Otto Penzler: Dangerous Women

Anyway, Will knew this was merely a game, a variation on the mating ritual that took place in every singles bar in Manhattan on any given night of the year. You came up with a clever approach, you got a response that indicated interest, and you took it from there. In fact, he wondered how many times, in how many bars before tonight, Jessica had used her “Why don’t we kill somebody?” line. The approach was admittedly an adventurous one, possibly even a dangerous one-suppose she flashed those splendid legs at someone who turned out to be Jack the Ripper? Suppose she picked up a guy who really believed it might be fun to kill that girl sitting alone at the other end of the bar? Hey, great idea, Jess, let’s do it! Which, in effect, was what he’d tacitly indicated, but of course she knew they were just playing a game here, didn’t she? She certainly had to realize they weren’t planning an actual murder here.

“Who’ll make the approach?” she asked.

“I suppose I should,” Will said.

“Please don’t use your ‘What’ll we do for a little excitement tonight?’ line.”

“Gee, I thought you liked that.”

“Yes, the first time I heard it. Five or six years ago.”

“I thought I was being entirely original.”

“Try to be more original with little Alice there, okay?”

“Is that what you think her name is?”

“What do you think it is?”

“Patricia.”

“Okay, I’ll be Patricia,” she said. “Let me hear it.”

“Excuse me, Miss,” Will said.

“Great start,” Jessica said.

“My friend and I happened to notice you sitting all alone here, and we thought you might care to join us.”

Jessica looked around as if trying to locate the friend he was telling Patricia about.

“Who do you mean?” she asked, all wide-eyed and wondering.

“The beautiful blonde sitting right there,” Will said. “Her name is Jessica.”

Jessica smiled.

“Beautiful blonde, huh?” she said.

“ Gorgeous blonde,” he said.

“Sweet talker,” she said, and covered his hand with her own on the bar top. “So let’s say little Patty Cake decides to join us. Then what?”

“We ply her with compliments and alcohol.”

“And then what?”

“We take her to some dark alley and bludgeon her to death.”

“I have a small bottle of poison in my handbag,” Jessica said. “Wouldn’t that be better?”

Will narrowed his eyes like a gangster.

“Perfect,” he said. “We’ll take her to some dark alley and poison her to death.”

“Wouldn’t an apartment someplace be a better venue?” Jessica asked.

And it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps they weren’t discussing murder at all, jokingly or otherwise. Was it possible that what Jessica had in mind was a three-way?

“Go talk to the lady,” she said. “After that, we’ll improvise.”

Will wasn’t very good at picking up girls in bars.

In fact, aside from his “What’ll we do for a little excitement tonight?” line, he didn’t have many other approaches in his repertoire. He was emboldened somewhat by Jessica’s encouraging nod from where she sat at the opposite end of the bar, but he still felt somewhat timid about taking the empty stool alongside Alice or Patricia or whatever her name was.

It had been his experience that plain girls were less responsive to flattery than were truly knockout beauties. He guessed that was because they were expecting to be lied to, and were wary of being duped and disappointed yet another time. Alice or Patricia or Whoever proved to be no exception to this general Plain-Jane observation. Will took the stool next to hers, turned to her, and said, “Excuse me, Miss,” exactly as he’d rehearsed it with Jessica, but before he could utter another word, she recoiled as if he’d slapped her. Eyes wide, seemingly surprised, she said, “What? What is it?”

“I’m sorry if I startled you…”

“No, that’s all right,” she said. “What is it?”

Her voice was high and whiney, with an accent he couldn’t quite place. Her eyes behind their thick round lenses were a very dark brown, still wide now with either fright or suspicion, or both. Staring at him unblinkingly, she waited.

“I don’t want to bother you,” he said, “but…”

“That’s all right, really,” she said. “What is it?”

“My friend and I couldn’t help noticing…”

“Your friend?”

“The lady sitting just opposite us. The blonde lady at the other end of the bar?” Will said, and pointed to Jessica, who obligingly raised her hand in greeting.

“Oh. Yes,” she said. “I see.”

“We couldn’t help notice that you were sitting here, drinking alone,” he said. “We thought you might care to join us.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Do you think you might care to? Join us?”

There was a moment’s hesitation. The brown eyes blinked, softened. The slightest smile formed on her thin-lipped mouth.

“I think I would like to, yes,” she said. “I’d like to.”

They sat at a small table some distance from the bar, in a dimly lighted corner of the room. Susan-and not Patricia or Alice, as it turned out-ordered another Chardonnay. Jessica stuck to her martinis. Will ordered another bourbon on the rocks.

“No one should sit drinking alone three days before Christmas,” Jessica said.

“Oh, I agree, I agree,” Susan said.

She had an annoying habit of saying everything twice. Made it sound as if there were an echo in the place.

“But this bar is on my way home,” she said, “and I thought I’d stop in for a quick glass of wine.”

“Take the chill off,” Jessica agreed, nodding.

“Yes, exactly. Take the chill off.”

She also repeated other people’s words, Will noticed.

“Do you live near here?” Jessica asked.

“Yes. Just around the corner.”

“Where are you from originally?”

“Oh dear, can you still tell?”

“Tell what?” Will asked.

“The accent. Oh dear, does it still show? After all those lessons? Oh my.”

“What accent would that be?” Jessica asked.

“ Alabama. Montgomery, Alabama,” she said, making it sound like “Mun’gummy, Alabama.”

“I don’t hear any accent at all,” Jessica said. “Do you detect an accent, Will?”

“Well, it’s a regional dialect, actually,” Susan said.

“You sound like you were born right here in New York,” Will said, lying in his teeth.

“That’s so kind of you, really,” she said. “Really, it’s so very kind.”

“How long have you been up here?” Jessica asked.

“Six months now. I came up at the end of June. I’m an actress.”

An actress, Will thought.

“I’m a nurse,” Jessica said.

An actress and a nurse, Will thought.

“No kidding?” Susan said. “Do you work at some hospital?”

“Beth Israel,” Jessica said.

“I thought that was a synagogue,” Will said.

“A hospital, too,” Jessica said, nodding, and turned back to Susan again. “Would we have seen you in anything?” she asked.

“Well, not unless you’ve been to Montgomery,” Susan said, and smiled. “The Glass Menagerie?. Do you know The Glass Menagerie?. Tennessee Williams? The play by Tennessee Williams? I played Laura Wingate in the Paper Players’ production down there. I haven’t been in anything up here yet. I’ve been waitressing, in fact.”

A waitress, Will thought.

The nurse and I are about to kill the plainest waitress in the city of New York.

Or worse, we’re going to take her to bed.

Afterward, he thought it might have been Jessica who suggested that they buy a bottle of Moët Chandon and take it up to Susan’s apartment for a nightcap, the apartment being so close and all, just around the corner, in fact, as Susan herself had earlier pointed out. Or perhaps it was Will himself who’d made the suggestion, having consumed by then four hefty shots of Jack Daniels, and being somewhat bolder than he might ordinarily have been. Or perhaps it was Susan who invited them up to her place, which was in the heart of the theatrical district, right around the corner from Flanagan’s, where she herself had consumed three or four glasses of Chardonnay and had begun performing for them the entire scene in which the Gentleman Caller breaks the little glass unicorn and Laura pretends it’s no great tragedy, acting both parts for them, which Will felt certain caused the bartender to announce last call a full ten minutes earlier than he should have.