The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [7]
She supposed that she ought to eat dinner. Her father and mother were now sitting over the dinner table, talking about how nice a boy Marc was and wouldn’t it be nice if things worked out and they did get married and settled down. She sighed and went to the refrigerator again, checked the cupboards again. Nothing appealed in the slightest. She put up water and was fixing a cup of instant coffee when there was a knock at the door.
She said, “Marc?” And put her hand to her mouth, surprised at the automatic response.
“It’s Peter.”
“Oh. Come in, it’s open.”
When she had first seen Peter Nicholas with Gretchen Vann, she’d taken them for mother and son. Gretchen’s hollow cheeks and darkly circled eyes made her look far older than her thirty-seven years. Peter, blond and slim-hipped and open-faced at twenty-two, could have passed for eighteen. They shared a large one-room apartment on the ground floor with Gretchen’s three-year-old daughter, and had been living there several months before Marc and Linda moved in.
Marc had found them amusing. “She probably started nursing Peter the day she weaned the kid,” he had said. “The bond that holds them together is that nobody on earth can guess what either one sees in the other. God knows they have a strange effect on each other. Every day she looks a little older and he looks a little younger. One of these day’s he’s going to crawl right back into her womb and never get out.”
“I was making coffee,” Linda said now. “Want a cup?”
“Thanks, but—actually I’d like a cup if it’s no trouble.”
“The water’s hot. Cream and sugar?”
“Just cream.”
“Well, it’s milk.”
“That’s okay. I hardly ever drink coffee anyway. It’s supposed to be terribly yin.”
“Is that macrobiotics? I didn’t know you were into that.”
“Well, that’s the thing. I keep thinking I ought to be, but I never manage to get into it. I’ll have brown rice for three meals running and then I’ll go and have a Coke, which is ridiculous, and then I’ll see how ridiculous the whole thing is and I’ll have a cheeseburger and that’s the end of the macro thing. Things like that are only possible if you’re living alone, anyway. Or if the person you’re living with is into it. And Gretchen. The thing is, she’s just the kind of person who ought to be into something like that. Some discipline that would help her get herself together.”
His eyes were an absolutely clear and guileless blue. He made small hand movements as he spoke. His fingers were very long, very slender.
She asked about Gretchen.
“Oh, she’s all right, I guess. You know how it is. She’s okay when she’s working, and when she’s not okay she can’t work and she goes into a down cycle. It’s the work that’s important to her. It doesn’t matter if anybody buys her pots or not, It matters in terms of money but sales don’t affect her personally, just that she’s getting the work done and likes what she’s turning out. This is good coffee.”
“It’s a tricky recipe. The hard part is boiling the water.”
“I can imagine. Say, why I dropped in. I was over at the Playhouse and Marc wasn’t around, and I thought he might be here. Which he obviously isn’t. Is he coming back here before the show or should I catch him over there?”
She put down her cup, got a cigarette out of the pack, dropped it, picked it up, got it lit.
She said, “No.”
“No he won’t be here?”
“No he won’t be here and no you can’t catch him there.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, shit,” she said. She stood up and got the note from the sofa. “Annie doesn’t live here anymore,” she said.
“I must have missed the opening credits.”
“Any luck and you could have missed the whole movie. Here.”
He started to read the note. “Oh, wow,” he said. He finished reading it and held it out to her. She took it from him, folded it neatly.
“What do I say, Linda? Hell. I picked a great time to knock on the door.”
“No, I’m glad for the company.”
“How are you taking it? I’m full of