Warm and Willing - Lawrence Block [5]
“When do you finish work?”
“Why…five-thirty. Why?”
“Would you have dinner with me?”
“I—”
“I don’t feel like eating alone tonight,” the girl went on “I’d like company. Unless you’re busy—”
She remembered how the girl had looked the night before, in Washington Square. A study in loneliness. She said, “No, I’m not busy.”
“Then I’ll pick you up here? In an hour or so?”
“Well, I ought to change—”
“You look lovely,” the girl said. “We’ll just grab a bite in the neighborhood. About five-thirty?”
“All right.”
The blonde girl’s smile was almost radiant. “My name is Megan,” she said. “Megan Hollis, sometimes called Meg. But not too often because I don’t much care for it. And you’re—”
She gave her name.
“Rhoda,” Megan repeated. Her eyes took in Rhoda’s face, swept downward, then up again. “A nice name. I like it. It fits you.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Five-thirty,” Megan said. “I’ll see you then.”
CHAPTER TWO
The restaurant was a small Italian place on Thompson Street. I was low-priced and off the beaten track, and the tourists never knew that it existed. They sat together across a small table in the rear. A candle burned in a Chianti bottle, dripping wax over the green sides of the wine bottle. There was a red and white checked cloth on the table, a portrait of Garibaldi on the far wall, an air of shabby-genteel antiquity permeating the room. They ate spaghetti with marinara sauce and drank Chianti at room temperature.
“I’m very glad you’re here,” Megan was saying. “I couldn’t face the idea of eating alone not tonight. And you’re good company.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you like this place? It’s always been a favorite of mine.”
“I like it very much.”
“More wine?”
“Well—”
But Megan was already filling both their glasses. “I’m a real sinner when it comes to wine,” she said, grinning. “I don’t like to drink otherwise, because I don’t like to get drunk. I hate the idea of losing control of myself, and if I drink hard liquor that usually happens.” She took a small sip of wine. “But this is different,” she went on. “Wine just gives you a happy and heady feeling. And tastes good, too. Have you been in the Village long, Rhoda?”
“Five months.”
“But you lived in the city before that, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “Uptown for almost three years. On the west side first, while I was working. And then on the east side after I got married.”
“I didn’t know you were married.”
“I’m not. It didn’t work out.”
“Divorce?”
“Annulment. I suppose it amounts to the same thing. Except that I have my maiden name, and that I don’t collect alimony.” She lowered her eyes. “I didn’t want his money,” she said.
“A couple of bad years, huh?”
“Yes.”
Megan touched her hand very briefly. The contact was vaguely reassuring to Rhoda, as if the touch of another sympathetic human being helped make the world that much safer for her.
“You poor kid. What happened?”
She hesitated.
“I’m sorry, I’m just like that. Forgive me, Rhoda. I’m the nosiest girl in the state. When I ask personal questions, just slap my wrist and tell me to mind my own damned business.”
“No, I—”
“Because I don’t mean to pry.”
“It’s all right.” She sipped her wine, savoring the sharp, dry bite of the Chianti. She set the glass down on the table and closed her eyes. Her head swam pleasantly; evidently the wine was having more of an effect on her than she realized. “He ran around,” she said finally. “Other women.”
“He must be out of his mind.”
She looked up, startled.
“A girl like you,” Megan explained. “Any man married to a woman like you would have to be crazy to look at another girl. Maybe you don’t know it, Rhoda, but you’re a beautiful woman.”
Unconsciously, she felt herself blushing. She covered her nervousness first with another longer sip of Chianti, then by lighting a cigarette. She drew on the cigarette, took smoke deeply into her lungs, then blew it out in a long thin column that hung hazily together as it floated toward the ceiling. Her eyes followed the column of smoke while it rose. Then they dropped to fix on the base of the wine