Nobody moved. Macklin grinned.
'Okay, I believe you. Come on, Tiffany.'
He took hold of her wrist and led her past the dead man in the foyer and out the front door. Turn left. Two doors down. Into the emergency stairwell. Tiffany was still crying. He let go of her.
'I left you behind, they'd have taken the money away from you,' he said.
'Now you're on your own.'
And he left her clutching the table stakes and sniveling, and he ran down the four flights. At the bottom he took the gun off cock, dropped it in the pillowcase, and went out the emergency door onto the street.
NINE.
'So now you're a weather weenie,' Jesse said.
He sat at the counter in Jenn's kitchen in a newly remodeled third-floor condominium on Beacon Street. Jenn had shown him around. From her bedroom window, you could see the Charles River. He had felt uneasy in her bedroom, but he was more comfortable now, sipping a scotch and soda, while Jenn transferred supper from the take-out boxes to the plates.
'Only the guys have to be weenies,' Jenn said.
'The weather girls have to look,' she stuck out her chest and wiggled her hips, 'goooood.'
Jesse smiled.
'What about 'having a film career'?'
Jenn shook her head.
'Have to ball too many toads,' she said.
'Like Elliot?' Jesse said.
'Yeah, and the worst part is after you ball them, they're still toads.'
She had bought chicken salad at the take-out, and cold sesame noodles, and a loaf of sourdough bread. She went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of Chardonnay and handed it to Jesse.
'Opener's right there beside the wine bucket,' she said.
Jesse finished his scotch, opened the wine, and poured two glasses. He handed one to Jenn as she came around the counter to sit beside him. She touched his glass with hers.
'I don't know what to drink to,' Jesse said.
'We could drink to each other.'
'Okay,' Jesse said. They drank.
'So,' Jesse said.
'Here we are.'
'Yes.'
'But I don't quite know where here is.'
'Other than three thousand miles from Los Angeles?' She served a spoonful of chicken salad onto his plate.
'It's got grapes in it,' Jesse said.
'That makes it chicken salad Veronique.'
Jenn served him some sesame noodles and took some for herself. She liked to eat, and she was careful about what she ate. But she put together some very odd combinations, Jesse thought.
Sesame noodles and chicken salad? Veronique? She was sitting beside him eating neatly. She seemed calm. He could smell her perfume, and he could brush her arm if he leaned slightly left. He remembered exactly what she looked like with her clothes off.
He felt as if he might come apart and scatter on her kitchen floor.
He sipped some Chardonnay. He didn't like wine that much. He particularly didn't like Chardonnay. But he knew she always had ordered it when they were married, and this had been the most expensive bottle of Chardonnay in the Cove Liquor Store, which was the nearest liquor store to the police station.
'You doing good with your drinking, Jesse?'
'I'm all right, Jenn. I slip occasionally, but never in public.'
'Drinking alone?'
'Yep. But not often.'
'I worry about you drinking alone.'
'Hell, I've always liked drinking alone, Jenn. I hate being drunk where people can see me.'
'I know. You're a very inward person.'
Jenn was eating her noodles with chopsticks. He admired how clever she was with the chopsticks. He always used a fork. She ate some noodles, put down the chopsticks, drank some wine.
'Well,' she said.
