‘Bon appetit,’ she said.
‘Thanks.’
The glasses pinged as they touched. She leaned forward on her elbows, holding her wine glass between her finger tips, and stared at him again, the blue eyes digging deep.
‘I have to ask you something,’ she said, very quietly, almost confidentially.
Jesus, does she know? Does she suspect? ‘Fire away,’ he said.
‘How did you get that?’ she asked, pointing towards his nose.
‘What?’
She reached out and ran her middle finger very delicately down between his eyes, lingering for a moment where his nose flattened out between them. ‘That,’ she said.
‘Oh, that.’
‘Urn hum,’ she said, adding, ‘If it’s something unromantic, like you got it caught in an elevator door or something, lie to me.’
‘The first thing they teach you in elevator school is not to get your nose caught in the door.’
She laughed and the laugh became a smile and stayed on her lips.
‘Well, when I was in high school there was this bully named Johnny Trowbridge and he hit me with a brick.’
She paused and then laughed again. ‘Really?’
Really.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘He was about, uh, three feet taller than me, so I went to the Y and I took boxing lessons for six months and then I beat the living bejesus out of him.’
She was laughing hard now and she shook her head. ‘Did you really?’ she said, ‘did you really do that?’
‘I really did it. Acceptable?’
‘Oh, yes. Oh, absolutely. If it’s a lie, don’t change it.’
It was a lie, although a bully named Johnny Trowbridge had hit him with a brick and be had taken boxing lessons and a year later he’d kicked the shit out of Johnny Trowbridge. But his nose bad been broken in an alley behind the bus station when he was a rookie cop. A drunk had scaled the lid of a garbage can straight into his face with uncanny accuracy.
She sighed. ‘I’m so glad we got that settled.’
‘What?’
‘The business about your nose.’
‘Does my nose bother you?’
She shook her head very slowly, staring at it. ‘No. It gives you character.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Eat your soup before it gets cold.’
Upstairs on the roof the tapes were whirring, recording their conversation. He could envision the rest of the machine listening to it in Friscoe’s Inferno. He knew what The Nosh would think. But how about Friscoe? Livingston? Papa? And The Bat! The Bat would have a coronary. He would sit in his office and his face would turn red, then blue, and he would clutch his heart and make a face like a fish out of water, and he would fall dead on the floor. I may have to erase this tape.
He raised the spoon to his lips, sipped the soup. It was unreal. Fantastic. Soup wasn’t the right word for it. It was nectar. He held it in his mouth a moment, savouring it, before he swallowed.
‘Well?’ she asked.
‘It’s . . . incredible.’
‘Incredible good or incredible bad?’
‘Good? Hell, it’s . . . historic.’
‘Historic’! What a wonderful choice of words.
‘Of course I’m not an expert. Is your friend Chinese? ‘No, but he lived in the Orient for years.’
Is he the mark? Is the dinner tonight part of the set-up?
Sharky decided not to push it. ‘Do you pick up strays in the supermarket very often?’ he asked.
‘Only in Moundt’s. .1 would never pick up a stray in just any market.’
He laughed.
‘Actually I felt kind of sorry for you. You looked so forlorn, wandering around, trying to decide what to buy. I can usually spot a bachelor in the market. They can never decide between what they want and what they need. In the end it’s a disaster.’
She leaned forward and stroked the broken place on his nose again. He felt chills. It was like school days again. He was reacting like a kid. But he liked it. You can keep your finger there for the rest of the night, he thought. You
