She faced me square-on and crossed her arms over her chest. "Well, look at ya. Face all scraped up, bruises, he bullies you… Think I'm blind? You don't deserve it, you know. Don't have to take it just 'cause he's got the dangly bits and you don't."
"Hold on," I said, digging around in my pockets. I found a business card and handed it to her. "I'm a private investigator. I got these bruises at work. That man had nothing to do with it and if he did, he would be suffering a lot worse than a beer in his lap."
She stared at my card, then peered at my face. "Really? You're not just trying to cover up?"
I nodded. "Really."
Our gazes locked and her mouth formed a little O, but no sound came out. Memories leave a light in the eyes, just as plain as scars.
I shifted expression and smiled. "Now, where's the restroom? I really need to pee." She pointed and I headed for the door.
I looked at my face in the restroom mirror. The bruising wasn't that bad, but I'd acquired a new graze on my left cheek. My jacket was roughed up and stained with mud. My hair stuck out in tufts. I looked like Ophelia three days after the river. No wonder the waitress thought someone had hit me. I'd have been indignant, too, if it happened to be true. I straightened myself up before I headed back to the table, much cleaner and looking a little less like a tragic heroine.
I slipped back into my seat and reached for the plate of appetizers. I snarfed down three in short order and caught Novak grinning at me.
"What?" I demanded.
"I never expect skinny things like you to eat like that."
"It's not every day you cross the line between life and death, you know," I said. "You should dive in. You ordered this stuff and you're not exactly hefty yourself."
"You have a point, Ms. Blaine," he conceded, digging in.
But I had stopped talking or listening. The angle of the car, the speed… it could not have missed me. At the very least it should have clipped my hip, my leg, my foot… I shivered and felt gravity drop out from under me. It had been drizzling thin, wet drops with the brackish smell of the lake. But I had stepped sideways through stinking fog and back into rain. Somehow. Through the Grey to avoid the car.
"You OK?" Novak asked. "You seem to be drifting off."
I shook myself. "I'm fine. Just getting ideas about… various things."
"Work related?"
"Yes."
"Were those bruises work related, too?"
"Yes, but that's not a normal occupational hazard. Most of what I do is pretty low-key paperwork chasing."
"Mind if I ask, anyway?"
I was rattled. With the whiskey and the warm room and a man not hard to look at giving me puppy eyes, the urge to talk was overwhelming. I told him how I got the bruises. He looked horrified.
"And you say that's not an occupational hazard?" he asked.
"I said not a normal one. People go off the deep end sometimes.
"You just push the right button and that's all you get. You must know people like that."
He nodded. "My boss is like that, lately. Irrational about the oddest things."
"Like what?"
"Oh, business things. Doesn't like me to touch things one day, demands that I do all the cataloging, tagging, and hauling the next, while he schmoozes up the clients. Shows up late, then chews me out for taking an extra break. Other days, he just sends me home with no explanation. I've been putting money into the company for a couple of years, but stupid things like this make me wonder if I'm doing the right thing. Are you going to eat that, Ms. Blaine?" he added, pointing his fork at a lonely hors d'oeuvre.
I sat back to allow the waitress to put my dinner in front of me. "Are we still on a formal basis here, Mr. Novak?" Novak stabbed the last antipasto. "Don't we get to graduate to first names once we've shared a drink, salami, and garlic breath?"
He laughed. "On the first date?"
"If you're not prepared for any eventuality, don't take a date to an Italian restaurant. Something about all that marinara sauce and finger food just leads to trouble."
"All right, then—my friends call me Will." He extended his hand to me as if we were meeting for the first time.
I took it. "I'm Harper."
"Funny name."
"My mother has funny ideas. She wanted me to be a dancer or an actress—pushed me into it straight from the cradle. She thought that if I had a movie-star name, I'd have a movie-star life. The road to obscurity is paved with classy names."
"And she named you Harper? Not Marlene or Jean or Rita?"
"Do I look like Rita Moreno?"
"I was thinking of Rita Hayworth."
"I don't look like her, either, but they were both dancers."
"So was Gene Kelly, but you don't look like him, either."
"Thank the gods. He had a cute butt, though." The booze was talking… I hoped.
"Never before have I been envious of Gene Kelly's butt."
I sprayed whiskey, fluffing a laugh, and started to choke. Will reached over and pounded on my back—the advantage to long arms. I managed to swallow and catch my breath. He stayed leaning forward, peering at me with anxiety.
"You OK?"
"Fine. I'm fine. You shouldn't say things like that to a woman with a mouthful of whiskey."
"Yeah, with these rotten candles and the way you spit, we might have set the place on fire."
I broke down, giggling. Shadows and shapes flickered in the corners of the room, but I was laughing too hard to do anything about it, or care.
Will looked mock grave. "I can see that my flirting technique is rusty. I've reduced you to painful laughter and choking. Can you breathe? Are you going to expire? Should I call a doctor?"
"No, no. I'm fine," I gasped. "I'm not even wearing my dinner yet. Everything's fine."
"Good," he said, sitting back. "I'd be embarrassed if you choked to death."
"Imagine how I'd feel."
He looked at me and a wicked grin spread across his face; then he slowly turned red and looked away. "Umm… maybe I'd better not." He got very busy with his dinner and didn't look up to see me
No one had flirted with me—real, serious flirting—in a very long time. Maybe both of us were rusty, but I had to admit, I liked it.
"Another stupid question," he said, watching his knife diligently as he cut through a chicken breast which would have surrendered whorishly to a spoon. "Why private investigator?"
"I'm a mystery freak. And it was as different from my mother's ideas as I could get, which pisses her off to this day. I danced all the way through college to keep her off my back, but I ditched my jazz shoes the minute I had my diploma in my hand."
He looked up. "You entered a potentially dangerous profession to spite your mother?"
"No. But it does have that satisfying side effect," I explained. "I suppose, if I was less of a loner, I might have been a cop. But I'm the solitary puzzle-solver. I don't really care about street patrols and drug busts and gang shootings and traffic duty—all that necessary and cooperative community stuff that cops do. I like figuring out the puzzle. If it's interesting enough, I'll work a problem twenty-four hours a day. I get to exercise my obsessive-compulsive streak that way. Want to guess what my favorite movie is?"
"The Maltese Falcon."
"To Have and Have Not."
"That's not a mystery."
"I know, but I still like it better. I adore Lauren Bacall. Falcon comes in second, though, closely trailed by The Big Sleep."
"Bogart fan, eh?"
"Big-time. Bogey got all the great tough guys," I said. "Who did it better?"
"Jimmy Cagney, Alan Ladd?"
"Both very good, but not Bogart. Did you know Cagney started out as a dancer?"