'Amscray,' she said.
I pulled my head out of the shower and went back to the bedroom and stood looking at the fire. My shotgun was leaning on the wall next to my place at the table, and the.9 mm Browning was neatly arranged beside the plastic knife and spoon. The Death Dragons hadn't bothered me again. But that didn't mean they wouldn't. And they probably didn't know about Concord. But that didn't mean they wouldn't, either.
We sat at the table under the low ceiling in the old house with the fire dancing in the fireplace and sipped our champagne. The cold supper lay waiting before us, and our dog was asleep on the bed.
'Amscray?' I said.
'Un huh.'
'From a Harvard Ph.D.?'
'I minored in pig Latin,' Susan said.
She was wearing a big white terrycloth robe that she'd brought from home, and after her shower, without makeup, her face was like a child's. Albeit a very wised-up child.
'I know just what you must have looked like,' I said.
'When you were a little girl.'
'And I can't imagine you,' she said, 'as a little boy.'
I smiled at her.
'Me either,' I said.
We ate some chicken.
'Any progress in Port City?' she said.
'Well,' I said, 'I don't know if it's progress, but it's something.'
I got up and went to my jacket, where it was hanging in the closet. I fished the pictures of Craig Sampson and the mystery guest and gave them to Susan. She looked at them, and then got up and went to the light and looked at them more closely. Then she came back and sat down and handed me the pictures. She had an odd, half-amused look on her face.
'I think that's Rikki Wu,' Susan said.
'Why?'
Susan smiled.
'You'll like this,' she said.
'I was at dinner one night with Veronica Blosser and Naomi Selkirk and Rikki. Probably eight months ago. At Naomi's house. We were planning a fund-raiser for the theater.'
'Sorry I missed it.'
'Oh, you'd have gone crazy,' Susan said.
'And we were all through with the fund-raiser part and the conversation was flagging, and Naomi, who can't stand a moment's silence, said to Rikki, 'Oh darling you look so fabulous, what do you do? How do you keep looking so fabulous?' And Rikki tells us what she does.'
Susan smiled again as she thought about it.
'For Rikki, looking fabulous is a full-time career: creams, unguents, potions, lotions, jellies and jams, personal trainers, massage therapists, vitamins, blah blah blah. I won't bore you with it all, but, for example, she does a series of contraction exercises to strengthen the vaginal canal.'
'How strong does it have to be?' I said.
'Strong enough to keep your husband.'
'Great idea,' I said.
'Just tighten up on him and he's yours till you relax.'
'Fabulous,' Susan said.
'Now, here's the part that matters. She said to us, 'Girls, any man who tells you he likes hair on a woman's body is lying to you.' And Veronica says, 'Really? Do you mean any hair?' And Rikki says, 'Any hair.' And Naomi looks kind of uncomfortable, which makes me think something about Naomi's situation, hirsute wise but that's not germane. So I said to her, 'So what do you do, Rikki?' and she said, 'Electrolysis.' And we all say, 'Electrolysis? Everywhere?' and Rikki nods like a doctor confirming a diagnosis and says, 'Everywhere. My flower is like a polished pearl.'
' 'Flower?'
'Flower.'
'Funny, I thought I was the only one that called it that.'
'I've heard what you call it,' Susan said.
'The electrolysis took her two years.'
'She doesn't need that exercise,' I said.
'Two years of electrolysis would tighten up anybody's vaginal canal.'
