The jeep steadily turned corners, putting block after block of
the empty, early morning, upper-level streets between it and Fun
Incorporated. Phil wondered whether it could be traced by the electric
eyes that were said to be at each intersection, but he forgot the
question before it became a worry. Lucky was a plump green doughnut
on his lap. He felt over-poweringly sleepy and wished he could gently
slide into some universe lacking light, sound and gravity.
But before drifting off he glanced at Mitzie. Her face was set in
hard, proud, sneering lines, although two tears were jiggling down her
cheeks. Phil felt more annoyed than surprised or compassionate. No
one, he told himself, had the right to indulge such a mood in Lucky's
presence.
He decided that Mitzie needed to have certain truths rubbed in gently.
"Our escape is nothing to puff ourselves up over," he said softly.
"Lucky did it all. Though I admired your bravery dodging the jeep."
Mitzie didn't look at him, but she thinned her lips.
"The episode of the jeep was instructive," Phil went on, beginning to
twist the angelic knife just a little. "It showed you exactly what sort
of glorious criminal fellowship you had with those three hep-thugs. But
now," he went on, tempering justice with mercy, "you've discovered that
your romantic worship of evil isn't worth a fingersnap in the face of
true love and understanding. Eh, Mitzie?"
Mitzie let the car jog listlessly to a stop. Phil was dimly aware
that they were parking in a bumpy, blind end driveway in a neglected,
shrubby square with tall buildings set around. He leaned back, smiling
drowsily, his fingers playing with Lucky's springy fur. He was waiting
complacently for Mitzie's sobs.
Instead, the seat jounced and the door of the jeep slammed.
He looked around. Mitzie was standing outside the jeep against a
shadowy background of tangled shrubbery and misty, silent skyscrapers.
Suddenly she leaned forward toward him, bracing herself against the
door with stiff arms. She inhaled gustily and her small, tender breasts
lifted in their black satin half cups.
Now, he told himself, it must happen. She must yield, sobbing, to
Lucky's power.
"I hate you, Phil," she said intensely. "You want to see me turn to
jelly." New tears spurted from the inside corners of her eyes, but her
expression grew fiercer. "Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck may have tried
to kill me, but at least they gave me a chance to be something. They
allowed me the dignity of being hated. They didn't try to drown me in
slop.
"I want glory," she went on in a voice that certainly should have
sounded choked except she simply wouldn't permit it. "I want my kind of
glory, no matter how cheap and selfish you think it is, because it's
the only thing that's shining and brave in a shoddy, cowardly world.
I want to spit in the world's eye and then face it, when it comes
bleating for revenge, like I faced this jeep."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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