cautiously. 'Are you all right?'
'I'm fine, but things are getting rough. I need someone to stay with the client.'
'A baby-sitter?'
'Bodyguard.'
Her voice almost smiled. 'The client's right there with you, huh?'
'Yes.'
She hesitated. 'When would I start? Right away?'
'Yes.'
She was silent. An image focused itself in my mind, Lydia in her back-room Chinatown office, cloudy light drifting in the pebbled glass window. Maybe she was looking at one of the pictures on her wall as she thought; maybe the one I'd given her for Christmas, a shadowy, somber photograph of a city street at night, the buildings dark, the people gone.
'I know you're pissed off,' I said. 'We can talk about it when you get here. I need you, Lydia.'
More silence; then, briskly, 'I'll have to organize my mother, and I'll have to rent a car. I could leave by two. For how long?'
'I don't know.'
'How do I get there?'
I gave her directions.
'How long will it take me?'
'About four hours, the way you drive.'
'How about the way you drive?'
'Two and a half.'
'I'll see you at four-thirty.'
'Lydia—'
'This isn't just a ploy to get me up there where it's rustic and isolated and romantic?'
The unexpectedness of that question stopped me, made me laugh. 'If I thought that would work I'd have tried it long ago.'
'You've tried everything else.'
'Nice of you to notice.'
'See you later.'
'Lydia?'
'Umm?'
'It's been rough. It could get rougher.'
'Promises, promises,' she said in her sweetest tone, and hung up.
Eve brought the mugs to the counter by the phone, filled them.
'Do you want something to eat?'
'No, thanks. I'm not hungry.'
'You haven't eaten since dinner last night.'
'I'll get something later.' I drank my coffee slowly, savoring it.
'She wasn't frightened?' Eve asked. 'When you told her it was dangerous?'
'No,' I said. 'She liked it.'
We leaned on opposite sides of the kitchen counter, finishing the coffee. She looked at me over her mug, said nothing, hid her thoughts.
I took my rig from where I'd dropped it on the cedar chest, slung it over my shoulder. I was loading up my pockets with what she'd taken out of them when the phone rang.
'Hello?' she said into the receiver; then, 'Yes, in fact, he is. Are you all right?'
I stopped what I was doing, listened.
'All right,' she said, half smiling. 'I should have known better than to ask. Hold on.' She held the receiver out to me. 'It's Tony. He's looking for you.'
I grabbed it. 'Tony? Something wrong?'
'How the hell do I know?' Tony's voice growled out of the phone. 'I'm just the messenger boy. You okay?'
'Yeah. Shouldn't I be?'
'You sound lousy.'
'Thanks. What's up?'
