Burglars Can’t Be Choosers

In another cupboard I found an unopened box of spaghetti, which I decided might be palatable with olive oil provided that the oil wasn’t rancid, which it was. At this stage I began to think that perhaps I wasn’t hungry after all, and then I opened another cupboard and discovered that Rodney Hart was a soup fiend. There were sixty-three cans of Campbell ’s soup in that cupboard, and I know the exact number because I counted them, and I counted them because I wanted to know just how long I could stay alive without leaving the apartment. At the concentration-camp rate of a can a day I was good for two months, and that was plenty of time, I told myself, because long before my soup ran out the police would arrest me and in no time at all I’d be serving a sentence for first-degree murder, and feeding me would be the state’s problem.

So there was really nothing to worry about after all.

I started to shake a little but forced myself to concentrate on the process of opening the can. Rod’s can opener was pretty primitive, considering that soup was the mainstay of his existence, but it did the job. I dumped concentrated Chicken With Stars soup into a presumably clean saucepan, added water, heated the mess on the stove, pepped it up with a little thyme and a dash of soy sauce, and was sitting down to eat it just as the folk-rock station came through with a five-minute news summary. It repeated some of the items I’d already heard on the jazz station, told me far more than I needed to know about the weather, since I didn’t dare go out in it anyway, and had nothing to say about the late J. F. Flaxford or the murderous burglar who had done him in.

I finished my soup and tidied up in the kitchen. Then I went through some more cupboards until I found Rod’s booze collection, which consisted in the main of things like a bottle of ancient blackberry brandy with perhaps an ounce of the crud left in the bottom of it. That sort of treasure. But there was, incredibly, a fifth of Scotch about two-thirds full. Now this particular Scotch was some liquor store’s private label, and it had been bottled over in Hackensack, so what we had here was not quite in the Chivas and Pinch class.

But burglars can’t be choosers. I sat up for what was probably a long time, sipping Scotch and watching the really late movies on Cha

In one of those drab hours just before dawn I managed to kill the television set (having already done as much for the bottle) and insert myself a second time between Rodney’s sheets.

The very next thing I knew there was a crashing noise and a girl’s voice saying, “Oh, shit!”

No one ever returned more abruptly to consciousness. I had been deep in dreamless sleep and now I was jarringly awake. And there was someone in the apartment with me, someone female, and judging by her voice she was in rather close proximity to my no-longer-sleeping form.

I lay very still, trying to go on breathing as one breathes in sleep, hoping that she had not noticed my presence even as I realized that this was impossible. Who was she, anyway? And what the hell was she doing here?

And how was I going to get out of this mess?

“Shit,” she said again, taking the word right out of my mouth. This time the syllable was addressed not to the Fates but to me. “I woke you up, didn’t I? I was trying not to. I was being so quiet, just slipping around watering the plants, and then I had to go and knock the stupid thing over. I hope I didn’t hurt the plant. And I’m sorry I disturbed you.”

“It’s all right,” I told my pillow, keeping my face to it.

“I guess my plant-watering talents won’t be needed anymore,” she went on. “Will you be staying here for a while?”

“A couple of weeks.”

“Rod didn’t mention anything about anyone staying here. I guess you just got in recently, huh?”

Damn her, anyway. “Late last night,” I said.

“Well, I’m terribly sorry I woke you up. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll make us a cup of coffee.”

“There’s just soup.”

“Soup?”

I rolled reluctantly over and blinked at her. She was at the side of the bed. She had the split-leaf philodendron back on its perch and she was pouring water at its roots. The plant didn’t look any the worse for wear and she looked terrific.

Hair short and dark, a high forehead, and very precisely measured facial features with just the slightest upward tilt to her nose and just the right amount of determination in her jawline. A well-formed mouth that, if not generous, was by no means parsimonious. Little pink ears with well-defined lobes. (I’d recently read a paperback on determining character and health from ears, so I was noticing such things. Her ears, according to my source, would seem to be ideal.)

She was wearing white painter’s pants which showed good judgment by hugging her tightly. They were starting to go thin at the knees and in the seat. Her shirt was denim, one of those Western-style numbers with pearlish buttons and floral print trim. She had a red banda

The only thing I could think of that was wrong with her was that she was there in my apartment. (Well, Rod’s apartment.) She was watering his plants and jeopardizing my security. Yet when I thought of all the mornings I had awakened alone and would have been delighted to have had this very person in the room with me-ah, the injustice of it all. Women, policemen, taxis, newscasts, none of them on hand when you want them.

“Soup?” She turned her face toward me and smiled a tentative smile. Her eyes were either blue or green or both. Her teeth were white and even. “What kind of soup?”

“Almost any kind you’d want. Black bean soup, chicken noodle soup, cream of asparagus soup, tomato soup, cheddar cheese soup-”

“You’re kidding about the cheddar cheese soup.”

“Have I ever lied to you? It’s in the cupboard if you don’t believe me. If Campbell ’s makes it, Rod stocks it. And nothing else except for some roach-ridden rice.”

“I guess he’s not terribly domestic. Have you known him long?”

“We’re old friends.” A lie. “But I haven’t seen very much of him in the past few years.” A veritable truth.

“College friends? Or back in Illinois?”

Damn. What college? Where in Illinois? “College,” I ventured.

“And now you’ve come to New York and you’re staying at his place until-” the blue or green eyes widened “-until what? You’re not an actor, are you?”

I agreed that I wasn’t. But what in hell was I? I improvised a quick story, sitting up in bed with the sheet covering me to the throat. I told her how I’d been in the family feed business back home in South Dakota, that we’d been bought out at a good price by a competitor, and that I wanted to spend some time on my own in New York before I decided what turn my life should take next. I made the story very sincere and very dull, hoping she’d lose interest and remember a pressing engagement, but apparently she found my words more fascinating than I did because she hung on every one of them, sitting on the edge of my bed with her fingers interlaced around her knees and her eyes wide and i

“You want to find yourself,” she said. “That’s very interesting.”

“Well, I never even suspected that I was lost. But now that I’m really at loose ends-”

“I’m in the same position myself, in a way. I was divorced four years ago. Then I was working, not a very involving job, and then I quit, and now I’m on unemployment. I paint a little and I make jewelry and there’s a thing I’ve been doing lately with stained glass. Not what everybody else does but a form I sort of invented myself, these three-dimensional free-form sculptures I’ve been making. The thing is, I don’t know about any of these things, whether I’m good enough or not. I mean, maybe they’re just hobbies. And if that’s all they are, well, the hell with them. Because I don’t want hobbies. I want something to do and I don’t have it yet. Or at least I don’t think I do.” Her eyelashes fluttered at me. “You don’t really want soup for breakfast, do you? Because why don’t I run around the corner for coffee, it won’t take me a minute, and you can put on some clothes and I’ll be right back.”