All Chapters of Bad Love: Chapter 11 - Chapter 17

JOE CONTINUED TO PROWL THE STREETS OF MIAMI BEACH, to gaze at the swaggering rich, the pink hotels, the chrome and the glitter, to admire and dream. But the edge was off the original enthusiasm and excitement. He observed more coolly, at times almost with detachment. Some of the tanned and healthy-looking men had paunches and bald heads and worry lines in their foreheads. Some of the gaudy women who swung metallic purses and tripped about on gilded shoes, reeked with age beneath their loud perfumes, were gray beneath their bleaches, wrinkled beneath their pancake make-up, flat-chested beneath their falsies.Gradually he began to spend less time at his wanderings and more with Fran and Helen. Ten each night would find him at the Seventy-Seven Club, sitting at a corner table, sipping beer, watching the show. Between performances, if she was not occupied with the suckers, Fran would slip over and chat with him a while. Though she wore satiny low-cut gow

WHEN JOE RETURNED THAT AFTERNOON it came as a bit of a shock to find Helen in bed.“It’s nothing, darling… nothing at all,” she assured him.Rut he knew that she was ill when he came close to her and looked down at the small wan face, the eyes circled with gray-tinged skin, and the lips trembling perceptibly even as they tried to form a smile.“I was walking in the sun, and… well… I suppose I should have had some protection for my head.” She told him that she had fainted, but insisted she was feeling much better now.“The sun wasn’t that hot this afternoon,” he said. “You’re run down, Helen. You haven’t been yourself lately.” He realized, as he uttered them that his words were true.He stayed with her till six, sitting beside the bed, holding her hand, chatting with her, thinking.“It’s because of us,” he told Fran later. “We

WITH HIS THUMB ON THE AD he moved the paper over so Helen could read it.$5000 cash, lovely ranch-type home, 4 bedrooms, etcetera… he knew it by heart, for he had been staring at it for hours, staring and thinking. Thinking of Fran’s leaving for California in a day or two, of himself being left behind; of the chance let pass for a new life which might include a business of his own and respectability; and of Helen as she cared for him while he was ill, as she held his hand when he led her about on the purposeless shopping tours. Then the wrestling with his conscience as he had recalled the awful dream. The doubt, the uncertainty, the inner conflict. And at last the decision, final and irrevocable.“What do you think?” he asked softly.She shook her head, puzzled, frowning slightly. “I don’t know. We’ll have to drive out and see it, won’t we?”“No need to. I did that yest

HE REMAINED HOLED-UP, AS HE HAD SAID HE WOULD, but it was more of an ordeal than he expected. He could hardly bear it.His body was young and hard, it needed to be used. He would pace the room for hours on end… to the window, back to the couch, and around again… like a tiger in a cage. As he paced, memories would come Hooding in, torturing him. Pangs of remorse would stab at him, cause him to pause in his tracks and stare vacantly into space. He could not get Helen out of his thoughts… her kindness and selflessness, her love and devotion to him. He realized too late that it had been she he loved-she, the good, the warm, the simple. She was dead… vanished like a puff of air, leaving no trace behind. He could not believe it. lie had seen her poor twisted body, her purple face, and yet he could not accept the finality of it.And to think that he himself had planned to kill her, for this (he would draw the envelope from