Hit Man - Lawrence Block [46]
There was only one bathroom. Andria used it first. Keller heard the shower running, then nothing until she emerged wearing a generally shapeless garment of pink flannel that covered her from her neck to her ankles. Her toenails were painted, Keller noticed, each a different color.
Keller showered and put on a robe. Andria was on the sofa, reading a magazine. They said goodnight and he clucked to Nelson, and the dog followed him into the bedroom. When he closed the door the dog made that sound again.
He shucked the robe, got into bed, patted the bed at his side. Nelson stayed where he was, right in front of the door, and he repeated that sound in his throat, making it the least bit more insistent this time.
“You want to go out?”
Nelson wagged his tail, which Keller had to figure for a yes. He opened the door and the dog went into the other room. He closed the door and got back into bed, trying to decide if he was jealous. It struck him that he might not only be jealous of the girl, because Nelson wanted to be with her instead of with him, but he might as easily be jealous of the dog, because he got to sleep with Andria and Keller didn’t.
Little pink toes, each with the nail painted a different color. . .
He was still sorting it out when the door opened and the dog trotted in. “He wants to be with you,” Andria said, and she drew the door shut before Keller could frame a response.
But did he? The animal didn’t seem to know what he wanted. He sprang onto Keller’s bed, turned around once, twice, and then leaped onto the floor and went over to the door. He made that noise again, but this time it sounded plaintive.
Keller got up and opened the door. Nelson moved into the doorway, half in and half out of the room. Keller leaned into the doorway himself and said, “I think the closed door bothers him. Suppose I leave it open?”
“Sure.”
He left the door ajar and went back to bed. Nelson seized the opportunity and went on into the living room. Moments later he was back in the bedroom. Moments after that he was on his way to the living room. Why, Keller wondered, was the dog behaving like an expectant father in a maternity ward waiting room? What was all this back-and-forth business about?
Keller closed his eyes, feeling as far from sleep as he was from Sardinia. Why, he wondered, did Andria want to go there? For the sardines? Then she could stop at Corsica for a corset, and head on to Elba for the macaroni. And Malta for the falcons, and Crete for the cretins, and—
He was just getting drifty when the dog came back.
“Nelson,” he said, “what the hell’s the matter with you? Huh?” He reached down and scratched the dog behind an ear. “You’re a good boy,” he said. “Oh yes, you’re a good boy, but you’re nuts.”
There was a knock on the door.
He sat up in bed. It was Andria, of course, and the door was open; she had knocked to get his attention. “He just can’t decide who he wants to be with,” she said. “Maybe I should just pack my things and go.”
“No,” he said. He didn’t want her to go. “No, don’t go,” he said.
“Then maybe I should stay.”
She came on into the room. She had turned on a lamp in the living room before she came in, but the back lighting was not revealing. The pink flannel thing was opaque, and Keller couldn’t tell anything about her body. Then, in a single motion, she drew the garment over her head and cast it aside, and now he could tell everything about her body.
“I have a feeling this is a big mistake,” she said, “but I don’t care. I just don’t care. Do you know what I mean?”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Keller said.
Afterward he said, “Now I suppose you’ll think I put the dog up to it. I wish I could take the credit, but I swear it was all his idea. He was like that donkey in the logic problem, unable to decide between the two bales of hay. Where did he go, I wonder?”
She didn’t say anything, and he looked closely and saw that she was crying. Jesus, had he said something to upset her?
He said, “Andria? Is something wrong?”
She sat up and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “I’m just