Sweeter Than Life by Mark Tryon - Prologue

1954 Genre: Vintage Sleaze / Crime Noir

Revenge is sweeter than life itself.

So think fools.

—Juvenal Satires

Prologue

Nym Bardolph stretched her slender, beautiful legs under the dashboard of the white Cadillac convertible.

A sudden pain shot down her back, but she remained still, and dropping her head back on the cushion, she closed her eyes.

The dreadful bruises on her face could not hide the clean-cut, almost Grecian features.

It's over, she thought. It's done. Just as I always felt it would be done. It is complete, and the completion is a lovely thing . . . a thing I can touch with my thoughts and caress with the little fingers of my mind.

She wrapped her arms about herself and hugged her slim, elastic body within their compass. The pain shot through her again, but she did not mind. It made her feel her triumph. It reminded her of what she had gone through to achieve it.

Never, never, never did I know that a woman could feel like this! It is the culmination of the beginning.

Now lies ahead the straight, unswerving road which will be easy to walk.

For now I am alone. Now nothing stands in my way.

For a brief second she thought of Sean, who had been part of her life. Who had been the ladder on which she climbed. But what about Sean? What about the things that might have been . . . if things hadn't been the way they were?

Oh, things . . . things, things, and things . . . a word denoting nothing. Certainly not comparable to the triumph I now feel.

I only married Sean for one thing. Revenge!

Nym stirred restlessly. She searched her purse for a cigarette and finding none, she sat up straight, turned the dashboard light on, and searched the depths of the glove compartment, finally emerging with a pack of ancient smokes. She tore the wrapper open, and punching the lighter in with a stabbing, vicious movement, she waited impatiently until it got hot. Then she pulled the little glowing coil from its receptacle and put it to the tip of a slightly bent cigarette. She pulled deeply of the smoke and it seemed to fog her lungs and permeate her being.

As she replaced the lighter she caught a glimpse of herself in the rear-view mirror. She leaned closer and examined her face. It was a ghastly, bruised sight. Both eyes were blackened and her lips were puffed and swollen. She smiled wryly and the smile hurt like the devil.

Suddenly she felt ravenously hungry, but looking at her face she thought, I will wait a little while before going in. People are bound to stare like hell. Perhaps if I wait a little, the dining room will be empty.

The soft dance music from the country club drifted out to her through the open terrace doors and the umbrella-like tops of the royal palms swayed ever so gently, as though in time to the tune.

Nym Bardolph, every fiber of her body aching with her bruises, began to tremble. She ran her hands down over her full, pointed breasts, impeccably attired · in the latest from the choicest of the most exclusive little shops in Miami. With wry amusement she thought of how ragged the underwear under the suit was, and why she was wearing it like that.

Alone, she thought I am alone. Well, that's the way I want it.

She turned her head toward the brightly lighted club-building. Through the window she saw the dancers. The revelers. The Saturday night drunks.

I should be in there. I, of all of them, have something to celebrate.

But then she remembered that she was alone now.

That she had nothing in common with them anymore.

Her eyes narrowed perceptibly with their puffed lids, and she took a deep, satisfied breath.

She moved away from the car in the soft moonlight and walked slowly out onto the golf course. She turned her back to the clubhouse deliberately.

She passed the first green without knowing where she was going or why. She just kept walking although it hurt her to walk. All about her in the shadows of the Florida night she was conscious of the gentle murmurings, the sweet soft laughter, the deeply caught breaths of the young Saturday-nighters engaged in that most secret and joyous part of life which is the birthright of us all.

If we want it.

Without knowing how she had gotten there, she found her feet deeply sunk into the softness of a sandtrap.

She struggled irritatedly to extricate them from the sucking, slithering substance.

She never felt the bullet when it struck her squarely between the shoulder blades. The last impressions she had in this mortal life were two sounds-the giggle of a young girl behind some bushes to her right and the soft, smacking thud of the bullet as it entered her flesh.

Then she knew nothing more. Nothing more at all.

She neither saw nor heard nor felt the sobbing figure that fell across her form.

Nym Bardolph was very much alone.

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