"I found that very interesting," she said, reaching up for her drink. " 'Exciting' would be a better word."
"We try to please," he said. He picked up the pistol and carried it to the mantel over the fireplace. He was now more than a little uncomfortable. He didn't like her reaction to the pistol, and suspected that she was somehow excited by the knowledge that he had killed someone with it.
There's a word for that, and it's spelled P E R V E R S E.
When he turned around, she was on her feet, walking toward him.
"How old are you, Poor Patricia Payne's Boy Matthew?"
"Twenty-two."
"I'm pushing thirty," she said. "Which does pose something of a problem for you, doesn't it?"
"I don't know what you mean."
She laughed, just a little nastily.
"As does the fact that I am behaving very oddly indeed about your gun, not to mention the fact that I am married. Right?"
He could think of nothing whatever to say.
"So we will leave the decision up to you, Matthew Payne. Do I say good night and thank you for showing me your etchings, or do I take off my dress?"
"Do what you want to do," Matt said.
She met his eyes, and pushed her dress off one shoulder and then the other, and then worked it down off her hips.
Then she walked to him, put her hands to his face, and kissed him. And then he felt her hand on his zipper.
When Margaret McCarthy got in Charley McFadden's Volkswagen he could almost immediately smell soap. He glanced at her and saw that her hair was still damp.
Charley immediately had-and was as immediately shamed by-a mental image of Margaret naked in her shower.
"You didn't have to do this, you know," Margaret said.
"What? You got some guy waiting for you at the hospital?"
"Absolutely, and in my uniform we're going to a bar somewhere."
"I'll break his neck," Charley said.
"What I meant, honey," Margaret said, "was that you didn't have to stay up just to drive me to work."
I really like it when she calls me "honey."
"I don't want you wandering around North Broad Street alone at midnight," Charley said. "Are we going to argue about this again?"
"No, Charley."
"Call me 'honey' again," Charley said. "I like that."
"Just 'honey.' Not 'sugar'? How do you feel about 'saccharine'?"
"Now, you're making fun of me."
"No, honey, I'm not," Margaret said, and leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
"I like that too," he said.
"Well, I'd do it more often if I didn't wear lipstick. When I go on duty, no lipstick, and you get a little smooch."
"Now you know why I had to drive you to work," Charley said.
She laughed.
"What are you going to do now? Go home? Or go back to the FOP and have a couple of beers with Matt?"
"If I went to the FOP and Payne was still there, I would have to carry him home. Anyway, he had a date."
"A date? He doesn't have a girl, does he?"
"He has lots of them. Jesus, with that car, what did you expect?"
"A lot of girls, including this one, don't really care what kind of a car a fellow drives."
"There's not a lot of girls like you."
"Is that the voice of experience talking?"
"Maybe, maybe not. Matt was really bananas about one girl. A rich girl, like him. He met her when Whatsername, the girl whose father owns Nesfoods, got married."
"What happened?"
"She was a rich girl. She thought he was nuts for wanting to be a cop. Instead of like, a lawyer, something like that."
"So why does he want to be a cop?"
"I thought a lot about that. What it is, I think, is that he likes it. It's got nothing to do with him not getting in the Marines, or that his father, his real father, was killed on the job. I think he just likes it. And he's working for Inspector Wohl. He gets to see a lot of stuff. I don't think he'd stick around if they had him in one of the districts, turning off fire hydrants."
"You really like him, don't you?"
"Yeah. We get along good."
"You going to ask him to be your best man when we get married?"
Charley had not thought about a best man.
"Yeah," he said. "I guess I will, if I live that long."
"Are we going to start on that subject again?"
"I'm not starting anything. That's just the truth."
"We want to have some money in the bank when we get married."
"I'd just as soon go in hock like everybody else," Charley said. " Jesus, baby, I go nuts sometimes thinking about you."
"Like when, for example?"
"Like now, for example. Since you asked. I smell your soap, and then
I-"
"Then you what?"
"I think of you taking a shower."
"Those are carnal thoughts."
"You bet your ass they are," Charley said. "About as carnal as they get."
There was a long silence.
"I guess I shouldn't have said that. Sorry."
"You think you could live six weeks the way things are?"
"What happens in six weeks?"
"The semester's over. I could skip a semester. I wouldn't want to be a just-married, and work a full shift, and try to go to school. But I could skip a semester."
"Jesus, baby, you mean it?"
"I'll call my mother in the morning and tell her we don't want to wait anymore."
"Jesus! Great!"
"I get those thoughts too, honey," Margaret said. She reached over and caught his hand.
At the hospital, when she kissed him, she kissed him on the mouth and gave him a little tongue, something she didn't hardly ever do.
Where the fuck am I?
I was thinking about that, and what she said about her having those kind of thoughts, carnal thoughts too, and drove right across Broad Street without thinking where I'm supposed to be going.
"Shit!" he said, and slowed abruptly, and made the next left.
There's Holland's body shop. That means I'm behind Holland PontiacGMC, just a block off North Broad. That's not so bad. I could have wound up in Paoli or somewhere not thinking like that.
And then something wrong caught his eye. There was a guy sitting in a beat-up old Mustang in an alley.
If I hadn't been looking to see where the fuck I was, I would never have seen him.
What's wrong about it? Well, maybe nothing. Or maybe he's drunk. Or dead. Or maybe not. Now that I think of it, he was smoking a cigarette. People don't sit in alleys smoking cigarettes at midnight. Not around here.
He made the next right, and the next, and pulled to the curb.
Fuck it, McFadden. It ain't any of your business, and you ain't Sherlock Holmes.
Fuck fuck it!
Charley turned off the headlights and got out of the car. He took his wallet ID folder from his pocket and folded it back on itself, so the badge was visible, and then he took the snub nose from its holster, and held it at arm's length down along his leg so that it would be kind of hard to see,
Then he went in the alley, and sort of keeping in the shadows walked down close to the Mustang.
Piece of shit, that car.
Moving very quickly now, he walked up to the driver's window. He tapped on the window with his badge.
He scared shit out of the guy inside, who jumped.
The window rolled down.
"Excuse me, sir. I'm a police officer. Is everything all right?"
"I'm a Three-Six-Nine," the man said. "Everything's okay. On the job."
Oh, shit. He's probably a Central Detective on stakeout. Why didn't you mind your own fucking business?
Fuck fuck fuck it. Maybe he ain't.
"Let me see your folder, please," Charley said, and pulled the door open so the light would come on. It didn't.