Read Where Is Janice Gantry? for Free Online

her and said, “There’s one other thing that should be done.”
    “Yes?”
    “But it might not be too smart. Skip it.”
    She came quickly to me and hooked two fingers in my shirt pocket and gave an irritable tug and said, “What, Sam? What other thing?”
    “Well, it sort of relates to the fact that knowledge is power.”
    She stamped her foot. “Stop being so damn shifty!”
    “I just had the idea that before you get this motel deal all set up, you could send Cal to me for detailed information on the best way to attack this special problem he’ll be facing … uh … what to do and what not to do …”
    She tried a hard right and I caught that wrist, and I just barely caught the left wrist in time to jump out of the way of some very sincere kicks. Her face was bright red and she was grunting with effort and trying to keep from laughing at the same time.
    “Oh, you dirty stinking thing!” she groaned.
    When I felt the tension go out of her muscles I cautiously released her. We were standing close, and smiling at each other.
    “You
are
a monster,” she said gently.
    “I bet you can lick that lawyer man in a fair fight, lady.”
    Her breasts lifted and fell with a mighty sigh as she looked up at me, and I saw the way her eyes and her mouth changed.
    “Sam, my darling, you’ll always be a part of my life,” she whispered.
    “It was a good part, wasn’t it?”
    She dropped her eyes and said, “This is … shameless and disloyal and … and sick, I guess. But could we … what was that word you used?… celebrate once more what it all used to be? Sam?”
    Right at the edge of an eager agreement, no matter how unwise, I remembered Charlie. “Could you … drive out about nine o’clock, or could I pick you up?”
    She took another deep shuddering breath and then squared her shoulders and said, “No, dear. That would be too cold-blooded, and it would give me too much time to think and … too much guilt afterward. If it could have happened right now … if you could have broken speed laws taking me down to the cottage … The hell with it, Sam. At very best it was a very bad idea.”
    “I hope you’ll be happy, Sis.”
    “I want enough of them so I can name one of them Sam without anybody getting any cute ideas about it.”
    “If they’re all girls?”
    “Sam is still a good name.”
    As I walked by the front of the building toward my car I looked in and saw her covering her typewriter, her face thoughtful. She looked up and smiled and gave me a final bawdy wink.
    After I had crawled into the bread-baking heat of the wagon I remembered too late, the tailored red leather couch in Tom Earle’s small private office. She was right—I was a monster, a hopeless lecher. It made me feel guilty to realize it had even entered my mind. I knew Sis well enough to know she would have taken the offer of the random bounce on her employer’s red couch in one of two ways. She would have become savagely angry or semi-hysterical with laughter. With all her potential of eagerness, she yet required that dignity which is a product of total privacy and ample time.
    As I drove over toward town to check a claim that could be looked at only after working hours, I improved my morale by telling myself no hopeless lecher could long endure without a girl. And I was enduring quite well, and was convinced that the months of girlishness were not corroding my masculinity in any way. And how many months was it? Five anda bit, since that turbulent weekend in March with that miraculous tourist lady down in Fort Myers. A policy holder with one of my client companies had stove in the front of her husband’s blue Buick and, for business reasons, he had to fly back to Philadelphia, leaving her to wait for the repairs and then drive the car north. I came onto the scene after the husband had departed, and she had described him for me, saying, “This is the first time in our entire married life that I have had one minute