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don’t look that puny, do I?”
    Let it lie, I thought. This is a small town. We went inside. The place was empty except for some old counters and shelves, and our footsteps rang with a hollow sound. There was dust everywhere. “We have to go upstairs,” she said.
    The stairs were in the rear. I went up first and I could hear the high heels clicking after me. All the windows were closed, and heat lay like a suffocating blanket across the lifeless air. I could feel sweat breaking out on my face. The whole second floor was a jumble of discarded junk, old pieces of furniture, loose and bundled papers, piles of clothing, cast-off luggage, and even some old feather mattresses piled in a corner. A fire marshal would take one look at it, I thought, and run amok. They’d have a fire here some day that would really turn the town out. It wouldn’t take much. Just some turpentine and rags …
    “What?” I asked, suddenly aware that she had come up behind me and said something. I turned. She was throwing the clothing on a pile. Her face was flushed with the heat and there were little beads of perspiration on her upper lip.
    “I said you must not know your own strength. You carried those things all the way up here, and then forgot you had them. Why don’t you set them down?”
    I was still holding the bundles of papers. “Oh,” I said.
    I threw them down. She was still looking at me, but she said nothing. It was intensely still, and hot, and there was an odd feeling of strain in the air.
    “Is that all of it?” I asked.
    “Yes. That’s all,” she said. “Thanks.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    “How do you like our town?”
    “All right. What I’ve seen of it.” Why did you have to stand here and talk in this stifling hotbox up under the roof? Her face was expressionless as she watched me.
    “Did you ever live in a small town?” she asked.
    “Yes. I grew up in one.”
    “Oh? Well, you probably know what they’re like, then.”
    “Sure.”
    “Well, maybe we’d better go,” she said. “It’s awful hot up here, don’t you think?”
    “It’s murder.” I nodded for her to go first, and we started weaving our way through the junk, towards the stairs.
    “I wondered if I was just imagining it. I usually don’t mind the heat, when I keep my weight down.”
    That was the second time she’d thrown it out there, but we understood each other about the small town now.
    “Why do you want to keep your weight down?” I asked.
    She looked around at me. “Don’t you think I ought to?”
    “It looks perfect to me.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Not at all. It was a pleasure.”
    “I mean for carrying the stuff up, when Mr. Harshaw forgot.”
    Well, the hell with you, I thought. You just remember you’re married and I won’t have any trouble with you. “That’s what I meant,” I said. “It was a pleasure.”
    We went down the stairs. Just as we hit the lower floor I heard her say, “Oh, darn it. What a mess!” I looked at her, and she held out a hand covered with dirt, staring at it disgustedly. She’d forgotten about the dust and had held on to the railing.
    I took out my handkerchief. “Here,” I said. “Let me.”
    “It’s all right,” she said. “I think the water’s still turned on in the washroom. I’ll only be a minute.”
    She walked on back to the end of the building and disappeared into a room walled off in one corner. I stood there looking around and waiting for her, and then before I knew it I was thinking about that boar’s nest of trash and junk upstairs. The place was a natural firetrap.
    I don’t know why I did it; there was no idea or plan in my mind. But I reached over and wiped my hand through the dust on a step, and when I saw her come out of the washroom I started back that way. “I got some of it, too,” I said, holding out the hand.
    There was a window in the washroom, all right, as I’d thought there would be. It was closed and locked with an ordinary latch on top of the lower