“There isn’t time. Get started.”
She started the motor and eased away from the curb. Alta Ashbury went past us like a flash. I said to Bertha, “Go ahead. Give it the gun.” I reached over and switched out the headlights.
Bertha started groping for the headlight switch. I jerked her hand away, grabbed hold of the hand throttle, and pulled it out all the way. We started going places. Bertha got jittery, and I leaned over to put a hand on the wheel. After a while, Alta came to a cross street just as the light changed. It gave us a chance to catch up and for me to run around the back of the car and let Bertha slide over.
When the light changed, Alta shot ahead as though she’d been fired from a gun. The agency bus rattled on across the street, gathering headway. Somebody yelled at me to put my lights on, but I kept running dark, hoping we’d get into a snarl of traffic. After a while we did. I switched the lights on and started jockeying for position, trying to keep just a little on the left and behind.
Bertha was full of apologies. “I should have listened to you, lover. You’re always right. Oh, why didn’t you make me listen to you?”
I had a job to do driving the car, so I didn’t say anything.
Bertha kept right on talking. She said, “Donald, I don’t suppose I can ever make you understand me. For years I had to fight my way. Every nickel counted. There were lots of times when I only allowed myself fifteen cents a day for eating money. Do you know, Donald, the hardest job I ever had was trying to learn how to spend money again after I began to make a little.
“I’d draw a hundred dollars every month from my bank account and make up my mind I was going to spend it on myself, and I just couldn’t do it. I’d find myself at the end of the month with seventy or eighty dollars I hadn’t spent. When you’ve once been right up against it where money means so damn much to you, it does something to your morale. You never get over it.”
“I’ve been broke,” I said.
“I know, lover, but you’re young, and you have brains. Bertha didn’t have brains, not the kind you have. Bertha just had to stay in there and pitch, and it was tough sledding. You have something I’ll never have, Donald. You’re resilient. Put pressure on you, and you bend. Then as soon as the pressure is removed, you spring back. I’m different. Put pressure on me, and I put pressure back. If anything happens, and I can’t put any pressure back sometime, I won’t bend, I’ll simply break.”