PARTISAN REVIEW
this was a ruse. She could see him quite clearly each second or so,
whenever the sky lighted up. When she was near enough to the
bench, he motioned for her to sit down beside him.
As
he had sus–
pected, she spoke
his
tongue.
"What is it?" she asked. The talk in the strange language at the
station had only been for show, after all.
"Sit down, senorita."
"Why?"
"Because I tell you to."
She laughed and threw away her cigarette.
"That's not a reason," she said, sitting down at the other end
of the bench. "What are you doing here so late?" She spoke care–
fully and correctly, like a priest. He answered this by saying. "And
you, what are you looking for?"
"Nothing."
"Yes. You are looking for something," he said solemnly.
"I was not sleeping. It is very hot."
"No. It is not hot," said Jacinto. He was feeling increasingly sure
of himself, and he drew out the last cigarette and began to smoke it.
"What are you doing here in this town?" he asked her after a moment.
"Passing on my way south to the border," she said, and she
told him how she was traveling with two friends, a husband and
wife, and how she often took a walk when they had gone to bed.
Jacinto listened as he drew in the smoke and breathed it out.
Suddenly he jumped up. Touching her arm, he said: "Come to the
market."
She arose, asking: "Why?" and walked with him across the
park. When they were in the street, he took her wrist fiercely and
pressing it, said between his teeth: "Look at the sky."
She looked up wonderingly, a little fearfully. He went on in
a low, intense voice:
"As
God is my witness, I am going into the
hotel and kill the man who came here with you."
Her eyes grew large. She tried to wrest her arm away, but he
would not let-it go, and he thrust his face into hers. "I have a pistol
in my pocket and I am going to kill that man."
"But why?" she whispered weakly, looking up and down the
empty street.
"I want
his
wife."
310
