We went into the elegant old tavern with its polished wood floors and its colonial colors, and paintings of stern but good men on the walls. We sat at a trestle table, as far as we could get from the children's tour groups, and ordered. Our waitress had on the implacable mobcap and long dress, adorned with a white apron.
'Might I have a mug of nut brown ale?' I said.
'We got Heineken, Michelob, Sam Adams, Miller Lite, Budweiser, and Rolling Rock.'
I had a Rolling Rock, Susan had a glass of iced tea.
'How's Frank?' Susan said.
'He's awake more of the time now,' I said. 'But he has no memory of being shot, and still no movement in his legs.'
'Does he know about his wife being a prostitute?'
'No.'
'Does he know anything?'
'He knows that Quirk and I are working on it.'
'What about the ex-boyfriend?'
'He's a little hard to talk with,' I said. 'Being as he lives in what appears to be some sort of three-story bunker in the Hispanic ghetto in Proctor.'
'I thought all of Proctor was an Hispanic ghetto,' Susan said.
'San Juan Hill is a sub-ghetto,' I said.
'Tell me about it,' Susan said.
Which, with an interruption to order chicken pie for me, and a tossed salad, dressing on the side, for Susan, I did.
'And you have your translator, this Rollo man?'
'Chollo,' I said.
'Yes. Is he good?'
'Very,' I said.
'Does Frank know any of this?' Susan said.
'No. Even if I told him he'd forget it.'
'When you tell him, how will he be?'
'He'll manage,' I said. 'Belson's a tough guy and he had a long unhappy first marriage, so he learned how to dull his feelings.'
Susan smiled.
'Might be why he was always such a good cop,' she said. 'The wound and the bow.'
'Disability of some kind helps strengthen us in other areas?'
Susan nodded. The waitress brought Susan her salad, and me the pot pie and another beer. Susan took a spray of red lettuce leaf from her salad and dipped it delicately into the dressing on the side and nibbled on the end of it.
'Save some room for dessert,' I said.
'Don't you think the romantic make-believe about having no past should have bothered Frank? Wouldn't it strike you as odd? It sounds cute, but can you imagine us never saying anything about before?'
'Well,' I said, 'I don't know much about your ex-husband.'
'Yes, but you know I have one.'
I nodded.
'Belson's a smart cop, and he's been one for a long time,' I said. 'It would strike him as odd too.'
'If there is a silence,' Susan said, 'it is often the result of an unspoken conspiracy, maybe even an unconscious conspiracy to keep something under cover.'
'You think Belson knew?' I said.
'He may not even know what she's concealing, only that there's something, and he doesn't want either of them to have to look.'
The waitress came by to see if everything was all right. We said yes, and Susan ordered a chicken sandwich, plain, no mayo, just bread and sliced chicken. I raised my eyebrows.
'This is nearly gluttonous,' I said. 'A salad and a chicken sandwich?'
'The sandwich is for the baby,' Susan said, 'on the ride home.'
'Of course,' I said.
'Sometimes,' Susan said, 'when people have been, ah, unlucky in love, so to speak, they are so fragile, and so untrusting of themselves, or of the experience, that they want everything to remain in stasis. Be very careful. Take no chances. You know? So they ask no questions.'
