The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [103]
“Here,” I said, handing her the bottle. “Try some of this.”
She kept one hand on her stomach and moaned as she took a deep pull off the bottle. Then she held the thing away from her and stuck her tongue out. “Ugh! What the hell is that?”
“Just something to calm your gut down.”
“I need burny!” she answered, with a little stamp of her foot.
“Kat, there ain’t any here. Just try to stay calm. Take another shot of this—” I held the bottle to her head as she shook it, trying to avoid the foul-tasting medicine; but after another swig, her nerves did seem to calm down some. “Better?” I asked.
She nodded slowly. “Kinda. Whoo …” She finally took her hand away from her stomach, got a deep breath into her lungs, and stood up. “Yeah. That is better.”
“Maybe some food now, hunh?” I walked her to the stove. “I still ain’t so sure I buy this cooking business outta you …”
Kat was able to laugh a little at that; and when she picked up another egg, her hands were steady. “You wait, boy,” she said, cracking the little brown shell on the lip of the skillet with practiced skill. “You’re gonna wish you had this breakfast every day.” She winced once, then turned to the table. “Gimme a little more of that stuff, will you? Tastes awful, but it helps.”
As she labored over the eggs and herring Kat took not one but several more shots of the paregoric, and her mood brightened considerably. The next half an hour or so was one of the happiest times I can remember spending with her, just making breakfast and eating in the kitchen like two ordinary types, chatting, laughing, forgetting, for the time being, what had driven her to the Doctor’s house. She began to talk about the day when she’d have a big, beautiful house of her own, and though I didn’t believe that whoring would ever lead her to such a place, I didn’t say anything to interfere with the daydream, so chipper and healthy did it make her seem.
In fact, I was a little sorry when the front door bell finally rang at a little past ten o’clock. I had just set to washing our dishes and Kat had lit up a smoke, still romancing away about her future and even joking, at one point, about how she’d hire me to work in her house. I’d never thought of that idea before, me and Kat under one roof as adults, not even in my own moments of dreaming; nor could I conjure it up that morning, so outside the realm of possibility did it seem. Her imagination, I suppose, was a lot better than mine; had to’ve been, when I think about it.
Drying my hands on a kitchen towel, I started running for the front door, Kat joking about my being her butler and telling me to send whoever it was away, as she was not “receiving” that morning. She straightened right up, though, when I came into the kitchen with the two detective sergeants—she still wasn’t completely sure that their visit didn’t have anything to do with her. I introduced them to Kat, and together the four of us went on up to the parlor, where they all sat down. For my part, I ran further on to the Doctor’s study to fetch the picture of Nurse Hunter. When I brought it back down, I found the Isaacsons arguing—in their usual testy, childish way—over the exact ratio of chemicals that was supposed to be used in the test what Lucius had conducted that morning. Kat was sitting on the edge of the same easy chair she’d been in before, glancing over at the two men and wondering, I’m certain, what in the world kind of cops behaved in such a way.
“Here we go,” I said, taking the picture to Kat as she stood up. “Kat, tell the detective sergeants who this woman is.”
She just stared around at the three of us for a second, then mumbled to me, “But I already told you.”
“Yeah,” I whispered back, “but tell them. Don’t worry, it ain’t gonna get you in any trouble.