We were in bed, three hours after getting our car towed to a station, the tow truck giving us a ride home.
The rain had quit an hour ago. Now there were just icy winds.
But it was snug and warm in the bed of my one true love and icy winds didn’t bother me at all.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “about being so jealous.”
“And I’m sorry about hiding the letter. It made you think I was going to take him up on his offer. But I really don’t have any desire to see him at all.”
Then we kind of just lay back and listened to the wind for a time.
And she started getting affectionate, her foot rubbing my foot, her hand taking my hand.
And then in the darkness, she said, “Would you like to make love?”
“Would I?” I laughed. “Would I?”
And then I rolled over and we began kissing and then I began running my fingers through her long dark hair and then I suddenly realized that—
“What’s wrong?” she said, as I rolled away from her, flat on my back, staring at the ceiling.
“Let’s just go to sleep.”
“God, honey, I want to know what’s going on. Here we are making out and then all of a sudden you stop.”
“Oh God,” I said. “What a day this has been.” I sighed and prepared myself for the ultimate in manly humiliation. “Remember that time when Rick’s sister got married?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I got real drunk?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And that night we tried — well, we tried to make love but I couldn’t?”
“Uh-huh.” She was silent a long moment. Then, “Oh, God, you mean, the same thing happened to you just now?”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry.”
“The perfect ending to the perfect day,” I said.
“First you find that letter from Chris—”
“And then I can’t concentrate on my job—”
“And then Ms. Sandstrom threatens to fire you—”
“And then a man sticks us up—”
“And then you have to stick up another man—”
“And then we come home and go to bed and—” I sighed. “I think I’ll just roll over and go to sleep.”
“Good idea, honey. That’s what we both need. A good night’s sleep.”
“I love you, sweetheart,” I said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to... well, you know.”
“It’s fine, sweetheart. It happens to every man once in a while.”
“It’s just one of those days,” I said.
“And one of those nights,” she said.
But you know what? Some time later, the grandfather clock in the living room woke me as it tolled twelve midnight, and when I rolled over to see how Laura was doing, she was wide awake and took me in her sweet warm arms, and I didn’t have any trouble at all showing her how grateful I was.
It was a brand-new day... and when I finally got around to breakfast, the first thing I did was lift the horoscope section from the paper... and drop it, unread, into the wastebasket.
No more snooping in drawers... and no more bad-luck horoscopes.
Favor and the Princess
Thursday, finally, something happened.
Favor had been tailing David Carson for two days, and they had each been equally dull days. Back when he was a city detective, there were two jobs Favor hated most: telling parents that their child had been killed, and tailing people. Favor’s ass always went to sleep.
For two days, Carson, a slender and handsome man, went to work, played squash, stopped by his country club for two quick drinks, and then drove on home to the wife and kids. Home being a walled estate complete with large gurgling fountain on the front lawn, and a pair of jags in the three-stall garage.
Thursday, Carson was nice enough to do something different.
As CEO of the electronics firm he had recently inherited from his father-in-law, Carson didn’t have any problem sneaking off in the middle of the afternoon. He stopped first at a branch of the Federal National Savings bank. Favor figured this was going to be another nowhere tail. But Carson parked and went inside, and stayed inside for nearly half an hour. When he came out, he carried a manila envelope.
From the bank, he drove straight to the bluffs out in Haversham State Park. On a weekday May afternoon, the birds and the butterflies frolicking in the warm air, the park was empty. Carson angled his shiny black Lincoln Towncar into a spot near the log-cabin restrooms, and got out carrying the manila envelope. There was another car already parked there, a sporty little red Mustang convertible with the top up. He then took off walking toward a path that led straight to an overlook above the river.
Favor gave him a couple of minutes and then went after him, shoving his small notebook back in the pocket of his blue blazer. He’d written down the number of the Mustang.
All Favor could think of, as he wound his way down the forest path, the damp leaves and loam playing hell with his sinuses, was that he didn’t have a cap on and was therefore susceptible to Lyme disease.
Favor was a good-looking guy of forty-five who seemed competent and confident in every way. His darkest secret was his hypochondria. Being in a room where somebody sneezed pissed him off for an hour and he could feel the jack-booted cold germs invading his body and seizing control of it. Sometimes he was so upset he wanted to take out his trusty old Police .38 Special and waste the offender. If he ever got to be President of the United States, which, he had to admit, wasn’t real likely, he would make public sneezing a felony.
For a few minutes, as the path wended and wound its way through the deepest part of the forest, and possums and rabbits and raccoons lined up to look at him, he was a seven-year-old again, imagining he was Tarzan, and this wasn’t a forest at all but a jungle, and it wasn’t in Iowa, it was in Africa, and it wasn’t the real Africa, which was actually kind of boring, it was Tarzan’s Africa, which was about the coolest place on the whole planet. Favor had been a stone Tarzan freak until he was fifteen years old, when he discovered a) girls b) marijuana and c) Neil Young records. Neil couldn’t sing for shit but he did stuff to a guitar that never failed to give Favor chills. But now, for a brief time at least, he was Tarzan again and seven years old again and if he wasn’t careful he just might get himself attacked by an alligator...
The overlook was actually a kind of stone verandah set on the highest point of a woodsy bluff. It was the kind of aerie the Indians had no doubt used for spying on intruders. Beyond, across the wide rushing river, were other bluffs, gleaming with the skins of white birch trees that struggled all the way up hill to the point where some old narrow-gauge railroad track could still be found. Jesse James had once robbed one of the short-haul trains that had used these very same tracks.
The man with David Carson was short, stumpy and bald. He wore a buff blue polo shirt, khaki pants, argyle socks and penny loafers. He put his hand out and Carson set the manila envelope on it.
Favor couldn’t hear what they were saying. A couple of motor boats were showing off below and drowning out the words.
Then Carson was angrily jamming his finger into the smaller man’s chest.
The man backed up but Carson pursued him, continuing to jab at his chest, continuing to spit angry words into the man’s face.
Favor could see that Carson was starting to glance back up the trail. He was probably going to leave soon.
Favor decided this would be a good time to leave.
He hurried back along the path, got in his car, and drove up near the exit where he parked on the shoulder of the road and took out his trusty newspaper. The paper was ten years old. He used it for every surveillance job. Someday he’d have to get a new paper.