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look of surprise.

    She smiled the satisfied-cat smile they always had, with the lips closed and the amused eyes. Then she said, "If you're lonely, I'm not doing anything."

    In one part of his mind he was thinking she was extremely tempting—
    huge, bright blue eyes that seemed to peep out from behind a veil of heavy brown hair. In another part all the danger signals were reminding him that this was neither the time nor the place. To have anything to do with her now would put him in jeopardy: she was risking his life and he was angry about it. So he said, "Oh, I'm sorry, Miss. I'm a married man." He did his best to look flustered, to make her think she'd been wrong this time, to convince her that this time she'd picked a man who hadn't even seen her. And then he quickened his pace, behaving like a frightened businessman who wanted nothing more at the 21

    moment than to escape the place where he'd been embarrassed, but after thinking it over and smoothing out the rough edges, wouldn't be able to resist telling his wife and one or two close friends about it because he thought it magnified him: a real prostitute came up to me on the street and . . . well, she offered herself to me. I couldn't believe it.

    He turned off on a side street and kept going, moving along in his preoccupied businessman's stride. Then he turned again onto a narrow street that ran parallel with Colfax— almost an alley, really. It was darker, and on one side were the backs of stores and taverns and restaurants, nestled together and indistinguishable from one another with their steel fire doors and loading docks and navy-blue dumpsters piled with cardboard boxes.

    The girl had put him into a bad mood, reminded him of how impatient he was for this trip to end so he could go back to Tucson and relax. It wasn't easy to live for days at a time without so much as talking to anybody, and for weeks without saying more than "What's the soup of the day?"

    He glanced at his watch. A little after ten. Time to head for the motel and read the paper while he waited for the eleven-o'clock news. Then the watch disappeared in a flash of pain, and he was aware that he had heard the sound of whatever had crashed into his skull even while he felt it. But he was on the ground now and his left kneecap seemed to hurt too. Dimly he could see a rock the size of two fists beside him as he rolled in the gravel. He didn't have time to decide whether that was what hit him. He just scooped it in and had his arm cocked when he saw a human figure bending toward him for the next blow. With all of his strength he hurled it into the darkness where the face must be, pushing off the ground with his right foot at the same time. There was a sickening thump as it hit, and a high, tentative half-scream that never got all the way out before the shape crumpled.

    He was up and moving now, whirling around because the other one would be behind him. This time he wasn't quite fast enough. A blow across his back with something long like a club electrified him with pain and terror, and he wasn't sure he could move himself. But then something hit him in the face and he was on the ground again and the other one was winding up for a kick. He grabbed the stable leg with one hand, pulling the man off balance, and punched up into the groin with the other—a quick, hard jab. This time there was no cry of pain, only the sound of the air leaving the man's lungs. Then the man lay on the ground doubled up like a foetus, rocking and grunting.

    He stood up and looked for the others, but no, there had only been two.
    Muggers, he thought. Jesus! He looked down at them. The first one was probably dead. He wondered what he should do about the other. He didn't have anything with him—not even a knife. He couldn't leave them this way. They had almost certainly gotten a good look before they'd done anything. He walked over to the first one, picked up the bloody rock that lay by his head, and brought it down once,