The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [54]
He closed and locked the office door and spread a towel on the couch. The girl watched him do this, her face stolid and expressionless. “I don’t know,” she said again.
He straightened up from the couch and grinned at her. “What do you have to know? You want a drink?”
“No.” “C’mere.”
“Just like that.”
“Look, don’t stay if you don’t want to.”
“And find some place else to work, huh.”
“Did I ever say that? What the hell’s the matter with you tonight?”
“Maybe I got my monthly.”
“Not you. Your forehead breaks out when you get your period.” She flushed. “Give me credit, I notice things. You want to go, the door’s over there. But don’t give me maybe you got your monthly.”
He went over and embraced her again. When he touched her breast she began to respond and was on the point of letting herself go. Then she went rigid and he let go of her and looked at her. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“You enjoyed yourself the other times,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“So what’s different now?”
“What’s different is I been seeing this person.”
“So?”
“So he wouldn’t like it.”
“Tell you what. I won’t tell him if you don’t.”
“I’m seeing him later tonight. You probably know who it is.”
“I probably do, and his shift don’t end until four so you got the time.”
“That’s him.”
“Listen, he’s married himself. You think he’s saving it all for you? Because why kid yourself?”
“I don’t know. Going from you to him.”
“You even got time for a shower in between, kid.” He reached for her confidently, put one hand on her shoulder and the other between her legs. Her eyes closed and the muscles in her jaw went slack. “Just tell me this don’t do a thing for you,” he said, “and you can walk right out the door.”
“Oh, shit,” she said. “Who am I kidding?” He let her go, and she began unbuttoning her uniform.
He dropped her at her rooming house in Lambertville and drove back across the river to his own house. The lights were on in the living room and bedroom. When he put the car in the garage he saw that her little red. Alfa-Romeo was missing. He went directly to the bedroom and looked immediately in the closet. Her dresses were still there. That meant she would be back.
He switched on the television set and sat down on the bed to watch it. There was a remote-control unit, and he switched from channel to channel for fifteen minutes but couldn’t pay attention to any of it. He went downstairs and poured some applejack and sat in the living room in front of the picture window, sipping applejack and waiting.
At three o’clock he went upstairs and got into bed. When he gave up and put on the light it was not quite three thirty. He’d thought it was much later. He got up and put on pajamas and a robe and went downstairs, but after a few minutes he felt uncomfortable dressed that way and went upstairs to change back into the clothes he had worn earlier. Then he returned to the living room to wait for her.
A few nights ago he had come home to an unlit house. He had undressed silently in the darkness and got in bed beside her. He was almost asleep when she spoke his name.
He said, “Hell, I tried not to wake you.”
“I was awake.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“No, I didn’t.” She put on the bedside lamp, “We have to talk.”
“In the morning, huh?”
“I was thinking you should see a doctor.” ‘
“Come on, don’t give me all that in the middle of the night. I break my back all day—”
“Well, it’s either you or me, and you say it isn’t me, so who does that leave? So maybe you see a doctor, and he gives you a shot of something and it’s all right again.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Look, are you a doctor? How do you know?”
“I don’t have to see a doctor. It’s a temporary thing, it happens to everybody. Look, Melanie, you get satisfaction, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but you don’t.”
“So maybe that’s my problem.”
“And it’s not my problem knowing I can’t do a