That must've been from her nose, he thought. He climbed down from the truck and dropped the chains near the left rear wheel, and then looked around the garage and saw a hose attached to a faucet, and alongside that a can. He glanced toward the front of the garage to check if the attendant was anywhere in sight. He walked to the hose and picked up the can and filled it about a quarter full, and then went back to the truck again. He put the can down near the tailgate. From under the front seat he took an old soiled rag, and he carried that with him to the back of the truck again, where he dipped it into the can of water.
He was very lucky. The blood had dripped onto one of the metal strips running the length of the truck, and had not fallen on the wooden floor of the body. It might have been difficult to remove a bloodstain from a wooden floor. Instead, he wiped the blood off the metal in as long as it took him to pass the wet cloth over it.
He rinsed the cloth out several times until it was clean. The water in the can showed hardly any discoloration, hardly any trace of red or even pink. He poured the water down the open drain near the hose attachment, and rinsed the can out several times.
He went back to the truck and put on the chains.
She was waiting for him outside the drugstore.
She spotted him as he turned the corner, and waved immediately and came running up to him.
"Hi," she said, and looped her arm through his. "You're late."
"I haven't got a watch," he said.
"Well, you're not too late, it's only about twenty to. Where were you?"
"Putting chains on my truck."
"Fine thing. Guy'd rather put chains on his truck than be with me."
"No, I'd rather be with you, Amelia."
"There are times, you know," she said, smiling, "when I think you have absolutely no sense of humor."
"None at all," he said, and returned her smile.
"So look at me," she said. I He looked at her.
"Well?"
"You changed your coat."
"This is my best coat. I only wear it on very special occasions. The collar is genuine fitch."
"What's fitch?"
"An animal."
"I know that, but"
"You've never heard of rat fitch?"
"No."
"It's a close relative to rat fink. There are millions of rat finks in this city, but only very few rat fitches. One of them voluntarily donated his life to make a collar for my coat. Stunning, isn't it?"
"Stunning."
"Also, look." She unbuttoned the coat and held it open, her arms widespread. She was wearing a black skirt and a V-necked black sweater cut very low over her breasts. A string of tiny pearls circled her throat, startling white against her dark skin. "Very sexy number, huh?" she said.
"Very sexy."
"Also," she said, and winked, "black bra underneath. Men like black bras, huh?"
"Yes."
"Now, if you don't mind, I'll close the coat before I freeze everything I own, you don't mind, huh?" She closed the coat and buttoned it. "Brrrr, my hands are freezing." She put her left hand into the pocket of her coat, and then entwined the fingers of her right hand in his, and put both their hands into the pocket of his coat. "There," she said, "nice and cozy and warm, I can't stop talking, what the hell is it about you?"
"I'm a good listener," he said, "that's what it is."
"Yeah, how come?"
"In my house, I listen all the time."
"To who?"
"My mother."
"Mmm, mothers, don't talk about mothers. You should hear the lecture I got this afternoon."
"About what?"
"About you, what do you think?"
"Why?"
"Man, you de white man. You Mr. Charlie." Amelia giggled.
"Is that what Mr. Charlie is?"
"Well, sure. You Mr. Charlie, and you de ofay, and you sometimes just De Man, although De Man is also sometimes a plain old pusher, but he usually a white man, too, so I guess you synonymous, is that de word, man?"
"I don't know."
"It went on for hours, I thought she'd never stop."
"Is that why you couldn't make it at three-thirty?"
"That's why. She had my brother come over to talk to me. He's married and has two kids, and he drives a cab. So she called his garage and asked them to tell him to call his mother as soon as he checked in. He doesn't check in 'til about four, so I knew I'd be stuck there 'til at least a quarter after, his garage is on Twentieth, near the river. Anyway, he got to the house at twenty-five after, and I talked to him for about three seconds flat and then left."
"What'd he say?"
"He said, 'Amelia, you are out of your head.'"
"What did you say?"
"I said, 'Louis, go to hell.'"
"And then what?"
"He said if he caught us together he would cut off your balls."
"Will he really?"
"Louis is a fat happy cab driver who wouldn't know where to find your balls because he hasn't had any of his own since the day he married Mercedes in 1953, do you mind my talking this way?"
"What way?"
"Well, I swear a lot, I guess. Although, actually, I'm only repeating what my brother said. Anyway, I told him to go to hell again, and I walked out."
"I don't mind," Roger said.
"What do you mean?"
"Your swearing a lot." He paused. "We never swear in our house. My mother's pretty strict about that."
"Well, the hell with mothers, huh?" she said.
He felt a momentary spark of anger, and then he simply nodded. "What would you like to do?" he asked.
"Walk a little. I love snow. It makes me stand out."
"You stand out anyway," he said.
"Do I?"
"Yes."
"You say very sweet things, sweet-talker. Mother warned me. Oops, excuse me, we're not supposed to talk about mothers."
"Where would you like to walk?"
"Any place, who cares?"
He didn't like the way Amelia said that, but he told himself not to get angry. She was, after all, allowing him to assume the responsibility. She was saying she would follow him wherever he wanted to go. She was allowing him to be the man. It's you who's the man in the family now, Roger. He did not want to get angry with her the way he had got angry with Molly last night. Last night, he had begun to get angry with Molly when she started telling him about that man in Sacramento. He told himself later that she should not have begun talking about another man when she was in bed with him. That was what had got him so angry. But he had the feeling, even while he was trying to convince himself, that the real reason for his sudden anger had nothing at all to do with the man in Sacramento. He couldn't quite understand it, but he knew somehow he had got angry with Molly only because he was beginning to like her so much. That was the part he couldn't understand.
"There's been only one other man in my life who mattered," Molly had said last night. "Before you. Only one other."
He said nothing. They were lying naked on the bed in his room, and he felt spent and exhausted and content, listening to the February wind howling outside, wind always sounded more fierce in the dead of night, especially in a strange city.
"I met him when I was twenty, just a year after my mother passed away, do you mind my talking about this?"
"No," he said, because he really didn't mind yet, he wasn't angry with her yet, he liked her very much. He kept thinking about how his mother would make fun of him for bringing home another ugly duckling and of how he would say, "Why Mom, she's beautiful, what's the matter with you?"
"It was the first job after secretarial school, I really didn't know how to handle either the job or him. I never went out much with boys, boys hardly ever asked me out. I think I'd been kissed maybe half a dozen times in my life, and once a boy touched my breast when we were decorating the high school gym for a senior dance. I didn't even go to the dance because no one asked me." She paused. "His name was Theodore Michelsen, he had a brother who was a priest in San Diego. He was married and had two children, a little boy and a little girl, their pictures were on his desk. His wife's picture was on his desk, too, in the same frame, one of those frames that open like a book. His wife was on the left-hand side and his two children on the right. Do you mind my talking about this?"