“Genevieve!”
He stopped the car.
Genevieve Selsor stood in the open door of the salon as he ran across the street.
A box of cream chocolates lay open in her arms.
Her fingers, cuddling it, were plump and pallid.
Her face, as he stepped into the light, was round and thick, and her eyes were like two immense eggs stuck into a white mess of bread dough.
Her legs were as big around as the stumps of trees, and she moved with an ungainly shuffle.
Her hair was an indiscriminate shade of brown that had been made and remade, it appeared, as a nest for birds.
She had no lips at all and compensated this by stenciling on a large red, greasy mouth that now popped open in delight, now shut in sudden alarm.
She had plucked her brows to thin antenna lines.
Walter stopped.
His smile dissolved.
He stood looking at her.
She dropped her candy box to the sidewalk.
“Are you — Genevieve Selsor?”
His ears rang.
“Are you Walter Griff?” she asked.
“Gripp.”
“Gripp,” she corrected herself.
“How do you do,” he said with a restrained voice.
“How do you do.”
She shook his hand.
Her fingers were sticky with chocolate.
“Well,” said Walter Gripp.
“What?” asked Genevieve Selsor.
“I just said, «Well,»” said Walter.
“Oh.”
It was nine o’clock at night.
They had spent the day picnicking, and for supper he had prepared a filet mignon which she didn’t like because it was too rare, so he broiled it some more and it was too much broiled or fried or something.
He laughed and said,
“We’ll see a movie!”
She said okay and put her chocolaty fingers on his elbow.
But all she wanted to see was a fifty-year-old film of Clark Gable.
“Doesn’t he just kill you?” She giggled.
“Doesn’t he kill you, now?”
The film ended.
“Run it off again,” she commanded.
“Again?” he asked.
“Again,” she said.
And when he returned she snuggled up and put her paws all over him.
“You’re not quite what I expected, but you’re nice,” she admitted.
“Thanks,” he said, swallowing.
“Oh, that Gable,” she said, and pinched his leg.
“Ouch,” he said.
After the film they went shopping down the silent streets.
She broke a window and put on the brightest dress she could find.
Dumping a perfume bottle on her hair, she resembled a drowned sheep dog.
“How old are you?” he inquired.
“Guess.”
Dripping, she led him down the street.