Blood Music by Jessie Prichard Hunter Page A

wanted her to talk some more.
    â€œLike the scarecrow,” he said, crossing his arms and pointing in both directions. The girl laughed. “Like the scarecrow,” she agreed. They had begun walking west down St. Luke’s Place, although she seemed unaware of it; “I don’t know this part of the Village,” he said.
    â€œI don’t either. I’m the worst person to ask for directions.” Like honey, like spun sugar. He could listen to her forever.
    â€œBut you know once you get to Fourteenth Street,” he said.
    â€œOh, everybody knows that. Oh, sorry. I guess not, huh?” Her laughter was beautiful too. The cat for some reason followed them for three or four houses, a small black shadow out of the corner of his eye.
    â€œI can’t remember how far down the park goes,” she was saying. She didn’t seem to mind walking down the street with him, after all the street lamps were bright and there was a young couple across the street, arm in arm (and not seeing them at all), and a group of guys up ahead in muscle T-shirts, earnestly talking (and not seeing them), an old woman talking encouragement to her squatting dog (and he could see that she didn’t see them either). In the middle of the city, in the middle of a crowded street, there would be, he knew, no witnesses. And she felt safe.
    The cat dropped back, abruptly sitting to wash its hindquarters. The image was burned into his mind now, one leg stretched up and away like a can-can dancer’s, dark against a dark pocket of space that the streetlight didn’t reach: he thought about the cat as he walked along and chatted with the girl. It was a spring night, ten o’clock, and across the street the couple walked with melded hips, and the moon hung like a stage prop.
    When they got to Seventh Avenue he expected her to be put off by the sudden rush of traffic, the barren corner; crossing Seventh Avenue meant changing neighborhoods, from the Village proper to the West Village, away from the tourist haven of Bleecker and MacDougal. He expected her to look south where there was nobody, just red taillights running in rows like a vast, undisciplined school of fish. North the lights were white. They emphasized the bareness of the corner, the shelter of the dark residential street behind them and the darker leafy street far away across the intersection. The girl was telling him about the time her aunt’s sister-in-law drove her car the wrong way toward the entrance of the Midtown Tunnel during a road test; she stepped into the street and he moved his arm to stop her and he almost touched her. She stepped back up onto the curb and laughed and looked around. White lights, red lights.
    â€œOh,” she said, “what is this, Sixth Avenue? I don’t think I’ve been this far west—” She took a step backward. He could feel her wholly conventional apprehension: she didn’t want to be impolite.
    â€œIf I could offer you a lift—” and she took another, more resolute step away from him, and he knew he had misjudged her drunkenness. “God, that was a stupid thing to say, wasn’t it?” he asked, shaking his head ruefully. “I’m sorry. Sometimes you forget, you know, how dangerous it is for women. How careful you have to be. I’m really sorry.” It was easy to forget that it was really just like talking to any girl.
    â€œOh,” she said, “that’s all right. I was looking for a place to get cigarettes, actually—” as though she owed him an apology for her suspicion—“and I seem to have gotten lost myself.”
    â€œI think there’s a candy store about a block down St. Luke’s,” he said, moving into the street as the light turned green in front of them. There was no candy store. “I’d offer you one but I quit about six months ago.” He held his empty hands out and his wedding ring caught the light from