She switched on the TV, told him to sit on a beige plastic couch with factory-embroidered pink cushions in each corner, handed over a large remote control and went off to shower and change. A newscaster appeared, adjusted his cuffs, bowed and dramatically recited headlines. They all sounded bad. De Gier pressed the remote's mute button. The first clip was war: He watched hungry-looking soldiers in summer uniforms getting shot at in a winter landscape. A beautiful woman in an ofF-the-shoulder dress danced about a cruise ship where fat men laughed as impeccable waiters heaped more food on their plates. The newscaster reappeared to smile briefly. Old folks in a home were beaten by their attendants. A hidden camera showed the pictures in black and white. The black-and-white old people screamed soundlessly as leering attendants forced them to sign papers. The newscaster nodded. A beautiful woman ate breakfast cereal on a terrace overlooking a lake. She closed her eyes and showed the tip of her tongue after daintily chewing her crispy breakfast. The newscaster smiled, then faded as the screen was filled by a burning bus under palm trees, then by mangled bodies of children at the side of the road. The newscaster came back. De Gier read his lips. 'More news in a moment.' A compact car looking like any other compact, but clean and polished, was driven by a beautiful woman in an evening gown and gloves up to her elbows. The woman pursed her lips as if waiting for a kiss while she made her vehicle accelerate effortlessly in an empty city street. More newscaster's smiles before a two-story house slid down a hill's steep slope towards cars buried up to their roofs in mud.
De Gier pressed the remote's power button.
He stretched out on the couch and tried to rest his eyes by looking at a bouquet of silk roses in a bright green vase on a mirrored coffee table, then turned on his back so that he could look at the ceiling.
Maggie woke him up. 'You snore.'
It was two hours later.
De Gier sat up and apologized. 'Why didn't you wake me?'
'You probably have jet lag. I thought you needed rest but you were making such a racket. Were you choking on your mustache?'
She had made gin and tonics decorated with slices of orange.
They toasted each other.
De Gier told her the snoring might be due to a recent operation. His nose had been damaged during an arrest some years ago and hadn't healed well. A surgeon broke it again to open up the left nostril. Both nostrils were sometimes blocked now. He 'would have to go back. Maybe have another operation.
She was interested. 'When did this happen?'
He tried to remember. 'Two months ago?'
'You don't know exactly?' She looked concerned.
De Gier laughed.
She stirred her gin and tonic. 'What's so funny?'
'Nothing,' de Gier said. 'But before an operation a hospital will check a patient's blood. If there is AIDS it will inform the patient.'
'So you were clean,' Maggie said.
He wasn't sure. The AIDS virus takes sixty days to become visible in testing.
'And you had been active within the sixty days before your nose job?'
He had been active.
Maggie sighed. 'So have I.'
She stood looking down at him. 'My guy is married. A safe and solid kind of a guy. His wife has lymph cancer. He can't divorce her.'
'Ah,' de Gier said.
'So you were active with what kind of person?'
'With a prostitute,' de Gier said. 'Kind of high class.
The type that is careful.'
Maggie said prostitution was illegal. She knew cops who protected prostitutes, so they got free service.
De Gier said prostitution was legal in Holland. He had paid. Maggie liked that. Nobody likes to give free service. 'Am I right?'
'You are right,' de Gier said.
'You sure you paid?'
He nodded. 'Top guilder.'
'You do that often?'
De Gier said he did not. Once during three months. He was getting older.
'And you don't have girlfriends?'
He shook his head. 'They always want to get married.'
'Yes,' Maggie said. 'We can't always ride tall horses.' She poured more gin, pushed The Road Warrior into her VCR and sat down next to de Gier on the beige plastic couch.
During the movie, which he liked, he was aware of her body in the semitransparent robe. She had untied her ponytail. He thought she looked very inviting and attractive.
She stopped the movie when de Gier said he'd like to see the man in longjohns fly his machine again, 'or whatever it was, the thing with the blade.' He also had to go to the bathroom. 'Take a shower,' Maggie said. 'Wrap yourself in a towel afterward. I put out a huge one. You can shave too if you like. There is gear next to the washstand; there's nice aftershave, too.'
'I could see you as Road Warrior,' Maggie said when he came back, 'in leather, and with that riot gun pistol, and the boots, driving hot rods across endless deserts. The lonely hero to be comforted by the lady in white.'
She had refilled their glasses. They both began to slur their words while commenting on the movie's final and spectacular battle between odd-looking automobiles. Maggie was sad when the lady in white, who manipulated a flame thrower from the top of a tank truck driven by Mel Gibson, was killed by an arrow.
'If that was me, we couldn't do it.'
The movie ended. Maggie led de Gier to her bedroom. His towel slipped off. Her robe slipped off too.
'Don't we look nice?' Maggie whispered.
He thought they might have just one more drink.
When she came back with the refilled glasses he asked whether she had seen a Road Warrior look-alike in the park the day that Bert Termeer got killed.
'I sure did,' Maggie said. 'It should have been you.'
'How many?'
'Just one.' She laughed. 'Should have been two and you would have been the other and you would have done something bad and I would have arrested you and dragged you along behind me.'
De Gier made himself smile at that S amp;M scene. 'Did you see him from close by?'
'No.' She leaned over to kiss his cheek and sniffed the aftershave. 'My favorite. Herbal. You like herbal?'
De Gier didn't. 'Sure.'
'I was on my horse,' Maggie said. 'I had to be everywhere. There were all these kids. Falling in the pond. Trying to prick holes in the balloons of the dinosaur. There was that loud tuba thumping that makes Jagger prance and rear.'
They sat on the double bed, sipping their gins, admiring each other's bodies. She complimented him on his wide chest. He complimented her on her beautiful bosom.
They put their drinks down and lay back, just to relax for a moment, before getting 'serious,' Maggie said.
He went back to the bathroom, where he had left his clothes.
'You brought a condom?' Maggie asked. 'How thoughtful.' She frowned. 'Always ready, eh?' Her smile came back. 'Shall I put it on?' She touched him and laughed at the prompt reaction. 'Instant hydraulics!'
'Powerful.' She played some more, too roughly. The condom broke. 'You think it is all right?' she asked. 'I am wearing something.'
He thought it might be all right. He didn't sound sure.
Her hand slipped away. They lay back again, not touching.
His eyelids dropped. He was snoring again, and she turned him on his side and made her breasts caress his
