It was not exactly a dance. She moved like a burlesque dancer, but there was nothing crude about it. She knew how beautiful she was, and she moved in rhythm, making a symphony of her body and watching herself as she did. It was something to watch.
Finally she stopped dancing. She slipped on a housecoat and stepped through a door. I guessed she was going to the bathroom, which meant it was the end of the show. I could have left then, but didn’t. I wanted to get another glimpse of her. She had to come back.
I stood silently at the window, waiting for her.
Suddenly a door opened. I whirled around to find her standing there, in the doorway, pointing a gun at me. “Don’t move,” she said. “Don’t move or I’ll shoot.”
I froze in terror, staring down the mouth of the gun, which looked like a cannon to me. “I wasn’t doing anything,” I stammered. “Just watching you. I didn’t hurt you.”
She didn’t say a word.
“Look,” I pleaded, “just let me go. I won’t bother you anymore. I promise I’ll stay away from here.”
She ignored me. “I saw you in the mirror,” she said. “Saw you watching me. I danced for you. Did you like the way I danced?”
I nodded dumbly, unable to speak.
“It was for you,” she said. “I liked your eyes on me. I liked the way you looked at me.”
She smiled. “Come inside.”
I hesitated. Was this a trap? Had she called the police?
“Come here,” she said. “Come inside. Don’t be afraid.”
I followed her into the house, into the bedroom. “I want you,” she said. “I want you.” She slipped out of the housecoat and tossed it over a chair.
“Come on,” she said. “I know you want me. I could tell from the way you looked at me. Come here.”
She set the gun on the dresser and motioned for me to step closer. “I want you to make love to me,” she said.
I walked over to her, and she threw her arms around me. “Take me,” she moaned.
I pushed her away. “No,” I said. “I don’t want that. I just wanted to watch you. I wouldn’t do that.”
She pressed against me again. “I want you,” she insisted. She opened her arms and I felt her hot breath on my face.
There was only one way to stop her. I picked up the gun from the dresser. “Don’t come any closer,” I warned. “Leave me alone.”
“Don’t be silly.” She smiled. “You want me and I want you.” She kept coming closer as I retreated.
That’s when it happened — when the gun went off. The noise resounded in the small bedroom, and she crumpled and fell. “Why?” she moaned. Then she died.
The police beat me. They beat me harder than last time, and they called me a pervert. They think I tried to rape her, but that’s not true. I wouldn’t do a thing like that.
Precise Moment
by Henry Kane
1.
When you’re alone in a graveyard, you have many thoughts. When you’re alone in a graveyard, that is, and you’re not dead.
And I was not dead.
I was, in fact — if one can be said to be — too much alive. Nervous. Jumpy. Prickles ridged along the back of my neck like the risen hackles of a fighting cock. Nerve-ends jagged, and every fibre taut. And why not, at one o’clock in the morning of a silent fog-wisped night, alone in a stone-infested graveyard out at the eerie edge of Long Island?
And what was I doing there?
Have a laugh.
I was there on business.
I had a flashlight in my left hand, and a brown-paper package in my right, and I was glued, like a peeping-Tom at an inviting aperture, to a flavorsome tombstone, enticingly inscribed, in curlicues yet: J. J. J. Tompkins, Rest In Peace.
Tompkins, I hoped, was resting more peacefully than I.
I shrugged, scratched, grimaced and clicked the flashlight again. It was five after one. I had been there, at Mr. Tompkins’ tombstone — as directed — since twelve-thirty. I stiffened, stretched and returned to the whirligig of random thinking; but my unconscious mind must have sought succor, because it presented a picture of Trina Greco.
Ah, that Trina Greco. Tall, dark, lithe and graceful, she had the longest, shapeliest legs in New York, and they were legs that stood up against the staunchest of competition — Trina was a ballet dancer. This very afternoon — before I had returned to the office, and before the call from Mrs. Florence Fleetwood Reed — I had attended a rehearsal with Trina. Legs, legs, legs... legs and leotards... but my Trina won hands down (or is it legs down?). Afterward, we had sat about sipping peaceful afternoon cocktails in a peaceful afternoon tavern, and she had looked off wistfully — Trina, the unusuaclass="underline" with a brain to match the legs — and she had said, apropos of nothing:
“A fragment of time in connection with a fragment of space... creates the precise moment.”
“Wow,” I had said. “In the middle of the afternoon. Just like that.”
“It’s from the Greek philosophers.”
“Trina, my Greek.”
“I am of Greek extraction. You know that, Pete.”
“Sure. Sure.” I had pondered it. “Fragment of time... fragment of space... precise moment.”
“And that precise moment... can be ecstatic or catastrophic.”
“Wow. Again with the words. Slow down, my lady love. I’m only a detective taking off part of an afternoon.”
“Even here...” Her dark eyes crinkled in a grin. “You and I... this might be... a precise moment.”
My grin had answered hers. “No, ma’am, and that’s for sure. I can think of a better time and a more appropriate space for our precise moment. But I do believe I know what you mean, big words or little words.”
“Do you, Peter?”
“Sure. Something like this, let’s say. Deciding game of the World Series. Last half of the ninth, home team at bat, one run behind. Bases full, two out. Third baseman moves a little to his left for some reason, just as the batter hits a screaming line drive. Third baseman lifts his glove, practically to protect himself... and he’s made a sensational catch. At the right fragment of time he was in the right fragment of space... and for him, it was the precise moment. Ecstatic for his team, catastrophic for the other.”
“Very good, Peter. Very good, indeed.”
The way she had said it, the way her dark eyes had narrowed down, the promise in the soft-sweet smile — right here in the fog-tipped graveyard, a pleasant little shiver ran through me. Everything else was forgotten — even Johnny Hays, small-time hood with big-ideas, good-looking lad with a smooth blue jaw — Johnny Hays, who had come up to me just after I had put Trina into her cab — Johnny Hays, talking through stiff lips:
“You just beg for trouble, don’t you, Mr. Chambers?”
“Like how, little man?”
“Like making with the pitch for this Trina Greco.”
“That have any effect on you, little man?”
“It figures to have an effect on you, big man.”
“Like how?”
“Like Nick Darrow.”
“Darrow, huh?”
“Friendly warning, big man. When Nick don’t like, Nick cuts you down to size. Then you’re a little man, very little, and very dead. So smarten up. There’s a million dames. Skip this one.”
I forgot about Johnny Hays, thinking of the expression on Trina’s face, of her dark eyes, of that secret little smile, and, as I clicked the flashlight, the pleasant little shiver went through me again — but then the shiver remained and all the pleasantness went out of it.
A quiet voice said, “Put that light out.”