Belson shook his head. “Nope,” he said, “not yet.” He finished the bottle of beer.
“Belmont cops?”
“They said they could help out a little.”
“You got anybody at Julie Wells’s apartment?”
“Yeah. And we check in at the agency regular. She ain’t there.”
I said, “You want a ride to your car?”
He nodded, and I went around the block and dropped him off on the street behind Mingo’s house. “You stumble across anything, you might want to give us a buzz,” Belson said as he got out.
“Yeah,” I said. “I might.”
He said, “Thanks for the beer,” and closed my door, and I pulled away. It was almost an hour and a half in the snow and the near-motionless rush hour until I got to my apartment. Susan was there.
“I had an Adolescent Development Workshop at B.U. this afternoon, and when I got out it was too bad to drive home, so I left my car in the lot and walked down,” she said.
“You missed a golden opportunity,” I said.
“For what?”
“To take off all your clothes and make a martini and surprise me at the door.”
“I thought of that,” Susan said, “but you don’t like martinis.”
“Oh,” I said.
“But I made a fire,” she said. “And we could have a drink in front of it.”
“Or something,” I said. I picked her up and hugged her.
She shook her head. “They were talking about you all day today,” she said.
“At the workshop on adolescent development?”
She nodded and smiled her fallen-seraph smile at me. “You exhibit every symptom,” she said.
I put her down and we went to the kitchen. “Let us see what there is to eat,” I said. “Maybe pulverized rhino horn with a dash of Spanish fly.”
“You whip up something, snooks,” she said. “I’m going to take a bath. And maybe rinse out the pantyhose in your sink.”
“A man’s work is never done,” I said. I looked in the refrigerator. There was Molson Golden Ale on the bottom shelf. If we were snowbound, at least I had staples on hand. In the vegetable keeper there were some fresh basil leaves and a bunch of parsley I’d bought in Quincy Market. It was a little limp but still serviceable. I opened a Molson. I could hear the water running in the bathroom. I raised the bottle of ale, and said, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” in a loud voice.
Susan yelled back, “Why don’t you make me a gimlet, blue eyes, and I’ll drink it when I get out. Ten minutes.”
“Okay.”
In the freezer was chopped broccoli in a twenty-ounce bag. I took it out. I got out a large blue pot and boiled four quarts of water, and a smaller saucepan with a steamer rack and boiled about a cup of water. While it was coming to a boil I put two garlic cloves in my Cuisinart along with a handful of parsley and a handful of basil and some kosher salt and some oil and a handful of shelled pistachios and I blended them smooth. Susan had given me the Cuisinart for my birthday, and I used it whenever I could. I thought it was kind of a silly toy, but she’d loved giving it to me and I’d never tell. When the water boiled, I shut off both pots. I could hear Susan sloshing around in the tub. The door was ajar, and I went over and stuck my head in. She lay on her back with her hair pinned up and her naked body glistening in the water.
“Not bad,” I said, “for a broad your age.”
“I knew you’d peek,” she said. “Voyeurism, a typical stage in adolescent development.”
“Not bad, actually, for a broad of anyone’s age,” I said.
“Go make the gimlet now,” she said. “I’m getting out.”
“Gin or vodka?” I said.
“Gin.”
“Animal,” I said.
I went back to the kitchen and mixed five parts gin to one part Rose’s limejuice in a pitcher and stirred it with ice and poured it into a glass with two icecubes. Susan came into the kitchen as I finished, wearing the half-sleeved silk shaving robe she’d given me last Christmas, which I never wore, but which she did when she came and stayed. It was maroon with black piping and a black belt. When I tried it on, I looked like Bruce Lee. She didn’t.
She sat on one of my kitchen stools and sipped her gimlet. Her hair was up and she had no make-up and her face was shiny. She looked fifteen, except for the marks of age and character around her eyes and mouth. They added.
I had another Molson and brought my two pots to a boil again. In the big one I put a pound of spaghetti. In the small one with the steamer rack I put the frozen broccoli. I set the timer for nine minutes.
“Shall we dine before the fire?” I said.
“Certainly.”
