“And guess what I bought last week?” Herb said after finishing his story.
“What?”
“A biplane just about like yours.”
“You’re kidding. Where’d you find it?”
“Louisiana, of all places. Bayou country, actually. It’s in beautiful shape.”
“I’ll have to see it.”
“You bet you will. Why don’t you stop out tomorrow and I’ll let you take it up?”
“I’m not sure what time I can come out.”
“Just call the house before you come. Make sure I’m here.”
“Thanks. It’ll be good to see you.”
The laugh again. “Yeah, and it’ll be even nicer to see my biplane.”
After we hung up, I tried Jane’s place.
“Hello?”
“You’re home,” I said.
“I sure wish you’d tell me what’s going on in this town of mine,” she said, sounding tired. “Two murders yesterday and now another one tonight.”
“You probably won’t believe me, but I’m not sure myself. Not yet.”
“Will you give me a little time to take a shower?”
“Sure.”
“Let’s make it an hour then.”
“That’s perfect. That’s about how long it takes for Domino’s to prepare a gourmet pizza.”
“Double cheese.”
“Double cheese it is.”
6
“It’s kind of a pit, actually,” Jane Avery said after I got the pizza box open and handed out bottles and white paper napkins and grease-stained coupons entitling us to $1.00 off our very next Domino’s pizzas.
I had complimented her in the usual casual way one always compliments a person on her apartment. The trouble was, she was right, about it being a pit, I mean.
What you had here was the standard modern middle-class apartment. You had your four rooms and a bath, you had your wall-to-wall carpeting, you had your stove and refrigerator and garbage disposal, and you had large sliding windows that overlooked just about the two cutest little Dumpsters I’d ever seen.
And then, imposed on the sterile right-angled order of the apartment itself, you had Jane’s delirious messiness.
I’d used the bathroom right after getting here and had found one high-heeled black shoe in the sink. I’d gone out to the kitchen to get glasses and ice for us while she visited the bathroom, and hanging off the knob of the door leading to the back yard, I found a pair of panties, bright yellow and quite clean. But hanging from the doorknob? In the living room, an array of magazines ranging from People to Police Science Quarterly squatted everywhere in short stacks, like kittens waiting to be patted upon the head. A glass half-filled with what appeared to be milk sat atop the TV set; I imagined it tasted just dandy. A red skirt — which I knew she would look nice in, her shortie white bathrobe having just given me my first peek at her legs — was draped over the back of an armchair while next to the small, dark fireplace was an ancient Hoover upright, either waiting to be employed, or having been sitting there ever since it had been employed.
“I don’t know why you say your apartment is a pit,” I said.
“Gee, I don’t either,” she said, giving me a sarcastic smile as she was about to push her third piece of pizza in her mouth. After swallowing, she said, “That really used to get him.”
“Get who?”
“My husband.”
“Oh.”
“He’s one of those guys who believes that God genetically programmed women to like doing housework. And I’m serious. He once said that maybe I should see a counselor because I never liked to do any of the housework.”
“I think you should see a counselor, too, but not for that reason.”
“Funny.”
“I think you should see a counselor because you hang your underwear off doorknobs.”
“You saw that, huh?”
“Is that a religious practice or something?”
She shrugged, looking cute as hell with her short blonde hair still wet from the shower, and her freckles evoking sunny afternoons on the fish-filled creeks of my youth. “I always drop stuff when I bring the laundry up from downstairs. Yesterday I dropped a pair of panties. That’s how they got there.”
“Ah.”
“This is really good pizza,” she said.
“You look great.”
“I thought we were talking about pizza.”
“You were talking about pizza. I was talking about how great you look in that white terry-cloth robe with your hair all wet.”
There was one piece of pizza left.
“God, we sure pigged out,” I said. “That was an extra-large pizza.”
“I’ll arm-wrestle you for the last piece.”
“God, are you serious?”
“Sure I’m serious. I had three older brothers. They made me arm-wrestle them for everything. I don’t blame you, though. I’d hate to be beaten by a girl, too.”
We were sitting on the floor, using the coffee table for pizza and beers.
To arm-wrestle, all we had to do was angle our bodies closer to the coffee table and set our elbows down.
“You know something funny?”
“What?” she said.
“I really want to beat you. I really do. I mean, I feel competitive about this.”
“Good. You should. Because I feel competitive, too.”
“But I don’t want to hurt you.”
“What a he-man.”
“No, I’m serious. If I start getting carried away, you just tell me.”
“Sure.”
She gripped my hand. “Ready?”
“Remember now, if I get carried away, you let me know.”
“Right.”
She put my arm down flat against the table.
“I mustn’t have been ready.”
“Oh, right, that must’ve been it. You weren’t ready.”
“You really think you could’ve just flattened my arm like that if I’d been ready?”
“I told you I had three brothers.”
“Well, I had three sisters, so what does that prove?”
“Did you really have three sisters?”
“No. But that wasn’t any dumber than saying that you had three brothers.”
This time I was ready and right away you could see the difference. She didn’t put my arm down flat in ten seconds this time. Nope, on this second outing it took her at least twenty seconds.
I stared down at my arm as if it had betrayed me.
“Tell you what,” she said.
“What?”
“We’ll cut the piece of pizza in half.”
“No; no way. You won fair and square.”
“Aw, God, don’t be noble. My husband was like that, noble noble noble, and he was a real pain.”
“I seem to remind you of your husband an awful lot.”
“You couldn’t possibly be as big a jerk as he was. Nobody could.”
“Boy, there’s a glowing endorsement.”
“Now, c’mon, we’ll split the piece of pizza. And afterward you can try me again.” She leaned over and gave me a chaste little kiss on the cheek. “Maybe I just got lucky.”
“You have a cute big toe,” she said twenty minutes later.
“You only say I have a cute big toe because you want to spare me the embarrassment of pointing out the hole in my sock.”
She smiled. “I noticed you looking around.”