“You’re awfully friendly.”
“I’m the friendliest guy in the world.”
“You don’t even know where I live.”
“I don’t care.”
“It’s pretty far. It’s in the country.”
“The further the better. Wherever it is, it’s right on my way.”
“You make it hard for a nice girl to say no.”
“Well then, if it’s so hard, don’t say it.”
She was a light-haired girl, maybe a little older than I was, and not bad on looks. But what got me was how friendly she was, and how she wasn’t any more afraid of what I might do to her than if I was a kid or something. She knew her way around all right, you could see that. And what finished it was when I found out she didn’t know who I was. We told our names on the way out, and to her mine didn’t mean a thing. Boy oh boy what a relief that was. One person in the world that wasn’t asking me to sit down to the table a minute, and then telling me to give them the lowdown on that case where they said the Greek was murdered. I looked at her, and I felt the same way I had walking away from the train, like I was made of gas, and would float out from behind the wheel.
“So your name is Madge Allen, hey?”