The city outside was unwinding at day’s end, dusk softening her pace, slowing her step. Kling sat in an armchair near the window, watching the sky turn bloodred and then purple and then deepening to a grape-stained silky blackness. The apartment was very still.
Somewhere out there in the city of ten million people, there was a man named Walter Damascus and he had killed Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Leyden, had killed them brutally and viciously, pumping two shotgun blasts into each of their faces.
Kline wanted very much to go to bed with Cindy Forrest.
He did not move when he heard the key in the latch. He sat in the dark with a smile on his face, and then suddenly realized he might frighten her, and moved belatedly to turn on the table lamp. He was too late, she saw or sensed movement in the darkness. He heard her gasp, and immediately said, “It’s me, Cind.”
“Wow, you scared the hell out of me,” she said and turned on the lover light. “What are you doing here so early? You said…”
“I felt like coming over,” Kling said, and smiled.
“Yeah?”
“Mmm.”
She put her bag down on the hall table, wiggled out of her pumps, and came into the living room.
“Don’t you want a light?” she asked.
“No, it’s all right.”
“Pretty out there.”
“Mmm.”
“I love that tower. See it there?”
“Yes.”
She stared through the window a moment longer, bent to kiss him fleetingly, and then said, “Make yourself a drink, why don’t you?”
“You want one, too?”
“Yes. I’m exhausted,” Cindy said, and sighed, and padded softly into the bathroom. He heard the water running. He rose, turned on the lamp, and then went to where she kept her liquor in a drop-leaf desk. She was out of bourbon.
“No bourbon,” he said.
“What?”
“No bourbon. You’re out of bourbon,” he shouted.
“Oh, okay, I’ll have a little Scotch.”
“What?” he shouted.
“Scotch,” Cindy shouted. “A little Scotch.”
“Okay.”
“What?”
“I said okay.”
“Okay,” she said.
He smiled and carried the Scotch bottle into the small kitchenette. He took two short glasses down from the cabinet, poured a liberal shot into each glass, and then nearly broke his wrist trying to dislodge the ice-cube tray from the freezer compartment. He finally chipped the accumulated frost away with a butter knife, dropped two cubes into each glass, and then carried the drinks into the bedroom. Cindy was standing at the closet in half-slip and bra, reaching for a robe. With her back to him, she said, “I think I know what I’m going to write for my thesis, Bert.”
“What’s that?” he said. “Here’s your drink.”
“Thank you,” she said. Turning, she accepted the drink and tossed her robe onto the bed. She took a long sip, said, “Ahhh,” put the glass on the dresser, and then said, “I’ll be getting my master’s next June, you know. It’s time I began thinking about that doctorate.”
“Um-huh,” Kling said.
“You know what I’d like to do the thesis on?” she asked, and reached behind her to unclasp her bra.
“No, what?”
“The detective as voyeur,” she said.
He thought she was kidding, of course, because as she said the words her breasts simultaneously came free of the restraining bra, and he was, in that moment, very much the detective as voyeur. But she stepped out of her slip and panties without so much as cracking a smile, and then went to the bed to pick up the robe and put it on. As she was belting it, she said, “What do you think?”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, of course,” she said, looking at him with a somewhat puzzled expression. “Of course I’m serious. Why would I joke about something as important as my thesis?”
“Well, I don’t know, I just thought…”
“Of course I’m serious,” she repeated, more strongly this time. She was frowning as she picked up her drink again. “Why? Don’t you think it’s a good idea?”
“I don’t know what you have in mind,” Kling said. “You gave me the title, but…”
“Well, I don’t know if that’d be the exact title,” Cindy said, annoyed. She sipped some more Scotch and then said, “Let’s go into the living room, huh?”
“Why don’t we stay in here awhile?” Kling said.
Cindy looked at him. He shrugged and then tried a smile.
“I’m very tired,” she said at last. “I’ve had a lousy day, and I think I’m about to get my period, and I don’t…”
“All the more reason to…”
“No, come on,” she said, and walked out of the bedroom. Kling watched her as she went. He kept watching the empty doorframe long after she was out of the room. He took a swallow of his Scotch, set his jaw, and followed her into the living room. She was sitting by the window, gazing out at the distant buildings, her bare feet propped on a hassock. “I think it’s a good idea,” she said, without turning to look at him.
“Which one?” he asked.
“My thesis,” she said testily. “Bert, can we possibly get our minds off…”
“Our minds?”
“Your mind,” she corrected.
“Sure,” he said.
“It isn’t that I don’t love you…”
“Sure.”
“Or even that I don’t want you…”
“Sure.”
“It’s just that at this particular moment I don’t feel like making love. I feel more like crying, if you’d like to know.”
“Why?”
“I told you. I’m about to get my period. I always feel very depressed a day or two before.”
“Okay,” he said.
“And also, I’ve got my mind on this damn thesis.”
“Which you don’t have to begin work on until next June.”
“No, not next June. I’ll be getting my master’s next June. I won’t start on the doctorate till September. Anyway, what difference does it make, would you mind telling me? I have to start thinking about it sometime, don’t I?”
“Yes, but…”
“I don’t know what’s the matter with you today, Bert.”
“It’s my day off,” he said.
“Well, that’s a non sequitur if ever I heard one. And anyway, it hasn’t been my day off. I went to work at nine o’clock this morning and I interviewed twenty-four people, and I’m tired and irritable and about to get…”
“Yes, you told me.”
“All right, so why are you picking on me?”
“Cindy,” he said, “maybe I’d better go home.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to argue with you.”
“Then go home if you want to,” she said.
“All right, I will.”
“No, don’t,” she said.
“Cindy…”
“Oh, do what you want to do,” she said, “I don’t care.”
“Cindy, I love you very much,” he said. “Now cut it out!”
“Then why don’t you want to hear about my thesis?”
“I do want to hear about your thesis.”
“No, all you want to do is make love.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, except I don’t feel like it right now.”
“Okay.”
“And you don’t have to sound so damn offended, either.”