The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [62]
“Is that how you pronounce it?”
“It’s how I pronounce it. For me? I suppose you know you didn’t have to.”
“I know, and it’s only for you if you insist. I was thinking of it as for us.”
“This is the real stuff, isn’t it? That means a cork. I think I know where the corkscrew is. She’s out cold, one of us can check her every once in a while and she’ll be fine.”
He locked the door and they went up to her room and opened the wine. They were both light-headed and buoyant. He said he never got a cork out of a wine bottle without breaking it and she asked if he generally broke the cork or the bottle and he said nobody loved a smartass. He opened the bottle perfectly and they sat on the floor and passed it back and forth while she told, about her encounters with Hugh Markarian.
She said, “What do I do when he shows up?”
“That’s the question.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What do you think you’ll do?”
“I don’t really know, Peter. I don’t want to go out with him. Or I think I don’t.”
“Because it might turn serious. You really think it would?”
“I don’t know. Not serious serious, but maybe pretend serious. Whatever the lady means by that. What do you know about him?”
“He’s a writer and he lives a few miles out of town. I know what he looks like because somebody pointed him out once. But I never—wait a minute, I met him about a month ago. We were at the same table at Sully’s but he wasn’t saying much and I wasn’t listening closely anyway. I never read any of his books. He’s just a name to me on the list of Bucks County writers who make this place such a culture center. Pearl Buck and James Michener and S. J. Perelman—”
“Didn’t he move?”
“That’s right, he did. And who else? The tall skinny one who wrote three books set here with real people in them, that everybody’s still uptight about. I can’t remember his name.”
“Neither can I, but I know who you mean.”
“From what I’ve heard they almost rode him out of town on a rail. The guy I can’t think of, that is. Not Hugh Markarian. I suppose you can afford to turn him down a few more times. It sounds to me as though he’ll come back for more.”
“For a while. And not if I really put him down.”
“It sounds as if you have his combination, too.”
“I think I do. I was just enough of a bitch the other day. If I was a little bit more of a bitch he wouldn’t have been interested.”
“You really do have a bitch streak, don’t you? It’s hard for me to believe it.”
“I usually keep it on a leash.”
They each had some more wine and he said, “Linda? Mind a question? Even if it could be serious, so what?”
“I knew you were going to ask that.”
“I mean it’s not as if you were likely to freak. You’ve got yourself very much together.”
“And want to stay that way.”
“I think you’re worried about nothing.”
She put down the bottle and looked at him. She was beginning to feel the wine and she was enjoying what she felt. And there was something besides the wine, an extra presence in the room. No, it wasn’t a presence, it was an absence. Gretchen had always been present in their previous conversations and tonight she was in Philadelphia.
“Makes the heart grow fonder,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Did I say that out loud? I must have had either too much or too little of this wine. There’s only one solution.”
“Here. What were you saying?”
“Thanks. I wasn’t saying anything, but maybe Tanya was right.”
“About what?”
“About what she said.”
“I’m starting to feel like the dentist Gretchen is going to. Pulling teeth. What did Tanya say now?”
She gave him a long look. “Well, Peter,” she said, mock serious, “I don’t think I’m going to tell you Tanya’s most recent utterness. Utterance. I don’t think I’m going to tell you now.”
“Okay.”
“Later. I may tell you later.”
“Okay.”
“But I will tell you what Tanya said before.”
“Okay. Well? What did she say before?”
“There is alcohol in this wine.”
“That’s what