The Bible Repairman and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF

said lightly, taking his hand and stepping away from the Gregory Peck square. “Have you got a cigarette?”
    “Yes.” He pulled a pack of Camels and a lighter from his shirt pocket, and when she had tucked a cigarette between her lips – he noticed that she was not wearing lipstick today – he cupped his hand around the lighter and held the flame toward her. She held his hand to steady it as she puffed the cigarette alight.
    “There couldn’t be a motel called Erotic,” he said.
    “Sure there could, lover. To avoid complications.”
    “I’m George,” he said. “What’s your name?”
    She shook her head, grinning up at him.
    The bearded balloon man had shuffled across the pavement to them, deftly weaving a sort of bowler hat shape out of several long green balloons, and now he reached out and set it on her head.
    “No, thank you,” she said, taking it off and holding it toward the man, but he backed away, smiling through his beard and nodding. She stuck it onto the head of a little boy who was scampering past.
    The balloon man stepped forward again and this time he snatched the cigarette from her mouth. “This is California, sister,” he said, dropping it and stepping on it. “We don’t smoke here.”
    “You should,” she said, “it’d help you lose weight.” She took Sydney’s arm and started toward the sidewalk.
    The balloon man called after them, “It’s customary to give a gratuity for the balloons!”
    “Get it from that kid,” said Sydney over his shoulder.
    The bearded man was pointing after them and saying loudly, “Tacky people, tacky people!”
    “Could I have another cigarette?” she said as they stepped around the forecourt wall out of the shadows and started down the sunlit sidewalk toward the soft-drink and jewelry stands on the wider pavement in front of the Kodak Theater.
    “Sure,” said Sydney, pulling the pack and lighter out again. “Would you like a Coke or something?” he added, waving toward the nearest vendor. Their shadows stretched for yards ahead of them, but the day was still hot.
    “I’d like a drink drink.” She paused to take a cigarette, and again she put her hand over his as he lit it for her. “Drink, that knits up the raveled sleave of care,” she said through smoke as they started forward again. “I bet you know where we could find a bar.”
    “I bet I do,” he agreed. “Why don’t you want to tell me your name?”
    “I’m shy,” she said. “What did the Michelin Man say, when we were leaving?”
    “He said, ‘tacky people.’”
    She stopped and turned to look back, and for a moment Sydney was afraid she intended to march back and cause a scene; but a moment later she had grabbed his arm and resumed their eastward course.
    He could feel that she was shaking, and he peered back over his shoulder.
    Everyone on the pavement behind them seemed to be couples moving away or across his view, except for one silhouetted figure standing a hundred feet back – it was an elderly white-haired woman in a shapeless dress, and he couldn’t see if she was looking after them or not.
    The girl had released his arm and taken two steps ahead, and he started toward her –
    – and she disappeared.
    Sydney rocked to a halt.
    He had been looking directly at her in the bright afternoon sunlight. She had not stepped into a store doorway or run on ahead or ducked behind him. She had been occupying volume four feet ahead of him, casting a shadow, and suddenly she was not.
    A bus that had been grinding past on the far side of the parking meters to his left was still grinding past.
    Her cigarette was rolling on the sidewalk, still lit.
    She had not been a hallucination, and he had not experienced some kind of blackout.
    Are you always so nice to dead people?
    He was shivering in the sunlight, and he stepped back to half-sit against the rim of a black iron trash can by the curb. No sudden moves, he thought.
    Was she a ghost? Probably, probably! What else?
    Well then,