Read Looking for Rachel Wallace for Free Online Page B

Levi’s and a purple warmup jacket that said Brass Kaydettes on it.
    “You really an author?” she said to Rachel.
    Rachel said, “Yes, I am.”
    “You write this book?”
    “Yes.”
    Linda Smith said, “Would you like to buy one? Ms. Wallace will autograph a copy.”
    The girl ignored her. “This book any good?” she said.
    Rachel Wallace smiled. “I think so,” she said.
    “What’s it about?”
    “It’s about being a woman and about the way people discriminate against women, and about the way that corruption leads to other corruption.”
    “Oh, yeah? Is it exciting?”
    “Well, I wouldn’t, ah, I wouldn’t say it was exciting, exactly. It is maybe better described as powerful.”
    “I was thinking of being a writer,” the kid said.
    Rachel’s smile was quite thin. “Oh, really?”
    “Where do you get your ideas?”
    “I think them up,” Rachel said. The smile was so thin it was hard to see.
    “Oh, yeah?” The girl picked up a copy of Rachel’s book and looked at it, and turned it over and looked at the back. She read the jacket flap for a minute, then put the book down.
    “This a novel?” the girl said.
    “No,” Rachel said.
    “It’s long as a novel.”
    “Yes,” Rachel said.
    “So why ain’t it a novel?”
    “It’s nonfiction.”
    “Oh.”
    The girl’s hair was leaf-brown and tied in two pigtails that lapped over her ears. She had braces on her teeth. She picked the book up again and flipped idly through the pages. There was silence.
    Rachel Wallace said, “Are you thinking of buying a copy?”
    The girl shook her head. “Naw,” she said, “I got no money anyway.”
    “Then put the book down and go somewhere else,” Rachel said.
    “Hey, I ain’t doing any harm,” the girl said.
    Rachel looked at her.
    “Oh, I’m through anyway,” the girl said and left the store.
    “You got some smooth way with the reading public,” I said.
    “Little twerp,” Rachel said. “Where do I get my ideas? Jesus Christ, where does she think I get them? Everyone asks me that. The question is inane.”
    “She probably doesn’t know any better,” I said.
    Rachel Wallace looked at me and said nothing. I didn’t have a sense that she thought me insightful.
    Two young men came in. One was small and thin with a crew cut and gold-rimmed glasses. He had on a short yellow slicker with a hood up and blue serge pants with cuffs that stopped perhaps two inches above the tops of his wing-tipped cordovan shoes. He had rubbers on over the shoes. The other one was much bigger. He had the look of a fat weightlifter. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, but he was starting to get bald. He wore a red-and-black plaid flannel shirt, a black down vest, and chino pants rolled up over laced work boots. The sleeves of his shirt were turned up.
    The small one carried a white cardboard pastry box. I edged a little closer to Rachel when they came in. They didn’t look bookstorish. As they stopped in front of Rachel’s table I put my hand inside my jacket on the butt of my gun. As the small one opened the pastry box I moved. He came out with a chocolate cream pie and had it halfway into throwing position when I hit him with my shoulder. He got it off, side-armed and weakly, and it hit Rachel in the chest. I had the gun out now, and when the fat one grabbed at me I hit him on the wrist with the barrel. The small one bowled over backwards and fell on the floor.
    I said, “Everybody freeze,” and pointed my gun at them. Always a snappy line.
    The fat one was clutching his wrist against his stomach. “It was only a freaking pie, man,” he said.
    The small one had scrunched up against the wall by the door. The wind was knocked out of him, and he was working on getting it back. I looked at Rachel. The pie had hit her on the left breast and slid down her dress to her lap, leaving a wide trail of chocolate and whipped cream.
    I said to the men, “Roll over on the floor, face down. Clasp your hands back of