Shoot the Piano Player by David Goodis

good for me. Keeps me from eating too much. I never overload my belly."
Her body showed it. She still had the acrobat's coiledspring flexibility, and was double-jointed in so many places that it was as if she had no bones at all. She stood five-five and weighed one-five, but she didn't look skinny, just tightly packed around the frame. There wasn't much of breast or hip or thigh, just about enough to label it female. The female aspect showed mainly in her face, her fragile nose and chin, her wide-set, pale-gray eyes. She wore her hair rather short, and was always having it dyed. Right now it was somewhere between yellow and orange.
She sat there wearing a terry cloth bathrobe, one sleeve ripped halfway up to the elbow. With the cigarette still between the thumb and little finger, she lifted it to her mouth, took a small sip of smoke, let it out and said to him, "How's about it?"
"Not tonight."
"You broke?"
He nodded.
Clarice sipped more smoke. She said, "You want it on credit?"
He shook his head.
"You've had it on credit before." she said. "Your credit's always good with me."
"It ain't that." he said. "It's just that I'm tired. I'm awfully tired."
"You wanna go to sleep?" She started to get up.
"No," he said. "Sit there. Stick around a while. We'll talk."
"Okay." She settled back in the chair. "I need some company, anyway. I get so dragged in that room sometimes. They never wanna sit and talk. As if they're afraid I'll charge them extra."
"How'd you do tonight?"
She shrugged. "So-so." She put her hand in the bathrobe pocket and there was the rustling of paper, the tinkling of coins. "For Friday night it wasn't bad, I guess. Most Friday nights there ain't much trade. They either spend their last nickel at Harriet's or they're so plastered they gotta be carried home. Or else they're too noisy and I can't chance it. The lady warned me again last week. She said one more time and out I go."
"She's been saying that for years."
"Sometimes I wonder why she lets me stay."
"You really wanna know?" He smiled dimly. "Her room is right under yours. She could take a different room if she wanted to. After all, it's her house. But no, she keeps that room. So it figures she likes the sound it makes."
"The sound? What sound?"
"The bedsprings," he said.
"But look now, that woman is seventy-six years old."
"That's the point," he said. "They get too old for the action, they gotta have something, at least. With her it's the sound."
Clarice pondered itfor a few moments. Then she nodded slowly. "Come to think of it, you got something there." And then, with a sigh, "It must be awful to get old like that."
"You think so? I don't think so. It's just a part of the game and it happens, that's all."
"It won't happen to me." she said decisively. "I hit sixty, I'll take gas. What's the point of hanging around doing nothing?"
"There's plenty to do after sixty."
"Not for this one. This one ain't joining a sewing circle, or playing bingo night after night. If I can't do no better than that, I'll just let them put me in a box."
"They put you in, you'd jump right out. You'd come out doing somersaults '
"You think I would? Really?"
"Sure you would." He grinned at her. "Double somersaults and back flips. And getting applause."
Her face lighted up, as though she could see it happening. But then her bare feet felt the solid floor and it brought her back to here and now. She looked at the man in the bed.
And then she was off the chair and onto the side of the bed. She put her hand on the quilt over his knees.
He frowned slightly. "What's the matter, Clarice?"
"I don't know, I just feel like doing something."
"But I told you--"
"That was business. This ain't business. Reminds me of one night last summer when I came in here and we got to talking, I remember you were flat broke and I said you could have credit and you said no, so I let it drop and we went on talking about this and that and you happened to mention my hair-do. You said it looked real nice, the way I had my