Instead I turned and walked away. When I'd gone half a block I turned and looked over my shoulder at them. They were still lounging against the same steel shutter, and they didn't appear to have moved.
Maybe they hadn't been looking at me at all.
* * *
I gave her the hour and fifteen minutes she'd asked for. I spent half of it as productively as the two idlers
onEighth Avenue , lurking in a doorway of my own across the street from Elaine's apartment building.
People came and went, all of them strangers to me. I don't know what I was looking for. Motley, I suppose, but he didn't show.
I made myself wait until precisely one o'clock before I went over there and presented myself to her doorman. He called upstairs, handed me the phone. She asked me who had drawn the sketch, and I went blank for an instant, then told her it was Galindez. I gave the phone back to the doorman and let her tell him it was okay to let me come up. When I knocked on her door she checked the judas first, then unfastened all the locks.
'Sorry,' she said. 'I suppose it's silly to go through all that—'
'That's all right.' I walked over to the coffee table, where a floral arrangement was a riot of color among all that black and white. I didn't know the names of all the flowers, but I recognized a couple of exotics, bird-of- paradise and antherium, and I figured I had to be looking at seventy-five dollars' worth of floral affection.
She came over and kissed me. She was wearing a yellow silk blouse over black harem pants, and her feet were bare. She said, 'See what I mean? They're prettier than yesterday.'
'If you say so.'
'Some of the buds are starting to open, I think that's what it is.'
Then I guess she picked up on the tone of what I'd said and she looked at me and asked if something was the matter.
'They're not my flowers,' I said.
'Did you pick out something different?'
'I didn't send any flowers, Elaine.'
It didn't take her long. I looked at her face and watched the wheels turn in her mind. She said, 'Jesus Christ. You're not kidding around, are you, Matt?'
'Of course not.'
'There was no note, but it never even occurred to me that they weren't from you. For God's sake, I thanked you for them. Yesterday. I called you, remember?'
'You didn't mention flowers.'
'I didn't?'
'Not specifically. You thanked me for being romantic.'
'What did you think I meant?'
'I don't know. I was a little groggy at the time, I'd dozed off in front of the TV set. I guess I just thought you were referring to the night we'd had together.'
'Well, I was,' she said. 'Sort of. The night and the flowers. In my mind they more or less went together.'
'There was no note?'
'Of course not. I figured you didn't bother with a note because you knew I'd know who sent them. And I did, but—'
'But I hadn't.'
'Evidently not.' She had paled at the news, but her color was back now. She said, 'I'm having a little trouble adjusting to this. I've spent the past twenty-four hours enjoying the flowers and thinking warm thoughts about you for having sent them, and now they're not your flowers at all. I suppose they're from him, aren't they?'
'Unless someone else sent them to you.'
She shook her head. 'My gentlemen friends don't send flowers, I'm afraid. God. I feel like throwing them out.'
'They're the same flowers they were ten minutes ago.'
'I know, but—'
'What time did they get here?'
'When did I call you, around five o'clock?'
'Something like that.'
'They came an hour or two before then.'
'Who delivered them?'
'I don't know.'
'Well, was it a kid from the florist or what? And did you happen to get the name of the florist? Was there anything on the wrapper?'
She was shaking her head. 'Nobody delivered them.'
