scotch. When he got home, if he felt like it, he could have a couple of real ones before he went to bed. A tall, good- looking woman with a nice tan came to the bar and ordered an Absolut martini up with extra olives. Jesse smiled at her. She looked maybe five years older than he was, with platinum blond hair and a lot of makeup very well applied. She wasn't wearing a wedding ring.
'Isn't this awful,' the woman said.
'That martini will probably help,' Jesse said.
'If I could have enough of them.'
'And you can't?'
She smiled and shook her head.
'I'm here because it's sort of good for business to be seen here,' she said.
'Neither one of us can get drunk in public.'
'You know my business?'
'Sure. You're the chief of police.'
'And you?' Jesse said.
'I sell real estate on Stiles Island. I brought a couple of prospective clients, let them circulate, get a feel for their neighbors.'
She was wearing a very simple black dress with thin straps, which seemed to whisper engagingly over her body when she moved. Jesse could tell she worked out.
'People from Stiles don't usually come to these things,' Jesse said.
'I told them that, but they said they'd like to get a sense of the whole town.'
'This may blow the sale,' Jesse said.
'Well, they're circulating,' the woman said.
'We'll just play it as it lays.'
She put out her hand.
'Marcy Campbell.'
Jesse took her hand and shook it.
'Jesse Stone,' he said.
She leaned her elbow next to him on the bar and looked at the dance floor. She was only a couple of inches shorter than he was.
Her hair smelled the way he was sure violets would have smelled if he had ever actually smelled a violet, which he hadn't.
'You know what violets smell like?' he said.
'No. But I'd recognize champagne in a heartbeat,' she said.
Jesse smiled.
'I like your priorities,' he said.
'Despite life's busy pace,' she said, 'it's always nice to stop and smell the booze.'
Jesse smiled again and they were quiet watching the dancers moving about the floor. The band was playing 'Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree.' Most of the men wore white dinner jackets. Most of the women were in floor-length gowns, some of which were in small floral patterns. Many with puffy shoulders and bows in unexpected places. It looked like an over aged frat party.
'My God, look at those dresses,' Marcy said.
'Colorful.'
'Look at this with the bow on her ass,' Marcy said.
'If you had an ass like that, would you call attention to it by putting a bow on it?'
'I'd rather not think about her ass,' Jesse said.
Marcy laughed and took one of the olives from her martini and popped it in her mouth. Jesse took another controlled sip of his scotch.
'Wouldn't you think,' Marcy said, 'with all that money and all that time on their hands, nobody works, that these women could manage to look better than they do?'
'Well it's not like they all married Tom Selleck,' Jesse said.
'I suppose,' Marcy said.
'But you know I sometimes seriously think about it. I mean really look at these people. Dancing to dreadful music, wearing dreadful clothes, saying dreadful boring things.
Can they possibly be having any fun?'
'Maybe they think it's fun,' Jesse said.
'But...' Marcy shook her head.
'Just imagine the impoverishment of their daily lives,' she said.
'If this is their recreation.'
'Better than no recreation,' Jesse said.
'But that's the sad part. They do this and think it's fun, and so they never have any actual fun. Can you imagine these people in bed?'
'Another thing I'd prefer not to think about,' Jesse said.
'Most men, and women, lead lives of quiet desperation,' Marcy said.
'That's a quote from someplace,' Jesse said.
Marcy laughed.
'Henry David Thoreau,' she said.
'I modified it a little.'
'How about yourself ?'
'Me? My desperations are never quiet,' Marcy said.
'What do you do for fun?'
'Eat,' she said, 'drink, work out, shop, travel, read, talk to interesting people, have sex.'
'Bingo,' Jesse said.
'We've found a common interest?' Marcy said.
'Anyone special?' Jesse said.
'That I have sex with?'
'Yes.'
Marcy laughed. The laugh was genuine and quite big. He had already noticed that her face flushed slightly when she laughed.
'They're all special,' she said.
'No husband?' Jesse said.
'Not anymore.'
'Boyfriend?'
'Not currently. How about you?'
'I'm divorced,' Jesse said.
'I knew that. Girlfriends?'
'Nope.'
'Do you think we've stayed here long enough?' Marcy said.
'Yes.'
'Then let's go somewhere and get a real drink.'
'What about the clients?'
'They have their own car. I'll just say good-bye.'
Jesse watched the way her hips moved under the smooth tight dress as she walked away from him across the dance floor and carrying her martini. She spoke to a good-looking couple near the buffet table. They looked more Palm Beach than Stiles Island, Jesse thought. But maybe they were just summer people. The man kissed Marcy on the cheek, and she turned and came back across the dance floor. In a while, Jesse was pretty sure, he'd see that body without the intervening dress. The pressure of possibility, which had begun almost as soon as she had spoken to him, was now very strong. He didn't mind. He enjoyed the pressure. No hurry. He enjoyed looking forward to it. Marcy put her empty glass down on the bar.
'Shall we?' she said.
Jesse drained the rest of his drink and put his glass on the bar beside hers.
'You bet,' Jesse said.
SEVENTEEN.
'See the guy over there talking to Marcy?'
Macklin said.
'Cute,' Faye said.
'What's so cute?' Macklin said.
'Well he's slim, but he looks strong.
He's got a nice face. Good hair. Looks sort of, I don't know, graceful. He's cute.'
'Whaddya think he does for a living?'
Macklin said.
'He's some kind of professional athlete.'
'He's the chief of police,' Macklin said.
'He's young,' she said.
'How do you know he's the police chief?'
'I scoped out the police station, so's I can recognize the cops, and I see him come and go. Plain clothes, unmarked car, and he walks like, you know, 'This is mine.' So I go over the library and get a town report and look up the police department and there he is, Jesse Stone, chief of police.'
'You don't miss much do you, Jimmy?' Faye's voice was admiring.
'No more than I have to.'
He liked to think that of himself, Faye knew. He liked to think that he was prepared for everything. The truth was Faye knew that he simply enjoyed the foreplay. She had never said, If you're so goddamned good why have you spent half your life in jail? It would break his heart if he knew she thought less of him than he thought of himself. At least he was still alive. At least she still had him.
'How's he look to you aside from cute?' Macklin said.
'He looks like he might know what he's doing,' Faye said.
'Why do you say that?'
