamed for it. It's not my fault. You practically threw me out of your office, and told me to leave you alone. I was only t-trying to look after you, b-but you-"

I cut in on her, telling her to listen to me and listen good. And when she persisted, obviously working herself up to a tear storm, I took her by the shoulders and shook her.

"Don't you pull that on me!" I said. "Don't pretend that that little stunt you pulled down in my office was an attempt to protect me. You were just being nosy. Acting like a jealous wife. Miss Aloe and I were discussing business, and-"

"Ha! I know her kind of business. She's got her business right in her-well, never mind. I won't say it."

She dropped her eyes, blushing, I stared at her grimly, and finally she looked up and asked me what I was looking at.

"At you," I said. "What's with this blushing bit? I think it's just about impossible for you to be embarrassed. I don't think you'd be embarrassed if you rode naked through Coventry on a Kiddy-Kar with a bull's-eye on each titty and a feather duster up your arse! You've repeatedly proved that you're shameless, goddammit, yet you go around kicking shit, and turning red as a billy goat's butt every time you see the letter
p
. You-"

"
Oops!"
said Kay. "
Whoops!"
And she lost her balance and went over backwards, sitting down on the floor with a thud. She sat thus, shaking and trembling, her hands covering her face; making rather strange and fearful sounds.

"What's the matter?" I said. "Are you throwing a fit? That's all I need, by God, a blushing fit-thrower!"

And her hands came away from her face, they were literally exploded, as she burst into wild peals of laughter. The force of it made me wince, but it was somehow contagious. I started laughing, too, laughing harder at each new blast from her. And the harder I laughed the harder she laughed.

That kind of laughter does something to some people, and it did it to her. She staggered to her feet, trying to get to the bathroom, but she just couldn't make it. Instead, she fell down across me, now crying from laughing so much, and I took her by her wet seat, and hauled her over to my other side.

"You dirty girl," I said. "Why don't you carry a cork with you?"

"D-don't," she begged. "Please d-don't…"

I didn't; that is, I didn't say anything more. For practically anything will start a person up again when he has passed a certain point in laughing.

We lay quiet together, with the only sound the sound of our breathing.

After a long time, she sighed luxuriously and asked if I really minded her blushing, and I said I supposed there were worse things.

"I don't know why I do it, Britt, but I always have. I've tried not to, but it just makes it worse."

"I used to know a girl who was that way," I said. "But an old gypsy cured her of it."

I told her how it was done. Following the old gypsy's instructions, she sprinkled salt on a sparrow's tail when it was looking the other way. When the sparrow flew off, it took her blushes with her.

"Just like that?" Kay said. "She didn't blush any more?"

"No, but it started a blushing epidemic among the sparrows. For years, before they lost their shame by do-doing on people, the midnight sky was brilliant with their blushes, and-"

"
Darn you!"
An incipient trembling of the bed. "You shut up!"

I said quickly that we should both think of something unpleasant. Something that definitely was not a laughing matter. And it was no trouble at all to think of such a something.

"I'm gonna catch holy heck," Kay said solemnly. "Boy, oh boy, am I gonna catch it."

"You mean, I'm going to catch it," I said. "I was the one that got shot."

"But I let you. I didn't stop you from going outside."

"Stop me? How the hell could you stop me? I'm a grown man, and if I wanted to go outside I'd go, regardless of what you said or did."

"You'll see," Kay said. "Sergeant Claggett will hold me responsible. He's already said he would."

I couldn't talk her out of her qualms, nor did I try to very hard. I was the one who had goofed-and I would hear from Claggett about that!-but she would be held responsible. He would have her yanked off the job, possibly even fired.

"Look, Kay," I said. "We don't know that I was actually shot. We don't
know
anything of the kind, now, do we?"

Kay said that of course, we knew it. At least, she did. That crease across my temple had been put there by a bullet.

"Now, we
don't
know," she added thoughtfully, "that anyone was actually trying to hit you. That it was a professional, say, which it would just about have to be, wouldn't it, if the shooting was intentional?"

"Why, that's right!" I said. "And a pro wouldn't have just creased me. He'd have put one through my head. I'll bet it was an accident, Kay. Some character hunting rabbits across the road, or-or else-" I broke off, remembering the other things that had happened to me.

"Or else what, Britt?"

"He wasn't trying to kill me or seriously injure me. Just to give me a bad jolt."

"Oh," said Kay, slowly. "Oh, yes. I guess you're probably right, all right. I guess your darling little Miss Aloe was lying when she promised not to give you any more trouble."

I snapped that Manny hadn't been lying-something that I was by no means sure of, much as I wanted to be. Kay shrugged that, of course, I knew more about my business than she did. So who was responsible for the shooting, if Manny was not?

"I thought she was the only one you and Sergeant Claggett suspected. Of giving you such a bad time, I mean. I guess you did say that her uncle
might
be involved, but you really didn't seem to believe it."

"Didn't and don't," I said curtly. "That was just a far out possibility."

"Well, just don't you worry your sweet tinted-gray head about it," said Kay. "I imagine that Miss Aloe just forgot that she'd ordered someone to take a shot at you. I'll bet that now that she remembers doing it, she's just as sorry as she can be."

I said something that sounded like ship but wasn't. Kay said brightly that she'd just thought of another explanation for the shooting. Manny had ordered it, and then ordered it canceled. But the gunman had forgotten the cancellation.

"That's probably what happened, Britt, don't you think so? Of course, you'd think a professional gunman would be a little more careful, but, oh, well, that's life."

"That's life," I said, "and this is my hand. And if you don't stop needling me, dammit…!"

"I'm sorry, darling. It just about had to be an accident, didn't it? A stray bullet from a hunter's gun."

"Well…" I hesitated.

"Right," said Kay, "So there's no reason to tell Sergeant Claggett that you were ever outside the house. He'd just get all upset and mad, and maybe take me away from you, and oh, boy," sighed Kay. "Am I glad to get that settled! Let's go to the bathroom, shall we?"

We went to the bathroom.

We got out of our clothes and washed, and helped each other wash, and Kay carefully removed the adhesive strip and examined my head wound.

"Mmm-hmm. It doesn't look so bad, Britt. How does it feel?"

"No problem. A very slight itching and stinging occasionally."

"Well, we'll leave it unbandaged for the time being. Let the air get to it. Have you felt any more faintness?"

"Nope. Not the faintest."

She lowered the toilet seat, and told me to sit down on it. I did, and she took my pulse while resting a palm on my forehead. Then-

The bathroom suddenly began to shake. There was a sudden ominous creaking and cracking, slowly mounting in volume.

Kay pitched sideways, and her mouth opened to scream. I laughed, grabbed her and pulled her down on my lap.

"It's all right," I said, "don't be afraid. I've been through the same thing a dozen times. There's a lot of shaking and trembling, and some of the damnedest racket you ever heard, but…"

I tightened my grip on her, for the shaking was already pretty violent. And the noise was so bad that I was virtually yelling in her ear.

The house was "settling," I explained. Something it had done sporadically for decades. The phenomenon was due to aging and exceptionally heavy building materials, and, possibly, to deep subterranean springs which lay beneath the structure. But frightening as it was to anyone unaccustomed to it, there was absolutely no danger. In a few minutes it would be all over.

The few minutes were actually more than ten. Kay sat with her arms wound around my neck, hanging on so tightly at times that I was almost strangled. It was not a bad way to go, though, if one had to, being hugged to death by a girl who was not only very pretty but also very naked. And I held her nakedness to mine, as enthusiastically as she held mine to hers.

It was so pleasant, in fact, that neither of us was in any hurry to let go even after the noise and the trembling had ceased.

I patted her on the flank, and said she wiggled very good. She whispered naughtily in my ear-something which I shall not repeat-and then she blushed violently. And I even blushed a little myself.

I was trying to think of some suitable, or rather, unsuitable reply, when she let out a startled gasp.

"Oh, my God, Britt"-she pointed a trembling finger. "L-look!"

I looked. And laughed. "It's all right," I said, giving her another flank spank. "It always does that."

"B-but the doorknob turned! It's still turning."

"I know. I imagine every other doorknob in the place is doing the same thing. As I understand it, the house undergoes a kind of winding-up during the settling process. Then when the tension is relieved, there's a general relaxing or unwinding, and you see such things as doors flying open or their knobs turning."

Kay said,
Whew
, brushing imaginary perspiration from her brow.

"It scared me to death, Britt! Really!"

"No, it didn't Kay," I said. "Really!"

"Well, I sure wouldn't want to be alone when it happened. You see the knob turn, and-how do you know someone's not there?"

"Very simply," I said. "If someone's there, he just opens the door."

The door opened, and Sergeant Claggett came in.

He stood frozen in his tracks for a moment, blinking at us incredulously. Then he said, "Excuse
me!
" retreating across the threshold with a hasty back step.