“No, guess again.”
“Hmmm. You’re so big. Is it an outside job?”
“No hints. Guess again.”
“Are you a writer?”
“No.”
“A businessman?”
“No.”
“A lawyer?”
“No.”
“A movie star!”
“Hah! No.”
“A fireman?”
“No.”
“I give up. Tell me what you do, and I’ll tell you what I do.”
“Okay, but prepare yourself for a letdown. I sell insurance.” I said it with boyish mock humility and resignation. Maggie loved it.
“What’s so bad about that? I’m just a bookkeeper! What we _do_ isn’t what we _are_, is it?”
“No,” I lied.
“So there!” Maggie squeezed my hand again.
I signaled the bartender, who brought us refills. We raised our glasses in a toast. “To mystery,” I said.
“To mystery,” she repeated.
Maggie finished her drink quickly. I sipped my beer. It felt like time to make a move. “Maggie, if this weather weren’t so damn rotten, we could take a drive. I know L.A. like the back of my hand, and there’s lots of beautiful places we could go.”
Maggie smiled warmly, this time not worrying about showing her teeth. “I feel like getting out of here, too. But you’re right, the weather is rotten. We could go to my apartment for a nightcap.”
“That sounds nice,” I said, my voice tightening.
“Did you drive? I came in a cab.”
“Yeah, I drove. We can take my car. Where do you live?”
“In Hollywood. On Harold Way. That’s a little street off of Sunset. Do you know where it is?”
“Sure.”
“That’s right, you know L.A. like the back of your hand!”
We both laughed as we left the bar and hurried across rainy Western Avenue to my car.
Driving north on Wilton Place, the rain started to abate. Maggie and I avoided flirting, and talked instead about things like the weather and her cat. I didn’t particularly like cats, but faked great interest in meeting hers. I kept wondering about her body. In the bar she had never taken off her coat. Her legs were well formed, but I wanted to know the size of her breasts and breadth of her hips before we were nude together.
Harold Way was a small, dimly lighted side street. Maggie showed me where to park. Her apartment building was postwar ugly with a Hawaiian motif. It was a giant boxlike structure of eight or ten units, stucco, with phony bamboo trim along the doors and windows. The entrances were along the side of the building.
Maggie and I chatted nervously as we walked down the long entranceway to her apartment. When she opened the door and flipped on the lights a fat gray cat jumped out of the darkness to greet us. Maggie put down her umbrella and picked him up. “Mmmm, my baby!” she cooed, hugging the captive feline. “Lion, this is Bill. Bill, this is my protector, Lion.”
I patted the cat’s head. “Hello, Lion,” I said naturally, not changing my voice. “How are you this fine winter’s evening? Caught any rodents lately? Are you earning your keep in this wonderful abode your lovely mistress has given you?”
My deadpan expression and voice sent Maggie into gales of laughter. “Oh, Bill, that’s so funny!” she gasped. She was slightly drunk.
I took the cat as Maggie locked the door behind us. Lion was very fat, probably not a ball bearing mousetrap. I looked around the living room. It was tidy, and a virtual ode to faraway places: Greece, Rome, France, and Spain were represented on the four walls, courtesy of Pan American Airways. I dropped the cat to the floor, where he started to sniff my trouser legs.
“It’s a nice apartment, Maggie. You’ve obviously taken a lot of care with it.”
Maggie beamed, then took my hand and led me to a plush overstuffed sofa. “Sit, Bill, and tell me what you’d like to drink.”
“Cognac, neat,” I said.
“One minute.”
While Maggie was in the kitchen I transferred my gun and cuffs from my belt to my coat pocket. She returned a moment later with two snifter glasses each containing a solid three ounces. She sat next to me on the sofa. We toasted silently. As the brandy hit my system I realized that I had little to say. There was nothing I could impart to this woman–who was probably ten years my senior– that she didn’t already know.