when they were ready. A mutual trust. Their very private conversations had provided insights into each other's souls.
'You seemed a little unsettled when you got here,' Tony said, as the waiter finished pouring the wine. His grin was beautiful and boyish. Toothpaste-commercial white, yet genuine as Tony himself. 'Still worried about someone trespassing in your apartment?'
'Not anymore.' Jill smiled, wondering if she should tell him about Madeline. Mad Madeline.
Actually mad?
Better to say nothing. Tony, handsome and perfectly normal Tony, might think she, Jill, was the one with the overactive imagination. The paranoid tendencies.
Maybe I am the mad one.
But she knew she hadn't imagined Madeline.
And somewhere deep in her mind she knew she couldn't entirely dismiss Madeline's mad tale.
Somewhere.
Far away.
The wine was relaxing her, making her feel warm inside. So warm and safe.
With Tony.
Over coffee at the Lotus Diner, Quinn and Linda made easy small talk. The evening was warm, but it was cool in the diner and unusually quiet.
It hadn't taken long before Quinn felt totally comfortable talking with Linda, and she seemed comfortable talking with him. Strangely, the coffee cups between them helped. They were similar to other containers of liquid from the hell they'd both visited, reminders of who they'd been, and who they were. The present, where the liquid containers had handles, was infinitely better than the past, and getting better.
Quinn hadn't taken a sip of his coffee in a long time. He sat toying with the warm cup, enjoying the scent of the coffee and the heat on his fingertips. 'It was a good idea, meeting here tonight.'
'I think so,' Linda said. She was wearing a dark blouse, pale Levi's that she had the figure for, no jewelry except for four or five thin silver loop bracelets that jangled together ever so faintly whenever she lifted her right arm to sip coffee.
There were only a few other people in the diner, and no one was paying them the slightest attention. Outside the streaked window next to their booth, traffic on Amsterdam had slacked off and there weren't so many pedestrians-the city as relaxed as it ever got. Across the street, a woman waving a folded newspaper lured a cab to the curb. She opened its rear door and climbed in. The white of the newspaper showed behind the cab's reflecting windows as it drove away.
'My place is within easy walking distance of here,' Quinn said.
Linda smiled. 'Seeing that woman hail a cab make you think of that?'
Quinn looked into her eyes, not smiling. 'You made me think of that.'
Linda felt a stirring she hadn't experienced in years. She knew they could both feel their relationship shifting toward the tipping point and wondered if Quinn was as nervous about it as she was. Nervous and a little bit afraid. He couldn't be as afraid. He'd been the one who'd nudged things in a new and faster direction. Linda's heart wouldn't slow down.
Her smile faded and she raised a hand to run her fingertips lightly along the contours of his face, like a blind woman assessing someone's true self.
'I'll get the check,' she said.
'Wouldn't think of it,' Quinn told her.
'No, you wouldn't.'
She thought that from this point on it wouldn't matter much which of them paid.
25
'Pearl's pissed off,' Ed Greeve said to his boss. 'Has been ever since we made sure she knew about Linda Chavesky.'
'That's a good way for her to be,' Nobbler said from behind his desk. He scratched his fleshy neck. 'Walking around pissed off and with her mind not on her work.'
Harsh morning light streamed in through the office window, making the brightly illuminated half of Nobbler's face look red and raw, as if he'd shaved way too close and planed the skin.
'Think we might be able to flip her?' Greeve asked. 'Get her to let us know what Quinn's up to?'
Nobbler thought for a few seconds and shook his head. 'Not that one.'
'A woman scorned,' Greeve reminded Nobbler.
Nobbler smiled. 'Remember, she's the one who dumped Quinn.'
'I will say she's trying to get over him. Got herself a replacement. Guy named Milton Kahn, who's been humping her heavy.'
'Well, well…' Nobbler drummed the plump fingertips of his right hand on the desk and looked off into the brilliant light, maybe calling up the image of Pearl and whoever this Milton Kahn was.
'Pearl's probably a sexual dynamo,' Greeve said.
'The type,' Nobbler agreed. 'Lucky Milton Kahn.'
He sat back in his chair, made a tent with his fingers, and tapped their soft tips lightly together.
'Pearl's got this mother in a retirement home,' Greeve said. 'Way I got it, she and another old broad there set up Pearl with this Kahn guy, and the chemistry was there. Matchmaker moms. Always a pain in the ass.'
'You never had a wife.'
'Other peoples',' Greeve said.
'Hardly counts.'
'Counts where it counts, depending on who's counting.'
Nobbler didn't want to get into that kind of conversation with Greeve. The guy was a mystery anyway, even without going all Zenlike. 'This Kahn character, is he a player?'
Greeve knew what Nobbler meant. Might Milton Kahn develop into a problem? 'Naw, what he is is a dermatologist.'
'It gets better and better,' Nobbler said.
'I'll tell you something else I think,' Greeve said. 'My feeling is they might be humping like crazy, but they're not in love.'
'How the hell would you know that?'
'I can just tell. It's not the real thing.'
Nobbler gave him an incredulous look. 'Christ on a stick! What are you, a romance columnist?'
'I'm somebody who knows people.'
'He's humping her,' Nobbler said. 'That's good enough for me.' He tapped his fingertips together faster and faster, as if to demonstrate.
Greeve might have shaken his head in disapproval as he left the office, or it might have been Nobbler's imagination.
Jill had never been in the main library. After climbing stone steps to the entrance, she found herself in a vast atrium of richly veined cream-colored marble with tall columns. The floor was also marble. A wide stairway led to upper floors. There was a mezzanine with a railing high above. A girl about ten was leaning over the railing looking down at her. She smiled at Jill, then ducked back out of sight. People walked past, their footsteps and voices echoing in the vastness.
Jill found a spot out of the flow of foot traffic and looked around.
There was no sign of Madeline. Or the woman who called herself Madeline. As far as Jill knew, the woman might be someone other than she said she was, someone so mentally deranged she might be imagining a different identity as well as the bizarre story she'd told.
Or was it so bizarre? When Madeline told it to Jill it seemed to possess a stubborn if frightening truth that kept finding its way to the surface. Jill had believed her enough to be afraid, to need to know more. Which was why
