They go for ice cream after the show, and Jesse lets Edgar play another slot machine. He feeds it a roll of quarters without getting anything back and insists the machine is broken, tries to reach inside it through the tray.

Back at the motel Jesse gets him interested in a Frankenstein movie on TV so he and Johona can sit by themselves on the walkway in front of the room. A couple of kids are splashing in the pool. Johona lights a cigarette and picks up the ashtray.

“Is it stealing to take this with you?” she asks.

“They must mean for you to,” Jesse says. “With the name of the place and the telephone number and everything on it.”

“The Holiday Motel,” Johona reads off the ashtray.

“Will your folks be worried about you?” Jesse says.

“They live in Santa Fe. They won’t even know I’m gone until you make me leave and I call them for the money to get to California.”

“You should be glad to be moving on.”

“Will you be glad to get rid of me?”

No, he wants to say, but doesn’t. “You wouldn’t want to live the life me and Edgar have. Believe me.”

“Maybe me being around would make things easier for you,” she says. “I could run errands during the day, keep you company at night, help with Edgar.”

More and more it’s her Jesse sees when he looks at her, not Claudine. More and more it’s her that makes him smile, not memories. But it’s cruel to even flirt with the notion of keeping her with him.

What are you going to do when you find out the truth? he thinks. The first time I bring a girl back and cut her throat so Edgar’ll stop moaning about his Little Devil? Or maybe you’re thinking you’d like me to turn you, make you into a monster too.

“As soon as Beaumont sounds out the Fiends and sees where they stand, you’ll be on your way,” he says. “Even if this mess gets settled, you’re going. That’s the way it has to be.”

Johona takes a puff off her cigarette and watches the kids in the pool. “You’re the boss,” she says.

He heads out again to go dipping. Johona’s right, he’ll never pull together enough money to pay off the Fiends by lifting wallets, but he’s got to start somewhere. And he wasn’t joking about robbing banks. He’s considered it before but always felt it was too risky. Now, if that’s what it takes to save Johona and Edgar, he’ll rob ten of them. It’s something else to talk to Beaumont about.