Ray Bradbury - Dandelion Wine

“We’re crazy being out on a night like this,” said Helen.

“Lonely One won’t kill three ladies,” said Lavinia. “There’s safety in numbers. And besides, it’s too soon. The killings always come a month separated.”

A shadow fell across their terrified faces. A figure loomed behind a tree. As if someone had struck an organ a terrible blow with his fist, the three women gave off a scream, in three different shrill notes.

“Got you!” roared a voice. The man plunged at them. He came into the light, laughing. He leaned against a tree, pointing at the ladies weakly, laughing again.

“Hey! I’m the Lonely One!” said Frank Dillon.

“Frank Dillon!”

“Frank!”

“Frank,” said Lavinia, “if you ever do a childish thing like that again, may someone riddle you with bullets!”

“What a thing to do!”

Francine began to cry hysterically.

Frank Dillon stopped smiling. “Say, I’m sorry.”

“Go away!” said Lavinia. “Haven’t you heard about Elizabeth Ramsell—found dead in the ravine? You running around scaring women! Don’t speak to us again!”

“Aw, now—”

They moved. He moved to follow.

“Stay right there, Mr. Lonely One, and scare yourself. Go take a look at Elizabeth Ramsell’s face and see if it’s funny. Good night!” Lavinia took the other two on along the street of trees and stars, Francine holding a kerchief to her face.

“Francine, it was only a joke.” Helen turned to Lavinia. “Why’s she crying so hard?”

“We’ll tell you when we get downtown. We’re going to the show no matter what! Enough’s enough. Come on now, get your money ready, we’re almost there!”

The drugstore was a small pool of sluggish air which the great wooden fans stirred in tides of arnica and tonic and soda-smell out onto the brick streets.

“I need a nickel’s worth of green peppermint chews,” said Lavinia to the druggist. His face was set and pale, like all the faces they had seen on the half-empty streets. “For eating in the show,” said Lavinia as the druggist weighed out a nickel’s worth of the green candy with a silver shovel.

“You sure look pretty tonight, ladies. You looked cool this afternoon, Miss Lavinia, when you was in for a chocolate soda. So cool and nice that someone asked after you.”

“Oh?”

“Man sitting at the counter—watched you walk out. Said to me,’say, who’s that?’ Why, that’s Lavinia Nebbs, prettiest maiden lady in town, I said. ’she’s beautiful,’ he said. ‘Where does she live?’ “Here the druggist paused uncomfortably.

“You didn’t!” said Francine. “You didn’t give him her address, I hope? You didn’t!”

“I guess I didn’t think. I said, ‘Oh, over on Park Street, you know, near the ravine.’ A casual remark. But now, tonight, them finding the body, I heard a minute ago, I thought, My God, what’ve I done!” He handed over the package, much too full.

“You fool!” cried Francine, and tears were in her eyes.

“I’m sorry. Course, maybe it was nothing.”

Lavinia stood with the three people looking at her, staring at her. She felt nothing. Except, perhaps, the slightest prickle of excitement in her throat. She held out her money automatically.

“There’s no charge on those peppermints,” said the druggist, turning to shuffle some papers.

“Well, I know what I’m going to do right now!” Helen stalked out of the drugshop. “I’m calling a taxi to take us all home. I’ll be no part of a hunting party for you, Lavinia. That man was up to no good. Asking about you. You want to be dead in the ravine next?”

“It was just a man,” said Lavinia, turning in a slow circle to look at the town.

“So is Frank Dillon a man, but maybe he’s the Lonely One.”

Francine hadn’t come out with them, they noticed, and turning, they found her arriving. “I made him give me a description-the druggist. I made him tell what the man looked like. A stranger,” she said, “in a dark suit. Sort of pale and thin.”

“We’re all overwrought,” said Lavinia. “I simply won’t take a taxi if you get one. If I’m the next victim, let me be; the next. There’s all too little excitement in life, especially for a maiden lady thirty-three years old, so don’t you mind if I enjoy it. Anyway it’s silly; I’m not beautiful.”

“Oh, but you are, Lavinia; you’re the loveliest lady in town, now that Elizabeth is—” Francine stopped. “You keep men off at a distance. If you’d only relax, you’d been married years ago!”

“Stop sniveling, Francine! Here’s the theater box office, I’m paying forty-one cents to see Charlie Chaplin. If you two want a taxi, go on. I’ll sit alone and go home alone.”

“Lavinia, you’re crazy; we can’t let you do that—”

They entered the theater.

The first showing was over, intermission was on, and the dim auditorium was sparsely populated. The three ladies sat halfway down front, in the smell of ancient brass polish, and watched the manager step through the worn red velvet curtains to make an announcement.

“The police have asked us to close early tonight so everyone can be out at a decent hour. Therefore we are cutting our short subjects and running our feature again immediately. The show will be over at eleven. Everyone is advised to go straight home. Don’t linger on the streets.”

“That means us, Lavinia!” whispered Francine.

The lights went out. The screen leaped to life.

“Lavinia,” whispered Helen.

“What?”

“As we came in, a man in a dark suit, across the street, crossed over. He just walked down the aisle and is sitting in the row behind us.”

“Oh, Helen!”

“Right behind us?”

One by one the three women turned to look.

They saw a white face there, flickering with unholy light from the silver screen. It seemed to be all men’s faces hovering there in the dark.

“I’m going to get the manager!” Helen was gone up the aisle. “Stop the film! Lights!”

“Helen, come back!” cried Lavinia, rising.

They tapped their empty soda glasses down, each with a vanilla mustache on their upper lip, which they found with their tongues, laughing.

“You see how silly?” said Lavinia. “All that riot for nothing. How embarrassing.”

“I’m sorry,” said Helen faintly.

The clock said eleven-thirty now. They had come out of the dark theater, away from the Buttering rush of men and women hurrying everywhere, nowhere, on the street while laughing at Helen. Helen was trying to laugh at herself.

“Helen, when you ran up that aisle crying, ‘Lights!’ I thought I’d die! That poor man!”

“The theater manager’s brother from Racine!”

“I apologized,” said Helen, looking up at the great fan still whirling, whirling the warm late night air, stirring, restirring the smells of vanilla, raspberry, peppermint and Lysol.

“We shouldn’t have stopped for these sodas. The police warned-”

“Oh, bosh the police,” laughed Lavinia. “I’m not afraid of anything. The Lonely One is a million miles away now. He won’t be back for weeks and the police’ll get him then, just wait. Wasn’t the film wonderful?”

“Closing up, ladies.” The druggist switched off the lights in the cool white-tiled silence.

Outside, the streets were swept clean and empty of cars it or trucks or people. Bright lights still burned in the small store windows where the warm wax dummies lifted pink wax hands fired with blue-white diamond rings, or flourished orange wax legs to reveal hosiery. The hot blue-glass eyes of the mannequins watched as the ladies drifted down the empty river bottom street, their images shimmering in the windows like blossoms seen under darkly moving waters.