She didn’t know the latest steps, but no one cared, not even the handful of collegians who had showed up, for some unheard-of reason.
Judge Mottley was particularly thrilled when he saw her. He forgot all about his wife and the other battle-axes and tapped me on the shoulder, just about the time I cut in on a tall and handsome and started edging Catalina into the patio. The women were making dirty quips about her dress, and not even a vampire can take that.
I wasn’t surprised about the judge. He’d been eyeing us all evening.
"Ah . . . Mr. Binns. I am pleasantly surprised to see you here.”
"Civic spirit, sir,” I said, and presented him to Catalina.
When she got through turning the magnificent eyes on him, he hailed a flunkey who was distributing glasses of punch. Then he changed his mind and asked us to drive to the country club for a spot of Scotch.
Catalina said she never drank and didn’t smoke, but the drive would be lovely. He was too cagey to try to edge me out. That would come later; he was a foxy old buzzard. In the meanwhile, he was much impressed by a fellow who had a girl who didn’t gargle furniture polish. I began to seem the sort of person who fitted into the firm of Mottley, Mottley, Bemis & Burton. It was really a nice evening, in spite of finally having to get back to the ball.
While the judge was telling me how well he liked Green Gold, the tall and handsome snagged Catalina. By the time I got rid of the judge, I couldn’t find my date.
Not for a while, that is. I was worried. Suppose she had reverted to type and was taking a light lunch? Suppose her victim yeeped or started talking later? I was in a sweat, dashing around looking for her.
I got good and sore when I missed the tall and handsome. When a fellow is neither, he is inclined to be sensitive about such things. So when I found them in a parked car, I was relieved and hog wild at the same time—relieved because she wasn’t doing any blood-drinking, and griped because the big lug was kissing her breathless, and she liked it. Liked it, and wearing the red dress I furnished. One hundred and twenty-nine years in a shroud, and double-crossing me, who’d got her into the social whirl.
He got out of the car when I cracked off. I just measured him and flattened him. This was no time for politeness, and if I’d given him a chance, where’d my chance have been?
He flopped to the running-board. That was what finished knocking him cold, I guess. There was a general departure from the other parked cars, but a crowd of newcomers who hadn’t been committing themselves came out of the patio to watch the show.
I turned around to give Catalina hell. She straightened up and showed her claws. "Go away! My poor Johnnie——” She knelt beside the big lug and began crying. I had to check out before the judge heard I was a law-breaker again. Assault and battery at the Civic Center was as bad as having leprosy.
The minute she saw a good-looking fellow, she made a sap of me. That burned me up. That I had Judge Mottley on the right side again fell flat. With the evening totally sour, I hoofed it to East Palo Verde and began lapping up firewater.
AFTER about eight noggins of fifteen-cent Bourbon, I began to see the joke of it all. Catalina was now so used to me not screaming and running, she’d be tactless with Johnnie. Funny, huh?
Positively excruciating. It never occurred to me to think of what’d happen if she did scare him silly. I guess I must have been drunk when I went into the next place.
