Read Cloud Nine for Free Online Page B

Mr. Kirby.”
    “Sonya! He couldn’t have! He wasn’t there!”
    “And her mother was driving. He killed her, though.”
    “But how? How?”
    “I don’t know how, Mr. Kirby.”
    She leaned forward, both hands on her knees, looked me straight in the eye, and went on: “I tell you one thing, though: My father knows how, and we’d better do something quick, or he’ll blow this ship out of water. And that could ruin us both. Both, do you hear, Mr. Kirby? I said—”
    “I heard what you said, Sonya.” We sat blinking at each other, and then in a low voice she said: “There’s one way out, Mr. Kirby, that’ll settle Burl’s hash, settle my father’s hash, and settle my hash, for that matter—I mean, from your point of view. One way out for you, that would be a whole lot cheaper than the Crittenton charges would be. One way out that would take care of everything.”
    “What way is that, Sonya?”
    “You could marry me yourself.”
    “...I bet I could, I bet I could!”
    If she’d set off a cherry bomb under me, she couldn’t have jolted me worse, and I didn’t try to hide it, how her idea hit me. She didn’t move or raise her voice, merely telling me: “Well don’t fly off the handle. I mean it.”
    “Sonya, I think you’re feeling the strain.”
    “I am, I admit it, and you better.”
    “Let’s stick to what makes sense.”
    “This does, if you’ll let me explain it.”
    “I’m sorry, I couldn’t keep a straight face.”
    “Then I’ll explain it innyway, and if your face gets all twisted up, from how funny it is to you, then okay it’s funny to you, but it’s not funny to me, so suppose you hold still and listen and stop making silly cracks.”
    “You talk like a wife already.”
    “You ready?”
    “Then, make with the explanation.”
    “You go to Northwestern High, you hear things all the time, because some girl’s always in trouble, and the rest of them talk about it, coming up with stuff that doesn’t come up in sex-education class. So you and I get married, and that makes you my guardian—not my father inny longer, or my mother, or innyone, but you. So that gives you the right to have an abortion done, in New York, where all they want is your money, two hundred dollars, please pay the cashier. So, two hundred, plus the plane fare, plus the hotel bill, is a whole lot cheaper isn’t it, than the Florence Crittenton Home? It would wind the whole thing up, because you’ll be the one, remember, who decides if Burl’s to be charged, if a warrant’s going to be sworn out. If you say no, that’s it. So? Does that make sense or doesn’t it?”
    “...Okay. And then what?”
    “What do you mean? And then what?”
    “We come back from New York and then what?”
    “Well that would be up to you.”
    “Hey! This was your idea. What’s the rest of it?”
    “The rest of it is, it would be up to you, to keep me or ship me home, and whichever way you want, I won’t be inny pest. Of course, I’d feel I owed you something, nice as you’ve been to me, and maybe you wouldn’t mind. But, if you didn’t feel that way, you could get a divorce, or ’nullment I think its called, on account of me not being consummated. Of course, I own up, I would try being nice to you, so nice you might want to keep me, without shipping me back. At least, you don’t think me repulsive.”
    “How do you know what I think?”
    “By how you look at my legs.”
    “Well who wouldn’t, the way you throw them around?”
    “Now you talk like a husband.”
    “Well, it makes more sense than I realized, and I confess the guardian angle hadn’t occurred to me. But —”
    “It would fix everything up—Burl, Father, Mother, honor, the whole stinking mess. We could apply for a license today, pick it up, be married Monday, go to New York Monday night, and have the surgery done on Tuesday—it takes a minute and a half. And then Tuesday night with me in your lap, helping you make up your mind, you could say what