“I’m twenty-three.”
“And how long have you been a trooper?”
“Three months. I’m what they call a ‘boot.’ Another name for recruit or rookie.”
“Your face is sunburnt and your nose is peeling. But you’re very good-looking.”
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s the outdoor life.”
“That makes you good-looking?”
“No. I was talking about the sunburn.”
Then she laughed and I grinned back at her and the air in the place seemed warmer and mellower and friendlier. She said, “I wonder if they serve food here.”
“I wouldn’t try it,” I said. “But if you’re hungry–”
“Oh, not really. I would like a lobster salad roll, though.”
“You like lobster?”
“Love it. I come from Cleveland. Lobster is expensive there.”
“We could go to Howard Johnson’s. They have good lobster rolls.”
She slid off her stool and picked up her bag and gloves. “If you’d like to take me,” she said, “I’m ready.”
“You haven’t touched your drink,” I reminded her.
“I don’t care for it,” she said hurriedly. Then, as the bartender stared at her, she touched my elbow.
We went to the door. My car was outside. It was a 1946 Ford coupé. The fenders were battered but it had a good motor. We got in and I drove out the turnpike to the nearest Howard Johnson’s.
It was as simple as that.
The lobster salad rolls and coffee had come and gone. She refused a cigarette. I sat across from her in the booth, looking at her face in the glow of the table lamp. Her face was finely shaped, delicately boned, but inexpressive and immobile. Her eyes were heavily lidded and long-lashed, and their color was like the deep blue of the Gulf Stream. I don’t know what she was thinking. But I knew what I was thinking, and I had a twinge of conscience about it. It was of Ellen back home in Cambridge, to whom I was engaged. Also, I was thinking of fate, and how it was just plain luck the way I had met Manette Venus. You didn’t meet girls like her very often and it would never happen again. And unconsciously I must have said it out loud.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Pure luck,” I said. “The way we met, I mean. My father always said life is ninety per cent luck, but people don’t recognize it. Only the smart ones do, and they take advantage of it.”
“Is your father one of the smart ones?”
“No,” I said. “Not that smart.” I didn’t tell her my father had no luck at all. He had been a state trooper who, in 1939, had been shot in the back and had been paralyzed from the waist down ever since. “Are you one of the smart ones?”
She laughed. “Me neither. You see, I work in the mill.”
“You? Which one?”
“Staley Woolen. Out in Staleyville. I’m in the office. Clerical work.”
“It’s a big mill. I go by there in a cruiser every Friday. It’s on one of my patrols.”
“I’ve never seen you.”
“I go by before noon. I guess everybody’s inside then.”
“Are you alone in the car?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never noticed you,” she said. “Lots of times I look out the window.”
“I’ll slow down the next time,” I said. Then I told her how she couldn’t miss the cruiser. It was pale blue. The state seals were on the doors and there were big white letters on the rear deck that said Massachusetts State Police. And on top of the roof there was a red light and a siren.
“I’ll surely watch for it Friday,” she said. “I’ll wave to you from the window.” Then she smiled. “But Friday’s a long way off, and the evening is still young. Of course, if you’ve made other arrangements–”
“No,” I said. “What would you like to do?”
“Anything you say. I don’t care.”
“We could take in a movie. There’s a drive-in about a mile down the pike.”
“I’d love to see a movie,” she said.
We left Howard Johnson’s. It had grown dark. I was crossing the parking lot with her when suddenly she stopped. She said, “Do you always carry a gun, Ralph?”
I turned to her. “What difference would that make?”
“I’m just curious,” she said with a short, nervous laugh. “It isn’t a secret or anything, is it?”
“No. Cops have to carry a gun at all times. I’ve got a little .38 Smith and Wesson Special here on my belt.”
“Where?”
“At my right hip pocket.” I opened my jacket and showed her the tiny leather open holster and the butt of the S&W.
She said, “No one would ever know. It doesn’t show one bit, Ralph.”
“That’s supposed to be the general idea,” I said.
We went to the drive-in theater. Now I like the movies. But if you asked me, I couldn’t even tell you what the picture was that October night. I was looking at her as she sat beside me. Her face was tilted up toward the screen, her hands clasped primly in her lap, her profile finely etched. She was a strange girl. Before there had been a forced brashness in her, now she seemed shy and timid. She didn’t seem to be too relaxed either, because every once in a while her foot would begin to tap on the rubber floor mat.
The picture ended and the lights went up. I started the car and we left the drive-in theater. I said, “How about a drink somewhere? A nightcap.”
“I’m not much for drinking, Ralph. Thanks, but I think it’s time to go home.”
“Where do you live?”
“I don’t want to trouble you. You can let me off downtown.”
“It’s no trouble,” I said.
“I live on Glen Road. I have a room with a private family. You go down the turnpike, past the Blue Grotto, to the first set of lights. Turn left.”
“You don’t live with your folks?”
“No, I’m all alone in Danford.”
I
