"What's your hurry? Going someplace?"
"When I'm in the mood for wisecracks, I'll crack them. Just clean up in a hurry, that's all."
The driver did so, while Lucky sat smoking a cigarette. The cabin's single all-purpose room was lit by a kerosene lamp hanging from the ceiling on a big hook and casting uneven shadows as the wind came through the open windows and stirred it. Jeanne-Marie felt herself dropping off to sleep and had time to register amazement. She should have been horrified, afraid for her life, beyond the point where sleep was possible. Mary-Jean surely would have been.
Yes, she thought dreamily, Mary-Jean would have been. Which was one lesson she learned from Jeanne-Marie at least. Useless fretting had always been part of Mary-Jean's make-up. But then, it was not owned exclusively by Mary-Jean: useless fretting probably took more energy from more housewives....
She awoke with a start. She felt instantly refreshed. Somehow, she had known she would. In that way, the beautiful Jeanne-Marie had a certain animal-like quality about her. Sleep—and a quickening of the self. She felt alert and capable, almost as if she had been dosed with benzedrine.
She heard a noise outside and went silently to the window. Lucky was on the porch. He had found some rope and was tying the cab driver there. Lucky—with a psychopath's mind. Not insane, of course. An insane person was badly oriented. Lucky knew what he was doing—but he didn't care about the consequences, as they affected other people. A psychopath. A fugitive murderer psychopath with absolutely nothing to lose whether he tried to make love to her or decided to kill her....
Adventure, Jeanne-Marie thought. This was adventure, all right. This was what she had overlooked.
In adventure—always—was the element of danger. It was part of the definition of adventure. And a housewife—a mother with responsibility—had no business craving adventure.
No business?
Well, maybe once. Once only—to cure her. Or once, to keep with her all her life through the dull times and the humdrum days. Provided, Jeanne-Marie thought with a strange little smile, she lived through it.