She was a loose girl, given to loose blouses and a top that showed her erect nipples. Men came to her, but tonight, a languid slow night, she was drawn to the streets by the humidity and summer itself. Heat coated her but radiated from her body, her long legs, her still-tight tummy, her triangle of hair. A pool of perspiration dripped between her heavy breasts, and her full mouth was open and moist. She pushed back her short hair, which clung damply to her skull
She wanted a man inside her, but didn't know why.
Lanois stumbled into the night from his home. The gate creaked mournfully on its hinges. There was a fog around the streetlamps, and the shops were closing, winking out like eyes, closing against the mist.
Lanois was a petite man, but handsome. He kept his beard trimmed tightly against his sharp chin, and his eyes were intelligent and moist behind his spectacles. He worked figures at his job, and looked like such a man. He was reserved and women took this for character.
He pushed himself down the street, toward the closing town. A deep bell somewhere announced ten o'clock. The grocer, also a small man, nodded to him knowingly, pocketing his key and hurrying away into the swallowing fog.
Lanois pushed onward, and encountered the girl.
'Ah! The accountant!' she said, smiling, stopping him as he sought to move away from her with a strangling cry in his throat. 'What's the matter—won't you buy a girl a drink?'
He looked at her, and nodded, his voice still a croak. 'All right,' he said.
She took him to the expensive place, because she knew he had money. 'You have a nice house,' she said, and smiled again. Her lips were wet.
'Yes,' he said, trying not to look at her, but listening to the loud chatter in the cafe. He felt oily, as if the night were adhering to him.
'Take me home with you,' she said, pressing against him and pushing her drink away.
He trembled, and said, 'All right.'
Outside, the night had thickened. The fog pressed toward the ground, a green vapor. She led him, holding his arm because he seemed either drunk or unwilling.
'Here it is!' she said, pushing open the moaning gate.
Inside, she slammed the door and pushed him away. Her eyes looked full of tears, but her warmth reached him. She undid her top and let it fall to the floor, as an almost ripe odor assailed him from her breasts.
'Take me here,' she said, pulling him down toward her as she lowered and stepped out of her blouse, kicking her shoes expertly off in the same motion.
Lanois, mewling, drew his knives crosswise from his pockets as he fell toward her, and, with both of the blades, crying out deeply, cut his own throat.
A deep winter day. Snow had fallen in abundance, and there was a cold smell in the air that topped the redolence of the radiators. Lanois moved from his bed, scratching himself and yawning. His feet missed their slippers, and he returned groggily to his bedside, slipping the footwear on where they lay by the bed's foot. He put his robe on over his gown and yawned again.
Saturday?
No. But a holiday!
He retrieved his rolled paper from outside the front door, thankful for the robe but still shivering. The day was suffused with light, the white snow only more blinding than the now-sapphire sky. The air smelled cold and clear in the aftermath of the storm.
He retreated to his kitchen and brewed coffee, the rich hot smell soon filling the room.
Opening the paper, he scanned the columns, noting the day's international events, another African war, the troubles in the colonies. Idly, he looked for news of his own death, and, finding none, was relieved.
Of course it was a dream, he thought.
The girl's murder was on page two.
Gasping, reading closely, he learned that she had been beheaded; that her head had been found in the gathering snow at the edge of the town park, the body nearby in an obscene position.
'The force of beheading was gargantuan,' the pathologist was quoted as saying. 'I doubt one man could have done this.'
Lanois's coffee turned cold, and he laid the paper down.
Dressed in his working clothes, Lanois entered the prefect's office and was met by the prefect himself.
'Lanois!' the man said, smiling. 'What brings you out on a holiday in such weather!' He advanced, holding out his hand.
Lanois did not take it. 'The murder,' he said. 'I have something to report.'
'Oh?'
Lanois pushed ahead, toward the prefect's office. 'Please,' he said.
His brow furrowed, the prefect followed.
'But this is preposterous!' the prefect said, after Lanois had told his story. 'In the first place, in your dream, you were with her in the summertime, not the dead of winter. And you said yourself, you cut your own throat.'
'Nevertheless. And this has happened before, other murders...'
The prefect traded his scowl for a smile. 'Lanois, go home! You've been working too hard! Today is a holiday, and I suggest you use it as such. And I expect to see you at our weekly card game tomorrow evening!'
'Perhaps...' Lanois said.
The prefect's hand was on his shoulder, and Lanois looked up into the man's wide, kind face. 'You had a dream,' the prefect said, his hand squeezing Lanois's shoulder. 'You didn't kill anyone. Anyhow, you are not capable of such an act. If you were, I would catch you!' The prefect laughed. 'Now go home, and rest yourself. At the most, you had a strange dream. Leave it at that.'
Lanois nodded briskly, and rose.
'Perhaps,' he said.
'Good! And remember—you will lose money to me tomorrow night!'
Lanois managed a slight smile. 'I'm sure I will,' he said.
A week later Lanois packed for a trip. The snow had melted as if by magic, leaving the February streets clean and clear. Spring could almost be tasted, though not yet arrived. Trees in Lanois's yard, pear and peach, had begun to show faint buds, and the air was unaccustomedly mild and sweet.
The clock in the hail struck eight, and Lanois looked up from his valise, knowing he would be late if he didn't hurry.
He snapped the valise closed and his eye was drawn to the window. The Green Face was hovering there.
In an instant, it was gone. As Lanois's heart skipped a beat, the window as once again clear, half-raised, letting in the oddly warm air.
Lanois stared at it, waiting for a reoccurrence, and then quickly crossed the room to shut and lock it.
Outside, in his backyard, a blue jay sat on the branch of the nearest fruit tree and cocked its head at him.
Lanois finished packing, pressing two knives into his open suitcase before closing it, and left.
The trip was as uneventful as all trips were. The weather turned toward winter again, a cold front driving cold air and flurries into the northern city he was visiting, and leaving the sill of his hotel window covered in snow dust. Lanois pulled the shade and sought to nap until the night's meeting.
