Noir - By Robert Coover Page 0,1

of thugs and is said to have half a dozen lookalike doubles moving about the city as decoys. Though who these were was hard to say because no one knew what he looked like in the first place.

The widow seemed to be studying her pale hands, fingers laced together in her black lap. You did likewise, studied her hooks: sensuous expressive mitts of a dame in her thirties, unaccustomed to hard work, ornamented only by a wedding ring. With a big rock. Why she wasn’t wearing gloves. No sign of nervousness or uncertainty. She knew what she was doing, whatever it was.

She looked like trouble and the smart thing probably would have been to send her packing. But the rent has to be paid, you don’t have enough business to turn down anyone. And besides, you liked her legs. So, instead, even though you knew her story before you heard it, the inevitable chronicle of sex, money, betrayal (what the fuck is the matter with the world anyway?), you asked her to tell it. From the beginning, you said.

I AM NOT FROM THE CITY. MY EARLY YEARS WERE SPENT in a small country town far from here, a pretty village with neat tree-lined streets, well-kept lawns, schools and churches that were right in the neighborhood, and a sunny central park with a white wooden bandstand where bands played on weekends. A town where everybody knew each other and loved each other and said hello to each other on the streets and no one was afraid. What I remember now was how much light there was. My father was the town pharmacist and taught Sunday school at church; my mother held bridge parties and volunteered in the municipal library. I was a drum majorette and my younger brother, a happy-go-lucky boy, played on the school basketball team. We were very happy. I was in love with the captain of the school football team and he was in love with me. But then one day my father caught us in what he mistakenly thought were compromising circumstances, and in a fit of temper he sent me away from home. I was only sixteen years old and penniless and all alone in the world when I arrived here in the city. I was, as you can imagine, utterly bereft and desolate, overwhelmed by grief and despair, and facing the hard realities of poverty and loneliness with fear in my heart. But then, by the happiest stroke of good fortune, the sort I thought was never to be mine again, I was able to obtain a position as a maid in the house of the kind and generous man who was later, after the death of his beautiful wife, whom he loved dearly and whose death nearly brought on his own, to become my husband. I tended his critically ill wife through her final days, while he wept at her bedside. The poor man was shattered when she died and became bedridden himself and I had to care for him, too. An affection grew up between us and in time we married. And that is my whole story, except for my husband’s tragic and mysterious death which has brought me here this evening.

SHE REACHED UNDER HER BLACK VEIL IN THE DARKENING office (outside, the neon light was doing its nightly stuttering-heartbeat turn) and dabbed at her eyes with a white lace handkerchief. Until she did that, you believed her story because you had no reason not to. Now, it seemed as full of holes as her black veil. You had a hundred questions to ask, but with a silky whisper she crossed her legs and you forgot them. So instead you told her it was a tough assignment, you’d need to buy some help, there would have to be some dough up front.

She uncrossed her legs (you thought you saw sparks) and reached into her purse, handed you a fat bankroll. No need to count it. I’m sure you will find it adequate. It was more lettuce than you’d seen outside the salad bar at Loui’s, but you tossed it dismissively on your desk, lit a cigarette and, sending some smoke her way like a searching inquiry (or maybe just, vicariously, to feel her up), said you’d see what you could do.

She stood to go, batting at the smoke. What does the M stand for, Mr. Noir? she asked, nodding toward the sign painted on the street window behind you, seen in reverse from