I don't think any of the shots would have missed.
There were five in the little gun. She had fired four.
I rushed her.
I didn't want the last one in my face, so I swerved to one side.
She gave it to me quite carefully, not worried at all.
I think I felt the hot breath of the powder blast a little.
I straightened up.
"My, but you're cute," I said.
Her hand holding the empty gun began to shake violently. The gun fell out of it.
Her mouth began to shake. Her whole face went to pieces.
Then her head screwed up towards her left ear and froth showed on her lips. Her breath made a whining sound.
She swayed.
I caught her as she fell.
She was already unconscious.
I pried her teeth open with both hands and stuffed a wadded handkerchief in between them.
It took all my strength to do it.
I lifted her up and got her into the car, then went back for the gun and dropped it into my pocket.
I climbed in under the wheel, backed the car and drove back the way we had come along the rutted road, out of the gateway, back up the hill and so home.
Carmen lay crumpled in the corner of the car, without motion.
I was halfway up the drive to the house before she stirred. Then her eyes suddenly opened wide and wild. She sat up.
"What happened?" she gasped.
"Nothing.
Why?"
"Oh, yes it did," she giggled. "I wet myself."
"They always do," I said.
She looked at me with a sudden sick speculation and began to moan.
32
The gentle-eyed, horse-faced maid let me in the long gray and white upstairs sitting room with the ivory drapes tumbled extravagantly on the floor and the white carpet from wall to wall.
A screen star's boudoir, a place of charm and seduction, artificial as a wooden leg.
It was empty at the moment.
The door closed behind me with the unnatural softness of a hospital door.
A breakfast table on wheels stood by the chaise-longue. Its silver glittered.
There were cigarette ashes in the coffee cup.
I sat down and waited.
It seemed a long time before the door opened again and Vivian came in.
She was in oyster-white lounging pajamas trimmed with white fur, cut as flowingly as a summer sea frothing on the beach of some small and exclusive island.
She went past me in long smooth strides and sat down on the edge of the chaise-longue.
There was a cigarette in her lips, at the corner of her mouth.
Her nails today were copper red from quick to tip, without half moons.
"So you're just a brute after all," she said quietly, staring at me. "An utter callous brute.
You killed a man last night.
Never mind how I heard it. I heard it.
And now you have to come out here and frighten my kid sister into a fit."
I didn't say a word.
She began to fidget.
She moved over to a slipper chair and put her head back against a white cushion that lay along the back of the chair against the wall.
She blew pale gray smoke upwards and watched it float towards the ceiling and come apart in wisps that were for a little while distinguishable from the air and then melted and were nothing.
Then very slowly she lowered her eyes and gave me a cool, hard glance.
"I don't understand you," she said. "I'm thankful as hell one of us kept his head the night before last.
It's bad enough to have a bootlegger in my past.