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Leaning against the locked door and as far back in the shadows as he could go, waiting for the infuriatingly slow car to reach the intersection, Sam had a moment for reflection and realized that even for one-thirty in the ht Cove was peculiarly quiet and the streets unusually deserted Sht owls as surely as did cities; there should have been a pedestrian or two, a car now and then, sons of life other than police patrols

The black-and-white turned right at the corner, heading west and away froer had passed, Sa his journey fro, from there to the Union 76, and finally to his current position He could not recall passing a house where , where a television blared, or where the laughter of late revelers indicated a party in progress He had seen no young couples sharing a last kiss in parked cars The few restaurants and taverns were apparently closed, and the movie theater was out of business, and except for his ht have been a ghost town Its living rooht have been peopled only bythe day and were turned off at night to save energy when it was not as essential to ly worried by the word "conversion" and itsthey called the Moonhawk Project, he left the entrance way, turned the corner, and ran along the brightly lighted street to the laundry He saw the phone as he was pushing open the glass door

He hurried halfway through the long rooht, a double roashers back-to-back in the middle, so the left ith the candy and detergentcounter--before he realized the place was not deserted A petite blonde in faded jeans and a blue pullover sweater sat on one of the yellow plastic chairs None of the washers or dryers was running, and the woman did not seem to have a basket of clothes with her

He was so startled by her--a live person, a live civilian, in this sepulchral night--that he stopped and blinked

She was perched on the edge of the chair, visibly tense Her eyes ide Her hands were clenched in her lap She seehtened her, Sam said, "Sorry"

She stared at hi down a fox Aware that he erous"

"They all say that"

"They do?"

"But I aerous"

"Really?"

She stood up

"I’enuine smile pulled at Sam’s face "Can you kill with your hands?"

She stared at hi When she spoke, her defensive anger was excessive

"Hey, don’t laugh at me, asole, or I’ll bust you up so bad that when you walk, you’ll clink like a bag of broken glass"

At last, astonished by her vehean to assi No washers or dryers in operation No clothes basket No box of detergent or bottle of fabric softener

"What’s wrong?" he asked, suddenly suspicious

"Nothing, if you keep your distance"

He wondered if she knew soet hold of him But that see here if you don’t have clothes to wash?"

"What’s it your business? You own this dump?" she demanded

"No And don’t tell lared at hi how attractive she was

She had eyes as piercingly blue as a June sky and skin as clear as su this dark, October coast, let alone in a grungy Laundro When her beauty finally, fully registered with hi the intensity of her fear, which was revealed in her eyes and in the lines around them and in the set of her mouth it was fear far out of proportion to any threat he could pose If he had been a six-foot-six, three-hundred-pound, tattooed biker with a revolver in one hand and a ten-inch knife in the other, and if he had burst into the laundry chanting paeans to Satan, the utterly bloodless paleness of her face and the hard edge of terror in her eyes would have been understandable But he was only Sauy-next-door ordinariness and an aura of harmlessness

Unsettled by her unsettledness, he said, "The phone"

"What?"

He pointed at the pay phone

"Yes," she said, as if confir it was indeed a phone

"Just ca one eye on her, he went to the phone, fed it his quarter, but got no dial tone He retrieved his coin, tried again No luck

"Daed toward the door She halted, as though she thought heher down if she atteendered in Saly over the past few hours he had come to think of everyone in town as a potential enemy And suddenly he perceived that this woman’s peculiar behavior resulted from a state of mind precisely like his "Yes, of course--you’re not froht Cove?"

"So?"

"Neither a"

She stared at hi’s happened, you’ve seen soot daood reason to be"

She looked as if she’d sprint for the door