nearly closed eye.
“No one here but you and me,” I said. “I won’t tell, you have my word on it, but I have to be sure. You said it was Vincent.”
She started to cry again. Not boo hoo, more sniff sniff, but still crying. She seemed to be hiding behind the cold compress.
“Dip that in the ice water,” I said. “It was, wasn’t it?”
She cried some more.
“Damn it, KC, yes or no? You don’t have to speak. Just nod. You said it was Vincent.”
Nod.
“Thank you,” I said.
We were quiet. She sniffled a little more and stopped.
“Will you kill him for me?” she said.
“No,” I said. “But I’ll make sure he leaves you alone.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.
“I think he’s a little crazy,” she said. “You know how it’s crazy time when a romance breaks up.”
“Um hmm.”
“I can count on you, can’t I?”
“Yes.”
“I feel as if I’ve known you all my life.”
“You haven’t,” I said, “and you’re a little crazy yourself, right now. But you’ll be better.”
“Of course I’m crazy,” she said. “What I’ve gone through. I have a right to be crazy.”
“Of course you do,” I said. “But only for a while.”
The social worker stuck her head around the partly open door.
“Can I come in?” she said.
“Tell her yes,” KC said to me.
“Come in,” I said.
The social worker was a thin-faced black-haired woman wearing round glasses with green rims.
“I’m Amy Coulter,” she said, “from Social Services. Dr. Tripp asked me to come and see you.”
“Sit down,” I said. “I’m leaving anyway.”
“Where are you going?” KC said.
“Home,” I said. “Sleep.”
“You’ll come back?”
“Like esophageal reflux,” I said.
I always tried to make my similes appropriate to the ambiance. Surprisingly neither Amy Coulter nor KC remarked on it. Too bad Dr. Tripp wasn’t there. She’d appreciate my kind of quality medical humor.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I stopped for coffee and a couple of donuts, and then went straight to Susan’s house and let myself into her living space. I submitted to five minutes or so of lapping and jumping about from Pearl before I got her quieted down enough so I could take off my clothes and lie on the bed in my shorts. Always game for a nap, Pearl jumped up on the bed, turned around several times, and got ready to lie down beside me. I was asleep before she did. When I woke up Pearl was gone. I looked at my watch. It was 6:20 in the evening. I got up and walked around the house. I noticed that Susan’s purse was on the front hall table, and Pearl’s leash was gone. I went back into the bedroom and took a long shower and shaved in the shower and put on clean clothes from the wardrobe stash I kept at Susan’s place, and was pouring two ounces of Dewar’s over a lot of ice in a tall glass when Pearl and Susan came back from their walk. Pearl bounded about the way she does when she knows supper is imminent, and Susan, more restrained, came over and gave me a kiss on the mouth.
“Good to see you up and about,” Susan said. “When I came up from the office and found you I thought you might be dead.”
I poured club soda over the ice in my tall glass, getting it as close to the top as I could, without it being so full I couldn’t pick it up without spilling.
“Did you have a plan for how to deal with that?” I said.
“If you were still dead when I came back from walking the baby,” Susan said, “I was going to call someone.”
I got a bag of Kibbles ‘N Bits dog food out of the cupboard and put a cup and a half’s worth into Pearl’s bowl. I knew it was Pearl’s bowl because it said Pearl in violet script on the outside.
Susan said, “She likes it with cheese, remember.”
