She looked about with dazed, glassy eyes.
“There might be people here.……” He swung in toward a fillingstation.
“I cant get out,” she whimpered.
“It’s still running, I tell you!”
“Who told you to get out?”
He descended and looked at her across the wheel.
“Dont you move.”
She watched him go up the street and enter a door. It was a dingy confectionery.
He bought a pack of cigarettes and put one in his mouth.
“Gimme a couple of bars of candy,” he said.
“What kind?”
“Candy,” he said.
Under a glass bell on the counter a plate of sandwiches sat.
He took one and flipped a dollar on the counter and turned toward the door.
“Here’s your change,” the clerk said.
“Keep it,” he said.
“You’ll get rich faster.”
When he saw the car it was empty.
He stopped ten feet away and changed the sandwich to his left hand, the unlighted cigarette slanted beneath his chin.
The mechanic, hanging the hose up, saw him and jerked his thumb toward the corner of the building.
Beyond the corner the wall made an offset.
In the niche was a greasy barrel half full of scraps of metal and rubber.
Between the barrel and the wall Temple crouched.
“He nearly saw me!” she whispered.
“He was almost looking right at me!”
“Who?” Popeye said.
He looked back up the street.
“Who saw you?”
“He was coming right toward me!
A boy.
At school.
He was looking right toward—”
“Come on.
Come out of it.”
“He was look—” Popeye took her by the arm.
She crouched in the corner, jerking at the arm he held, her wan face craned around the corner.
“Come on, now.”
Then his hand was at the back of her neck, gripping it.
“Oh,” she wailed in a choked voice.
It was as though he were lifting her slowly erect by that one hand.
Excepting that, there was no movement between them.
Side by side, almost of a height, they appeared as decorous as two acquaintances stopped to pass the time of day before entering church.
“Are you coming?” he said.
“Are you?”
“I cant.
It’s down to my stocking now.
Look.”
She lifted her skirt away in a shrinking gesture, then she dropped the skirt and rose again, her torso arching backward, her soundless mouth open as he gripped her.
He released her.
“Will you come now?”