She turned the car onto a side-street, into her driveway, stopped the engine.
"Pardon me for a minute, Leslie. I'm going to run home and burn every dollar I have. It'll take a minute. . . ."
She smiled. "You don't have to burn it. It's fine if you have money. The thing that matters to a woman is whether you use it to try to buy her. Be careful you never try that."
"Too late," I said. "I've already done it. More than once."
She turned to me, leaning back against the door of the car. She made no move to open it.
"You? Why do I find that such a surprise? Somehow I can't see you doing . . . Tell me. Have you bought any good women?"
"Money does strange things. It scares me to watch, to see it happening firsthand to me, not a movie but nonfiction firsthand, real life. It's as if I'm the odd man in a love-triangle, trying to force myself between a woman and my money. A lot of cash is still a new thing to me. Along comes some very nice lady who doesn't have much to live on, who's just about broke, her rent's overdue, do I say, 'I won't spend a dime to help you'?"
I needed an answer to that one. Part of my perfect woman at the moment included three comely friends, struggling to survive.
"You do what you think is right," she said. "But don't fool yourself that anybody's going to love you because you pay their rent or buy their groceries. One way to be sure
they will not love you is to let them depend on you for money. I know what I'm talking about!"
I nodded. How does she know? Does she have men out to get her money?
"It's not love," I said. "None of them love me. We enjoy each other. We're happy mutual parasites."
"Grf."
"Pardon?"
"Grf: expression of distaste. 'Happy mutual parasites' makes me see bugs."
"Sorry. I haven't solved the problem yet."
"Next time don't tell them you've got money," she said.
"Doesn't work. I'm a terrible deceiver. I reach for my notebook and these hundred-dollar bills tumble out on the table and she says, 'What the hey, you said you were on welfare!' What can I do?"
"Maybe you're stuck. But be careful. There's no town like this one to show you the many ways people crash who can't handle money." She pushed her door open at last. "Would you care for a salad, something healthy? Or will it be hot fudge for Hoggie?"
"Hoggie's off hot fudge. Could we split a salad, between us?"
Inside, she put a Beethoven sonata on low, made a huge vegetable-and-cheese salad, we fell to talking again. Missed sunset, missed a research-movie, played chess, and-our time together was gone.
"It must be early takeoff tomorrow that's on my mind," I said. "Does it seem to you that my play is up to form, losing three out of four like that? I don't know what's happened to my game. . . ."
"Your game is as good as ever," she said with a wink.
"But mine is improving. July eleventh you will remember as the day you won your last chess-game from Leslie Parrish!"
"Laugh while you can, mischievess. The next time you encounter this mind, it will have memorized Wicked Traps in Chess and every one of them will be waiting for you on the board." I sighed without knowing it. "I'd best be on my way. Will my Bantha-driver give me a ride to the hotel?"
"She will," she said, but she didn't move from the table.
To thank her for the day, I reached for her hand and held it, lightly, warmly. For a long time we looked at each other and no one talked, no one noticed time had stopped. The quiet itself said what we had never considered in words.
Then somehow we were holding each other, kissing softly, softly.
It didn't occur to me then, that by falling in love with Leslie Parrish I was destroying the only sister I'd ever have.
nineteen