Tight-lipped, she looked at him, making him see-tryingto make him see-that, goddamn it, this really wasn't a game to her. Not at all.
He must have seen some of this; he breathed out a sigh and looked around for an invisible audience like the kind Danny Traub carried around with him. Healy said, 'All right, come on.' He turned and walked quickly back inside the theater, Rune trotting to keep up with him.
Suddenly he stopped and turned. He spoke as if the words were lines in a high school play and he was an actor of Nicole's ability. 'I know I didn't call like I said I would. And you don't have to, if you don't want to. But I was thinking, tomorrow night-it's my day off-maybe we could go out.'
What a place to ask her out on a date! A bombed-out porno theater.
She didn't give him time to be embarrassed about his delivery. She smiled and said, 'Ah graciously accept yo chahming invitation. Nahn, shall we say?'
He stared at her, totally lost.
Rune said, 'Nine?'
'Oh, sure. Good.'
And smiling while he tried not to, he walked back into the theater, banging a plastic evidence bag against his leg.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Rune spent the day assembling the reels of exposed footage for the House O' Leather commercial and stuffed it, along with the editing instructions, into a big white envelope.
Sam picked her up at L &R and drove to a postproduc-tion house, where the technicians would edit the raw footage into a rough cut. Rune dropped it off with instructions to deliver cassettes to L &R and the client as soon as possible, even if it meant overtime.
Then she said, 'Okay… work's done. Time to party. Let's go to the club.' And she gave him directions to the West Side piers.
'Where?' Healy asked dubiously. 'I don't think there's anything there.'
'Oh, you'd be surprised.'
She gave him credit-he was a sport.
Healy put up with the place for a couple of hours before he managed to shout, 'I don't feel quite at home here.'
'How come?' Rune shouted.
He didn't seem sure. Maybe it was the decor: black foam mounds that looked like lava. Flashing purple overhead lights. A six-foot Plexiglas bubble of an aquarium.
Or the music. (He asked her if the sound system was broken and she had to tell him that the effect was intentional.)
Also he wasn't dressed quite right. Rune had said casual and so she'd dressed in yellow tights, a black miniskirt and-on top of a purple tank top-a black T-shirt as holey as Jarlsberg.
Sam Healy was in blue jeans and a plaid shirt. The one thing he shared with most of the other clubbies was a pair of black boots. His, however, were cowboy boots.
'I think I got it wrong,' he said.
'Well, you may start a trend.'
Maybe not but he wasn't being eyed like a geek, either, Rune noticed. Two pageboy blonds lifted their sleek faces and fired some serious 'Wanna get laid?' vibrations his way. Rune took his arm. 'Sunken cheeks like that, you see them? They're a sign of mental instability.' She grinned. 'Let's dance some more.' And began to gyrate in time to the music.
'Dancing,' Healy said and mimicked her. Ten minutes later, he said, 'I've got an idea.'
'I know that tone. You're not having a good time.'
Healy wiped his forehead and scalp with a wad of bar napkins. 'Anybody ever dehydrate in here?'
'That's part of the fun.'
'You sure like to dance.'
'Dancing is the best! I'm free! I'm a bird.'
'Well, if you're really into dancing, let's try this place I know.'
'You're pretty good doing this stuff.' Rune drank down half of her third Amstel as she continued to move in time to the music.
'Oh, you think this is good, try my place.' 'I know all the clubs. What's this one called?' 'You've never heard of it. It's real exclusive.' 'Yeah? You need a special pass to get in?' 'You need to know the password.' 'All right! Let's go.'
The password was 'Howdy' and the girl at the door checking IDs and stamping hands with a tiny map of Texas responded with the countersign-'How y'all doing tonight?'
They were shown into the club-which for having a four-piece swing band was incredibly quiet. Or maybe it just seemed that way after the deafening roar of Rune's place. They were seated at a small table with a gingham plastic tablecloth.
'Two Lone Stars,' Healy ordered.
Rune looked at a girl sitting next to them. A tight white sweater, a blue denim skirt, stockings and white cowboy boots.
'Very, very weird,' she said.
'You hungry?'
'You mean this's a restaurant too? What, you get to pick your own cow out of the pen in the back?'
'The ribs are great.'
'Very weird.'
'I liked that other place,' he said. 'But I kind of have to watch the noise.' Pointing to his ears. She remembered that bomb blasts had affected his hearing.
They drank the beers and were still thirsty so they ordered a pitcher.
'You come here much?' Rune asked.
'Used to.'
'With your wife?'
Healy didn't answer for a minute. 'Some. It's not like it was a special place for us.'
'You still see her at all?'
'Mostly just when I pick up Adam.'
Mostly, she noticed.
Healy continued. 'There're books she left she comes by to pick up. Kitchen things. Stuff like that… I never asked you if you're going with anybody.'
Rune said, 'I'm sort of between boyfriends.'
'Really? I'm surprised.'
'Yeah? It's not as unbelievable as some things, like talking dogs or aliens.'
'I'd think you'd have them lined up.'
'Men have these strange feelings about me. Mostly, they ignore me. The ones who don't ignore me, a lot of them just want sex and then the chance to ignore me afterward. Sometimes they want to adopt me. You see people in Laundromats Saturday night doing their underwear and reading two-week-oldPeople magazines? That's me. From what I've learned during the rinse cycle I could write a biography of Cher or Vanna White or Tom Cruise.'
'Let's dance,' he said.
Rune frowned and looked out over the dance floor.
Healy said, 'It's called the two-step. Best dance in the world.'
'Let me get this straight?' she said. 'You hold on to each other and you dance at the same time?'
Healy smiled. 'It's a whole new idea.'
