At one point, she was bent far over, her back to him, palms and knees on the floor. He looked at her, and felt a sudden physical desire, like a knife twisting low in his abdomen. He leaned forward and smacked her backside instead. It didn’t help.
He watched her. She straightened, keeping her back to him, and adjusted the robe, then walked through the apartment to the kitchen. He followed her.
It was an expensive apartment in an expensive building on an expensive block in the East Sixties. Inside the front door was a foyer, with a mirror and a table and a closet and an oriental rug. To the left, two steps led down between potted plants to the living room. More plants were spotted along the walls. There was other furniture, but the room was dominated by a long black coffee table and a longer white sofa.
In the right-hand wall, glass-paned double doors led to a dining room. Of the very few dining rooms left in Manhattan, this was one of the last. It was done like a traditional dining room, with the warm, wood table and chairs, the side tables, the glass-doored shelving lined with tumblers and brandy snifters and pilsner glasses, even the yellow-bulbed chandelier hanging over the table.
Another right turn from the dining room led to the kitchen. There was a swinging door. The girl pushed through it, and Parker followed her. He sat down at the table and looked up at the white-faced black-fingered clock on the white wall. Nearly five-thirty. The kitchen window showed black, but dawn wasn’t too far away.
The girl opened a cupboard door and took down an electric coffee maker. She had to hunt around for the cord. Her face was expressionless, her movements neither slow nor fast, but she carefully kept from looking at him, and when she found the cord she dropped it on the floor.
Stooping to pick it up, she exposed her breasts to him. They were pale, like her belly, full, red tipped, soft looking. She didn’t even know she’d done it. She was afraid for her life. She wasn’t thinking about her body at all.
While the coffee was making, she stood gazing unseeing at the pot. He had to tell her when it was ready.
She got him a cup. He said, “Get two.” She did, and poured them coffee, and sat down across from him not looking at him.
“Lynn,” he said. His voice was harsh, but soft.
She raised her eyes, as though they were being hauled up by pulleys. She looked at him. “I had to,” she whispered.
He said, “Where’s Mal?”
She shook her head. “Gone. Moved out.”
“Where:-’”
“I don’t know. Honest to God.”
“When?”
“Three months ago.”
He sipped at the coffee. It was stronger than he liked, but that was all right. He shouldn’t have come here.
Four in the morning, at the hotel, all of a sudden he’d been awake. And with the vodka still strong in him. So he’d come straight here.
It was just as well Mal was gone. When he met up with Mal, he didn’t want any vodka in him.
He lit a cigarette, drank more coffee. He said, “Who pays the rent?”
“Mal,” she said.
He got to his feet without a word, stepped swiftly through the swinging door to the dining room. He looked to the left, through the glass doors into the living room, then moved to his right, and shoved open the other door. He reached quickly in and switched on the light.
The bedroom was empty. He strode across and checked the bathroom, and it was empty, too.
Back in the bedroom, he noticed Lynn standing in the doorway, looking at him. He opened the closet. Dresses and skirts and blouses and sweaters. Women’s shoes on the floor. He went over to the dresser, looked quickly through the drawers. Only female things.
He shook his head. He looked at her, still watching him from the doorway. “You live alone?”
She nodded.
“And Mal pays the rent?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Let’s go back to the kitchen.”
Again, she led the way. He switched off the bedroom light and followed.
They finished their coffee in silence, and then he said, “Why?”
She jumped, startled, as shaken up as if a firecracker had gone off next to her ear. She gaped at him, and slowly her eyes focused, and she said, “What? I don’t — I don’t know what you mean.”
He waved a hand, impatiently. “The rent,” he said.
“Oh.” She nodded, and brought her hands up to her face. They stayed there a few seconds, and then she inhaled shudder-ingly and lowered her hands again. Her face was no longer expressionless. Now it was ravaged. It was as though invisible weights were sewn to her cheeks, dragging the whole face down. “A payoff, I guess,” she said. Her tone was hopeless, like before.
“Yeah,” he said. He sounded mad again. He flipped his cigarette across the room into the sink. It sputtered,
