Sudden Mischief Part 22

"Would you go back?"

"No."

She smiled as if she'd discovered the innermost me.

"Did you get your nose broken in the line of duty?" she said.

"Among other things," I said.

"Like what?"

"I used to box."

"Oh my," she said.

We ordered more food than we could eat, and Olivia had another gla.s.s of wine.

"I promised not to ask you any questions about Jeanette Ronan," I said.

"That's right," Olivia said.

She had a little trouble with the't's.

"But I would like you to give her a message from me."

"How come you don' give't to her yourself?"

She wasn't doing so well with adjacent vowel sounds either.

"She won't take my calls," I said.

She drank some more wine.

"Why don' you go out there in person?"

"I don't want her husband to know," I said.

"Why not?"

"There's something involved here that he shouldn't know. I'm trying to spare her."

A pu-pu platter had arrived and Olivia sampled a spare rib while she thought this through.

"Wha's the message?"

"It's a question," I said. "I'll write it on the back of my business card."

I took out a card and wrote: Do you have a remote control device on your Polaroid? I handed it to Olivia who looked at it and frowned.

"Wha's this mean."

She had solved the problem with her't's by dropping them.

"Nothing you should know," I said. "But it will mean something to her. And, hopefully, if it should fall into her husband's hands, it won't mean much to him."

I could see that she liked the conspiratorial overtones. Fall into her husband's hands pleased her.

"Okay," she said. "I'll do it."

The purpose of the lunch was over, but I felt I owed her the full treatment, so I stayed on with her through several more gla.s.ses of wine, and increasingly flirtatious small talk. When I finally got her home, she was quite drunk. Much too drunk to conceal her disappointment when I said I wouldn't stay. I felt kind of bad about that, but I guess it was better than having her eager to get rid of me.

"Will you call again?" she said.

"Absolutely," I said.

"Being divorced sucks," she said.

"I've heard."

"Nothing out there but jerks."

"Heard that too."

"I had a nice time," she said.

"Me too," I said. "I'll call."

She put her arms around my neck and stood on tiptoe and gave me a hard open mouth kiss. I did the best I could with it. It would have been ungentlemanly not to respond. Driving back to Boston over the bridge I felt like I may have been guilty of some kind of molestation myself. I decided that when this was over, I'd take her to lunch again. The decision made me feel better. But not a lot.

chapter twenty-nine.

SUSAN CAME OVER to my place and Pearl came with her. I had promised to make steak salad and biscuits, and Pearl had apparently got wind of it. She gave me several wet kisses, then raced around my apartment nosing in every place that it was possible to conceal a steak salad. Finally she gave up and hopped onto the couch and turned around three times and lay down.

"Now it's your turn," I said to Susan.

"Do you mind if I don't sniff behind the bookcase?" she said.

I settled for the several kisses. When that was done, Susan sat on one of the stools at my kitchen counter and poured half a gla.s.s of Merlot. She had come from work so she looked very professional in a tan suit.

"We haven't had steak salad in a long time," she said.

"Well," I said, "call me crazy, but I tire of tofu."

"Fickle," she said.

I was drinking a bottle of beer.

"I like this Merlot," Susan said.

"It's Meridien," I said. "When we were in Santa Barbara we used to look at its vineyards from the top of that hill we used to run."

The steak was grilling. I was cutting mushrooms and sweet peppers and celery and scallions with a large knife on a white Fiberglas cutting board.

"In some ways that was the hardest time we've ever had," Susan said, "Santa Barbara and all that went with it. But I kind of miss it."

I turned the steaks on the grill with some tongs.

"I was pretty dependent on you when we first got out there," I said.

"Well, of course you were," Susan said. "You'd been shot and nearly died."

"That does increase dependency, I suppose."

There was a lot of activity on my couch. Pearl was rooting the pillows around trying for a better lie. She finally found one that satisfied her and she settled into it with a sigh.

Susan got up from the counter, took her wine gla.s.s, walked to the front windows in the living room, and looked down at Marlborough Street. During the fall last year, when fresh corn was a glut on the table, I had wrapped and frozen any ears left over during the time of plenty. Now that fresh corn would be more valuable than ambergris, I couldn't wait to take out a couple of frozen ears and use them. They weren't good as corn on the cob, but thawed and cut from the cob, the kernels were a lot better than the perfect and nearly tasteless ones they sell in the store. I picked up one of the ears I'd defrosted and began to cut the kernels off.

"Magnolias are out," Susan said from the window.

"Every year," I said.

I sc.r.a.ped the cut corn into a small bowl, sprinkled it with very little sugar and some chopped cilantro, and put it aside.

"I wonder if my fondness for Santa Barbara might have had something to do with your dependence," Susan said.

"Well, I was sure at my least," I said.

"Physically," Susan said. "You were, and that maybe is what I'm responding to now. But in some ways you were more you than you've ever been."

"I think this may be my moment," I said. "I understand what you said."

Still carrying her wine gla.s.s, she turned away from the window and came back to the counter and sat again.

"Do you know why I've been so b.i.t.c.hy lately?"

"Is b.i.t.c.hy an acceptable phrase for a feminist?" I said.

"No. Do you know?"

"Has something to do with Brad Sterling."

"Do you have a theory on what the something is?"

"Well, I'd say something about him, or my connection to him, scares you."

"Yes," Susan said. "I think that's right. Do you know what it is?"

"No."

"That's the thing," Susan said. "I don't either, and being scared and not knowing of what makes me frantic."

"You're not used to it," I said.

"No I'm not. And," she shook her head, "physician heal thyself-I decided simply to deny it."

"And yet you would ask about him."

"Of course, how could I not be interested? I had gotten myself into a situation I couldn't tolerate."

"And therefore..."

"And therefore b.i.t.c.hy," Susan said.

"Like you are about Russell Costigan," I said.

Susan took in a deep breath and let it out. I was finished tearing the romaine and the steaks were done. I took the steaks off the grill and put them on the cutting board to rest.

"You are so much fun," Susan said. "And you're so nice to people who need being nice to, and you're so nice to me that it is easy to forget how hard you are."

I got out a container of cajun spice that a guy had sent me from Louisiana and sprinkled some on the steaks. There was nothing to be gained here by opening my mouth.

"But it's not meanness, is it," Susan said.

I wasn't entirely sure she was talking just to me.

"You think I need to make the connection between how I feel about Brad and how I feel about Russell Costigan."

I nodded.

"And you know how difficult this is for me, which is why you are being very quiet."

I nodded.

"You are, of course, right, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"Don't you hate when that happens," I said.

Susan nodded. I began to cut the steaks into small squares. Susan was quiet. I looked up at her and there were tears running down her face.

"Jesus Christ," I said.

She turned her head away. But she couldn't stop her shoulders from shaking. Pearl raised her head from the couch and looked at Susan with a mixture of annoyance and anxiety. I came around the counter and started to put an arm around her shoulder. She stood and turned half away from me. Her shoulders were shaking hard now and she was cursing to herself.