"Darling." She laid the cool backs of her fingers against his forehead. "I'll miss you."

"I'll be there day after tomorrow probably."

"Let's have fun in California."

"Sure."

"Why're you so serious this morning!"

"I'm not, Ma."

She tweaked the thin dangling hair over his forehead, and went on into the bathroom.

Bruno jumped up and shouted against the roar of her running bath, "Ma, I got money to pay my bill here!"

"What, angel?"

He went closer and repeated it, then sank back in the chair, exhausted with the effort. He did not want his mother to know about the long-distance calls to Metcalf. If she didn't, everything was working out fine. His mother hadn't minded very much his not staying on, hadn't really minded enough. Was she meeting this jerk Fred on the train or something? Bruno dragged himself up, feeling a slow animosity rising in him against Fred Wiley. He wanted to tell his mother he was staying on in Santa Fe for the biggest experience of his life. She wouldn't be running the water in there now, paying no attention to him, if she knew a fraction of what it meant. He wanted to say, Ma, life's going to be a lot better for both of us soon, because this is the beginning of getting rid of the Captain. Whether Guy came through with his part of the deal or not, if he was successful with Miriam, he would have proved a point. A perfect murder. Some day, another person he didn't know yet would turn up and some kind of a deal could be made. Bruno bent his chin down to his chest in sudden anguish. How could he tell his mother? Murder and his mother didn't go together. "How gruesome!" she would say. He looked at the bathroom door with a hurt, distant expression. It had dawned on him that he couldn't tell anyone, ever. Except Guy. He sat down again.

"Sleepyhead!"

He blinked when she clapped her hands. Then he smiled. Dully, with a wistful realization that much would happen before he saw them again, he watched his mother's legs flex as she tightened her stockings. The slim lines of her legs always gave him a lift, made him proud. His mother had the best-looking legs he had ever seen on anyone, no matter what age. Ziegfeld had picked her, and hadn't Ziegfeld known his stuff? But she had married right back into the kind of life she had run away from. He was going to liberate her soon, and she didn't know it.

"Don't forget to mail that," his mother said.

Bruno winced as the two rattlesnakes' heads tipped over toward him. It was a tie rack they had bought for the Captain, made of interlocking cowhorns and topped by two stuffed baby rattlers sticking their tongues out at each other over a mirror. The Captain hated tie racks, hated snakes, dogs, cats, birdsa"What didn't he hate? He would hate the corny tie rack, and that was why he had talked his mother into getting it for him. Bruno smiled affectionately at the tie rack. It hadn't been hard to talk his mother into getting it.

Eleven.

He stumbled on a goddamned cobblestone, then drew himself up pridefully and tried to straighten his shirt in his trousers. Good thing he had passed out in an alley and not on a street, or the cops might have picked him up and he'd have missed the train. He stopped and fumbled for his wallet, fumbled more wildly than he had earlier to see if the wallet was there. His hands shook so, he could hardly read the 10:20 A.M. on the railroad ticket. It was now 8:10 according to several clocks. If this was Sunday. Of course it was Sunday, all the Indians were in clean shirts. He kept an eye out for Wilson, though he hadn't seen him all day yesterday and it wasn't likely he would be out now. He didn't want Wilson to know he was leaving town.

The Plaza spread suddenly before him, full of chickens and kids and the usual old men eating pinones for breakfast. He stood still and counted the pillars of the Governor's palace to see if he could count seventeen, and he could. It was getting so the pillars weren't a good gauge anymore. On top of a bad hangover, he ached now from sleeping on the goddamned cobblestones. Why'd he drunk so much, he wondered, almost tearfully. But he had been all alone, and he always drank more alone. Or was that true? And who cared anyway? He remembered one brilliant and powerful thought that had come to him last night watching a televised shuffleboard game: the way to see the world was to see it drunk. Everything was created to be seen drunk. Certainly this wasn't the way to see the world, with his head splitting every time he turned his eyes. Last night he'd wanted to celebrate his last night in Santa Fe. Today he'd be in Metcalf, and he'd have to be sharp. But had he ever known a hangover a few drinks couldn't fix? A hangover might even help, he thought: he had a habit of doing things slowly and cautiously with a hangover. Still, he hadn't planned anything, even yet. He could plan on the train.

"Any mail?" he asked mechanically at the desk, but there wasn't any.

He bathed solemnly and ordered hot tea and a raw egg sent up to make a prairie oyster, then went to the closet and stood a long while, wondering vaguely what to wear. He decided on the red-brown suit in honor of Guy. It was rather inconspicuous, too, he noticed when he had it on, and it pleased him that he might have chosen it unconsciously for this reason also. He gulped the prairie oyster and it stayed down, flexed his armsa"but suddenly the room's Indian decor, the loony tin lamps, and the strips hanging down the walls were unbearable, and he began to shake all over again in his haste to get his things and leave. What things? He didn't need anything really. Just the paper on which he had written everything he knew about Miriam. He got it from the back pocket of his suitcase and stuck it into the inside pocket of his jacket. The gesture made him feel like a businessman. He put a white handkerchief into his breast pocket, then left the room and locked the door. He figured he could be back tomorrow night, sooner if he could possibly do it tonight and catch a sleeper back.

Tonight!

He could hardly believe it as he walked toward the bus station, where one caught the bus for Lamy, the railroad terminal. He had thought he would be so happy and exciteda"or maybe quiet and grima"and he wasn't at all. He frowned suddenly, and his pallid, shadowy-eyed face looked much younger. Was something going to take the fun out of it after all? What would take it out? But something always had taken the fun out of everything he had ever counted on. This time he wouldn't let it. He made himself smile. Maybe it was the hangover that had made him doubt. He went into a bar and bought a fifth from a barman he knew, filled his flask, and asked for an empty pint bottle to put the rest in. The barman looked, but he didn't have one.

At Lamy Bruno went on to the station, carrying nothing but the half empty bottle in a paper bag, not even a weapon. He hadn't planned yet, he kept reminding himself, but a lot of planning didn't always mean a murder was a success. Witness thea" "Hey, Charley! Where you going?"

It was Wilson, with a gang of people. Bruno forced himself to walk toward them, wagging his head boredly. They must have just got off a train, he thought. They looked tired and seedy.

"Where you been for two days?" Bruno asked Wilson.

"Las Vegas. Didn't know I was there until I was there, or I'd have asked you, Meet Joe Hanover. I told you about Joe."

"H'lo, Joe."

"What're you so mopey about?"Wilson asked with a friendly shove.

"Oh, Charley's hung over!" shrieked one of the girls, her voice like a bicycle bell right in his ear.

"Charley Hangover, meet Joe Hanover!" Joe Hanover said, convulsed.

"Haw haw." Bruno tugged his arm away gently from a girl with a lei around her neck. "Hell, I gotta catch this train." His train was waiting.

"Where you going?" Wilson asked, frowning so his black eyebrows met.

"I hadda see someone in Tulsa," Bruno mumbled, aware he mixed his tenses, thinking he must get away now. Frustration made him want to weep, lash out at Wilson's dirty red shirt with his fists.

Wilson made a movement as if he would wipe Bruno away like a chalk streak on a blackboard. "Tulsa!"

Slowly, with a try at a grin, Bruno made a similar gesture and turned away. He walked on, expecting them to come after him, but they didn't. At the train, he looked back and saw the group moving like a rolling thing out of the sunlight into the darkness below the station roof. He frowned at them, feeling something conspiratorial in their closeness. Did they suspect something? Were they whispering about him? He boarded the train casually, and it began to move before he found his seat.

When he awakened from his nap, the world seemed quite changed. The train was speeding silkily through cool bluish mountainland. Dark green valleys were full of shadows. The sky was gray. The airconditioned car and the cool look of things outside was as refreshing as an icepack. And he was hungry. In the diner he had a delicious lunch of lamb chops, French fries and salad, and fresh peach pie washed down with two Scotch and sodas, and strolled back to his seat feeling like a million dollars.

A sense of purpose, strange and sweet to him, carried him along in an irresistible current. Merely in gazing out the window, he felt a new coordination of mind and eye. He began to realize what he intended to do. He was on his way to do a murder which not only would fulfill a desire of years, but would benefit a friend. It made Bruno very happy to do things for his friends. And his vie67 tim deserved her fate. Think of all the other good guys he would save from ever knowing her! The realization of his importance dazzled his mind, and for a long moment he felt completely and happily drunk. His energies that had been dissipated, spread like a flooded river over land as flat and boring as the Llano Estacado he was crossing now, seemed gathered in a vortex whose point strove toward Metcalf like the aggressive thrust of the train. He sat on the edge of his seat and wished Guy were opposite him again. But Guy would try to stop him, he knew; Guy wouldn't understand how much he wanted to do it or how easy it was. But for Christ's sake, he ought to understand how useful! Bruno ground his smooth, hard rubber-like fist into his palm, wishing the train would go faster. All over his body, little muscles twitched and quivered.

He took out the paper about Miriam, laid it on the empty seat opposite him, and studied it earnestly. Miriam Joyce Haines, about twenty-two, said his handwriting in precise, inked characters, for this was his third copy. Rather pretty. Red hair. A little plump, not very tall. Pregnant so you could tell probably since a month. Noisy, social type. Probably flashy dressed. Maybe short curly hair, maybe a long permanent. It wasn't very much, but it was the best he could do. A good thing she had red hair at least. Could he really do it tonight, he wondered. That depended on whether he could find her right away. He might have to go through the whole list of Joyces and Haineses. He thought she'd be living with her family probably. Once he saw her, he was sure he would recognize her. The little bitch! He hated her already. He thought of the instant he would see her and recognize her, and his feet gave an expectant jump on the floor. People came and went in the aisle, but Bruno did not look up from the paper.

She's going to have a child, Guy's voice said. The little floozy! Women who slept around made him furious, made him ill, like the mistresses his father used to have, that had turned all his school holidays into nightmares because he had not known if his mother knew and was only pretending to be happy, or if she did not know at all. He recreated every word he could of his and Guy's conversation on the train. It brought Guy close to him. Guy, he considered, was the most worthy fellow he had ever met. He had earned the Palm Beach job, and he deserved to keep it. Bruno wished he could be the one to tell Guy he still had it.

When Bruno finally replaced the paper in his pocket and sat back with one leg comfortably crossed, his hands folded on his knee, anyone seeing him would have judged him a young man of responsibility and character, probably with a promising future. He did not look in the pink of health, to be sure, but he did reflect poise and an inner happiness seen in few faces, and in Bruno's never before. His life up to now had been pathless, and seeking had known no direction, finding had revealed no meaning. There had been crisesa"he loved crises and created them sometimes among his acquaintances and between his father and mothera"but he had always stepped out of them in time to avoid participation. This, and because he occasionally found it impossible to show sympathy even when it was his mother who was hurt by his father, had led his mother to think that a part of him was cruel, while his father and many other people believed him heartless. Yet an imagined coolness in a stranger, a friend he telephoned in a lonely dusk who was unable or unwilling to spend the evening with him, could plunge him into sulking, brooding melancholy. But only his mother knew this. He stepped out of crises because he found pleasure in depriving himself of excitement, too. So long had he been frustrated in his hunger for a meaning of his life, and in his amorphous desire to perform an act that would give it meaning, that he had come to prefer frustration, like some habitually unrequited lovers. The sweetness of fulfillment of anything he had felt he would never know. A quest with direction and hope he had always felt, from the start, too discouraged to attempt. Yet there had always been the energy to live one more day. Death held no terror at all, however. Death was only one more adventure untried. If it came on some perilous business, so much the better. Nearest, he thought, was the time he had driven a racing car blindfolded on a straight road with the gas pedal on the floor. He never heard his friend's gunshot that meant stop, because he was lying unconscious in a ditch with a broken hip. At times he was so bored he contemplated the dramatic finality of suicide. It had never occurred to him that facing death unafraid might be brave, that his attitude was as resigned as that of the swamis of India, that to commit suicide required a particular kind of despondent nerve. Bruno had that kind of nerve always. He was actually a little ashamed of ever considering suicide, because it was so obvious and dull.

Now, on the train to Metcalf, he had direction. He had not felt so alive, so real and like other people since he had gone to Canada as a child with his mother and fathera"also on a train, he remembered. He had believed Quebec full of castles that he would be allowed to explore, but there had not been one castle, not even time to look for any, because his paternal grandmother had been dying, which was the only reason they had come anyway, and since then he had never placed full confidence in the purpose of any journey. But he did in this one.

In Metcalf, he went immediately to a telephone book and checked on the Haineses. He was barely conscious of Guy's address as he frowned down the list. No Miriam Haines, and he hadn't expected any. There were seven Joyces. Bruno scribbled a list of them on a piece of paper. Three were at the same address, 1235 Magnolia Street, and one of them there was Mrs. M.J.Joyce. Bruno's pointed tongue curled speculatively over his upper lip. Certainly a good bet. Maybe her mother's name was Miriam, too. He should be able to tell a lot from the neighborhood. He didn't think Miriam would live in a fancy neighborhood. He hurried toward a yellow taxi parked at the curb.

Twelve.

It was almost nine o'clock. The long dusk was sliding steeply into night, and the residential blocks of small flimsy-looking wooden houses were mostly dark, except for a glow here and there on a front porch where people sat in swings and on front steps.

"Lemme out here, this is okay," Bruno said to the driver. Magnolia Street and College Avenue, and this was the onethousand block. He began walking.

A little girl stood on the sidewalk, staring at him.

"Hyah," Bruno said, like a nervous command for her to get out of the way.

"H'lo," said the little girl.

Bruno glanced at the people on the lighted porch, a plump man fanning himself, a couple of women in the swing. Either he was tighter than he thought or luck was going to be with him, because he certainly had a hunch about 1235. He couldn't have dreamt up a neighborhood more likely for Miriam to live in. If he was wrong, he'd just try the rest. He had the list in his pocket. The fan on the porch reminded him it was hot, apart from his own feverlike temperature that had been annoying him since late afternoon. He stopped and lighted a cigarette, pleased that his hands did not shake at all. The half bottle since lunch had fixed his hangover and put him in a slow mellow mood. Crickets chirruped everywhere around him. It was so quiet, he could hear a car shift gears two blocks away. Some young fellows came around a corner, and Bruno's heart jumped, thinking one might be Guy, but none of them was.

"You ola' jassack!" one said.

"Hell, I tol' her I ain't foolin' with no man don't give his brother an even breaka."

Bruno looked after them haughtily. It sounded like another language. They didn't talk like Guy at all.

On some houses, Bruno couldn't find a number. Suppose he couldn't find 1235? But when he came to it, 1235 was very legible in tin numerals over the front porch. The sight of the house brought a slow pleasant thrill. Guy must have hopped up those steps very often, he thought, and it was this fact alone that really set it apart from the other houses. It was a small house like all the others on the block, only its yellow-tan clapboards were more in need of paint. It had a driveway at the side, a scraggly lawn, and an old Chevy sedan sitting at the curb. A light showed at a downstairs window and one in a back corner window upstairs that Bruno thought might be Miriam's room. But why didn't he know? Maybe Guy really hadn't told him enough!

Nervously, Bruno crossed the street and went back a little the way he had come. He stopped and turned and stared at the house, biting his lip. There was no one in sight, and no porch lighted except one down at the corner. He could not decide if the faint sound of a radio came from Miriam's house or the one next to it. The house next to it had two lighted windows downstairs. He might be able to walk up the driveway and take a look at the back of 1235.

Bruno's eyes slid alertly to the next-door front porch as the light came on. A man and woman came out, the woman sat down in the swing, and the man went down the walk. Bruno backed into the niche of a projecting garage front.

"Pistachio if they haven't got peach, Don," Bruno heard the woman call.

"I'll take vanilla," Bruno murmured, and drank some out of his flask.

He stared quizzically at the yellow-tan house, put a foot up behind him to lean on, and felt something hard against his thigh: the knife he had bought in the station at Big Springs, a hunting knife with a six-inch blade in a sheath. He did not want to use a knife if he could avoid it. Knives sickened him in a funny way. And a gun made noise. How would he do it? Seeing her would suggest a way. Or would it? He had thought seeing the house would suggest something, and he still felt like this was the house, but it didn't suggest anything. Could that mean this wasn't the house? Suppose he got chased off for snooping before he even found out. Guy hadn't told him enough, he really hadn't! Quickly he took another drink. He mustn't start to worry, that would spoil everything! His knee buckled. He wiped his sweaty hands on his thighs and wet his lips with a shaky tongue. He pulled the paper with the Joyce addresses out of his breast pocket and slanted it toward the street light. He still couldn't see to read. Should he leave and try another address, maybe come back here?

He would wait fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour.

A preference for attacking her out of doors had taken root in his mind on the train, so all his ideas began from a simple physical approach to her. This street was almost dark enough, for instance, very dark there under the trees. He preferred to use his bare hands, or to hit her over the head with something. He did not realize how excited he was until he felt his body start now with his thoughts of jumping to right or left, as it might be, when he attacked her. Now and then it crossed his mind how happy Guy would be when it was done. Miriam had become an object, small and hard.

He heard a man's voice, and a laugh, he was sure from the lighted upstairs room in 1235, then a girl's smiling voice: "Stop that?a"Please? Plee-ee-ease?" Maybe Miriam's voice. Babyish and stringy, but somehow strong like a strong string, too.

The light blinked out and Bruno's eyes stayed at the dark window. Then the porch light flashed on and two men and a girla"Miriama"came out. Bruno held his breath and set his feet on the ground. He could see the red in her hair. The bigger fellow was redheaded, tooa"maybe her brother. Bruno's eyes caught a hundred details at once, the chunky compactness of her figure, the flat shoes, the easy way she swung around to look up at one of the men.

"Think we ought to call her, Dick?" she asked in that thin voice. "It's kinda late."

A corner of the shade in the front window lifted. "Honey? Don't be out too long!"

"No, Mom."

They were going to take the car at the curb.

Bruno faded toward the corner, looking for a taxi. Fat chance in this dead burg! He ran. He hadn't run in months, and he felt fit as an athlete.

"Taxi!" He didn't even see a taxi, then he did and dove for it.

He made the driver circle and come into Magnolia Street in the direction the Chevy had been pointed. The Chevy was gone. Darkness had closed in tight. Far away he saw a red taillight blinking under trees.

"Keep going!"

When the taillight stopped for a red and the taxi closed some of the distance, Bruno saw it was the Chevy and sank back with relief.

"Where do you want to go?" asked the driver.

"Keep going!"Then as the Chevy swung into a big avenue, "Turn right." He sat up on the edge of his seat. Glancing at a curb, he saw "Crockett Boulevard" and smiled. He had heard of Crockett Boulevard in Metcalf, the widest longest street.

"Who've the people's names you want to go to?" the driver asked. "Maybe I know *em."

"Just a minute, just a minute,' Bruno said, unconsciously assuming another personality, pretending to search through the papers he had dragged from his inside pocket, among them the paper about Miriam. He snickered suddenly, feeling very amused, very safe. Now he was pretending to be the dopey guy from out of town, who had even misplaced the address of where he wanted to go. He bent his head so the driver could not see him laughing, and reached automatically for his flask.

"Need a light?"

"Nope, nope, thank you." He took a hot swallow. Then the Chevy backed into the avenue, and Bruno told the driver to keep going.

"Where?"

"Get going and shut up!" Bruno shouted, his voice falsetto with anxiety.

The driver shook his head and made a click with his tongue. Bruno fumed, but they had the Chevy in sight. Bruno thought they would never stop driving and that Crockett Boulevard must cross the whole state of Texas. Twice Bruno lost and found the Chevy. They passed roadstands and drive-in movies, then darkness put up a wall on either side. Bruno began to worry. He couldn't tail them out of town or down a country road. Then a big arch of lights appeared over the road. WELCOME TO LAKE METCALF'S KINGDOM OF FUN, it said, and the Chevy drove under it and into a parking lot. There were all kinds of lights ahead in the woods and the jingle of merrygo-round music. An amusement park! Bruno was delighted.

"Four bucks," said the driver sourly, and Bruno poked a five through the front window.

He hung back until Miriam and the two fellows and a new girl they had picked up had gone through the turnstile, then he followed them. He stretched his eyes wide for a good look at Miriam under the lights. She was cute in a plump college-girl sort of way, but definitely second-rate, Bruno judged. The red socks with the red sandals infuriated him. How could Guy have married such a thing? Then his feet scraped and he stood still: she wasn't pregnant! His eyes narrowed in intense perplexity. Why hadn't he noticed from the first? But maybe it wouldn't show yet. He bit his underlip hard. Considering how plump she was, her waist looked even flatter than it ought to. Maybe a sister of Miriam s. Or she had had an abortion or something. Or a miscarriage. Miss Carriage! How do you do? Swing it, sister! She had fat little hips under a tight gray skirt. He moved on as they did, following evenly, as if magnetized.

Had Guy lied about her being pregnant? But Guy wouldn't lie. Bruno's mind swam in contradictions. He stared at Miriam with his head cocked. Then something made a connection in his mind before he was aware of looking for it: if something had happened to the child, then all the more reason why he should erase her, because Guy wouldn't be able to get his divorce. She could be walking around now if she had had an abortion, for instance.

She stood in front of a sideshow where a gypsy woman was dropping things into a big fishbowl. The other girl started laughing, leaning all over the redheaded fellow.

"Miriam!"

Bruno leapt off his feet.

"Oooh, yes!" Miriam went across to the frozen custard stand.

They all bought frozen custards. Bruno waited boredly, smiling, looking up at the ferris wheel's arc of lights and the tiny people swinging in benches up there in the black sky. Far off through the trees, he saw lights twinkling on water. It was quite a park. He wanted to ride the ferris wheel. He felt wonderful. He was taking it easy, not getting excited. The merrygo-round played "Casey would waltz with the strawberry blondea" Grinning, he turned to Miriam's red hair, and their eyes met, but hers moved on and he was sure she hadn't noticed him, but he mustn't do that again. A rush of anxiety made him snicker. Miriam didn't look at all smart, he decided, which amused him, too. He could see why Guy would loathe her. He loathed her, too, with all his guts! Maybe she was lying to Guy about having a baby. And Guy was so honest himself, he believed her. Bitch!

When they moved on with their frozen custards, he released the swallowtailed bird he had been fingering in the balloon seller's box, then wheeled around and bought one, a bright yellow one. It made him feel like a kid again, whipping the stick around, listening to the tail's squee-wee-wee A little boy walking by with his parents stretched his hand toward it, and Bruno had an impulse to give it to him, but he didn't.

Miriam and her friends entered a big lighted section where the bottom of the ferris wheel was and a lot of concessions and sideshows. The roller coaster made a tat-tat-tat-tat-tat like a machine gun over their heads. There was a clang and a roar as someone sent the red arrow all the way to the top with a sledge hammer. He wouldn't mind killing Miriam with a sledge hammer, he thought. He examined Miriam and each of the three to see if any seemed aware of him, but he was sure they weren't. If he didn't do it tonight, he mustn't let any of them notice him. Yet somehow he was sure he would do it tonight. Something would happen that he could. This was his night. The cooler night air bathed him, like some liquid that he frolicked in. He waved the bird in wide circles. He liked Texas, Guy's state! Everybody looked happy and full of energy. He let Miriam's group blend into a crowd while he took a gulp from his flask. Then he loped after them.

They were looking at the ferris wheel, and he hoped they would decide to ride it. They really did things big in Texas, Bruno thought, looking up admiringly at the wheel. He had never seen a ferris wheel big as this. It had a five-pointed star in blue lights inside it.

"Ralph, how *bout it?" Miriam squealed, poking the last of the frozen custard cone into her mouth with her hand against her face.

"Aw, a's ain't no fun. H'bout the merrygo-round?"

And they all went. The merrygo-round was like a lighted city in the dark woods, a forest of nickel-plated poles crammed with zebras, horses, giraffes, bulls, and camels all plunging down or upward, some with necks arched out over the platform, frozen in leaps and gallops as if they waited desperately for riders. Bruno stood still, unable to take his dazzled eyes from it even to watch Miriam, tingling to the music that promised movement at any instant. He felt he was about to experience again some ancient, delicious childhood moment that the steam calliope's sour hollowness, the stitching hurdy-gurdy accompaniment, and the drum-and-cymbal crash brought almost to the margin of his grasp.

People were choosing mounts. And Miriam and her friends were eating again, Miriam diving into a popcorn bag Dick held for her. The pigs! Bruno was hungry, too. He bought a frankfurter, and when he looked again, they were boarding the merrygo-round. He scrambled for coins and ran. He got the horse he had wanted, a royal blue one with an upreared head and an open mouth, and as luck would have it, Miriam and her friends kept weaving back through the poles toward him, and Miriam and Dick took the giraffe and the horse right in front of him. Luck was with him tonight! Tonight he should be gambling!