Meeting Evil Read Online Free PDF Page A

angrily asked whether John remembered his telling “that ugly bitch” to check the oil.
    “I didn’t hear you say that. Anyway, why are you so mad at her? She’s just somebody who pumps gas.”
    “She didn’t want to take my credit card!” He jerked his head in annoyance and gestured. “Come on, let’s get out ofhere before I really lose my temper.” He went around to the driver’s side and got into the car. When John reluctantly took his own place (his knee was throbbing; he needed the ride), the young man said, without trying again to shake hands, “My name’s Richie.” He started the engine.
    “John Felton.”
    “Okay, Johnnie, here goes nothing.” Richie slowly pulled out of the station.
    “No,” John said, “not Johnnie or John Boy or Jack.”
    Richie grinned. “You want things your own way, don’t you? I respect that. I know I let people push me around too much, and then I get mad. I wish I could be more like you, lay it on the line right away, it’s a free country. Instead I do a lot of weaseling, I admit. I got to get over that. Who am I trying to impress?”
    John found these remarks so meaningless that in an effort to disregard them he also briefly ignored the fact that Richie had turned in the wrong direction on leaving the gas station. When he came to, however, he spoke sharply.
    “Take this next right and then another right at the next block, and get back to Maple. I want to go straight home.”
    “Isn’t that what I said I would do?” Richie asked in exaggerated dismay. “Jesus, what a touchy guy you can be,
John.
I don’t care. I like you,
John.
You’re my kind of person. What I’d really like to do is buy you a nice breakfast someplace, to pay back the favor you did me.”
    “I’ve had breakfast,” John said decisively. “And you owe me nothing, because it wasn’t much of a favor.”
    Richie pulled the cap lower on his forehead, concealing the dirty curls in front but revealing more in back. “You’re not gonna deny me a cup of coffee, I hope. I haven’t eaten anything since I got up.” He pointed a long, skinny, gnarled finger at something out John’s window, which proved to bea doughnut shop, and steering with the free hand, swooped the car up to the curb just in front of the establishment, though the space was posted with prominent loading-area signs and gaudily striped in no-parking yellow.
    John had had enough. As soon as the car stopped, he threw the door open. But when he put his weight onto his feet, he found he could hardly use the leg with the bad knee, which had stiffened since being at rest. What a damnable predicament to find yourself in as the result of giving someone a hand: it was not fair.
    Though he had been exclusively self-regarding up to this point, Richie now noticed him, asking, “What’s with the limp?”
    “Forget about it.”
    “Come on.”
    “Bumped my knee. It’s nothing, it’ll go away.”
    Richie frowned. “Gonna sue me?”
    “For what?”
    “You’re always taking a chance when you pick somebody up.” Richie showed his teeth. “He might just be looking for an excuse to claim injury and hit you with a lawsuit.”
    “You
didn’t
pick me up. But don’t worry, I’m not going to sue you, for God’s sake. It didn’t have anything to do with you.” Of course it did, but John spoke so from motives of pride.
    The other stared at him for a moment, through pale-blue, watery eyes that gave an impression of moral triviality and perhaps a touch of physical ill health. Though John was aware that judgments of this sort were notoriously unreliable, he could not refrain from making them. When he first met his father-in-law, he assumed from the round, fleshy face that the man was of another sort than he in fact proved to be. For that matter, when John had first seen Joan herself, as afellow college student, he had found her not his type, with her rather awkward gait and his least favorite hairstyle, but in her case it was the eyes that