Nightlines

XXIII

Have you ever worn a black silk evening gown while cooking with Tabasco sauce?" Nudger asked Claudia. "No. It sounds kinky."

Nudger sat at Claudia's kitchen table, nursing an icy Budweiser and enjoying watching Claudia prepare dinner. She had every burner glowing on the old white four-burner stove, busying herself from pot to skillet to pot. She was a good cook, a practiced cook, though not necessarily the kind that could blend gourmet dishes. She was more of a specialist in the basic, in the sort of food that was no less tasty because it was recognizable on the plate. Corn on the cob was boiling in one pot, green beans simmering in another, potatoes heating in a third. In an old, heavy skillet, she was pan-frying the steaks Nudger had brought. Country cooking.

He liked the here and now of his life, he decided. There was a pleasant domesticity to it. Though Claudia wasn't wearing an apron, she was dressed in wifely-enough fashion in a sleeveless print blouse, denim skirt, and practical square-toed shoes that tried but failed to detract from the graceful turn of her ankles. Her dark hair was worn pulled back and pinned in a loose bun, emphasizing the symmetrical leanness of her face and making her deep-brown eyes seem enormous. she was obviously enjoying what she was doing, in fact seemed so absorbed in it that at times Nudger wondered if she remembered he was there. The simmering food gave off tantalizing cooking scents that mingled in the tiny kitchen. The beer was cold, the woman was warm. All very snug and right. Life on the upswing.

Nudger had thought his day was completely ruined when he lost Kelly. Listening to Jeanette's cold anger after he'd reported to her on Kelly hadn't improved his mood, either. But when Nudger had returned to his office, there was a new client, a six-foot-four, two hundred and fifty pounder who described himself as a small businessman, and who wanted his lawyer investigated. Nudger had taken the job, received a reasonable retainer, and immediately phoned Eileen.

What a princess! She had agreed to give Nudger more time to pay all back alimony on the condition that he mail her the retainer he'd just received. He'd gotten a money order made out to her, pocketed the part of the retainer he hadn't told her about, and mailed her the few hundred dollars to hold her at bay. It was something like tossing a cheese-burger to a trailing wolf.

Now here he was in Claudia's apartment, feeling content, knowing he'd staved off disaster at least through the weekend. That was about all you could ask of this world. He sipped his beer. Claudia turned the steaks.

"Black silk evening gown?" she said.

Nudger told her about his meeting with Kelly and his abortive attempt to follow the blond suspect. She listened attentively, automatically tending to the steaks.

"Do you think you followed the wrong bus?" she asked pertinently, when he'd finished.

"I think it was the same bus, the right bus, most of the way. But I can't be positive."

"Do you need to be?"

"No." He watched her switch off the burners, cross to the cabinets, and stretch to reach high for two dinner plates. It was worth watching. "But it would help immensely to be positive."

She set the plates on the counter by the stove and began deftly transferring food to them. "What are you going to do now?"

Nudger observed the largest steak, done medium and with just the right percentage of marbled fat, hoisted on the prongs of a fork and plunked onto his plate. "I'm going to eat," he said.

"I mean, about Kelly."

"I'm going to haunt the neighborhood between where I last saw him on the bus and where I first noticed he was missing from it. If he'd transferred again, I'm sure I'd have seen him standing at the stop where he got off, so I'm assuming he lives in the neighborhood, or at least had some business there."

"If you followed the right bus."

"If…"

"Well, it sounds like a reasonable plan," Claudia said, carrying the two heaping plates to the table in the small dining area. "Get yourself another beer."

"What about the wine I brought?"

"I forgot about that. I'll get some wineglasses."

She produced two stemmed glasses, one with a chipped rim. Nudger got the Gallo Brothers burgundy, of a vintage not yet ripped from calendars, out of the refrigerator, uncapped it, and poured. He gave Claudia the good glass.

The meal was delicious. Claudia had fried the steaks to exactly the point where they were done but hadn't lost much of their juice, and she had somehow seasoned the corn in the pot so that it didn't require salt or butter. She was in the wrong job at Kimball's.

Nudger raised his glass in a salute. "You're a world-class cook," he told her, meaning it. World-class. State of the art.

She seemed embarrassed. She actually smiled shyly and ducked her head, not knowing how to reply. "I use all cast- iron cookware," she said seriously. "It makes a difference." And so it must.

They decided to postpone dessert, then Nudger helped her to clear the table. She told him they'd wash the dishes later, after they'd had cheesecake and coffee. He didn't argue. She might think he was sexist.

"What do you want to do now?" she asked. "Watch television?"

"Too many commercials," Nudger said. "Watching television these days is like an evening with an aluminum-siding salesman."

"What, then?"

"I want to do this," Nudger said, and held her to him and kissed her mouth. He felt her arms jerk to life, coil around him, and her warm body levered forward and upward against his. He couldn't help feeling slightly surprised. It was as easy as in the movies.

She didn't want to pull away, but when she finally did, she looked up at him with dark crescent eyes and said, "I was hungrier for that than for steak. I'm not disappointed."

They were both in the movies. It was grand! "It has nothing to do with iron cookware," Nudger told her. Cary Grant.

She stared at him for a while, then nodded and smiled slightly. He knew that she saw the part of him that was detached from her and everyone else and would accept it. He could see the sweet sadness just below her surface. And her desperation, quieted at last, but patiently waiting. She led him into her bedroom.

The window was open, curtains swaying. Nudger could see the bright haze from the lights of the stadium, beyond the silhouettes of the buildings down the street. He heard the mass murmur of the night-game crowd.

As Claudia was methodically undressing, she saw the question in Nudger and said, "I had a tubal ligation. I can have no more children. Safe. Forever."

She made love violently and searchingly. There was a delicate sadness even in her letting go.

What they were doing must have been right. Thousands cheered.

By the time they were finished and lay quietly beside each other, the warm room held the musky scent of their perspiring bodies. A night moth found its way through the window, brushed softly against Nudger's bare leg, and then fluttered away. For an instant Nudger was with Eileen. For an instant.

"You were cautious with me," Claudia said.

"Yes."

"You don't have to be."

He laced his fingers behind his head, resting back on his pillow and listening to the faint sounds of the old building's concessions to time, the muted swish of traffic below on Spruce Street, the occasional stirring of the ballpark crowd.

"I've been doing some more detective work of a personal nature," he said.

"Oh?"

"I talked with several people who know you, your friends. Including Dr. Oliver."

She lay silently for a long time. When she answered, her voice held a flat tone of disbelief. "And you're still here with me?"

"I believe in you."

"You don't have any reason to believe in me."

"The best things in life are unreasonable."

She was reasonable enough not to argue.

"I want you to have faith in your future," he told her. "Hope."

She laughed her resigned, throaty laugh. "I can't keep hoping, and you can't stop hoping. Yours is a bigger problem than mine."

"When are you going to see your daughters next?" he asked. He felt the slight shift of the mattress as her body tensed.

"Next weekend. Remember? They're out of town this weekend."

"Let me go get them for you, bring them here or wherever you want to meet them. We'll make a day of it-the Arch, the Zoo, whatever you and they like."

"Ralph might not give them to you."

"I already told him I was your boyfriend. Must have been a premonition. Ralph and I have talked, so it's not as if we're strangers. You can phone him and let him know I'm driving by for the girls. Or you can go with me and sit in the car where he can see you."

"But you don't want me to see Ralph."

"Why should you?"

She didn't have an answer for that. Or not one she liked. She lay quietly beside Nudger, breathing regularly and deeply, almost as if she were asleep. He knew she was awake.

"All right," she said at last. He felt the light touch of her fingertips on his arm, tracing a feathery path from elbow to wrist.

"What about dessert?" he said.