“It’s Jameson,” said Rook, but Petar was too busy delivering a man hug shoulder bump for it to register.
Nikki touched his cheek and said, “Look at you, you grew your beard back.”
“Just stubble,” Petar said. “Stubble’s like the new deal.”
“All the rage in Macedonia,” said Rook. Petar seemed oblivious to the jab and asked what they were doing there. “Just a getaway.” Rook draped his arm around her shoulder and said, “Nikki and I are grabbing a little alone time.”
“Thought I’d show him our old stomping grounds,” she said. “What about you?”
“I’m having alone time, too. But alone.” He chuckled at his own joke and continued, “I came up from New York for the day to guest lecture a Communications seminar about the future of late night talk shows.”
“Professor Mulkerin?” asked Nikki.
“Yep. Funny, I barely got a C in that class, and now I’m the star alum.”
“Well, it was great to see you,” Rook said, the verbal equivalent of checking his watch.
“You, too, Jim. I wish I had known. We could have planned dinner together.”
Nikki said, “Let’s!” The smile she gave Rook held the hotel sex card clenched in its teeth.
Rook forced a grin. “Great.”
On the cab ride back to the Lenox, since Nikki didn’t have a knife, she cut the silence with her tongue. “Know what you’ve got, Rook? Petar envy.”
“Don’t make me laugh.”
“You have a thing against him, and it shows.”
“I apologize. I just didn’t see dinner with your old boyfriend as part of the RTWOTC plan. Is this payback because I got a massage from a practitioner who happened to be somewhat attractive?”
“Rook, she was a Victoria’s Secret model without the angel wings.”
“You thought so, too, huh?”
“Your jealousy is transparent and over-the-top. Forget old boyfriend. Yes, Petar did try to rekindle when we ran into him last fall, but I ended that.”
“He hit on you? You never told me that.”
“Now he’s just an old friend.” She paused to peer up at the top of the Pru then said, “And yes, this still is an RT-whatever. But just to remind you, since you may have been too traumatized-or in denial after your gunshot- Petar was a huge help breaking that case. This is my chance to say thank you.”
“By having me buy his dinner?”
She looked out the window and smiled. “Win-win for me.”
He booked a table at Grill 23 for the simple reason that, if it was good enough for Spenser, it was good enough for him. After starting off with topneck clams and an extraordinary Cakebread Chardonnay, dinner wasn’t pure hell for Rook. Perhaps just purgatory. Mostly he smiled and listened as Petar gassed on about himself and his exciting behind-the-scenes role booking guests for Later On! “I’m this close to the big get,” he said, and lowered his voice. “Brad and Angelina.”
“Wow,” said Nikki, “Brangelina.”
“I hate those cute nicknames,” said Rook.
Petar shrugged. “Nikki, remember what they called us? Petnik?”
“Petnik!” She laughed. “Oh my God, Petnik.” Rook reached for the ice bucket and filled his own glass, wondering what the hell it was about scruffy waifs with sad, soulful eyes that attracted women. What was this magical allure of underachievement and unruly hair?
After a main course of memory lane conversation and Nikki’s fifth cell check of messages from the precinct, Petar came out of his self-absorption to observe that she seemed preoccupied. Nikki set down her fork, leaving a perfectly good duck fat tater tot still speared on it, and napkinned her mouth. The clouds that had parted for her rolled in on a new cold front. She told Petar about the new development in her mother’s case, pausing only for the plates to be cleared before she resumed.
To his credit-for once-Petar listened intently and without interruption. His face sobered and his eyes grew hooded by an old sadness. When she finished, he shook his head and said, “There’s no such thing as closure for you, is there?”
“Maybe I can close the case someday. But closure?” She dismissed the entire concept with the wave of a hand.
“I don’t know how you got through it, Nikki.” He rested his hand on her wrist. “You were very strong then.” Rook signaled for the check.
“Maybe strong is what broke us up.”
He smiled a little and said, “And not me cheating?”
“Oh, right.” She grinned. “That, too.”
On their way out, Nikki excused herself to the ladies’ room and Petar thanked Rook for the nice meal. “You’re a very lucky guy, Jameson Rook,” trilling the R, a remnant of the accent. “Take this the right way, OK? I honestly hope you’re luckier than I was. I could never get through that protective wall of hers. Maybe you won’t give up.”
In spite of himself, Rook had to admit maybe he and the old boyfriend had something in common, after all.
The April air had chilled overnight, and as they waited Sunday morning on the empty sidewalk outside of NEC’s Main Conservatory Building to meet her mom’s former professor, Nikki could see vapor trails from Rook’s nose. It reminded her of Lauren Parry’s breath inside that freezer truck, and she turned away to watch a bus roll by on Huntington Avenue. Then they both heard bouncy synthesized music followed by a man’s amplified voice singing the Flashdance song “Maniac.” The two of them turned all around, searching for the source.
“He’s up there,” said the gray-haired woman approaching from the bus stop. She pointed to an eighth-floor open window in an apartment building behind the NEC residence hall, where a black man in a red long-sleeved shirt and matching black leather vest and fedora sang into the mic of his karaoke machine. “That’s Luther.” She waved up to the window, and Luther waved back, still swaying and singing, his booming voice echoing off the face of the building. “Every morning, when he sees me, he auditions like this for the Conservatory. I told him once we don’t do pop, but he seems undaunted.” Professor Yuki Shimizu extended her hand and introduced herself.
The three of them ascended the foot-worn marble steps and entered through hallowed wooden doors into the vestibule. “I guess you know NEC is a national landmark,” said the professor. “The oldest private music institution in America. And no, I wasn’t here when it opened. It just feels like it.”
As they signed in at Security, Professor Shimizu said, “Pardon me for staring, but I can’t help it. You look just like your mother.” The old woman’s smile filled her entire face and warmed Nikki. “Take that as a supreme compliment, my dear.”
“So taken, Professor. Thank you.”
“And since it’s my day off, how about calling me Yuki?”
“And I’m Nikki.”
“Most people call me Rook,” he said. “But Jameson’s fine, too.”
“I’ve read your magazine articles.”
“Thank you,” he said.
A twinkle played in the woman’s eyes. “I didn’t say I liked them.” She threw a wink Nikki’s way and led them down a corridor to the right. In spite of the gray hair earned over seventy-six years, she strode with vitality and purpose, not a bit like she even knew what a day off felt like.
As they passed a rehearsal hall, a scattering of students awaiting their turns sat cross-legged on the brown and tan carpet, beside their backpacks and instrument cases, listening to iPods. From inside the hall, Bolero pounded against the closed door, all lush and percussive. Rook leaned over and whispered to Nikki, full of suggestiveness, “Mm, Bolero.”
Professor Shimizu, strides ahead of them, stopped and turned. “You like Ravel, Mr. Rook?” she asked, clearly having nothing wrong with her hearing. “Almost as sexy as Flashdance, eh?”
She took them downstairs to the Firestone Audio Library, where she had arranged a booth for them to meet in, for quiet and privacy. Once they all sat, she regarded Heat again and said, “Nikki, you became a police officer, right? So much for the apple falling from the tree theory.”
“Actually, I had planned on becoming a performer myself,” she said. “I went to college next door at
