She said, 'It was a correctional institute, not a prison. An interview room with a door that didn't lock. There were three of them. Men. They were territorial toward the others, kept them out. It wasn't days. It lasted two hours and forty-two minutes.' She kept her gaze unflinchingly on mine, reading my face. I did my best not to show any reaction but probably failed. She leaned forward so I could feel her faint breath across my cheeks. 'Hey,' she said, 'at least I got syphilis out of it.'
I studied her for a long time, thinking how she'd like to have me go running around my living room with my arms waving over my head.
Instead I said, 'How about a drink?'
'I'm not going to talk about it with you. Not details. Not broad strokes. So don't think we'll get cozy and I'll get all cathartic. Off-limits. Got it?'
'Yes.'
'I'll have that drink now.'
I worked the cork free, poured two glasses, and handed her one. 'In case you're more pretentious than you look, I should tell you it's a flinty, soil-driven sauvignon with a rich finish.' I buried my nose in the glass, inhaled the fumes.
'This is delicious.' She looked around, as if for the first time. 'Spectacular view.'
'You're not allowed to be gracious. I won't recognize you.'
She bared her teeth at me. I retrieved the plates from the kitchen counter, and we dug in. We both had some trouble with the designer utensils, food dropping back to our plates before it reached our mouths. Finally she held up a MOMA fork, one tine separated by a gap. 'I'm not adept at using this.'
'But isn't it pretty?'
'It's a fork. It exists to convey food to the mouth.'
'In our case clearly not.' I spun my fork around, regarding the design. 'These really do suck, don't they?'
She was smiling now, broadly. 'You have something easier? Garden trowel, perhaps?'
'Chopsticks?'
'How about Ethiopian bread?'
'I'll check the Mirte stove. In the meantime…' I took our forks and tossed them into the trash compactor. I found some plastic utensils, still bagged from my last round of takeout, and we reap-proached our plates more successfully.
'This is amazing,' she said. 'What is it?'
'Israeli salad. Watch out it just launched a counteroffensive against the Wiener schnitzel.'
'I'll send in the couscous.'
'Keep it up and I'll drop a Big Mac on your ass.'
'Aren't you going to taste the wine?'
A flash of memory, six years new Mustang slant-parked in the bed of hydrangeas off my front step, radio blaring, me standing on the steaming hood hoarsely shouting Morrison's voice-over on 'The End' with a blonde wearing butterfly barrettes.
I said, 'My name is Andrew Danner, and I'm an alcoholic.'
'Then aren't you supposed to keep all booze away from you?'
'I need to keep an eye on it so it doesn't sneak up on me.'
'Like the Israeli salad.'
'Precisely.'
'How's sobriety?'
'Ruins my drinking.'
'What kind of alcoholic were you?'
'I was one of those guys who never knew when the party stopped, or that it had. As long as there was booze and anyone else still drinking, I kept going. Pig at a trough. Sorority binger confronting Twinkies. I wasn't one of those drown-the-pain lushes. I just loved alcohol.' I shuttled more couscous onto my incredibly effective plastic fork. 'If you believe that, my former shrink would be unimpressed with you.'
'Last one to leave a party,' she said. 'You didn't like being alone with yourself?'
'And a writer. The irony thickens.' I swirled my wineglass, watched the maroon legs streak the crystal. 'I guess if life was easy, it wouldn't be as much fun.'
'Sure it would.'
'The Cliche Buster claims another victim. I guess I've been regurgitating that dandy since my childhood.'
'Good childhood?'
'Am I on the clock, Doctor?'
'Yeah, but you bought dinner, so I'll only charge half.'
'I was a replacement child. My parents lost a daughter a year before I was born.'
'That's supposed to be difficult.'
'My folks must've skipped that chapter.'
'Not bad?'
'I was cherished. My feet didn't hit the ground until I was five.'
'Passing you back and forth.'
'Exactly. And you?'
'I lost my mom recently.' She took a sip of wine. 'We were very close. My dad's great lives in Vermont. Gonna be remarried in the fall.'
'Two stable childhoods. How refreshing. And here we are, fortyish and single.'
Despite my flippancy, the remark cut her deep. Loudmouth moi of the thoughtless aside. I stood to clear, imploring her to sit. She watched as I dumped my glass of wine down the sink.
'Why buy expensive wine if you're just going to pour it out?'
'I said I was an alcoholic, not that I had bad taste.' I scrubbed and loaded while Caroline sipped and looked at the view. We engaged in some small talk, which was surprisingly enjoyable. She lived in West Hollywood, on Crescent Heights. Hated cats and shopping. Brown belt in judo, reached it in just three years. I'd forgotten how warming it was to have company.
The rest of the objet d'art forks joined their mates in the compactor, drawing a laugh from her.
I asked, 'Would you mind handing me that equally affected trivet?'
'Do I have to do everything?' Smiling, she set down her glass and brought the trivet over to me.
'Why don't you sit on the mauled couch in the family room? I'll join you in a minute.'
'Junior's dog?' She waited for my reluctant nod. 'Where is she?'
'I put her in a decompression chamber upstairs.'
She started for the other room, and I said, 'Hang on.'
She turned back. The pashmina she'd draped over her chair, and her black shirt had loosed another button, revealing a dagger of smooth flesh. Delicate clavicles, lovely, slender neck. The notched-down lighting demoted her scars to impressions pronounced, to be sure, but there was a kind of beauty to them as well. They accented the composition of her features like war paint, bringing to them a hyperdefinition, added force, added grace.
'You look spectacular.'
She tried to repress her smile, a shyness I hadn't thought she possessed. 'This from a tumor-addled alcoholic suffering from temporary insanity.'
'Nothing wrong with my eyes.'
As she turned away, I caught a smile in her profile. When I finished, I found her in the family room, facing the bookshelf filled with my titles.
She turned at my approach. 'Where's Chain Gang?'
'Propping up the kitchen table.'
'Are you working on a new book?'
Hurwitz, Gregg
The Crime Writer (aka I See You) (2007)
237'You're living an investigation?'
'A story. We all are, but this segment of my life has a pleasing structure to it.'
'Maybe that's why it happened to you.'
