“So you asked Brown to recommend a place where we would both feel comfortable.”
“Yes. But I didn’t know everything would be divided right down the middle. Three white guys in the band, three black guys. One white bartender, one black. A black girl for every white guy, a black guy for every white girl.”
“Like painting by the numbers,” she said.
“Yeah. Would you like to get out of here?”
“Where would you suggest?” she asked.
“Top of the Hill,” he said.
The Hill Building was in midtown Isola on Jefferson Avenue. They had taken a taxi uptown, and now — at ten o’clock on a wide-awake, big-city, middle-of-the-week night — they walked into the lobby and stood behind a red velvet rope, where a man in a green uniform and a green hat kept parceling eight or ten people at a time into an express elevator that ran to the fifty-eighth floor of the building. They had no reservations. Kling was worried. Big-shot detective, How about Top of the Hill? How about when we get there a haughty headwaiter takes one look and sends us on our way, Sorry, buster, no room at the inn.
Well, how could that possibly happen? Handsome blond detective in a dark blue suit, beautiful black woman in a complementary blue dress, anyone should be delighted to have us in their midst, add a touch of elegance to the joint. Come in, come in, sir, come in, miss, would you care for a table by the window where you can look out over the entire city? Lovely night, isn’t it, sir? Otherwise, just flash the tin and slip him a few bucks… did people do that in fancy places like Top of the Hill?
He kept planning strategy all the way up to the fifty-eighth floor, where they transferred to another elevator going up to the sixty-fifth floor and the roof of the building. The elevator doors opened onto a plush reception area at one end of which were the glass entrance doors to the restaurant and lounge, beyond which a twinkling nest of lights beckoned romantically. He knew at once that he’d made the right spontaneous choice. But…
Oh, God, there he was, a stout penguin, all white and black, standing at a podium just inside the entrance doors. Kling would rather have faced a bank robber with a nine in each fist. Boldly, he led Sharyn to the doors, opened one for her, and allowed her to precede him into a view of the city that was utterly dazzling, lights stretching from here to the farthest tip of the island and beyond, bridges that seemed to span continents, stars racing to the planets and beyond, to solar systems yet unimagined. He almost caught his breath. There was the sound of music coming from somewhere deep in the room, soft and danceable. There were lighted votive candles in crystal holders in the center of round tables with polished black tops. There were waitresses in white blouses and long black skirts slit up the leg to the thigh, everyone and everything in black and white, when you were in love, the whole universe was black and…
“Sir?”
The penguin. He, too, in black and white, that hadn’t changed. Chest puffed out, staring down the length of his nose.
“Sir?”
A bit more imperiously this time. A king penguin, Kling figured.
“Detective Bert Kling,” he said, “Eighty-seventh Squad.”
There was a moment, but only a moment.
And then, beaming, the penguin said, “Yes, sir, how do you do, sir, a pleasure to have you with us. My name is Rudolph, will there be just the two of you, Mr. Kling?”
“Just the two of us, yes, thank you,” Kling said, bewildered.
“Will that be for supper, sir, or just cocktails?”
“Sharyn?”
“Just cocktails, please.”
“Just cocktails, please,” Kling said.
“Just cocktails, yes, Detective Kling, this way, please, I have a lovely table by the window.”
It was not until Rudolph was seating them that Kling realized what this was all about.
“That was speedy work you and your mates did on that actress who got stabbed,” Rudolph said.
“Oh,” Kling said. “Thank you.”
“Speedy work indeed. Enjoy the view. Enjoy the music, I’ll send your waitress at once. Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.”
“Thank you, Rudolph.”
“My pleasure, Detective Kling. Miss,” he said, and bowed to Sharyn, and then moved swiftly from the table.
“Well!” she said.
“Imagine what’ll happen if Fat Ollie stops by,” Kling said, shaking his head.
“Fat who?”
“Ollie. Who shared the collar. You’ll have to meet him sometime. No, on second thought…”
“I forgot to congratulate you,” she said.
“Our friend Rudolph must’ve seen us on television,” Kling said. “There were cameras waiting when we took Milton out to the van.”
“I saw it,” she said.
“Was I okay?”
“You looked very cute,” she said.
“But did I sound okay? Steve wouldn’t say a word…”
“Steve?”
“Carella. We worked the assault together. He doesn’t think Milton did the homicide.”
“Was Fat Ollie…?”
“The one standing on my right. The one hogging the camera.”
“Ah, yes.”
“Then you saw him.”
“How could I miss him?”
“The power of television, huh?” he said, still amazed, shaking his head. “Boy.”
A waitress materialized.
“Sir?” she said, smiling.
Her manner told him she watched television, too.
“Sharyn?” he asked.
“Beefeater martini, pair of olives,” she said, “straight up and very cold.”
“Johnnie Black, on the rocks,” Kling said, “a splash.”
“Water?”
“Soda.”
“Would you care to see menus?”
“Sharyn? Anything?”
“Maybe something to nibble on,” she said.
“I’ll bring the menu,” the waitress said, and clicked off on her black high heels, long legs showing in the slit skirt.
Sharyn turned immediately to the window, where the lights of the city lay spread below like a nest of sparkling red and white and green and yellow jewels. “This is glorious,” she said.
“Listen,” he said.
She looked toward the bandstand, where a quartet sounding very much like George Shearing’s had just begun a new tune. She listened for only a moment, recognizing the song at once.
” ‘Kiss,’ ” she said.
“Let’s dance,” he said.
“Love to,” she said.
They moved onto the polished dance floor. She slid into his arms. He held her close.
Kiss…
It all begins with a kiss…
“I’m a lousy dancer,” he said.
“You’re very good,” she lied.
“You’ll have to teach me.”
But kisses wither
And die
Unless
“This is much better, isn’t it?”
“Much.”
The first caress
Is true.
Kiss…
“See? We’re doing it already.”
“What are we doing already?” she asked.
She was thinking What we’re doing is dancing too close already. We’re going to get arrested already. Good thing you’re a celebrity hero cop — at Top of the Hill, anyway.
“We’re going wherever we want to go,” he said, “and we’re just being us, without having to worry about looking like everyone around us.”
“We could never look like everyone around us,” she said.