the station. Connie walked by it, very slowly, silhouetted against the station floodlights. She continued on down the street. I turned around in a driveway, went back to the parallel road, sped down threeblocks, and parked as before. Soon Connie went by, walking quickly now, high heels twinkling. I eased out after her.
Thirteen blocks from our house on April Lane she turned left. It was a cheap neighborhood. Midway in the second block was a green neon sign against a pale brick front: U NICORN —B AR AND G RILL . Beyond it was another sign,
Ladies’ Entrance
. She darted in there, reluctant to linger under the harsh green light. I could remember the exact stage of pain that green light represented. Not the worst, but bad.
I went down the street, turned around, parked on the same side as the Unicorn, facing toward it. I was barely in time. A ’40 Ford convertible parked across the street and Louie Palmer in jacket, open sports collar, hatless, walked across the street. He stopped in the full glare of green and lit a cigarette. He handled it in a thoroughly Bogart fashion, hand cupped completely around it, lowering it with calculated slowness after each drag. He looked up and down the street. He flipped it away, squared his shoulders, and went inside. After all, he was a desperate character. A real killer. The murder didn’t quite pan out, but what the hell. The intent was there. Louie was a real sharp apple, all wound up in a capital A affair, just like out of James M. Cain.
It would be nice to tell him that he was a sniveling little grease monkey preening himself over a tramp wife, a hired banty rooster with grease in his hair. But that was a pleasure I would have to forego.
I was in bed when she got home an hour later. I heard her in the bathroom. I wondered how radiant she looked.
Miranda lived alone in an efficiency apartment crowded into what had apparently been one of the bedrooms of a vast old Victorian house. To the left of the house was the parking lot for a supermarket. The street had been widened until the bottom step of the porch was a yard from the sidewalk.
She came down the street from the bus stop, lean legs in the white cotton stockings scissoring below the hem of the cheap coat.
She watched the sidewalk ahead of her and suddenly lookedacross the street directly into my eyes and stopped. It did not seem strange that she should have that utter awareness.
She waited and I walked across to her. The small blue eyes narrowed just a bit. Her heavy lips were laid evenly together. She wore no lipstick, and the strange thinness of the skin of her lips made them look peeled, raw.
We did not speak to each other until she had shut the apartment door behind us. “You should take stairs more slowly,” she said.
“Showing off, I guess.”
“You look better, George. Give me your coat.”
The apartment was absolutely characterless at first glance. Then the signs of her presence intruded. An ashtray squared precisely to the edge of a table. Three birch logs, so perfect as to look artificial, stacked in the shallow, ashless fireplace. Shades all pulled to exactly the same level. She plunged back and forth through the room, physically threatening to derange all its neatness, but her touch on each object was light and precise. She pulled a glass-topped table closer to the armchair where I sat. From the kitchenette alcove she brought bottle, glass, small bowl of ice cubes, new bottle of soda. She set them down with evenly spaced clicks against the glass top. She made the drink deftly and said, “With you in a moment,” and shut herself into the tiny bath.
She came out with her hair fluffed out of its rigid nurse’s style, and she wore a turtle-necked gray sweater and a harsh tweed skirt in a discomfiting orange shade. No stockings. Ancient loafers. She fell toward a chair, sat lightly in it. The bones of her wrists and hips were sharp. She looked harsh, brittle, angular. I thought irrelevantly that she was a
Thirteen blocks from our house on April Lane she turned left. It was a cheap neighborhood. Midway in the second block was a green neon sign against a pale brick front: U NICORN —B AR AND G RILL . Beyond it was another sign,
Ladies’ Entrance
. She darted in there, reluctant to linger under the harsh green light. I could remember the exact stage of pain that green light represented. Not the worst, but bad.
I went down the street, turned around, parked on the same side as the Unicorn, facing toward it. I was barely in time. A ’40 Ford convertible parked across the street and Louie Palmer in jacket, open sports collar, hatless, walked across the street. He stopped in the full glare of green and lit a cigarette. He handled it in a thoroughly Bogart fashion, hand cupped completely around it, lowering it with calculated slowness after each drag. He looked up and down the street. He flipped it away, squared his shoulders, and went inside. After all, he was a desperate character. A real killer. The murder didn’t quite pan out, but what the hell. The intent was there. Louie was a real sharp apple, all wound up in a capital A affair, just like out of James M. Cain.
It would be nice to tell him that he was a sniveling little grease monkey preening himself over a tramp wife, a hired banty rooster with grease in his hair. But that was a pleasure I would have to forego.
I was in bed when she got home an hour later. I heard her in the bathroom. I wondered how radiant she looked.
Miranda lived alone in an efficiency apartment crowded into what had apparently been one of the bedrooms of a vast old Victorian house. To the left of the house was the parking lot for a supermarket. The street had been widened until the bottom step of the porch was a yard from the sidewalk.
She came down the street from the bus stop, lean legs in the white cotton stockings scissoring below the hem of the cheap coat.
She watched the sidewalk ahead of her and suddenly lookedacross the street directly into my eyes and stopped. It did not seem strange that she should have that utter awareness.
She waited and I walked across to her. The small blue eyes narrowed just a bit. Her heavy lips were laid evenly together. She wore no lipstick, and the strange thinness of the skin of her lips made them look peeled, raw.
We did not speak to each other until she had shut the apartment door behind us. “You should take stairs more slowly,” she said.
“Showing off, I guess.”
“You look better, George. Give me your coat.”
The apartment was absolutely characterless at first glance. Then the signs of her presence intruded. An ashtray squared precisely to the edge of a table. Three birch logs, so perfect as to look artificial, stacked in the shallow, ashless fireplace. Shades all pulled to exactly the same level. She plunged back and forth through the room, physically threatening to derange all its neatness, but her touch on each object was light and precise. She pulled a glass-topped table closer to the armchair where I sat. From the kitchenette alcove she brought bottle, glass, small bowl of ice cubes, new bottle of soda. She set them down with evenly spaced clicks against the glass top. She made the drink deftly and said, “With you in a moment,” and shut herself into the tiny bath.
She came out with her hair fluffed out of its rigid nurse’s style, and she wore a turtle-necked gray sweater and a harsh tweed skirt in a discomfiting orange shade. No stockings. Ancient loafers. She fell toward a chair, sat lightly in it. The bones of her wrists and hips were sharp. She looked harsh, brittle, angular. I thought irrelevantly that she was a
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