it was going to be a lot more awkward on account of my being with her, but that was the way it bounced. I had to be sure she hadn’t talked to anybody. I opened the screen and we went in. The room was empty. He could be in back, I thought, but presumably he would have heard us by this time and come out. She hesitated, and I knew she didn’t like the idea of going in to see, but I couldn’t help her there. It was bad enough this way, but if he came in and found the two of us in their bedroom the whole thing was apt to turn hairy in large quantities.

He didn’t strike me at all as the well-we-might-as-well-be-civilized type.

“It’s so quiet,” she said.

I’d noticed that, and usually liked more noise myself. I was about to say something when the screen door opened quietly behind us and he came in. God alone knew where he’d been. Under the best of circumstances his face wasn’t anything you’d need in your dreams unless you wanted to grate a coconut, but now there was a frozen savagery about it I didn’t like at all.

He didn’t say anything. He leaned against the door jamb and looked dangerous. He was good at it.

She was behind me. “I’m leaving, George,” she said.

Nothing moved except his lips. “You figure you’ll be better off with glamor-boy here?

“I’m going away,” she said. “That’s the only thing that matters, isn’t it?”

“Get a place with a back door,” he said. “So you can both keep in practice.”

“Look, Nunn,” I broke in. “There hasn’t been . . .”

“Shut up,” he said. I’ll get to you in a minute.”

“Go pack your bag,” I told her. “You’ve told him you’re leaving. That’s all that’s necessary.”

She turned and went through the doorway behind the counter. He started to come toward me. I was blocking his way at the opening between the counter and showcase.

“She’s afraid of you,” I said. “Stay out of there and leave her alone.”

I could see he didn’t have a gun. He wore nothing except a pair of dungarees and a sweaty T-shirt. He looked like something carved out of knotty wood.

“You forget whose place this is?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “But why don’t you stop acting like an idiot. All she’s doing is leaving. It happens every day.”

“Yeah. It does with you around, sport.”

He made no move to swing at me, or go past. Instead he stepped down the counter and leaned over it. When he straightened he had a hunting knife in his hand. It had a thin and wicked blade about eight inches long.

He started back toward me. “You want to see what a man looks like standing in his own guts?”

He meant it. He wasn’t the bluffing kind. I backed up a step. There was nothing under the counter or in the showcase I could hold him off with. I didn’t like it at all any more. About one more step backward and I’d be in that hallway on the other side of the door, and in the close quarters there I was going to have knife in me somewhere no matter what I did.

Then something slid past my side, just under my right arm. It was a .45 automatic. I grabbed it from her hand and leveled it at him. Instead of stopping, he lunged at me, and I knew the chamber wasn’t armed. It was his gun, of course, and if she had armed it we’d have heard her. There wasn’t time. I swung it at the side of his head and was lucky enough to connect. He fell into me like a bum tackle, rolled off, and fell to the floor. She cried out behind me.

“Get back,” I snapped at her.

Instead, she came on past me, stepped over his legs, and went around the counter. She sat down on one of the stools and put her face down in her arms. She was just weak and sick.

I bent over him and felt his head where the trickle of blood showed on his scalp above the left ear. There was no fracture. He groaned and stirred his legs. I picked up the knife and tossed it back on the shelf under the counter. Straightening up, I pulled the slide of the gun back to arm it. A cartridge flew out. I looked down at him and shook my head. He was a rough type. It took guts to charge a