Read Online Anatomy of a Killer by Peter Rabe - Free Book Online Page B

watched the girl sweep.
    “You got crap on your uniform.”
    She looked down at herself and there was a coffee stain near her belly. She nodded and swept again.
    “I want this place clean. That includes you.”
    “Yes, Mister Wexler.”
    He watched her belly and sucked coffee over his gums. “You working here, girl, I don’t want those Rabbit Town habits to show.”
    Wexler was born in Penderburg and so was the girl. An outsider would say the girl was born in Penderburg, but Wexler, and more like him, said she was from Rabbit Town—where the families had nine children, where the chickens lived under the porch, where the coal truck never went in the wintertime because the shale hill ran down to the backyards. In Rabbit Town they used pickings from among the shale.
    I hope he burns his gums, she thought. He knows I don’t live there any more.
    “You call the man about the neon sign?”
    “Yes. He wasn’t in, Mister Wexler.”
    “He wasn’t in.” Wexler held his cup as if he were drinking, and watched. He could see her back and wished she would turn around. “I thought you know him personal,” he said.
    There was nothing for her to answer. He thinks Rabbit Town when he looks at me and that means one thing to him. He tries it out every night.
    “You see him around, don’t you? Next time, tell him about the sign.” Wexler slurped. “Or ain’t there absolutely no time at all for talk?”
    “I don’t want you to talk like that, Mister Wexler, please,” she said.
    Wexler laughed. She had turned around now and he just sat for a while.
    “How’s your sister?”
    She wanted to say, which one, stalling him, but that had never worked before and only helped him along.
    “The one in Pittsburgh,” he said. “She still doing all right?”
    “Yes. I guess so.”
    “I mean she’s getting on, I mean older than you. That’s a point in her business, no?”
    She hit the broom on the edge of a booth and on the next sweep caught it again. She felt awkward; she felt she could do nothing, and she felt in her throat that she wanted to cry. He was old and filthy and worse than any of the other things he always talked about.
    “You didn’t clean the grill,” said Wexler. “When you’re done sweeping, do the grill before rushing out of here.”
    She worked the sweepings into the dustpan, and after she had gotten rid of that came around to the back of the counter to clean the grill.
    “Where you going to rush to when you rush out of here, Betty?”
    “I’m going home to sleep,” she said. “I’m tired.” She worked the pumice stone back and forth on the grill and the scrape covered just some of Wexler’s laugh. His laugh and the scrape went into each other as if they were the same thing.
    She heard him cough and get up. Every night.
    “You got to turn the gas off when you pumice the grill,” he said.
    Other times it was: You’re leaning into the gas cocks and pushing them open, or, You’re leaning into them and pushing them shut. Every night.
    Then he came over where she worked on the grill and put his hand on the gas cocks and left it there. He left it there, waiting for her to get close to his hand.
    “I’m going to get a bigger fan put into that flue here,” he said. He stood and looked up into the hood over the grill and let his hand wait. The girl saw little sweat dots on Wexler’s scalp.
    “That’s enough with the stone,” he said. “You can wipe it now.”
    When she reached for the rag she felt his hand, the bones in it, on her thigh.
    “Mister Wexler, please—”
    “What please, what?”
    That was his mouth talking and his face looking smily but the hand was something else, was a secret between him and her, and she should respect the rule of that game.
    She moved back with his hand staying on, clamping a little.
    “This don’t get you pregnant,” he said.
    Then he always let go at that point and laughed a chicken sound.
    She moved back to finish the grill and kept her head down and away