Smoke

'I don't need any wine,' the damn woman said, and extended the sock toward him, dangling it in the air like some damn scrotum, as though to make fun of him, smiling at him but not getting to her feet, not coming forward, not letting him get his hands on her at all. 'Here, you do it,' she said.

Grumpy, stymied, Josh snatched the sock from her hand, sat himself down on the sofa, and emptied the sock onto the coffee table.

Well, well. Unquenchable lust for the moment forgotten, Josh stared at the little mountain of diamonds, like the world's richest pile of cocaine, with here and there a dozen other kinds of gems visible on its slopes. Small stones, mostly, but choice.

Jersey Josh knew his business, you could say that much for him. He would check and double-check, but he already knew what he was looking at here. Somewhat over a hundred thousand dollars in gems, unset, untraceable. Probably not so much as a hundred and a half, but certainly more than a hundred.

Since Jersey Josh and Freddie Noon had done business together for quite a while, Freddie normally would get the favored rate, which was ten cents on the dollar, which would be ten thousand in cash for this pile of crystallized carbon here. But that wasn't Freddie Noon over there, was it? That was a lady Jersey Josh didn't know, who wouldn't sit with him on the sofa, who wouldn't look at a movie with him, who wouldn't drink any of his Blue Nun, who almost certainly would not have sex with him without a struggle, and bad feeling from everybody afterward. Ten thousand dollars would this lady not get.

'Minute,' Josh said, palmed a couple diamonds, and got to his feet to go into the bedroom and get his jeweler's loupe, pausing to drop the diamonds into a dresser drawer and to pat his hair a couple times in front of the mirror.

A sound like a giggle came from the other room; was she loosening up, this woman? Josh lumbered back to the living room, and she was seated as before, knees together, arms folded, with her head bent forward now and shaking back and forth as she muttered something or other, then stopped when she saw he'd returned.

Woman talks to herself. Prays? Giggles. Maybe Josh'd be better off, have nothing to do with this woman, could be crazy. Nothing worse than a crazy woman. So loud.

Sitting up straighter, hands now in her lap, the woman said, 'Did you bring those diamonds back?'

He stared at her. She could not have seen him palm them, could not. 'What diamonds?' he asked.

'The ones you carried into the other room,' she said, cool, calm, and collected.

He was rattled, but he shook his head anyway, and clamped his jaws tight shut.

She smiled easily at him, and as though to give him an out, she said, 'I figured, maybe you wanted to weigh them or something.'

'Did not,' Josh said.

She considered him, then looked around, and pointed at the phone. 'Should I call Freddie?'

A confrontation with Freddie Noon? Bad idea. Josh snapped his fingers, as though suddenly realizing what she was talking about; it wasn't much of a snap. 'Weigh them,' he agreed.

'I thought so,' she said.

Feeling put-upon, Josh sat on the sofa again, in front of the little stack of diamonds. He screwed the loupe into his right eye, put a few of the stones in his right palm, studied them one by one.

Nice, very nice. Good quality. Excellent resale value. 'Not so good,' he said.

'Oh, sure they're good,' the woman said, unruffled.

She was very annoying. Josh dropped the diamonds back onto the table, lifted his eyebrow to drop the loupe into his now-empty palm, and looked at her. 'I know diamonds,' he said.

'So does Freddie.'

Hmm, yes. Whatever he gave this woman, she would take back to her friend Freddie, whose leg illness, whatever it might be, wouldn't last forever. Freddie Noon had for some time been a good source for Josh, and from the look of these diamonds Freddie was just now hitting his stride as a source.

Then there was the woman herself, named Peg; why make her angry or irritable? If she goes to bed with cheap burglars, why wouldn't she go to bed with Jersey Josh Kuskiosko?

All right. Time to lighten up. Taking a deep breath, Josh aimed an utterly false smile at . . . Peg . . . and said, 'Peg.'

She looked perky and alert. 'Yes?'

'Wait,' he announced, and heaved himself to his feet. At her look of surprise, he patted the air as though in reassurance, repeated, 'Wait,' and waddled off to his unspeakable kitchen, where he not only took the Blue Nun out of the refrigerator, but also the cheese spread he'd put in there last Christmas after nobody showed up. He gave it the sniff test — still fine. Crackers, crackers, crackers, here they are.

Speaking of crackers, the woman was muttering to herself in the other room again. Josh could hear her. That's okay, that's okay. Maybe crazy women aren't so bad, maybe they're better in bed, more . . . uninhibited. Josh tried to imagine what an uninhibited woman in his bed would be like, and had to lean briefly against the drainboard until the image faded. Then he opened the Blue Nun — the tock of the cork coming out silenced the muttering in the other room — chose his two least unspeakable glasses, put everything on an unspeakable tray, and carried it all to the living room, where he smiled at . . . Peg . . . as she looked at him in some surprise, gazing in particular at the wine bottle as he bore the tray across the room and put it down on the coffee table next to the little alp of diamonds.

'Oh, you shouldn't,' Peg said.

'Peg,' Josh repeated. His instinct told him, if you say her name, she'll think you care about her. About her.

She shook a finger at him, with a smile to show she was only teasing. 'If you think,' she said, 'you can get me drunk so I'll take less money, you're wrong.'

Well, that was one reason, of course. Josh smirked as he poured into the two glasses, and extended the cleaner one toward her. 'Both drunk,' he said.

'Well, that's fair,' she admitted, and took the glass, and even held it up while he clinked his against it.

He drank down half a glass of the cold stuff, while she held the glass to her lips. Then he put down the wine and gestured at the cheese and crackers. 'Eat,' he suggested.

'Oh, I'm on a diet,' she told him, putting her glass on the floor beside the Amish chair. 'I have to watch my figure, you know.'

There was some sort of clever response to that, he knew there was, having to do with him watching her figure, something like that, but his mind tripped over the phraseology, and the moment was lost. 'OK,' he said, and put down his own glass on the coffee table with a little thunk that made tiny avalanches on the diamond slopes. Then he lumbered across the room to kiss her on the point of the chin, painful for his teeth.

He hadn't been aiming for the point of her chin, of course, he'd been aiming for her mouth, but she'd moved, the damn woman, she'd thrown off his aim. She was still moving, as he pressed forward, fumbling at her, holding her in the chair.

'I DON'T THINK SO!' she yelled, very loudly, unnecessarily loudly.

He'd known she'd be loud, dammit. 'Coats,' he muttered, pawing at her, meaning he had other coats in the back he'd give her after he'd finished ripping this one to shreds to get it off her.

'DAMMIT, FREDDIE!'

'Not here,' he panted, shoving coat out of the way, blouse out of the way, one knee now in her lap, holding her down. Faintly he registered the squeak of the hinge of his mirror/door, far away, but his own loud breathing and his own tense concentration kept him from heeding that impossibility, or remembering it later. His hand found a breast, an actual real-life throbbing warm human breast! This so electrified him that he froze, glary-eyed, not even breathing, and was like that when he felt the sharp hard pain at the back of his head, and darkness fell, like a tree.

So did Josh.

'Are you all right?'

Josh swam into painful consciousness. There was a sticky smell in the air, a pain in his head, a nasty wetness around his collar and the back of his shirt. He groaned, and moved, and found he was stretched out on his back on the very thin carpet on his living room floor. The woman . . . Peg . . . leaned over him, expression