He felt unreasonably annoyed that she didn’t consider him worth more than a brief, uninterested glance, so he moved the next stool beside her and tapped her on the arm.
She looked at him and said, “Yes?”
“Look,” he said, “I don’t chase young children or have coughing fits. My hair lip is practically unnoticeable and I have a pound of butter in my back pocket. So I’m really a nice guy and you should be nice to me. Or don’t you think so?”
She looked at him for a moment with a puzzled expression and then she smiled. “You win,” she said. “You’re a nice guy. For a pound of butter I’d write mash notes to Rasputin.”
“That’s better. Can I buy you a drink?”
She shrugged. “We still have one, but you can buy another if you like.”
Larry waved to the bartender. “Two more of the same.”
“Fine,” he grinned. “I knew you two people would get along.”
They finished the drink and then had the next one. And that was when Larry realized he was getting a little tight.
His face felt hot and when he lit a cigarette it took him a long time to find the end of the cigarette with the lighted end of the match. He laughed about that and he wondered who was making all the noise.
When the girl told him to be quiet he realized that he had been listening to himself.
A little while later the girl suggested that he come home with her. He didn’t even know her name and that struck him as funny. Here he was being propositioned by an absolute stranger. Ridiculous.
He couldn’t go home with her, of course. He tried to explain very logically that it was simply impossible. Fran was getting dinner for him and he had to be there to tell her how much he enjoyed it. She didn’t understand. She told him to stop mumbling and finish his drink.
There was another drink in front of him and he didn’t know where it came from. He put it to his lips, but he couldn’t force it down. He wasn’t feeling so well now. He had to go home. Dinner was ready and Fran wouldn’t like it if he stayed out all night.
He felt cold wind on his face and he knew he was outside. His top coat was over his arm and someone had put his hat on his head at a crazy angle. The blonde was standing beside him, holding his free arm.
He didn’t remember getting into the cab, but its lurching motion almost made him sick. He leaned forward and tried to tell the driver to take him home, but the blonde pulled him back beside her.
“Just put your head on my shoulder,” she murmured. “We’ll be home in a little while.”
He tried to tell her he couldn’t go home with her, but he had trouble with the words. They choked up in his throat and stuck there like tennis balls.
He put his head on her shoulder and he knew he was going to pass out. His head was spinning and his body felt numb.
He made a last attempt to tell the blonde that Fran was waiting for him and then he gave up. He sank back against her and that was all he remembered.
Chapter II
He woke up by degrees. For a long interval he hung in a limbo that wasn’t sleeping or waking. Just a hazy in-between state.
Then his mind started to work. He had no physical sensation at all. All he had was disconnected thoughts that came out of white space.
He remembered things in strange sequence. There was Fran and a blonde. Drinks that made him sick and a wonderful dinner. A wise looking cab driver and a little brunette dice girl that liked his looks.
His first physical sensation was of lying down. On his left side with a pillow under his head. That meant he was in bed.
He tried to open his eyes and he couldn’t. He was becoming aware of pain in his head. A splitting pain that stretched across his forehead.
Finally he managed to get his eyes open but it didn’t help much. The room was almost dark. It smelled of liquor and stale smoke.
There was someone lying beside him. There was enough light for him to identify a head of silvery blonde hair and a finely chiseled profile. His right arm was flung across her chest.
More sensations were coming back. He raised himself on one elbow and the physical effort brought a black siege of nausea. When it passed he looked down at the girl.
She did not look pretty. Her lean features were twisted in a smile. But the smile had no humor in it. It was set and stiff and it wasn’t a smile at all.
Her face looked like cold wax. Her eyes were open, staring blandly at the ceiling.
Larry saw this and it didn’t register. He didn’t know she was dead until he saw the knife. The knife was buried hilt-deep between the cup of her naked breasts. And the fingers of his outflung arm held the handle of the knife in a tight grip.
He lay there and stared at his hand. As if it were something he never had seen before. Something that didn’t belong to him. He saw the blood then, dark and crusted, on his hand, on his shirt sleeve, on the girl’s naked chest.
Something was crawling in his throat. He felt sick and shriveled inside.
He got off the bed and groped for a light-switch. The light showed him a cheap, small bedroom, with a curtained window, a chest of drawers, two chairs and an open door leading to a bathroom.
And the bed. That was all. The girl on the bed was naked, but the sheet was pulled across her hips. Her clothes were in a pile on the floor.
The thing was crawling in his throat again and he stumbled into the bathroom. He was sick for a long time. Then he tried to wash the blood from his hand. It stuck like glue. He got it off, but he couldn’t do anything about his sleeve.
He came back into the bedroom and sat down in one of the chairs. He stared at the dead body of the girl. He didn’t think. There was nothing but white horror in his head.
He was sitting there when the loud knock sounded on the door.
He turned to the door and his breath made a scratching noise in his ears. His heart was pounding as if he’d been running up-hill.
The knock was repeated, and a shrill, feminine voice said, “I got to have this room at ten o’clock. Keep that in mind. You don’t lay around all day in my house.” The knock sounded again. “Do you hear me in there?”
Larry prayed for the woman to go away. He wanted her voice to stop. He wanted the knocking to stop. If she knocked on the door again he knew he’d start screaming.
He said, “I heard you,” and his voice was a whisper. He tried again and it came out louder. She said, “See that you’re out of there by ten, that’s all.”
He heard her feet shuffle away and he got up and put on his suit coat, top coat and hat. He wasn’t thinking yet. But he had the blind instinct of flight.
One flicker of reason made him take out his handkerchief and wipe the hilt of the knife clean, and then he went to the door. He heard nothing on the opposite side and when he twisted the knob and pushed it open he was looking out on a gloomy, empty corridor.
He stepped out, pulled the door behind him and started down the single flight of steps. As he reached the front door of the house he heard someone coming down from the upper floors. He pulled open the door and ran down a flight of stone steps to the street.
He started walking. The street was in a cheap neighborhood. There were ashcans on the sidewalk and the houses were ancient structures, with brown-stone fronts, bay windows and gold lettered street numbers.
At the first intersection he saw a street sign. Nelson Boulevard. That was on the South Side. About four miles south of the Loop. About a mile West.
He kept walking. A clock in a pawn shop said seven-thirty. There weren’t many people on the street. He passed a colored couple, a gray-haired man with a metal lunch box, an old woman who looked like she was coming off a gin hangover.