The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress Read Online Free Page A

between her fingers, ignoring the gangs of workmen boarding up store windows and raking glass into the gutters. On 26th Street the doors to the synagogue had been blooded with red paint.
    â€˜Dear God,’ he exclaimed, nudging her with his elbow. Her head jerked up, but still she remained silent. He couldn’t tell whether she was sulking or merely tired. He had to slow down as they approached Wild Bill’s Firearms store, on account of the number of police patrolling the sidewalk.
    He parked beyond the Medical Library and told her he would be as quick as he could. A fire was still burning at the lower end of St. Paul’s Street and he was obliged to make a detour. He left a letter at the bank, to be opened in the event of his death, and a copy with his broker. He took pride in keeping his life orderly.
    On his return he found Rose gone from the camper; she’d left her shoes behind. He strode up and down, and just as alarm was spiralling into anger spied her sauntering barefoot along the opposite sidewalk. ‘The camper,’ he bawled, ‘it isn’t locked.’ She waved at him, dismissively, and shouted back, ‘No need to get het up . . . I kept an eye open.’ He climbed into the driving seat and forced himself to remain calm.
    She took her time crossing the street and settling in beside him. She said, ‘It’s funny, isn’t it? A shop selling guns, like as if they were carrots and turnips.’
    He couldn’t reply, not civilly.
    â€˜When I was little,’ she burbled, ‘I wanted a toy gun more than anything, but they weren’t making them because of the war. So I sawed Mother’s yard brush in two and tied a piece of elastic from one end to the other, with a cork at the top. It didn’t work very well but it was better than nothing. I ran around shooting Germans. Mother was cross . . . on account of her broom.’
    â€˜I’ll bet,’ he ground out.
    â€˜Then one day I was playing in the back field when an enemy plane passed overhead. It had got lost from a previous raid or something. It came down so low I could see the airman. He started firing his machine gun . . .’
    A memory of Carl Bloomfield came into his mind, a secondyear freshman who swore that his father had been so addicted to the camera that he had paused to take a photograph when Bloomfield had gone under in a swimming pool, and again when he had smashed into a wall when learning to drive.
    Rose said, ‘My mother was in a window at the back of our house. She was screaming.’
    Only Shaefer had thought Bloomfield something other than a fantasist. He held that the expression in Bloomfield’s eyes nudged the truth.
    â€˜I hid in the bushes,’ Rose said, ‘and heard the bullets slashing the grass.’
    Nobody had believed Shaefer, not until Bloomfield went home for Thanksgiving and gunned down his parents while the turkey was being carved.
    â€˜No wonder Mr. Kennedy got killed,’ Rose said. ‘Or that Luther King.’
    â€˜Tonight,’ Harold told her, ‘we’re having dinner with a man who was in the same hotel as Dr. King the day he was shot.’
    â€˜Crikey.’
    He asked her if she was hungry; his own belly was growling. She said she didn’t care for food. ‘We all eat far too much,’ she told him. ‘It destroys the brain.’ She sat slumped beside him, bare feet propped on the dashboard, toenails rimmed with dirt. She was sucking her thumb.
    She was not an easy companion, that was for sure. He switched on the radio to subdue the silence. Someone was rasping out a jazz song . . .
Here’s a photo of me when I was three . . . And here’s my pony too. Here’s a picnic we had. And Jane with dad . . . Here’s me in love with you
. Embarrassed by the sentiments he reached forward to turn the dial.
    â€˜Leave it,’ she cried, ‘it’s so lovely,’ and shoved his hand away with her