Blood Game (17 page)

“What are you doing?” she asked. “You've got to go,” he said. “Fast.”

“But Leo, I killed a man this afternoon.”

“He killed your brother.”

“But I still didn't have any right to—”

“I said hurry.”

Looking at him in a kind of shocked disbelief, she rose from the bed and moved like an uncertain child to the closet.

“Hurry,” Guild said again.

She began taking dresses down from the closet and folding them in half. When she was finished, Guild took the dresses and put them inside the bag.

“Come on,” he said.

“Where?”

“Depot.”

“Depot?”

“There's a train pulling out of here in fifteen minutes.”

“To where?”

“Does it matter? Now, come on.”

Downstairs she paid the room clerk. He gave Guild, who was obviously nervous, a queer look.

In the street Guild kept her arm, steering her through the foot traffic and across the wide wagon-packed streets.

A block away they could hear the train getting ready to pull out. People's loud good-byes floated on the air like colorful balloons.

He made her sit as he bought her a one-way ticket at the counter.

On the way to the train, their footsteps loud on the wooden platform, she said, “You sure you should be doing this, Leo?”

“You let me worry about this.”

At the car she boarded, she turned and said, “I wish we were going to be together again, Leo.”

“It wouldn't work.”

“Why?” she said.

Without humor, he replied, “We're too much alike. Now get on up there.”

She started crying. “Leo, please, won't you reconsider? We could—”

“Board!” shouted the strolling conductor, checking his Ingram pocket watch. “Board!”

“You get up there,” Guild said. “You get up there right now.”

She leaned forward and kissed him quickly on the mouth.

He felt the kiss inside and out. He looked at her and felt alone. He wished there were some way she could stay.

“Board!” shouted the conductor.

The crowd pressed in, and she was lost in the midst of it, buoyed up the steps of the car as she moved inside with the others.

Guild knew better than to wait and wave.

He needed no more pain today.

In the morning Guild came down from his hotel room carrying his carpetbags. He had slept ten hours without any alcohol. Alcohol would just have made things worse.

He stood on the steps in the shade of the overhang. The bright day was already so hot the livery man down the street was sloshing water on horses.

From behind him a voice said, “I'd like to talk to you a minute.”

Guild turned to find John T. Stoddard standing there, carrying carpetbags of his own. Guild said nothing to him, just turned away and started down the steps, heading for the railroad station where he'd taken Clarise yesterday.

As he walked, he heard Stoddard coming up behind him, panting, change jingling in his pockets.

“I'm sorry about the way I treated Stephen,” Stoddard said. “If I could do it all over again—”

Guild set his bags down in the middle of the street and turned around and faced Stoddard. “I don't have any right to judge you, Stoddard. I've done some pretty terrible things in my own life.” He frowned. “But don't ask me to forgive you, all right? That's something I can't do.”

“He liked you, Guild. Did he—” He paused, looking aggrieved. “Did he ever say anything about me?”

“He said he loved you. He said that I didn't know anything about your suffering and that I shouldn't judge you. That's exactly what he said.”

Guild picked up his bags and turned back in the direction of the depot. He walked as fast as he could. He didn't want to see Stoddard ever again.

“Guild! Guild!” Stoddard shouted after him. “Please! Talk to me, Guild! Talk to me!”

But then a streetcar came, and John T. Stoddard vanished behind it. Not even his voice could be heard now, not even his voice.