"Not at all. Did you know you have an ice cream wrapper on your shoe?"
He looked down and saw that he did. It made him blush because he suspected that she would have informed him that his fly was open in that same tone. He stood on one leg and tried to pull it off.
"You look like a stork," she said. "Sit down and try it. My name is Rita Blakemoor."
"Pleased to know you. I'm Larry Underwood."
He sat down. She offered her hand and he shook it lightly, his fingers pressing against her rings. Then he gingerly removed the ice cream wrapper from his shoe and dropped it primly into a can beside the bench that said IT'S YOUR PARK SO KEEP IT CLEAN! It struck him funny, the whole operation. He threw his head back and laughed. It was the first real laugh since the day he had come home to find his mother lying on the floor of her apartment, and he was enormously relieved to find that the good feel of laughing hadn't changed. It rose from your belly and escaped from between your teeth in the same jolly go-to-hell way.
Rita Blakemoor was smiling both at him and with him, and he was struck again by her casual yet elegant handsomeness. She looked like a woman from an Irwin Shaw novel. Nightwork, maybe, or the one they had made for TV when he was just a kid.
"When I heard you coming, I almost hid," she said. "I thought you were probably the man with the broken glasses and the queer philosophy."
"The monster-shouter?"
"Is that what you call him or what he calls himself?"
"What I call him."
"Very apt," she said, opening her mink-trimmed (maybe) bag and taking out a package of menthol cigarettes. "He reminds me of an insane Diogenes."
"Yeah, just lookin for an honest monster," Larry said, and laughed again.
She lit her cigarette and chuffed out smoke.
"He's not sick, either," Larry said. "But most of the others are."
"The doorman at my building seems very well," Rita said. "He's still on duty. I tipped him five dollars when I came out this morning. I don't know if I tipped him for being very well or for being on duty. What do you think?"
"I really don't know you well enough to say."
"No, of course you don't." She put her cigarettes back in her bag and he saw that there was a revolver in there. She followed his gaze. "It was my husband's. He was a career executive with a major New York bank. That's just how he put it when anyone asked what he did to keep himself in cocktail onions. I-am-a-career-executive-with-a-major-New-York-bank. He died two years ago. He was at a luncheon with one of those Arabs who always look as if they have rubbed all the visible areas of their skin with Brylcreem. He had a massive stroke. He died with his tie on. Do you think that could be our generation's equivalent of that old saying about dying with your boots on? Harry Blakemoor died with his tie on. I like it, Larry."
A finch landed in front of them and pecked the ground.
"He was insanely afraid of burglars, so he had this gun. Do guns really kick and make a loud noise when they go off, Larry?"
Larry, who had never fired a gun in his life, said, "I don't think one that size would kick much. Is it a .38?"
"I believe it's a .32." She took it out of her bag and he saw there were also a good many small pill-bottles in there. This time she didn't follow his gaze; she was looking at a small chinaberry tree about fifteen paces away. "I believe I'll try it. Do you think I can hit that tree?"
"I don't know," he said apprehensively. "I don't really think - "
She pulled the trigger and the gun went off with a fairly impressive bang. A small hole appeared in the chinaberry tree. "Bull's-eye," she said, and blew smoke from the pistol barrel like a gunfighter.
"Real good," Larry said, and when she put the gun back in her purse, his heart resumed something like its normal rhythm.
"I couldn't shoot a person with it. I'm quite sure of that. And soon there won't be anyone to shoot, will there?"
"Oh, I don't know about that."
"You were looking at my rings. Would you like one?"
"Huh? No!" He began to blush again.
"As a banker, my husband believed in diamonds. He believed in them the way the Baptists believe in Revelations. I have a great many diamonds, and they are all insured. We not only owned a piece of the rock, my Harry and I, I sometimes believed we held a lien on the whole goddam thing. But if someone should want my diamonds, I would hand them over. After all, they're only rocks again, aren't they?"
"I guess that's right."
"Of course," she said, and the tic on the side of her neck jumped again. "And if a stick-up man wanted them, I'd not only hand them over, I would give him the address of Cartier's. Their selection of rocks is much better than my own."
"What are you going to do now?" Larry asked her.
"What would you suggest?"
"I just don't know," Larry said, and sighed.
"My answer exactly."