checked.”
“Any hint what he might be involved in now? Some kind of deal, say, that would require a large sum of cash?”
“Not so far.”
“He’s seeing a singer named Nicole Coyne, lives in North Beach.” I spelled the name and recited the address. “See what you can find out about her and her financial situation.”
“Will do.”
“Anything I ought to know about Mrs. Pollexfen?”
“Well, she’s a boozer. Two DUI arrests, lost her license for six months on the second. EMT call to their house three years ago-toxic reaction to prescription drugs and alcohol that put her in the hospital for three days.”
“What did she do before she hooked up with her husband?”
“Travel agent. She’s more than thirty years younger than him. True love at first sight, you think?”
“On his part, maybe,” I said. “I’d like to know if there was a prenup.”
“I’ll see if I can find out.”
“How faithful she’s been, too. Any whisper stuff, links with prominent men. Both Pollexfen and his secretary made sly little remarks about her daily ‘shopping trips.’ If she has been cheating, she couldn’t have been very discreet about it.”
“Oh boy,” Tamara said, “down and dirty.”
“One more thing. Any expensive habits or vices-her, and also her brother and husband.”
“Poor Tamara. Work, work, work.”
“You know you love it,” I said.
“Well, I’ve got the energy for it now. Sure is amazing what getting laid can do for a girl’s stamina.”
K erry said, “I have news.” There was a time, less than a year ago, when she’d made that same announcement, and the news had been bad enough to knock my world off its axis. Breast cancer. But long, difficult weeks of radiation therapy had done its job; she’d been cancer-free for several months now, as of her most recent checkup two weeks ago. This news couldn’t be linked to the disease. She was smiling and her green eyes were aglow.
“Good news, right?”
“Very good. Get yourself a beer and me a glass of wine and I’ll tell you.” When I’d done that and we had drinks in hand, she said, “You are looking at Bates and Carpenter’s newest vice president.”
“Hey! A promotion!”
“Effective immediately. Bigger office, bigger perks, and a bigger paycheck every month. How about that?”
“Terrific.” We clinked glasses. “More hours, too, though, I’ll bet.”
“Probably. Do you mind?”
“Not if you’re up to it.”
“I’m up to it. Jim Carpenter thinks so, too, or he wouldn’t have offered the promotion.”
“The important thing is what your oncologist thinks. I don’t have to remind you what he said about too much stress…”
“No, you don’t. I know my limitations, don’t worry.”
“It’s my nature to worry, especially where you’re concerned.”
She patted my cheek and leaned up to kiss me. “You’re sweet,” she said. Then she said, “You’re staring at me again.”
“Am I?”
“I catch you doing that a lot lately. I must really look different, huh?”
“Beautiful. Gorgeous.”
“Ten years younger?” she asked, pleased.
“At least.”
She’d had a face-lift a few weeks ago. Her treat to herself after the breast cancer ordeal. I’d been leery of it at first, all that slicing and dicing, and when I first saw her after the surgery, all bandaged and bruised and swollen like the victim of a bad accident, I’d been more than a little anxious. (Not Emily, though; nothing much bothered that kid of ours anymore.) Kerry had spent two and a half weeks holed up in the condo, going out only for post-op visits to her plastic surgeon, doing her ad agency work by home computer as she had during the cancer radiation treatments. When the last of the bandages came off and the scars finally healed, good-bye, anxiety, hello, happy surprise. The minor age wrinkles and eye bags and mouth lines that had bothered her, if not me, were gone and she truly did look ten years younger. More beautiful than ever. No wonder I kept staring at her.
“Where’s Emily?” I asked.
“It’s her choral group night, remember?”
“That’s right. Our daughter, the budding chanteuse. So how about you and I celebrate the promotion?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Oh, something Tamara told me this afternoon, about stamina.”
“And that is?”
I told her. Then I told her, juicily, what I had in mind. She actually blushed a little.
Face-lifts do wonders, all right. For a woman’s selfimage and morale. And for a man’s libido.
7
JAKE RUNYON
He picked Bryn up at six thirty. She was ready; she never kept him waiting. The scarf covering the frozen left side of her face was midnight blue with some kind of gold design. When he’d first met her four months ago, she wore dark-colored or paisley scarves with her plain sweaters, skirts, slacks. The outfits were still the same, but now the scarves had color in them. Her way of dressing up for him.
Subdued tonight. She had periodic bouts of depression, she’d told him, and when she was depressed she was even quieter than usual. “I’m not very hungry,” she said. “Do you mind if we drive for a while before we eat?”
“Where would you like to go?”
“I don’t care. Anywhere.”
“Down the coast? Highway One?”
“Yes, all right.”
He’d told her that he liked to drive, even on those days when the job required him to log in a lot of miles. She understood his restlessness, his need not to be trapped by stationary walls. She preferred the confines of her brown-shingled house-familiar, the place where she’d been happy before the stroke that had left her with partial facial paresis. But sometimes a restlessness seized her, too. At night, for the most part. Days, she had her watercolors and charcoal sketches and the graphics design business she was trying to build up.
He was seeing her three or four times a week now. Mostly at night, even on weekends. She didn’t like to go out much in the daylight hours. They had dinner usually, at one of the same two coffee shops on Taraval. In other restaurants, places where she wasn’t known, people had a tendency to stare at her or to cluck their stupid tongues because of the scarf and the way she was forced to eat, twisting open the good side of her mouth to take the food, chewing and swallowing in awkward movements with her head down over her plate because no matter how careful she was, pieces of food or dribbles of liquid sometimes leaked out. If there was one thing she hated more than anything else, it was pity-a stranger’s pity worst of all.
Now and then they took in a movie; she was comfortable in darkened theaters. In good weather they went for walks on Ocean Beach or Land’s End, away from people. Or sat in the car somewhere and talked. He’d been inside the brown-shingled house only twice, once to see her paintings and graphic designs, once for a glass of wine.
He had not touched her except to take her arm when they went up or down stairs, or to help her on and off with her coat. And yet a closeness had developed between them, a slow-developing bond of trust. Different by far from his relationships with the other two women in his life, the caretaker role he’d had to assume with half-crazy,
