“My name. That’s what it is.”
“Oh. Right.” Air emptied out of her, a delayed reaction from the tension of the confrontation moments before. The glaze lifted off her eyes and they seemed relieved, though still tired, and somehow old. Her hands came out and reached my hands and clutched them tightly in a cold grasp. She managed a smile, not much of one, but a smile.
I said, “What’s yours?”
She released my hands, taken mildly aback. “My what?”
“Name.”
“Oh.” She swallowed. “Janet. Janet Taber.”
“Hello, Janet.”
“Sorry I’m so dopey. I’m just a little shook, I guess.”
“Understandable. Feel the same myself.”
“What… what did you say your name was?”
“Mallory. Mal.”
“Mal. Hello, Mal.”
“Hello. How would you like a cup of hot coffee, Janet?”
“Oh….”
“I noticed you shivering. Come on. We can duck in Johnny’s next door and grab a couple cups.”
“I do have a bus to catch.”
“Meyer over there’ll come get us.” I looked over at Meyer, who was slumped behind his desk studying the Penthouse. “Won’t you, Meyer?”
He said, “Screw you, Mallory.”
“That’s his way of saying yes,” I said. “Now, what do you say?”
She smiled. Full out. It was a nice smile; she didn’t look quite so tired, so prematurely old, when she smiled that way.
She brushed some blond hair out of her face and said, “Okay.”
Two minutes later we were together in Johnny’s Grille in a back booth, both sitting on one side, snuggled together, almost like lovers. But there wasn’t much sex in it, really; just the closeness of two people who have shared something, which we certainly had, thanks to Punjab.
“How can I thank you?” she said.
“You can’t,” I said. “A hero like me comes along once per damsel-in-distress lifetime.”
Martha, the manager of the place, who also waited tables during slow times, stopped by the booth and I asked for a couple coffees.
Janet touched my hand. “Would you mind terribly if I had hot chocolate instead?”
I grinned, shrugged and made the correction, opting for hot chocolate myself. When I looked at her I saw she was grinning, too. A playful grin, and even with the wan face with its prematurely deep lines ’round eyes and mouth, and roots marring the beauty of blond hair that swept around her face in two gentle arcs, and eyes that had an old woman in them, even with all of that, she was a child. A child who’d walked home from school in a snowstorm and when the winter dark began to fall, got scared and cold; when she finally got home her mother fixed her hot chocolate and then she was better. That kind of child.
“I-never-saw-that-horrible-man-before-in-my-life,” she said suddenly, “ever.”
“Listen,” I said, “don’t feel obligated to tell me anything you don’t want to. No explanations necessary.” In a way I meant it: momentary heroism or not, pretty blonde or no, I had no driving compulsion to “get involved.” As if I wasn’t already.
“I’m telling you the truth, Mal.”
“I believe you, Janet.”
“It’s just that it must seem kind of unbelievable to you that something like that could just walk in out of nowhere and accost somebody.”
“Not so unbelievable. I just experienced it myself, remember? It must’ve been some weird mistaken identity trip, that’s all.”
“It must have.” She looked at me, reached for my hand and squeezed: she sensed my disbelief, evidently, despite my claims to the contrary. “I’m not putting you on, Mal. I never saw him before, and I don’t know anyone who’d have any reason for sending somebody like that.”
“I said I believe you, Janet.” And I was almost starting to.
“Christ, he was big. And that eye… the one that… wasn’t there. Brrrrrr. I have to say you handled yourself well, Mal. It must not be the first fight you were ever in.”
“No.”
“You know, sometimes when I’m waiting by myself, at a bus stop or in a reception room, I sometimes play a game of trying to guess people from their looks-I guess that’s something everybody does, huh? But that’s what I was doing with you while we were sitting waiting in the terminal….”
Martha came with our hot chocolate and I said thanks and Janet continued. “Anyway,” she said sipping, “I couldn’t get a reading on you. Nothing. Not a thing.”
I blew some heat off the chocolate. “You could’ve guessed anything and probably hit something I’ve been one time or another.”
“Just what are you now?”
“Have to tell you?”
“Have to.”
“A college student. Of sorts.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not at all. Right now I’m on quarter break. Thanksgiving vacation.”
“Come on.”
“I know, I know. I look a little weathered for a college boy. Well, I’m not twenty-five yet, I’ll have you know, and people a hell of a lot older than that go to college.”
“Don’t be so defensive about it. I didn’t mean you seemed too old or anything… you just don’t look the college type. How’d you end up that way?”
“Ran out of other things, I guess. I was in Vietnam a short tour, got wounded and sent home. I worked construction. I was a cop for a while, a little while, tried newspaper work, tended bar, finally dropped out, as they used to say, and was into the dope thing, briefly. Things were seeming kind of pointless, so I tried coming home and starting over. Been back since August, started school in September.”
“And you’re not putting me on? You were a cop, and a doper, too?”
“I just saved your rear end, lady, would I put you on? Besides, wait till you hear what I do for a living.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“I write mystery stories.”
“You’re kidding!”
“No, really. Although saying I make a living out of it may be stretching a point.”
“You mean, like you write books?”
“Not yet. But I’ve been selling short stories to Ellery Queen and Mike Shayne. Those are mystery magazines.”
“I’m impressed,” she said, meaning it, smiling.
“Don’t be,” I said. “What about you? Janet Taber? What’s the story of your life?”
It was like a shadow came over her face. The brightness, the child in her was gone, and she looked tired again and the old woman was back in her eyes.
“Janet? Hey, I didn’t mean to bring you down….”
She shook her head; the hot chocolate in her hands shook, too, spilled a little. “Christ, self-pity brings you down after a while. Listen, if I went into all of it, it’s just a friggin’ bore, real bummer, the depression that comes with it and all.”
I held up a hand. “Any way you want it, Janet.”
“You don’t mind? I just rather not go into any of that.”
“Hell, no-unless,” I said, and I slurped at my hot chocolate for dramatic effect, “unless maybe there’s something back there in what you don’t want to think about, and don’t want to talk about, that’s… dangerous.”
She got my meaning and started to stiffen up. “I told you I never saw him before.”
“And I told you I believe you.”
“Well…” She stared down into her mug of chocolate. “I got to admit it isn’t the only strange thing that’s happened to me lately.”
“Oh?”
“Well, not to me exactly. To my mother.”
“Your mother?”
“That’s what the bus is all about. I live here in Port City, have lately at least. I’m going up this afternoon to Iowa City, to the University Hospital.”
“I don’t follow you, Janet.”
“My mother. That’s where she is. The hospital.”
“I’m sorry. What’s the trouble?”
“She’s dying, I’m afraid.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
She sipped at the mug of chocolate calmly and told me that somebody had beaten her mother half to death and set the house on fire and left the old lady to burn.