“I… I just don’t think I can cope if I don’t know you’re there.”
“Where?” I said.
“You know, there for me.”
“As I said, that’s sort of my profession.”
“You mean you’re there for anyone who hires you.”
“More or less,” I said.
She was taking in more wine than chowder, which was a shame because the chowder at Legal was very good. I finished my lobster salad.
“When you were sitting by my bedside,” KC said, “after the… that awful thing happened to me, I thought maybe I might be more than just someone who had hired you to be there.”
I didn’t like the way this conversation was going.
“Part of the service,” I said.
She put her hand out and placed it firmly on top of mine, and stared into my eyes.
“God damn it,” she said, “can’t you see I love you?”
I felt like I’d wandered into a remake of
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I rescued you from a bad situation. And you need to be in love with someone to feel secure and you don’t have anyone else to love at the moment, and I’m handy and you think I’m it.”
“Don’t tell me what I feel,” she said.
“Are you still seeing the therapist Susan recommended?”
“Drive all the way to Providence twice a week to talk about my father? I don’t think so.”
“Susan can get you someone up here.”
“You think I’m crazy?”
“I think you need help in figuring out who to love and who to trust and what you need.”
“Talk talk talk. Why can’t men ever simply feel?”
“You need help in not generalizing, too,” I said.
She stood up so suddenly that she knocked over her empty wine glass. She came around the table and threw her arms around me and kissed me on the mouth. I sat stock still feeling like a virgin under siege. Flight seemed unbecoming. KC was pushing the kiss as hard as a kiss can be pushed. I remained calm. When she broke for air she leaned her head back and stared into my eyes some more.
“I love you, you bastard,” she said. “Don’t you understand that I love you.”
“If you don’t let go of me,” I said, “and sit back down, I will hit you.”
She straightened up as if I actually had hit her, and stared at me, and began to cry. Sobbing loudly, she turned and ran from the restaurant. Everyone in the place watched her leave, and then looked at me with either disapproval (almost all of the women, some of the men) or sympathy (several of the men, one woman). My waitress remained unperturbed. She brought me the check.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The post office in Beecham, Maine, was located in one corner of a variety store in a small weathered-shingle building at the top of a short hill which led down to the harbor. The coast of Maine was tourist country, and a lot of shopkeepers had adopted a kind of stage Yankee persona in order to fulfill expectations.
“I’m looking for Last Stand Systems,” I said.
The shopkeeper/postmaster was a fat old guy wearing a collar-less blue and white striped shirt, and big blue jeans held up by red suspenders.
“In town here,” he said.
As he answered me he eyed Hawk. The look wasn’t suspicious exactly, it was more the look you give to an exotic animal that has unexpectedly appeared. The way he might have looked if I’d come in with an ocelot on a leash.
“Where in town?”
“Out the Buxton Road,” he said.
“Does it have an address?” I said.
“Beecham, Maine.”
The shopkeeper was seated on one of four stools bolted to the floor in front of a marble-topped soda fountain, his fat legs dangling, his fat ankles showing sockless above a pair of moccasins. There were donuts under a glass dome, and straws and napkins in chrome dispensers.
“Does it have a number on it?” I said.
“Nope.”
“If I went out the Buxton Road how would I recognize it?”
“See the sign out front.”
