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He considered it. Of course he did. Here was a beautiful young woman, all but promising she would fuck him when her shift ended. He could sit at the bar, drink beer, let the anticipation build as he watched her twitch back and forth in those khaki shorts. She’d probably comp his bar bill, or at least sneak him a few under the table. And what was the difference-the diff-Saturday night versus Sunday morning? Nancy was doing the interview today, starting just about now, by his calculations. He had been cut out, through no fault of his own. Okay, through nobody’s fault, but definitely through no fault of his own. Under the circumstances-and the circumstances were begi
He brushed her wrist with his fingertips, feeling all that warmth, the vitality of her youth, the strength that came from never having had anything really bad happen to you. Kevin had no use for actual virgins, but he liked this particular kind of i
He slid his hand from her wrist, shook her soft little paw, and said good-bye, taking care to let her know, through his voice and expression, how much he regretted not staying.
“Oh,” she said, surprised, clearly a girl who was used to getting her way.
“Maybe another time,” he said, meaning, Tomorrow, next week, I’ll probably go home with another young woman I meet in a bar. But tonight I’m going to return my rental car and be a team player.
On the way out of town, he stopped at a barbecue joint in Brunswick and bought Lenhardt a T-shirt, a muscle-bound pig modeling his biceps: NO ONE CAN BEAT OUR MEAT. Even with that pit stop for a pulled-pork sandwich, he got to the Jacksonville airport so early that he managed to get standby on a flight that would get him into BWI almost an hour earlier than his original flight, a nonstop that would take almost half the time of his original one.
CHAPTER 32
“You want a better chair?”
“No, no.” Willoughby was embarrassed by the offer, by the sergeant’s very solicitousness. He was neither old enough nor distinguished enough to warrant so much attention.
“Because I can get you something better than that.”
“I’m okay.”
“I mean, over a few hours you’re going to feel that one.”
“Sergeant,” he said, intending to sound dignified and stoic, but achieving only cranky. “Sergeant, I’m fine.”
The building was a different one from the one where he had worked the bulk of his career, and he found himself grateful for that. He had not come here to stroll down memory lane. He was the ref, the linesman, here to rule what was fair or foul. A manila envelope, slightly dusty, sat at his feet, waiting for its moment. It was going on 4:30 P.M., an interesting time to begin a long interview. It was a drowsy time of day, when blood sugar dipped and people began thinking about di
“Protein,” she explained when she realized he was observing her. “It doesn’t give you a burst of energy, but it sustains you over the long haul.”
He wished he had a daughter. A son would have been nice, too, but a daughter cares for her parents in old age, while sons tend to get sucked into their wives’ families, or so he’d always heard. If he had a daughter, he would still have a daughter. And grandchildren. It wasn’t that he was lonely. Until a few days ago, he’d been pretty happy with his life. He had his health, golf, his golf buddies, and if he wanted to keep company with a woman, there were several at Edenwald who’d be thrilled to volunteer. Twice a month he met some old friends, Gilman boys, at the Starbucks on York Road, the one where the old Citgo station had been, and they talked about politics and old times. They called themselves “ROMEO”-retired old men eating out-and the conversation was damn lively. The sad truth was, Evelyn had been so sick and so frail for so long that he couldn’t really miss her. Or, more correctly, he’d been missing her for years, through the last decade of her life, and it was easier to miss her now that she was truly gone.
It was fu
“YOU’RE LATE,” Gloria snapped at Kay, taking Heather by the elbow.
“Heather told you what happened,” Kay said, trying to convince herself that she wasn’t lying, simply declining to contradict Heather’s lie, another hair split in a growing series of split hairs, a whole headful of them. But when she tried to follow them into the elevator, Gloria stopped her.
“You can’t come up, Kay. Well, you could come up, but you’ll be left in some empty office or conference room.”
“Oh-I knew that,” she said, her second lie in less than a minute, but this one merely a cover for her embarrassment.
“It’s going to be a while, Kay. Hours. I assumed that I would drive Heather home.”
“But it’s so far out of your way. You live up here, and I’m over on the southwest side.”
“Kay…”
She should go home, Kay told herself. She was getting too close to Heather as it was, crossing all sorts of lines. The mere fact that Heather was in her home-well, technically not in her home, but on her property-could result in a reprimand, threats against her license. She was losing her way. But, having gone this far, she was not willing to go back.
“I have a book with me. Jane Eyre. I’ll be utterly content.”
“Jane Eyre, huh? I never could read her.”
Kay realized that Gloria had confused Brontë’s novel with the other Jane of nineteenth-century letters, Jane Austen. There probably wasn’t room for much in Gloria’s brain besides her clients, her work. Should Kay take her aside, tell her that they had visited the old mall? Would Heather volunteer this? Did it matter? Left alone, her eyes sca