Melancholy Baby

“Oh, hell, East Overshoe, someplace. I don’t know. The Midwest. Some rinky-dink eight-watt radio station. She was their” — he made quote marks in the air and lowered his voice — “law correspondent.”

“And it built from there?”

“Yeah. It became a ‘call-in, ask Lolly’ kind of program, and then the subject matter broadened” — he waved his hand — “the rest is history.

“The firm has represented her since she went national,” he said. “I took her on personally, I’d say, about ten years ago.”

“She fun to work with?”

“You bet,” he said. “You always know where you stand with Lolly.”

“But is she fun?” I said.

“Probably not as much fun as you. Why the interest?”

“Hell,” I said. “What woman wouldn’t be interested. She’s a hero to us all.”

“I can see why she would be,” Peter said.

“Do you do all her legal work?”

“We do everything,” Peter said. “Legal, representation, the whole deal.”

“I’d love to meet her,” I said.

Peter tilted his head.

“Might be possible,” he said. “Would you like dinner here, or would you like to come back to my place?”

“Do you cook?” I said.

“Elegantly,” he said.

“And would there be something really good for dessert?” I said.

He smiled at me and let the question hang for a moment.

Then he said, “I guess that would be pretty much up to you.”

It was possible that Peter would turn out to be the enemy. I was alone in New York. My ex-husband had remarried.

“Let’s find out,” I said.

33

The red digital display on the cable box in Peter’s bedroom said that it was 2:30 in the morning. I was lying on my back beside Peter, listening to him snore softly. I had no clothes on. I wished very much to be dressed and in a cab back to my hotel. I wished I were back in my hotel, dressed in an oversized two-tone-orange T-shirt, and in my bed. Like so many liberated, up-to-the-minute contemporary men I had met, Peter felt it was important to spend the night together. No slam, bam, thank you, ma’am. Which meant a sort of awkward maneuvering around the bathroom in the morning. It meant wriggling into my pantyhose while he watched. Or it meant picking up my clothes and getting dressed in the closet. Ick!

There was no real basis for speculating about Lolly Drake. Except the coincidence that she knew Sarah’s father. And she was represented by a man who may have hired someone to beat up Sarah. But if I decided that it was a meaningless coincidence, and that Ike Rosen had probably lied to me, in the grip of his passion, then I had nowhere to go, and the discovery of that coincidence did nothing for me. And if it wasn’t a coincidence, I might be sleeping with the enemy. I decided to assume that it wasn’t a coincidence. So what if I had slept with the enemy.

The red-letter clock told me it was ten of three. I slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the chair where my clothes were folded and got dressed in careful silence. The pantyhose seemed too challenging at three in the morning, so I put them in my handbag and, carrying my shoes, I tiptoed out of the bedroom and through the living room, where the ambient light of the city showed the empty champagne bottle and two fluted glasses standing in mute memory of our evening. I stepped into my shoes while the elevator dropped silently to the lobby.

There was a sleepy doorman at the desk. I smiled at him demurely, trying not to look like a floozy, as I went by him and out onto Fifth Avenue. There is very little emptier than anywhere at three in the morning. I didn’t see a cab. The night was pleasant enough, so I headed downtown and walked twenty-one blocks down Fifth to my hotel. Most of the way, Central Park was on my right: lovely, dark, and deep. And beyond it, the eternal lights of the West Side marked its westward definition.

At my hotel, I had to ring to get in. I tried my I’m-not-a-floozy look on the security man who checked my room key. It’s a hard look to pull off when you are coming home alone at three in the morning with your pantyhose in your purse. I’m not sure he bought it.

Upstairs, I brushed my teeth and took a long shower and put on my orange T-shirt and went to bed and fell asleep almost as soon as I was prone. I dreamed Rosie and I were walking in a landscape I’d never seen, and Rosie was running around in ever-widening circles. When I called her, she came back, but then as we walked, she would continue to stray farther and farther until I called her back.

In the morning, I awoke with no new insights about myself or Peter Franklin, but I felt rested and lay in bed for a while being alone, reading the room-service menu, thinking about breakfast. Love and sex were great. Especially when they overlapped. But alone had its moments, too.

Two hours later, freshly showered, with a fine breakfast settling comfortably and my teeth newly brushed, I left the hotel and went to work.