Joe took lunch at the counter in the lobby. It had a name – Harry’s Cafe – but no one called it that; to people in the building it was just downstairs. You want to go downstairs for a sammitch? You wanna go downstairs for a coke? There were other counters downtown, but they were all the same in style and menu. Maybe one had a better split pea soup now and then. Maybe one had sugar in cubes instead of packets. It wasn’t worth going outside on a cold snowy day. Besides, you were taking a chance the stool would squeak or the table wobble. Foreign territory, other diners. Of course you might scout them out on someone else’s dime if you got an invite. But on your own? On your own lunch hour? Who took such a risk?

Harry’s had a five-stool chrome-trimmed counter, black and scarred; a row of three tables, a row of four booths along the window. Single guys took the counter; deals were made and papers signed in the booths. Strangers took the tables. A cash register sat at the end of the counter. There used to be a cashier but Harry cut back. Now the waitress handled it all, and if you had to wait to pay you held your tongue about it, especially if you wanted to come back. She never forgot a face, it seemed, although you’d be excused if you forgot hers. It wasn’t ugly or mean or wrong – it was just there, indistinct, like an ad for one of those police ID picture kits. Average nose average eyes average muth. Joe had tried to draw her a few times but gave up. It was like walking the wrong way up an escalator. You could do it if you tried, but you really hadn’t accomplished anything. But people remembered her anyway: she had a low raspy voice of a forty-a-day smoker, and listening to her speak was like getting your ears licked by a cat’s tongue.

No one ever saw her smoke; when would she have time?

Now and then Joe had something besides a grilled cheese, but this wasn’t one of those days. He sat at the counter, nodded to the waitress; she made two gestures – tipping a cup, holding a plate – and he nodded. She brought him a cup of coffee and said she’d put in the order right away. Pickle, right?

“No pickle. Never any pickle. And some matches?”

“Who’s the guy in the matchbook line here. Me or you? I should be asking you for some.” She took a book out her apron and slid it across the counter. It was the girl you could draw if you wanted to. He was ten years past that.

Ah, the famous Diamond Match Guarantee. They stood behind the advertisers. If you were unable to find out if you had valuable talent, you could take it up with them.

Joe had tried to sell Harry his own matches, but he’d declined. At least the waitress said he had, since no one ever saw Harry. Good call, anyway. Matches wouldn’t move his business any more than skywriting.

“You hear about the murder?” the waitress said when she put down his grilled cheese.

“What murder?”

“It was in the morning paper, hold on . . . aw, someone lifted it. Well anyway it was horrible. Man came home and beat his wife to death with a hammer.”

“That’ll happen,” Joe said. “Can you slide me the ketchup?”

“Yeah, but afterwards he sawed her up.” The waitress shivered. “They only caught him because the neighbors downstairs heard the screams and peculiar sounds in the bathroom and so they called the cops. Can you believe it? Sawed her up? Now they’re saying it was just a one-time thing, not any Jack-the-ripper type because they usually don’t saw up wives, least not their own. But I say if he did it to her he was probably thinking about it before, and maybe he wanted to practice. It makes you look at everyone funny for a while, doesn’t it?” She topped off his coffee and went back to the cash register.

Hammer and saw.

He quit around six. The newsstand in the lobby was closed. So was Harry’s. He was parked around the corner, and didn’t pass any paper boxes. He spent the night sketching girls copied from a few issues of Argosy he had around, trying to improve the basic nudie-cutie stuff. There were worse ways a guy could make his name. He waited until nine then turned the TV to the news.

They started right off with the murder, and they showed a picture of the guy who did it.

It wasn’t him and he wasn’t named Andrew.

Joe exhaled, turned the set off, and went back to drawing the girls.

How about if she wasn’t surprised by a dog pulling off her pants? How about if she looked like she meant to take it off?

He put down his pencil.

Have to draw that one from memory. If he could find it.