Free Anatomy of a Killer by Peter Rabe Page A

walking.”
    “Yes, back and forth.”
    “Ah,” she said. “Yes. It’s nice out. Better than daytime even.”
    He looked at her and her face struck him the way it had done once before. It holds still, he thought. The way a view out of a window holds still for you. There is a landscape and you look away and when you look back again, it is still there.
    “I myself like it very much,” she said. “Walking. This time of year.”
    The most harmless thing he did that day, he started to walk, knowing she would walk along. They went down the street.
    “I just want to tell you,” she said. “I think you were very nice before.”
    “What?”
    “When you didn’t take it up with that drunk, that Harry I’m talking about. I noticed that.”
    “Oh,” he said. “What else was there to do.”
    “No, you were nice about it, not making trouble. I noticed that and I think you were very decent.”
    He did not react to this but instead thought quickly of a very good reason for this walk with the girl. Ask about Kemp and his habits. End of the jinx day, starting over like this. She’s easy and I feel no effort. She is effortless like a view from a window. And I’m Smith, which leaves no problem between us.
    Jordan felt invisible, a very fine, powerful feeling, invisible except to the girl next to him, and there was no harm in that.
    “Your name’s Betty?”
    “Yes. Elizabeth. But that’s too long, to write on the pocket.”
    “Yes.” He looked at her, at the front where the name had been, and when she noticed it she put her hand up for a moment, feeling self-conscious.
    “You got far to go?” he asked her.
    “No. Just that way, past the square, maybe ten, fifteen minutes. Of course, I walk slow. I like it, in this kind of weather. You like it?”
    “Yes I do.”
    They walked past his car but he did not want to say anything about it. He took a cigarette out and put it into his mouth. He said, “You have to walk fifteen minutes?”
    “But I don’t mind it. I just mind it when I’m very tired or when the weather is bad and then I just wish I had a car. Why don’t you light that cigarette?”
    “I don’t smoke much. Just hold it like this sometimes. You want one?”
    “But then, if I had a car, I wouldn’t go home, I mean straight home either, you know? I’d take a drive. I don’t smoke, thank you.”
    “I have a car,” said Jordan. “Back there.”
    “You do?” and she looked back where he had pointed. Then she said, “Of course you would. You’re a traveling salesman, I forgot.”
    “Yes,” he said. “That’s right.”
    “You must be sick of driving.”
    He took the cigarette out of his mouth and then put it back in and gave a little bite on the filter. “Would you like a ride, a short ride?”
    She nodded and said yes, she’d like that. She didn’t want to go home yet but ride with the window open, and did he have any idea what it’s like working in that diner and none of the windows open ever. They got into the car and she told him which way to drive out of town where the country was the nicest. He knew the way because he had checked it so carefully during the day though he did not remember about the country being so nice.
    He leaned across her, pushing at her a little, and rolled the window down for her and then straightened up again. She smiled at him and thought, if I knew him better now I would like to say something to him but I would hate to be wrong, saying something nice, and would not want to hear him answer with something clever. She knew about one kind of clever talk, having heard it often, and what it meant, a time-killer before the hands on her and then sex. As if she were stupid and did not know what came next and needed leading around by the nose first, with the sex work suddenly upon her like an accident or a total surprise. And that was stupid too and added a false haste to everything, something she did not like.
    When it seemed Jordan had forgotten about the window already