"Please."

Blackburn sighed. "All right. Close your eyes."

Wayne closed his eyes. Blackburn went into the living room to retrieve the Python from under the chair cushion, then changed his mind. Why waste a cartridge? They were hard to come by. He looked at the encyclopedia volume in his hands. The filleting knife had sliced the leather on the back cover, but the board underneath was intact. It really was a well-made book.

Blackburn returned to the kitchen. Wayne was still alive, but the puddle of blood on the linoleum was growing. Blackburn stepped around it and knelt beside Wayne's head. He placed the spine of the book on the salesman's throat and pushed down. Wayne's eyes opened wide. His tongue stuck out. Then Lalo to Montpar crushed his trachea, and he was dead. Blackburn took the car keys from the body, cleaned up the mess as well as he could, and waited for night.

Just after eleven, Blackburn went out to the sidewalk trash pile and found a moldy twin-size mattress. He dragged it into the house, placed the salesman's body on it, and covered the body with newspapers, coffee grounds, and banana peels. Then he returned the mattress to the trash pile. It was hard work. When he came back inside, he had a glass of iced tea and a pastrami sandwich.

After eating, he tucked the filleting knife under his belt and stuffed his possessions into a gray duffel bag he found in the utility room. He carried the duffel and the Python outside and put them into the salesman's Vega. He locked the car, then took a hacksaw and a flashlight from the Talbots' garage and went around behind the house. He had to put down the saw and flashlight to pull the concrete blocks away from the gap in the foundation. Then he got down on his belly, grabbed the tools, and crawled in.

The place smelled like a public toilet. Mr. and Mrs. Talbot had messed their pants. They were still slouched against the stanchion to which they were chained. There was a shallow hole in the dirt beside Mr. Talbot, and he now held a chunk of two-by-four in his bound hands. That explained why the kitchen floor had been thumping.

Blackburn used the filleting knife to cut the Talbots' gags and to free their wrists from the nylon clothesline he had used to bind them. Mrs. Talbot began screaming. Mr. Talbot tried to club Blackburn with the two-by-four, so Blackburn scooted away and then tossed them the hacksaw.

"I couldn't find a key for the padlock," he said. "I'll leave you the flashlight, though."

"Lousy bastard," Mr. Talbot said.

"Hey," Blackburn said, "you got your house painted for nothing, and there's a free two-volume reference set in the living room. Don't bitch."

By the time he reached the Vega, he could no longer hear Mrs. Talbot's screams or Mr. Talbot's curses. The car started easily, and Blackburn pulled away from the trash. When he reached I-95, he took the encyclopedia volume from his duffel and caressed the leather. It felt wise. Maybe he had never graduated from high school, but within a month he would be an expert on everything from Lalo to Montpar.

Seven weeks later he read a dateline-Philadelphia story buried deep inside the Washington Post. The garbage on Mr. and Mrs. Talbot's street had finally been picked up.

FIVE

Blackburn met Dolores in a San Francisco record shop four days after his twenty-second birthday. They reached for the same copy of The Kids Are Alright at the same moment. It was the last one in the bin.

"Toss you for it," Blackburn said.

"Bet you can't," Dolores said.

Blackburn bought the album, and Dolores came to his apartment to listen to it. Blackburn hardly heard the music even though it made the windows rattle. His senses were full of Dolores. She was wearing running shorts and a halter top. She had golden hair, green eyes, a brown stomach, and long legs. She was California incarnate, and Blackburn was not pleased with himself for wanting her. But there it was. He was horny as a mule deer.

"My name is Eddie Reese," he said. That was the name on his new driver's license and Social Security card.

"Got anything to eat?" Dolores asked. Her voice was like honey poured over an apple.

Blackburn fed her pepperoni slices and Cheetos. Then they kissed, and Dolores said she would stay the night if Blackburn promised to use protection. Blackburn promised.

That night Blackburn told Dolores that he loved her. He had never said that to anyone, and it surprised the hell out of him that he said it to Dolores. Then he said it again, and again. He couldn't stop himself. It was as if a live wire were plugged into his lower spine, and the signal jolted its way through his vertebrae to his mouth. Dolores could do whatever she wanted with him. She could cut him open and bite holes in his heart with her fine pearl teeth. He would twine his fingers in her hair and hold her there.

The next day Blackburn went to his job at a Taco Tommy franchise and made burrito after burrito without having any orders for burritos. The manager came into the food preparation area and chewed him out for his wastefulness. Blackburn stood there and took it without wanting to kill the manager or even hurt him. After all, he was right. Overnight, Blackburn had become an idiot. His hands had been on automatic. The stack of burritos reached halfway to the ceiling.

As the manager yelled at Blackburn, the girl running the counter gave a yelp. Blackburn and the manager turned to look. A busload of Jews for Jesus had pulled up outside, and its occupants poured out like water. They came into the Taco Tommy and ordered one hundred and forty-four burritos to go. The manager stared at them, and then at Blackburn. Blackburn began stuffing the burritos into paper bags.

It was a miracle. Blackburn didn't believe in God, but he had to believe in a miracle when he saw one. At the end of his shift, he went home, telephoned Dolores, and asked her to marry him. Dolores laughed and suggested a second date instead.

They ate hamburgers and saw Melvin and Howard. Then they went to Dolores's apartment and made love five times between 11:00 P.M. and 6:00 A.M. Dolores fell asleep then, but Blackburn lay awake, studying Dolores in the glow of her Tom amp; Jerry night-light.

Her tan lines made her look as if she were wearing an ivory bikini. Blackburn hadn't noticed the phenomenon the night before, because they had made love in the dark. But now that he could see her entire body, he became fascinated with it in more than just a sexual sense. Her tan was absolute; there was no gradual fade to pale, but sharp demarcations between dark and light. She looked both naked and clothed. If it weren't for her nipples and pubic hair, she could go out in public.

Dolores turned in her sleep, snuggling her rump against Blackburn's abdomen. His erection returned. He would eat nails for this woman.

After the Jews for Jesus incident, the Taco Tommy's manager decided that Blackburn had the psychic ability to predict when unusual quantities of food items would be required. Blackburn almost believed it himself when he made eighty tostadas while lost in another reverie, and then sold them all within forty-five minutes. The manager gave him a nickel-an-hour raise and told him to keep up the good work.

Blackburn did his best. For the first time, he believed he was making progress toward the kind of moral, independent life he wanted to lead. He had even been able to save a little money. Saving money, he had decided, was important. He was determined to repeat his marriage proposal just as soon as he could do so from a position of financial strength. He had discovered that Dolores respected financial strength.