Hit Man - Lawrence Block [42]
“Gee,” she said, “that would be great.”
When he got off the phone Keller went into the kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee. Why, he wondered, had he made the offer? It was certainly uncharacteristic behavior on his part. What did he care if she had to spend one more night suffering the dirty looks of the wife and the wandering hands of the husband?
And he’d even improvised to justify her acceptance of the offer, inventing a late evening and claiming an early flight. He hadn’t booked the flight yet, and he had no plans for the evening.
Time to book the flight. Time to make plans for the evening.
The flight was booked with a single phone call, the evening planned almost as easily. Keller was dressing for it when Andria arrived, wearing striped bib overalls and bearing a forest-green backpack. Nelson made a fuss over her, and she shucked the backpack and knelt down to reciprocate.
“Well,” Keller said. “You’ll probably be asleep when I get home, and I’ll probably leave before you wake up, so I’ll say goodbye now. You know Nelson’s routine, of course, and you know where everything is.”
“I really appreciate this,” Andria said.
Keller took a cab to the restaurant where he’d arranged to meet a woman named Yvonne, whom he’d dated three or four times since making her acquaintance at a Learning Annex class, “Deciphering the Mysteries of Baltic Cuisine.” The true mystery, they’d both decided, was how anyone had the temerity to call it a cuisine. He’d since taken her to several restaurants, none of them Baltic. Tonight’s choice was Italian, and they spent a good deal of time telling each other how happy they were to be eating in an Italian restaurant rather than, say, a Latvian one.
Afterward they went to a movie, and after that they took a cab to Yvonne’s apartment, some eighteen blocks north of Keller’s. As she fitted her key in the lock, she turned toward him. They had already reached the goodnight kiss stage, and Keller saw that Yvonne was ready to be kissed, but at the same time he sensed that she didn’t really want to be kissed, nor did he really want to kiss her. They’d both had garlic, so it wasn’t a reluctance to offend or be offended. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he decided to honor it.
“Well,” he said. “Goodnight, Yvonne.”
She seemed for a moment to be surprised at being left unkissed, but she got over it quickly. “Yes, good-night,” she said, reaching for his hand, giving it a comradely squeeze. “Goodnight, John.”
Goodnight forever, he thought, walking downtown on Second Avenue. He wouldn’t call her again, nor would she expect his call. All they had in common was a disdain for Northern European cooking, and that wasn’t much of a foundation for a relationship. The chemistry just wasn’t there. She was attractive, but there was no connection between them, no spark.
That happened a lot, actually.
Halfway home, he stopped in a First Avenue bar. He’d had a little wine with dinner, and he wanted a clear head in the morning, so he didn’t stay long, just nursed a beer and listened to the jukebox and looked at himself in the backbar mirror.
What a lonesome son of a bitch you are, he told his reflection.
Time to go home, when you started having thoughts like that. But he didn’t want to get home until Andria had turned in for the night, and who knew what kind of hours she kept? He stayed where he was and sipped his beer, and he made another stop along the way for a cup of coffee.
When he did get home the apartment was dark. Andria was on the sofa, either asleep or faking it. Nelson, curled into a ball at her feet, got up, shook himself, and trotted silently to Keller’s side. Keller went on into the bedroom, Nelson following. When Keller closed the bedroom door, the dog made an uncharacteristic sound deep in his throat. Keller didn’t know what the sound meant, but he figured it had something to do with the door being closed, and Andria being on the other side of it.
He got into