Three by Cain: Serenade, Love's Lovely Counterfeit, the Butterfly by James M. Cain Page B

Host?”
    “Yes, of course.”
    “No sacrilegio there, was there? You’re all upset about nothing. Don’t worry, I know. I know as much about it as you do. More probably.”
    “Very bad sacrilegio . But I pray. Soon, I confess. I confess to the padre . Then, absolución . No bad any more.”
    By that time it must have been somewhere around eleven o’clock at night. The rain hadn’t let up, but sometimes it would be heavy, sometimes not so bad. The thunder and lightning would come up and go. There must have been three or four storms rolling up those canyons from the sea, and we’d get it, and it would die away and then we’d get it again. One was coming up now. She began to do what I’d noticed her doing once in the car, hold her breath and then speak, after a second or two when you could almost hear her heart beat. I tumbled that the sacrilegio was only part of what was eating on her. Most of it was the storm. “The lightning bother you?”
    “No. The trueno , very bad.”
    It didn’t look like it would pay to try to explain to her that the lightning was the works, the thunder nothing but noise, soI didn’t try. “Try to sing a little. That generally helps. You know La Sandunga?”
    “Yes, very pretty.”
    “You sing and I’ll be mariachi.”
    I began to drum on the bench and do a double shuffle with my feet. She opened her mouth to sing, but there came a big clap of thunder just then, and she didn’t quite make it. “Outside, I no feel afraid. I like. Is very pretty.”
    “A lot of people are like that.”
    “Home, with Mamma, I no feel afraid.”
    “Well—that’s practically outside, at that.”
    “Here, afraid, very much. I think about the sacrilegio , think about many things. I feel very bad.”
    You couldn’t blame her much because it wasn’t exactly what you’d call a gay place. I understood how she felt. I felt a little that way myself.
    “Anyhow, it’s dry. In spots.”
    The lightning came and I put my arm around her. The thunder broke and the candles guttered. She put her head on my shoulder and hid her face in my neck.
    It died off after a while and she sat up. I opened the window a crack to get a little oxygen in the air, and put a couple more sticks of charcoal on the fire. “You had a good dinner?”
    “Yes, gracias.”
    “You feel like a little work?”
    “… Work?”
    “Suppose you be fixing us up a place to sleep while I wash up.”
    “Oh yes—gladly.”
    I went and brought the mats and then got out a pile of altar cloths. Then I took the pots, bowls, and water out back and washed them up. I couldn’t see very well, but I did the best I could. I had to duck out to the well once or twice, stripped down like I was before, and rub off with the same old cloth, so it took me about a half hour. When I got done I piled the things up inside the door and went in there. She was already in bed.She had taken three or four of the mats and some altar cloths, for herself, and bedded me down across the room.
    I blew out the candles we had eaten by, and stepped out on the altar to blow out the ones I had lit there, and then I noticed the other one, the one I had stuck to the car fender, was still burning. I stepped over the rail, went back there and blew it out. Then I started up to the altar again. My legs felt queer and shaky. I slipped in a pew and sat down.
    I knew what it was all right, and it came to me then why I had put her to fixing the mats and taken all that time to wash up. I had hoped she would just fix one bed, and then when she didn’t, it was like a wallop in the pit of the stomach to me. I had even quit wondering why I was the only man on the face of the earth she wouldn’t sleep with. What I hated was that it made any difference to me.
    I don’t know how long I sat there. I wanted to smoke, and I had the cigarettes and matches with me, but I just held them in my hand. I was over by the choir loft, out of line with the Blessed Sacrament, but I was right in line with