I Would Rather Stay Poor

He could hear Kit Loring moving around in the other room. He heard the closet door being opened and he imagined her getting ready for bed. A few minutes later, he heard the bath water running.

He reached for another cigarette. As he lit it, he heard her walk from her room with a slip-slap sound of slippers into the bathroom. He slid out of bed and silently opened his door and peered into the passage. He was in time to see the bathroom door close. Moving silently, he walked down the passage and looked into the next room.

It was a pleasant room. There was a double bed: on it lay her dress, a pair of flesh-coloured panties, stockings and a girdle. There were two comfortable armchairs, a writing-desk, a television set and a range of closets. On the wall was a good reproduction of an early Picasso.

He returned to his room and closed the door. For some moments he remained motionless, his blue eyes fixed in a blank stare at the opposite wall. Then he sat on the bed and waited.

After twenty minutes or so, he heard Kit Loring come from the bathroom, enter her room and close the door. He imagined her getting into bed. The click of the light switch told him she had turned out the light.

She was interesting, he thought. She had that something that could compensate him for the dreariness of this job and the town. He had an idea she might be easy, but he wasn’t entirely sure. That amused expression he had seen in her eyes warned him it would be unwise to rush anything.

He stubbed out his cigarette, then settled himself once again in bed. He turned off the light.

It was when he was enclosed by darkness that his stifling fear of failure, his pressing need for money, his realisation that unless he broke out of this rut, he would never get anywhere, crowded in on him as it did every night when he turned off the light.

He lay still, struggling to throw off this depression, saying to himself, ‘You’re no good. You never will be any good. You might be able to kid yourself sometimes, but you’re still no good.’

It was only when he turned on the bedside light that he finally fell into a restless, uneasy sleep.

2

The next four days followed a pattern that Calvin forced himself to endure: a pattern of boredom and meaningless routine. Each morning he had breakfast with Alice, Miss Pearson and Major Hardy. At nine o’clock, he drove with Alice to the bank. The girl seemed embarrassed to be with him in the car, but there was no alternative. He lived where she did: it would be impossible for him to go to the bank by car and leave her to get to the bank by bus.

The business at the bank was dull and of no interest to him. All the time he was in the bank dealing with this financial problem and that financial problem, he was constantly aware of his need for money and the need to get away from this routine job.

At four o’clock, the bank closed. Then he and Alice completed the bank business behind locked doors. At five-thirty they left the bank and drove back to the rooming-house. Calvin would remain in his room, smoking and staring blankly at the ceiling until dinner time, then he would go down to the dining-room, eat with the other three, making polite conversation, and then pass an hour watching television before retiring to his room again.

During these four days, he got to know something about Alice Craig. She was a good worker, and once she got used to him, an easy companion. He found he could leave most of the routine work to her and he was happy to do so. He was thankful she was so completely sexless and negative. To share such long hours with her if she had been otherwise would have been dangerous. Calvin had always made a point never to have an association with any girl employed by the bank.

During these four days he had seen little of Kit Loring. He had listened to her going to bed each night, and he had got into the habit of lying in his bed, staring fixedly at the communicating door as if he were willing it to open. Each time he met her to speak to, he found her more attractive, but he made no serious attempt to get to know her better.

On the Wednesday evening while he was completing the work of the day, his desk-lamp alight, papers spread out on his desk, Alice tapped on the door and came in. He looked up, switching on his charm.

‘It’s about tomorrow, Mr. Calvin,’ Alice said, hesitating at the door.

‘Something special? Come in and sit down.’

She perched herself on the arm of the armchair.

‘The money for the wage pay-out will be coming.’

‘What wage pay-out?’

‘It’s for the four local factories. The money arrives in an armoured truck at six,’ Alice explained. ‘Sheriff Thomson and Mr. Travers are here to see it into the vault. Then the following day the accountants from the four factories come at nine and collect the money.’

Calvin rubbed the side of his jaw while he looked at her.

‘Seems an odd way to do it. What amount is involved?’

‘Three hundred thousand dollars,’ Alice said quietly.