'We meet the same kinds of people, don't we.'
'Except the kind you meet have managed to get themselves to a shrink.'
'Unless they are a shrink,' Susan said.
'Then they give themselves a referral,' I said.
We were quiet. Enough snow had collected on Marlborough Street to reflect the street lights, and the darkness outside my bedroom window had become somewhat paler. Susan still had her hand flat over the pale scars on my chest.
Susan said, 'We're skating very carefully on the surface here, aren't we.'
'Yes.'
'That's because we're on very thin ice.'
'I know.'
'It's not like you to be so oblique,' she said.
'It's not like us to be on thin ice,' I said.
'I… I'll get past this,' Susan said.
'I know.'
'But you'll have to bear with me,' she said. 'Right now this is the best I can do.'
'I'll bear with you,' I said, 'until hell freezes over.'
'There would be some really thin ice,' Susan said.
She took her hand off my scars and put it against my face and raised up and kissed me hard. Hell could freeze solid if it wanted to.
chapter seven
I PICKED RITA Fiore up at Cone, Oakes and Baldwin, where she was their senior litigator, and took her to lunch at the Ritz Cafe. The maitre d' got her a table by the window and let me sit there too.
'Is this a three-martini lunch?' Rita said.
'If you can control yourself,' I said.
'I have always controlled myself,' Rita said. 'Except maybe with that Assistant DA when I was in Norfolk County.'
We each ordered a martini. I had one made with vodka, on the rocks, with a twist. Rita was a classicist. She had it straight up with gin and olives. Outside our window on Newbury Street the snow that had fallen last night had melted except in corners where there was always shade. Rita drank her first drink and held it in her mouth for a minute and closed her eyes. Then she swallowed.
'Good,' Rita said. 'What do you need?'
'Maybe I've missed you,' I said.
'Yeah, and maybe you're going to guzzle down two martinis and come on to me.'
'In the Ritz Cafe?' I said.
'Of course not,' Rita said. 'So what do you want?'
'Francis Ronan,' I said.
Rita paused with her glass halfway to her lips. She leaned back in her chair and looked at me.
'You're not going to law school.'
'No.'
She kept looking at me. Then, as if she finally realized that she was holding it, she raised her martini glass and took another swallow and put the glass down.
'Working for or against?' she said.
'Probably against,' I said.
'That figures,' Rita said.
'Why does that figure?' I said.
'Sir Lancelot asks you about a dragon, you don't figure they're working together.'
'I'm Sir Lancelot?'
'You think you are.'
'Which makes Francis Ronan a dragon.'
'Not so loud,' Rita said.
'He has people everywhere?' I said.
'He knows a lot of people and some of them are the kind that have lunch here.'
