Death Sentence

18

Aspiral of potato skin hung from the paring knife. She sat on a straight chair and her feet barely touched the floor. “I warn you right now. I always have been, am, and probably will continue to be a lousy cook.”

Paul manhandled the cork out of the bottle. “Glasses?”

“Up there.” She stabbed the knife toward the cabinet. “No, the next one. I think that’s why he divorced me. Too many burnt hamburgers while I was working on a brief instead of inventing five-course feasts. But I got my revenge. He’s gained twenty pounds since the divorce. I, on the other hand, remain as you see — malnourished or svelte, it depends on your point of view.”

“You look damn good to me.”

“Well thank you kind sir. My goodness this is nice wine. At least two dollars a bottle, what?”

“At least,” he said gravely. He held his glass up to the light. “My friend Sam Kreutzer used to go on for hours about the nose, the hue, the tongue, the palate. I never knew what the hell he was talking about.”

“Neither did he. Blindfold those guys and they can’t tell red wine from ketchup.” She dropped the potatoes into the miniature cauldron. “You’ve got a surprising little sense of humor, Paul.”

“Standard survival equipment for CPAs.”

She opened the oven and looked at the meat thermometer and picked up her glass. “Let us retire to the drawing room, sir.”

The apartment was tidy and small: it was three paces from the kitchenette to the couch. Bookcases hung cantilever from the walls; evidently she was a voracious and catholic reader — only one section contained law books.

She waved him away when he fumbled for matches; lit her cigarette with a table lighter and sat back peering at him through a smoke-induced squint.

He said, “Do you ever play poker?”

“No. Why?”

“You’d be a killer at it.”

“Am I so inscrutable? I don’t mean to be.”

“I keep wondering what you’re seeing when you look at me like that.”

“A rather sweet guy who’s still trying to get himself sorted out after the world fell down around his ankles. And, I might add, probably a pretty good poker player himself. Are you?”

“I haven’t played in months.”

“But you used to.”

“Every Thursday. I held my own but I’m no Cincinnati Kid. It was just a social game — the same friends every week.”

“Do you miss them? Your New York friends.”

“Some of them. Sam Kreutzer. The office wit — sort of a fledgling Childress. But I’ve never been much of a social animal, I guess.”

The cat leaped to a bookshelf and began to clean a paw. It was a grey and white tiger — inobtrusive, vigilant. Paul said, “I like people, in small doses, but I don’t need to have them around me night and day. I don’t really know what it means to have the kind of close binding friendship people talk about. Well, Sam was damned kind to me when my wife died — he stayed close by, helped me keep things together. But that’s courtesy, isn’t it. I mean it didn’t bother me that I’d be leaving those people behind by moving to Chicago.”

“What about your daughter?”

“We were fairly close. At least I think we were. But we weren’t friends, really. Parent and child — I was very protective, maybe too much so. Maybe possessive. It’s hard to know.”

“I’m the same way,” she said. “I was an only child. Actually I feel privileged. Liking people, but not needing them desperately. It makes you much freer, don’t you think?” She left the burning cigarette on the rim of the ash tray and picked up her wine; she said in a different voice, “But still it seems worth a lot more if you have a little love along the way.”