“But alone... So late...”
“I’ll be all right.”
“Let Mr. Carson take you.”
“Sure,” Mr. Carson said. “I’ll drive you over, Gretta.”
He looked at her, and she was aware of her youth and his age. How old and repulsive he became suddenly, looking at her in that way!
“No,” she said, “you don’t have to bother.”
“It’s no bother.”
“I said no!” Gretta said.
“Well,” Mrs. Carson said. “We were only thinking of you, dear, trying to be nice.”
“But I think you need him here more.”
“I am upset,” Mrs. Carson admitted.
“You see? Well, good night.”
Gretta left the apartment, closed the door quickly behind her. She hesitated in the hallway a moment. Memory of the dream she’d had on the couch tried to come creeping back into her mind. She shook her head and walked quickly down the hallway.
It was late and the sidewalks were dark, deserted, and in this residential section there were few automobiles moving on the street at this hour. Across the street, a delicatessen was just closing, and down on the corner, the lights of a bar looked lonely.
Gretta started resolutely down the sidewalk. She fought thoughts of the razor fiend from her mind. She was afraid even of the thought of him, so afraid that a shiver, almost like a shiver of pleasure, passed over her.
She must put her mind to thinking of something else. Something deep, heavy, engrossing. She had a very brilliant mind, she knew. So much so that it set her apart, made her a kind of lone wolf. Girls were too frilly and boys too silly when they were her age. She knew all about Existentialism and could follow the torturous turns and twists of the philosophy of Nietzsche.
It all made for a great deal of loneliness when girls knew only to giggle about a dance and boys pawed at you with their revolting hands.
There’d been a boy once. Anthony. Her first year in high. Frail and gentle he had been, and her heart had gone out to him. They used to walk, he holding her hand shyly, and talk real talk about political philosophy and economic systems.
Then Anthony’s parents had moved away and taken him with them, of course. She’d cried for two whole days, brittle hard tears, and had told herself that she would never be the same again.
Engrossed in her thoughts, she passed the lighted bar with only a vague realization that it was there. She crossed the intersection, reaching the dark corner where business establishments had closed hours before.
It was then that she thought she heard footsteps. They were sharp, rapid.
She glanced over her shoulder, her heart almost stopping. There was no one.
She began shivering. The street seemed to have grown colder. How much further to her home? Five, six blocks. How could she ever manage to walk that distance?
She took a faltering step, another. Her right hand was against the building for support. Suddenly, the support wasn’t there. She had reached the corner of the building, was standing at the mouth of an alley. Heat seeped from the buildings into the alley and out of the alley over her.
She stood as if clinging to the warmth for a moment. And while she was there, a car came down the street. Light glided before it. Touched her briefly. Then the car stopped at the curb.
She threw her startled glance toward it. The door of the car opened. A man was getting out.
He came around the car. He stood looking at her the way he had looked at her in the apartment.
“You forgot your money, Gretta,” Mr. Carson said. “And Mrs. Carson was so fearful about your walking alone...”
He was coming toward her. She took a step back into the alley.
“No,” she said.
“Now, Gretta, it was only a dream. You’re not still upset, are you?”
She walked backward into the alley, staring at him. Why hadn’t she realized? The fiend could be anybody. A respectable business man, even. He had said so himself. He’d been having his private joke up there in the apartment talking about the fiend as he had.
“Gretta!” he said sharply as he moved after her.
A feeling of calm came over her. Her hand came up slowly, dipped into her bosom, came out holding the razor. It was an old-fashioned razor. She’d found it one day while rummaging through the attic for old books. The weight of it in her hand had given her a strangely pleasant feeling.
Mr. Carson was quite close to her now. She could see the anger on his face. Then something quite different was there as he saw the razor.
She struck quick and hard with all her young strength. The razor bit. Deep. Clean.
She saw him clutch his throat and fall.
She bent over him to look at the evil fiendishness in his face. Then she wiped the razor on his coat, replaced it under her tailored blouse and walked out of the alley.
She moved down the sidewalk without fear. She could go home now. Home to her room and deep, deep thoughts. The razor had saved her. The fiend was dead.
She knew.
Hadn’t she had to kill him four times?
Midnight Blonde
by Talmage Powell
“You’re old enough to know what you want to do,” she said. “But I’m glad I warned you.”
The girl sat alone in the curved leather booth of the bar. A half consumed glass of sherry was on the table before her. She made no move to touch it. She sat with her hands in her lap. She had sat this way, absolutely motionless, for the past ten minutes.
A man entered the bar. His brief first glance at the girl became a lingering one as he slowly passed her booth. In looking at her with appreciation, he joined the company of every man in the place. There was little talk. And not a moment passed that at least one man wasn’t glancing toward the girl who sat there, unmoving and alone.
She seemed unaware of the undefinable something she had brought into the bar. It wasn’t her beauty alone that attracted attention. She was small, but very shapely. Dressed in black. She wore her glossy blonde hair cut short, with a hint of curl at the ends, and casual bangs that accentuated the dreamy quality of her large dark eyes. Her smooth tanned complexion heightened further the hint of ageless mystery in her eyes.
Yet for all the enticement and sophistication of the girl there was a quality of terrible innocence about her. This quality reached out and made men at the bar feel more masculine than they had in a long time. It reached out and touched them, and some of them would therefore remember her before they went to sleep that night, or while answering absent-mindedly the question of a wife.
Her eyes stayed on the clock behind the bar. It was a pretentious clock, ringed with orange neon, its face illuminated by a pale orange glow. The hands indicated that the time was exactly nineteen minutes before twelve. The clock was ten minutes fast, an aid in getting the last, lingering customers out of the bar by legal closing time.
Twenty-nine minutes before midnight.
The girl’s lips parted; she had small, gleaming, even teeth. The pink tip of her tongue touched her lips briefly. She sipped the sherry at last.
Twenty-eight minutes.
The man who had just entered the bar continued to look at her over his shoulder while he walked to the bar and ordered a highball.
The bartender put the drink before him. The man raised his brows in a question, making it clear by a jerk of his head in the girl’s direction that he was asking about her. The bartender glanced toward the girl and shrugged.
The man tasted his drink, turned slowly, and stared boldly at the girl.
She was still watching the clock.
Twenty-seven minutes.
Holding his drink, the man moved across the short intervening distance until he was standing beside the booth. He was a tall, rangy man of about thirty, dark in coloring, nice looking without being handsome. He stood without speaking for a moment; then he said, “Hello.”