the table. 'And you can change the music, or turn it off, if you want. I should have said that before.'

The nocturnes had given way to Chopin mazurkas. 'No,' I said. 'It's fine. I haven't heard these pieces in a long time.'

'You know this music?'

'Yes.'

She smiled. 'I'm intrigued. I suppose I always thought of the detective business as rather sordid.'

'It is. But I'm not sure it's any dirtier than cows and chickens.'

She brought a round, crusty loaf out of the oven, set it on the table next to a dish of butter flecked with herbs. 'Cows are much more decent than people,' she said.

'Well, maybe. But not chickens. My grandmother kept chickens in our backyard in Louisville. I know all their secrets.'

'Is that where you grew up? Louisville?'

'We left there when I was nine, but yes, until then.'

'Where did you go then?'

'Thailand,' I said. 'South Korea, West Germany, the Philippines, Holland. My father was an army quarter master. We lived in a lot of exotic places; when I was fifteen we moved to Brooklyn.'

She nodded. 'Exotic.'

The last thing she did before sitting was to feed two more logs into the iron stove on the hearth.

'Well, it's not fancy,' she said. 'But you won't be hungry.'

It wasn't fancy, but it was great. The stew was thick with beef, and the beef was tender. Chunks of carrots, potatoes, onions, and stewed tomatoes glistened in a garlicky broth. The bread was dense and slightly sour, the butter sweet.

Eve Colgate and I drank more wine, and we talked, and in the silences we listened to Chopin and to the wind.

I admired her house, the spare completeness of it.

'I've been here thirty years. Things get completed, over time.'

'Not always.'

She poured wine for me, some for herself. 'Where do you live, when you're in the city?'

'Downtown. Laight Street.'

'What's it like?'

'The neighborhood? Changing.'

'Your place, I meant.'

'A friend of mine owns the building, and the bar downstairs. Years ago I helped him fix up the bar and the two upstairs floors. He has storerooms and an office on the second floor and I live on the third.'

'You have no neighbors?'

'It's better that way.'

'Why do you come here?' she asked me.

I sipped my wine. 'Even fewer neighbors.'

That was true, and in some ways the real reason; and in some ways, about as evasive an answer as I'd ever given to any question. Eve looked at me. She smiled, and in her smile it seemed to me she understood both the truth and the evasion.

I buttered a last piece of bread. 'Why did you choose this place, Eve? When you left New York, why come here?'

She didn't answer right away. 'Henri and I had come here for three summers, renting a cabin, the way you did Tony's father's. I suppose I wanted to be where I'd been happy. With him.'

She rose, went to the kitchen, put water on for coffee. I started to clear the dishes. 'I'll wash,' I said.

'No,' she said. 'There's almost nothing. I'll do it later.'

'It's my only domestic talent. Let me exercise it.'

'I doubt that that's true. I think you're capable of being quite domestic, in your way.'

'In my way,' I agreed. I did the dishes.

We drank coffee, ate pears and some Gorgonzola cheese that looked older than I was. We talked some more. Then the Chopin was over, and the coffee was gone, and I had work to do.

I called Lydia before I left. It must have been both my night and not my night: she answered the phone herself.

'Where's your mom?' I asked her.

'Playing mah-jongg at Mrs. Lee's. Don't try to make up by being solicitous about my mother.'

'Still mad?'

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