LITMIR.BIZ

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      Right along in there I began to get scared. In spite of the legends and all the books about it, there aren’t many women who go after you like that, straight and direct, and when it happens, if you’re leery of women anyway, it scares you off.

      The bartender went to the back room and the girl pressed closer and spoke into my ear.

      “My name’s Hazel,” she said.

      Since she was a customer and a native, I couldn’t very well spit in her face. I had to brush her off, but cool and slow, so it wouldn’t make trouble.

      “I’m a little shy,” I said. “Also, I have to work.”

      “You’ll get off sometime, won’t you?”

      “Sure. Midnight.”

      When the bartender came back, she got off the piano bench and went back to her table. Some more customers came in and after a while she got up to leave. The big guy with the hairy hands hadn’t shown up. On her way out, she paused long enough to stick something in the kitty—a beer glass on top of the old upright. What she put in was a couple of bills wrapped around a piece of white paper. She flashed a deadpan at me and went out.

      Between numbers I snaked the piece of paper out of the kitty and looked at it. She’d written:

      “615 East Chestnut Street. Hazel.”

      I put it in my pocket, took a short break and went back to the piano. It was a slow night and I fooled around for a while with some arrangements I’d been working on for a dozen years. But they didn’t go so well. I had stopped being serious about music a long time ago and a lot of it I had forgotten. What I tried only sounded sloppy, and nobody in the joint cared anyway. I went into the straight, easy stuff and tried to relax.

      I couldn’t get Hazel off my mind. I couldn’t forget the rich, red hair, the breasts pushing through the summer dress, the generous hips, the good legs. I couldn’t forget the scent of her when she leaned close to me on the piano bench. I said I’m leery of women. But I’m not made of wood. I’m not immune.

      Take it easy, I kept telling myself. She’s a local girl. She’s married. Let her play with somebody else.

      By the time we closed for the night I had pretty well talked myself out of it. I hung around for a while and helped the bartender put the tavern in order for the next day. Then he locked up and I walked up the street a couple of blocks to the run-down hotel I was living in.

      It was after one o’clock and the town had folded up for the night. The stores and houses were dark and there was nobody on the streets. The hotel was a four-story brick building on a corner. There were two entrances, one on the main street and another around the corner on the side street, the one I used because it depressed me to go through the lobby, past the ancient, feeble night clerk who always went to sleep standing up.

      When I rounded the corner I saw a cream-colored Ford convertible parked at the curb opposite the small side entrance with the yellow light bulb over the door. I didn’t pay much attention at first, because the car lights were out and I couldn’t see that there was anybody sitting in it. I headed for the door and had turned into it when the car lights blinked a couple of times. I glanced around and saw somebody behind the wheel. The lights blinked again and I walked slowly to the car.

      I guess I really knew all the time who it would be.

      The top of the convertible was down and I leaned on the door and looked across the seat at her.

      “Surprise,” she whispered.

      “Yeah,” I said. “I got your invitation, but I couldn’t make it.”

      Earlier, in the tavern, she had worn her hair up, very fancy and neat, with a high pile of it across the top. But now she had let it down and it was spread out around her face and over the back of the seat behind her head. The scent of her perfume was stronger than ever.

      I was carrying a perfect load. I felt sure of myself and untouchable. At this point, I would be hard to scare. It was not the same now as it had been in the joint when she’d sat beside me at the keyboard.

      Her eyes were looking at me through the dark, out of her beautiful pink and white face.

      “Is there something about me you don’t like?” she said softly.

      “Two things,” I said.

      I could see her jump slightly.

      “What?” she said.

      “The ring you’re wearing,” I said, “and that big bastard I’ve seen you with.”

      She looked away from me. Her left arm was resting on the wheel and her fingers played with the spokes in it. Her perfume was filling the whole street—or maybe it was just filling me.

      “That ‘big bastard,’” she said, “is my husband. Let’s say—he doesn’t understand me.”

      “And you, what do you understand?”

      “Let’s say I’m a music lover.”

      I looked up and down the street.

      “Isn’t it risky for you to sit here talking to me, this time of the night?” I said. “In a little town like this?”

      She shrugged.

      “It would be safer if you’d get in and we’d go for a ride,” she said.

      I figured I’d done my duty. I’d played hard to get as long as any man could be expected to. I twisted the handle of the door, opened it and slid in beside her. She straightened behind the wheel.

      “You want to drive?” she said.

      “Better not,” I said. “I’m loaded.”

      She looked at me quickly.

      “How loaded?”

      “Just enough,” I said, “which is too much to drive.”

      I knew I would need another drink before long, but I had some left in the bottle in my pocket. It wouldn’t be safe for me to drive, but I was all right for everything else, for a couple of hours anyway.

      She got the car started and pulled away from the curb, heading for the main street. She turned left into it and drove slowly toward the north end of town. We crossed a bridge over a small creek and then we were in the country, with flat fields and occasional farm buildings on both sides of the road. She drove faster now and in the rushing night air the odor of her perfume was mingled with the smell of clover and alfalfa in the fields along the road.

      You can’t talk much in an open convertible and I didn’t have much to say anyway. It was her party. So I leaned back in the seat and let the wind beat me in the face and watched her thick, red hair blowing as we rode.

      After about ten minutes she slowed suddenly and turned off the road into a narrow lane that wound upward among trees. The trees grew so close to the road they brushed the car as we passed. The air smelled damp, as if we were near a river or as if the ground were wet. The ruts of the lane were deep and I held onto the door handle as we lurched up the low hill.

      The car bumped heavily as Hazel turned into a clearing, drifted to a stop and turned off the lights. There was a bright moon and looking across the seat, I could see her clearly—her beautiful face, surrounded by that hair and the rich, ripe swelling of her breasts. She was truly a gorgeous pile of woman.

      We sat there for a while, neither of us speaking. The night was quiet. The white moonlight filled the small clearing. I took a deep breath and sprawled in the seat.

      “Los Angeles was never like this,” I said.

      “That’s where you’re from?” Hazel asked.

      “Some time back.”

      “What made you stop in a hick town like this?”

      “I got hungry,” I said. “Even a lush gets

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