“No, but I did give her directions.”
“Christina!” Ben rolled over on one side. He wanted to complain, but what was the point? Christina obviously did what she thought was right; nothing he said was going to change her mind.
After several minutes had passed, Christina broke the silence. “I’m sorry the audition didn’t go better.”
“How did you know?”
“If you’d gotten the gig, you would’ve mentioned it already.”
Christina had a habit of startling him with her understanding of matters she had no business understanding. Her instincts were uncanny. It was almost as if she were a mind reader. Which, given all the other weird stuff she was into, was not altogether impossible.
“You must be disappointed.”
He shrugged. “Not really. I never expected to get it. I’m all right playing with other musicians—Mike when we were in college, the guys in the jazz band these past months. But I’ll never cut it as a soloist.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re the best pianist I’ve ever heard.”
Ben laughed. “Remind me to take you to a Van Cliburn concert.”
“But I don’t think jazz is your forte.”
“Yeah, well, people expect folk music to come from a guitar, not a piano. And there aren’t a lot of folk music clubs in town.”
“Maybe you should start one.”
He laughed again. “You’re dreaming.”
“True. Wish I could get you to do the same.”
“You can’t start a club playing music people don’t want to hear.”
“Ben, do you know what your problem is?”
“I suspect I’m about to.”
“You always try to please other people. Which is commendable, but there are limits. You don’t start playing a kind of music just because that’s what other people want to hear. At some point in your life, you have to be who you really are.”
“You know, this is the second time today I’ve heard this speech, and frankly, I’m tired of it.”
“Then listen for a change!” Her words poured out with unexpected force. “Do you think I’d be telling you this if it wasn’t true?”
Ben turned away. “I don’t need other people to tell me who I am.”
“Evidently you do!” She threw up her hands. “And this is all a symptom of this ridiculous business of pretending you don’t want to be a lawyer anymore.”
“I don’t.”
Christina didn’t respond.
“I said, I don’t.”
She remained silent, impassive.
“I don’t!”
She turned her head slightly. “Methinks he doth protest too much.”
Ben rolled his eyes and edged toward the access panel.
“You know, Ben, just because your last case turned out badly—”
“I do not want to discuss this!”
Christina drummed her fingers. “I stopped by to see Jones and Loving today.”
“Please don’t start with that again, all right?”
“They need you.”
“They do not. Jones is a top-notch legal secretary and office manager, and Loving is a relentless investigator with great business connections. They don’t need me for anything.”
“They feel abandoned since you closed your law practice.”
“I didn’t close my practice. It was blown to smithereens.”
She made a tsking sound. “Excuses, excuses. Think of all that time you spent at OU getting your degree.”
“So what? Is it written somewhere that I have to be a lawyer forever just because I spent three years at the best law school in the state?”
“Tulsa has a perfectly good law school,” Christina interjected.
Ben stopped. It was true, of course, but since when did she become the defender of TU’s law school? “The point is, I don’t have to be a lawyer. I’m doing just fine.”
“Right, living off the proceeds of your big case. It won’t last forever, you know.”
“I make an income as a musician, too.”
“Not enough to pay the rent, but money isn’t the issue. I know you’ll eventually learn to be who you really are.” She paused, staring up at the sky. “I’m confident you will. In time. I just get tired of waiting. So do Jones and Loving. They need you.”
“Oh, would you stop with the guilt trip already? They do not need me. I’m sure they’re staying perfectly busy on their own …”
Jones leaned back, aimed carefully, and propelled another wad of paper toward the trash can. It came in high, bounced off one office wall, ricocheted off the other, and dropped just outside the rim.
“Blast!” Jones said, swinging around in his black swivel desk chair. “I had eleven baskets in a row and I blew it!”
“That’s so excitin’,” Loving said, looking up wearily from his magazine. “I’ll alert the media.”
“Yeah, well, at least I’m not wasting my time reading some idiotic magazine for the third time through. What is that, anyway?” Jones walked over to Loving’s desk and snatched the magazine out of his hands. “UFO Newswatch?. Give me a break. How can you read this junk?”
“It ain’t junk,” Loving said, snatching it back. “It’s serious journalism.”
“This is one step removed from the National Enquirer,” Jones replied. He scanned the cover of the magazine. “ ‘What Really Happened at Roswell? What—or Who—Is Hidden in Hangar 18? Elvis and JFK Alive in Andromeda?’ Sheesh.”
Loving jumped to his feet. “You shouldn’t make fun of things you don’t understand.”
Loving was a huge man, muscled from head to toe, and he outweighed Jones by about two hundred pounds. Jones, however, knew him well and wasn’t intimidated in the least. “Don’t you think if aliens had really landed it might have made the front page of The New York Times? Or at least the Tulsa World?”
Loving slapped the cover of his magazine. “These guys print the news the surface media is afraid to cover.”
“Afraid?”
“Everyone knows there’s been a cover-up. Vested interests are makin’ sure the truth don’t come out. People in the know know aliens have been abductin’ earthlings for decades.”
“Is that right?” Jones said, heading back toward his desk. “I guess that’s what happened to all our clients.”
Jones scanned his calendar, mulling unhappily on all the empty untouched squares on the Day-Timer. When Loving first opened this office in Warren Place, using his share of the loot Ben made off his last case, Loving had a stream of clients who needed his private investigator services. After about two months, though, the work had dried up. With some reservations, Loving had asked Jones to share the office space (and the rent), and Jones had agreed. Unfortunately they’d both been virtually idle ever since. Although they had enough in savings to hold out for a few more months, they both knew they couldn’t last forever without more business.
“Have you heard anythin’ from the Skipper?” Loving asked, his face buried in the magazine.
“No. Christina keeps saying he’ll come back.”
Loving grunted. “Wish he’d hurry.”
“Yeah, well, you know how he is.” Jones put a goofy expression on his face and raised his voice an octave. “ ‘Yes, I could practice law, but should I? Is it the ethically appropriate thing to do? Is it the best use of my journey on Spaceship Earth?’ ”
Loving dropped his magazine and guffawed. Jones was a talented mimic. He could do dead-on impersonations of other people’s voices, even after having heard them for only a short time. And of course he had heard Ben Kincaid’s voice a lot.
“Well, this is incredibly boring,” Jones said, returning to his own voice. “I’m going online.”
Loving shook his head. “You’re gonna go broke on that Internet crap.”