He took out his own pack, slid one out and tapped it against the dash, lit up and sat quietly smoking, watching the light change and the afternoon die around him. He could hear the World’s Fair in the distance: music, the rise and fall of a voice calling to customers.
People passed his car: mostly women, in twos and threes, carrying bags or with arms linked or pushing strollers. Groups of children raced along the sidewalk, yelling threats and insults, their faces blurred above bright T-shirts. The children didn’t see him. Doubtless they’d been warned since the Malone kids were taken, but the habits of childhood were stronger than the words of their parents. To them, it was just an idea. Just another scary story.
But the women noticed him. They looked right at him and frowned, and kept their eyes fixed on him while they dipped their chins and squared their shoulders and spoke to one another in low tones about the strange man in the car. A couple wrote down his license plate number, ostentatiously, hoping that would be enough to make him go away, and when it was not, they wrote over the letters to make them thicker and darker: an insurance policy against something bad happening again.
Pete thought about the empty refrigerator in his apartment, reached into his jacket for his wallet, and felt the crinkle of his mother’s latest letter.
Usually she wrote about the weather, which was very warm or awful wet or dreadful cold. She wrote about her occasional outings into town and the expense of the bus and the lines in the stores. She wrote about her arthritis, which was always no worse, thank the Lord, and as he read he would feel that old creeping sense of boredom and suffocation.
But this letter was different. He took it out of his pocket. Folded inside was a check.
As he reread it, he could see her sitting at the kitchen table in the amber lamplight, the white hair at her temples, the brown age spots on her hands. He could smell the familiar aromas of furniture polish and cooked vegetables.
He heard her thin, hopeful voice in her words.
There’s not a lot, you know we never had much. But we kept up the payments and the policy paid out after your father passed. The money is in the bank, waiting for you. You’ll surely need it one day. When your time comes to settle down.
He saw the unspoken words, the expectation, as clearly as if she had written them down.
He folded the letter, slipped it back in the envelope. He had a sudden desire to lie down and sleep for a long time. Then something made him look up, and he saw Ruth Malone at the window of her apartment. She wore a dress of some pale, clinging material and she stood with her hands and her forehead pressed against the glass, looking down at the sunlit street. At the world going on without her.
He watched her watching the women and children and thought about the neighbors he’d spoken to. The things they’d said about her. Maybe she felt safe, up there, behind the glass. Perhaps she thought that if she couldn’t hear what they were saying, their words couldn’t hurt her.
As he gazed up at her, she stretched sideways so that she rested one shoulder and her hip against the window. Her head was arched back so that her thick sheaf of bright hair hung heavy and full at an angle to her neck.
And then she turned, pivoting on the back of her shoulders, which remained in contact with the windowpane. She rolled over as though she was in bed and this was a lazy Sunday morning and everything was normal. She rolled again and came to a stop with her hands pressed against the glass, looking up at the burning sky. Almost as though she were praying.
And suddenly Ruth Malone didn’t look safe. She looked like a pale shimmering moth fluttering behind the glass. She looked trapped.
He had the strangest desire to touch her and, as he thought this, as he felt shame flush his skin in response, she stared straight at him. Her eyes widened, and for a long moment, neither moved. Then her lips parted. Slowly.
Pete dropped his gaze, let the letter fall to the floor. He started the car, fumbling with the key. He did not look at her again but he could feel her watching him, all the way back to the highway. He felt naked, as though she’d seen through to the core of him, and it made him afraid.
He drove home and lay on his bed and tried not to think about her. But his mind kept returning to her parted lips. The way she had looked at him.
And then he realized that his hand had found his cock and was rubbing it through his underwear, and that he was thinking of that mouth on his. That lipsticked O around his hardness, his hand in that glowing hair. And he pushed the cotton down around his thighs and came with a groan and wiped his hand on his stomach, and he was asleep before the stickiness had dried in the hot night.
8