Laura thought about that for a minute, while I thought about how nice it was to sit there and watch her think. Watching Laura do just about anything was high on my list of favorite activities. She’d changed from her school clothes into tight blue jeans, a long- sleeve red t-shirt and tennis shoes. I was speculating about whether she was wearing sexy red underwear when she said, “Okay, but what about this Razor person? What if he had pulled a knife on you?”
“It would have had to have been a really little knife for me not to have noticed it.”
“You know what I mean,” she said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I do. I’m just trying to think of the best way of answering you without coming across as Mr. Macho.”
“I know you’re not into that nonsense, Jeremy.”
We were both quiet for a minute, and then she said, “I know you can take care of yourself. I mean, you’re big and you’re strong and you’re fast, so I assume you’re able to defend yourself. But I know all that in the abstract. I’ve never actually seen you in a dangerous situation, so I’ve never even had a mental image of that. Now, though, I have a picture of you being surrounded by a bunch of gang kids, and it . . .well, it frightens me.”
She put her hand over mine as she continued.
“Jeremy, I’m not trying to tell you not to do your job or how to do your job or anything else about your job. I just . . . I just know that I love sitting here with you. I love being with you. We’ve never really talked about your job, about the people you come into contact with on your cases. I guess when I thought about it at all, I just sort of allowed myself to assume that you spent your days looking for runaway kids or verifying someone’s resume for a potential employer or, oh, I don’t know, maybe giving some business owner advice on a security system. Stuff like that.”
“Believe me,” I said, “I spend a lot more time doing those things than I do dealing with people like Razor.”
“But sometimes you can’t avoid people like Razor.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Sometimes I can’t avoid people like Razor.”
We sat there together for another minute, holding hands, neither of us saying anything. Then Laura gave my hand a squeeze and said, “Wanna talk about something else?”
“Not if it means we’re leaving this hanging,” I said. “I don’t want us to have things we can’t talk about.”
“Neither do I,” she said. “And we’re not leaving anything hanging. If you were still teaching, I’d probably worry about you getting caught up in another fight at school, and if you were a construction worker, I’d worry about you getting hurt in an accident, and if you were an accountant, I’d worry about, oh, maybe a paper cut.”
“I think I see a trend developing here,” I said.
She squeezed my hand again and said, “I’m going to worry about you. The worrying part comes with the liking you a lot part. You okay with that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m okay with it.”
“Good,” she said. She tucked her legs up under her and turned sideways a little so she was facing me. “On another matter, I did something today that I hope you won’t mind.”
“What sort of thing that you hope I won’t mind did you do?”
“I sort of committed us to attending a certain, um, activity.”
“If you’re talking about a threesome with that sexy saleswoman at the Victoria’s Secret in the mall,” I said, “my position remains firm.”
Laura’s eyes got that twinkle, and she said, “We’ll discuss your firmness a little later, if you’re lucky, but the activity I’m talking about is a Halloween party at Ginny Townsend’s. Ginny teaches down the hall from me, and she specifically extended the invitation to both of us.”
“Been braggin’ on me, huh?”
“I’ll take the Fifth on that. Anyway, I didn’t know how you felt about costume parties, so I told her I thought we’d be able to attend, but that I’d have to talk to you about it.”
“Well,” I said, “I guess I could dust off the old Superman outfit.”
“So you’re saying you’ll go, just like that?”
“You seem a little disappointed,” I said. “Did I miss something?”
“No,” said Laura. “It’s just that, if you weren’t too sure about the party, I was prepared to use a little persuasion.”
“Is there any chance that that persuasion would involve sexy red underwear?” I asked.
She smiled and stood up and came over and sat on my lap. She leaned her face close to mine and whispered in my ear, “Oh, most definitely.”
Then she straightened up a bit and said, “But about that Superman outfit.”
“You don’t think I should go as the ultimate superhero?”
Slowly, Laura swiveled around on my lap, straddling me. She wrapped her arms around my neck and gave me a long, lingering kiss. Then she sat back, smiled again and said, “Actually, I had something else in mind for the party.”
And then she giggled.
Just a little.
Chapter 26
If T-Man did deign to grant me an audience, I wasn’t sure exactly how he would communicate that information to me. He could just get a message to me through Anthony, of course, or he could call me. I’d given Larretta and Anthony my home, office and cell phone numbers. Would I get an e-mail? Was T-Man into technology? Or maybe I’d find a
