Eileen was smiling now.
“It was a very lovely scene,” she said.
“I don’t much care for foreign movies,” Kling said. “I mean, the ones with subtitles.”
“This one had subtitles,” Eileen said. “But it was beautiful.”
“That scene did sound very good,” Kling said.
“Le Diable au Corps, that was it.”
Kling looked at her, puzzled.
“The title,” she said. “It means ‘Devil in the Flesh.’ ”
“That’s a good title,” Kling said.
“Yes,” Eileen said.
“The Pouilly Fumé,” the waiter said, and pulled the cork. He wiped the lip of the bottle with his towel, and then poured a little wine into Kling’s glass. Kling looked at Eileen, lifted the glass, brought it to his lips, sipped at the wine, rolled the wine around in his mouth, raised his eyebrows and said, “This wine tastes of cork.”
Eileen burst out laughing.
“Cork?” the waiter said.
“I’m joking,” Kling said, “it’s really fine.”
“Because, really, if it’s—”
“No, no, it’s fine, really.”
Eileen was still laughing. The waiter frowned at her as he poured the wine into her glass, and then filled Kling’s. He was still frowning when he walked away from the table. They raised their glasses.
“Here’s to golden days and purple nights,” Eileen said, and clinked her glass against his.
“Cheers,” he said.
“My Uncle Matt always used to say that,” Eileen said. “He drank like a fish.” She brought the glass to her lips. “Be funny if it really tasted of cork, wouldn’t it?” she said, and then sipped at the wine.
“Does it?” Kling asked.
“No, no, it’s very good. Try it,” she said. “For real this time.”
He drank.
“Good?” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Actually, it was Micheline Presle, I think,” she said. “The heroine.”
They sat silently for several moments. Out on the river, a tugboat hooted into the night.
“So,” she said, “what are you working on?”
“That homicide we caught when you were up there Saturday night.”
“How does it look?”
“Puzzling,” Kling said.
“That’s what makes them interesting,” Eileen said.
“I suppose.”
“My stuff is hardly ever puzzling. I’m always the bait for some lunatic out there, hoping he’ll take the hook.”
“I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes,” Kling said.
“It does get scary every now and then.”
“I’ll bet.”
“So listen, who asked me to become a cop, right?”
“How’d you happen to get into it?”
“Uncle Matt. He of the golden days and purple nights, the big drinker. He was a cop. I loved him to death, so I figured I’d become a cop, too. He worked out of the old 110th in Riverhead. That is, till he caught it one night in a bar brawl. He wasn’t even on duty. Just sitting there drinking his sour mash bourbon when some guy came in with a sawed-off shotgun and a red plaid kerchief over his face. Uncle Matt went for his service revolver and the guy shot him dead.” Eileen paused. “The guy got fifty-two dollars and thirty-six cents from the cash register. He also got away clean. I keep hoping I’ll run into him one day. Sawed-off shotgun and red plaid kerchief. I’ll blow him away without batting an eyelash.”
She batted both eyelashes now.
“Tough talk on the lady, huh?” she said, and smiled. “So how about you?” she said. “How’d you get into it?”
“Seemed like the right thing to do at the time,” he said, and shrugged.
“How about now? Does it still seem like the right thing?”
“I guess so.” He shrugged again. “You get sort of... it wears you down, you know.”
“Mm,” she said.
“Everything out there,” he said, and fell silent.
They sipped some more wine.
“What are you working on?” he asked.
“Thursday,” she said. “I won’t start till Thursday night.”
“And what’s that?”
“Some guy’s been raping nurses outside Worth Memorial. On their way to the subway, when they’re crossing that park outside the hospital, do you know the park? In Chinatown?”
“Yes,” Kling said, and nodded.
“Pretty big park for that part of the city. He hits the ones coming off the four-to-midnight, three of them in the past three months, always when there’s no moon.”
“I gather there’ll be no moon this Thursday night.”
“No moon at all,” she said. “Don’t you just love that song?”
“What song?”
“ ‘No Moon at All.’ ”
“I don’t know it,” Kling said. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, this certainly isn’t the ‘We-Both-Like-the-Same-Things’ scene, is it?”
“I don’t know what scene that is,” Kling said.
“In the movies. What’s your favorite color? Yellow. Mine, too! What’s your favorite flower? Geraniums. Mine, too! Gee, we both like the same things!” She laughed again.
“Well, at least we both like the wine,” Kling said, and smiled, and poured her glass full again. “Will you be dressed like a nurse?” he asked.
“Oh, sure. Do you think that’s sexy?”
“What?”
“Nurses. Their uniforms, I mean.”
“I’ve never thought about it.”
“Lots of men have things for nurses, you know. I guess it’s because they figure they’ve seen it all, nurses. Guys lying around naked on operating tables and so forth. They figure nurses are experienced.”
“Mm,” Kling said.
“Somebody once told me — this man I used to date, he was an editor at a paperback house — he told me if you put the word nurse in a title, you’re guaranteed a million-copy sale.”
“Is that true?”
“It’s what he told me.”
“I guess he would know.”
“But nurses don’t turn you on, huh?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I’ll have to show you what I look like,” Eileen said. Her eyes met his. “In my nurse’s outfit.”
Kling said nothing.
“It must have something to do with white, too,” Eileen said. “The fact that a nurse’s uniform is white. Like a bride’s gown, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” Kling said.
“The conflicting image, do you know? The experienced virgin. Not that too many brides today are virgins,” she said, and shrugged. “Nobody would even expect that today, would they? A man, I mean. That his bride’s going to be a virgin?”