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"Poor Oliver. I feel bad for him. Didn't you say this dinner was his idea7" "I was going to call it off but he insisted that we not stand you up. So tonight I'll have to be myself and Oliver as well."

"Does that mean you're going to be eating for two? " "Yes.

With lots of garlic." Gin noticed that Duncan's smile seemed a little forced. He looked tense, his posture stiff. He seemed generally uneasy. Because of her?

Could it be he was uncomfortable taking a young female employee out to dinner?

But Duncan rarely gave a damn what anyone else thought - of him.

The Mercedes cruised down Connecticut like a battleship on a lake. She'd never been in Duncan's car before. She felt invulnerable as she watched the shops and hotels along Connecticut roll past on the other side of the tinted glass. They cruised around Dupont Circle, then turned right onto M Street A left on Twenty-first Street and they were there.

"Galileo, " he said as they pulled into the garage next door. A simple maroon canopy jutted out from what looked like an officer building.

"Where the effete elite meet to eat." Gin decided to go him one better. "Where the voracious and edacious mendacious can wax loquacious while looking gracious, sedacious, and perspicacious. " There. That was two or three better.

Duncan stared at her a moment, then said, "That, my dear, was a thing of beauty." But he wasn't smiling. His expression was strange.

Almost . . .

pained.

What's eating him tonight? she wondered.

Her before-dinner manhattan was perfect, the mezze lune di granachio was superb, the service impeccable, and the wine Duncan ordered, a I 984 amarone, as smooth as silk. Galileo's spare decor was not what she'd expected. No heavy Mediterranean drapes and furniture.

Everything was light and understated. But the mood at their table was anything but light. At times the conversation actually dragged, something she would have thought impossible in Duncan's presence. He didn't rant, didn't launch into a single tirade. Even when Larry King and Senator Rockefeller arrived and were seated three tables away, Duncan managed only a few disparaging remarks. At times she'd find him staring at her, his eyes intent on her face, other times he'd be a million miles away. He picked at his veal and barely sipped his wine, but kept refilling her glass. She wondered if he might be coming down with what Oliver had.

She wished she could get a grip on this jigsaw puzzle of a man. Every time she thought she had him figured, a new piece would pop up requiring her to rearrange everything and start over again.

She watched him stare into his half-full glass of wine for the longest time

"Are you okay? " He looked up. "Hmmm? Yes. Fine." '"You seem down." He shrugged. "Just thinking about life, the twists and turns it takes you through. The cruel tricks it plays on you." "Some of the tricks are funny, " she said.

"Sometimes we back ourselves into corners, " he said, as if she hadn't spoken, "and we despise the means necessary to extricate ourselves. ' What was wrong with him tonight?

"Do you want dessert? " he said as the waiter was clearing the dinner plates.

"I don't think I could eat another thing. But I could go for some coffee."

"Leave the coffee to me, " he said. "I don't care if this is one of the best restaurants inside the beltway, their coffee can't hold a candle to mine. We'll have real coffee back at the office." She considered begging off, but realized she couldn't deny Duncan his coffee ritual. Maybe it would pull him out of his funk. Besides, it was only a few miles out of the way.

After Duncan paid the bill, Gin rose and felt a little wobbly. She realized that she'd consumed most of the amarone.

As she stood staring at the languid koi in the rock garden pool beyond Duncan's offwce window, Gin wondered if there was any place on earth she'd feel less comfortable than Duncan's officer. This was where she'd broken into his drawer, where just yesterday she'd been sneaking through his bookshelf. And here he was toiling a dozen feet away making her what he called the best coffee in the world.

She felt like such a rat.

But at least the prospect of some good coffee seemed to have cheered him up. Maybe that had been his problem all along tonight, caffeine withdrawal.

"At last, " he said, turning from his drip equipment with a steaming cup. "The perfect after-dinner coffee." Gin took it from him and sniffed. "Licorice? " "I know, I know. You must promise never to mention to anyone that I adulterated my own coffee. But I figured that after an evening of Italian food, I'd break down and add some sambuca.

' Gin sipped and repressed a grimace. Bitter. She could taste the coffee, and the licorice tang of the sambuca, but there was something else there, something she couldn't identify.

"Mmmm, " she said. "Unusual."

"A special black sambuca, " he told her, sipping his own. "Gives it a unique flavor. Drink up." Gin took another sip. Definitely not to her taste, but she couldn't very well dump it after he'd gone to the trouble of brewing it for her.

Rather than prolong the agony, she drank it quickly.

"Another cup? ' Duncan asked.

"No, thanks, " she said. "Between the manhattan, the wine, and the sambuca, I think I'm already over my limit." That was an understatement. She was definitely woozy now.

"Maybe I'd better take you home, " Duncan said.

"Maybe you'd better, " she said. "I'm sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry about. You're not driving, so what difference does it make? " A fine drizzle had begun to fall. In the Mercedes, the swirl of lights from the streets and passing cars refracting through the myriad beads of water on the windows made her stomach begin a slow turn. She- squinted and breathe deeply. She would die before she'd throw up in Duncan's car.

He double-parked on Kalorama, took her keys, and walked her up to her apartment. He let her in, then stepped back onto the landing.

"Are you going to be all right? " "I'll be fine. Thanks for dinner.

And I'm sorry about . . . " "Don't give it another thought. I shouldn't have given you that doctored-up coffee." Something strange in his voice as he said that, but his face was unreadable Or was that because her vision was blurred?

"Good night, Duncan."

"Good night. Go right to bed." '"Don't worry about that."

As soon as he closed the door, Gin headed for the bathroom. But she didn't vomit. The nausea was still there, but now that the world around her was no longer in motion, it seemed to have eased.

She thought about taking a shower, then said to hell with it. What she needed was sleep.

She took off her raincoat and threw it on a chair. She sat on the bed and peeled off her panty hose, then began working on the buttons of her dress. Before she reached the last she flopped back and closed her eyes. Just for a second . . . no more than a minute . . . then she'd finish undressing . . .

THURSDAY MORNING GINA AWOKE WITH GLUE IN HER MOUTH, SAND IN HER eyes, and heavy metal pounding in her ears. She rolled out of bed and stumbled across the floor with her hand stretched toward the snooze button. She always left her clock radio on a hard-core metal station.

Never failed to get her up. No way she could stay in bed with that stuff playing.

Only now she wished she'd spun the dial to something else, anything else, before passing out last night. Noise equaled pain this morning, but speed metal went beyond pain into torture. The throbbing bass and drums were piercing straight through to the center of her brain. One of these groups should name itself Torquemada.

She banged her fist on SNOOZE, then turned around and headed for the bed again. She looked down and noticed she was still in her dress.