Free Anatomy of a Killer by Peter Rabe Page B

and was driving out of town, she said, “That was very nice of you, thank you, about the window.”
    “What?”
    “About remembering I like the window open, a ride with the window open,” and felt awkward after saying it.
    There was a roadhouse ahead on the highway and Jordan slowed.
    “You want to go in there?” she said.
    “No. But I thought some beer—I’d bring out some cans and we can have it in the car. Driving.”
    “Yes,” she said, “that would be nice.” She thought it was fine of him to remember that she liked to ride but said nothing this time.
    He got a six-pack and a key and, when he came back into the car, put all of it in her lap. Then he drove again.
    “If it were always like this it would be all right, you know that?” she said.
    “How do you mean?”
    “Here’s your can. Watch the foam.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Warm like this, I mean. Like this evening. You know where it’s warm like this all the time?”
    “Where?”
    “In Florida. My girl friend in Florida she’s been writing me. And she mentions it too. You ever been in Florida?”
    “Yes,” he said. “Once.”
    “You mean on business?”
    “Yes. That.”
    “What’s your name?” she said. “I don’t mean Smith, I mean the other one.”
    He held the can awkwardly and spilled beer on his pants. “Sam,” he said after a while.
    “What a Bible name you have. You know, I can’t picture anyone buying buttons in Palm Beach, can you?”
    “I never was in Palm Beach, I was in Miami Beach.”
    “That’s where my girl friend is! Make a turn here, Sam. This road.”
    He turned where she showed him onto a country lane. It went up a little. It was hard to tell anything else because of the darkness.
    “She lives in Miami Beach?”
    “If you go slow now I can find the spot. Little slower.”
    He drove more slowly and looked at her leaning out of her window.
    “She works in a stand where they sell juices. You know those juice bars they have in Florida all over? She works in one of those, squeezing juices. Here it is.”
    “Here?”
    “Stop a minute.”
    They were on the top of a rise where the lane got wide enough for the car to pull off to one side, then the rise dropped off again and Jordan could see nothing but the night there. He stopped the car for the girl and she leaned on the window sill and looked out.
    “This, I bet, is a lot like Florida,” she said.
    “Where?”
    “Turn the lights off.”
    He turned off the lights and after a while he saw a little better in the darkness.
    “That’s the beach,” she said. “You see the lights?”
    Somewhere down below he saw a curve of light and perhaps it looked the way a beach might look at nighttime.
    “Penderburg is over that way and this is the Number Three Conveyor. We just call it that, the Number Three Conveyor. It goes up that new shale hill. Did you ever see tile roofs?”
    “See what?”
    “Like in Florida, you know? Those tile roofs with the round-looking tile.”
    “Spanish tile roofs.”
    “Spanish tile. That’s what my girl friend calls them. There. You can just see them there.”
    He moved closer and when he put his head next to hers he could see the work sheds by the mine. They were made out of corrugated tin. The overhead light in the yard showed the geometry of the tin and from the distance it might have been what she wanted it to be.
    The girl had a soft odor, something like soapy water.
    “And when I’ve saved enough,” she said, “I’m going down there. To Florida.”
    Not from soap, he thought, because it isn’t an odor of chemistry. It’s skin. He remembered the look of her arm with fair skin, showing no texture. He did not touch her arm or look at it now but only thought about the way it had looked.
    “I’ve never been there,” he said, “except on business.”
    It struck her that he had said the same thing before, and talking as little as he did, that he had repeated himself. She turned her head to look at him. She did it slowly