“Well, I do have to earn a living.”
“You didn’t have to earn a living after four P.M. today.”
“Man dies of an overdose of Seconal, you can’t just let the case lay there for a week.”
“First twenty-four hours are the most important, right,” Augusta said again, and rolled her eyes.
“They are.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“You mind if I turn this on again?” he asked. “I want to see what the weather’ll be tomorrow.”
She did not answer. She rolled onto her side, and began lifting and lowering one leg, steadily, methodically. He put the beer can down, rose from where he was sitting in the leather easy chair, and snapped on the television set. As he turned to go back to his chair, the auburn hair covering her crotch winked for just an instant, and then her legs closed, and opened again, the flaming wink again, and closed again. He sat heavily in the leather chair and picked up the beer can. The female television forecaster was a brunette with the cutes. Smiling idiotically, bantering with the anchorman, she finally relayed the information that there was no relief in sight; the temperature tomorrow would hit a high of somewhere between ninety-eight and ninety-nine (“That’s normal body temperature, isn’t it?” the anchorman asked. “Ninety-eight point six?”) with the humidity hovering at sixty-four percent, and the pollution index unsatisfactory.
“So what else is new?” Augusta said to the television screen, her leg moving up and down, up and down.
“Marty Trovaro is next with the sports,” the anchorman said. “Stay tuned.”
“Now we get what all the baseball teams did today,” Augusta said. “Can’t you turn that off, Bert?”
“I like baseball,” he said. “Where’d you go after the party?”
“To a Chinese joint on Boone.”
“Any good?”
“So-so.”
“How many of you went?”
“About a dozen. Eleven, actually. Your chair was empty.”
“On Boone, did you say?”
“Yes.”
“In Chinatown?”
“Yes.”
“All the way down there, huh?”
“Bianca lives in the Quarter, you know that.”
“Oh, yeah, right.”
The television sportscasters in America all had the same barber. Kling had thought the distinctive haircut was indigenous only to this part of the country, but he’d once gone down to Miami to pick up a guy on an extradition warrant, and the television sportscaster there had his hair cut the same way, as if someone had put a bowl over his head and trimmed all around it. He sometimes wondered if every sportscaster in America was bald and wearing a rug. Meyer Meyer had begun talking lately about buying a hairpiece. He tried to visualize Meyer with hair. He felt that hair would cost Meyer his credibility. Augusta was doing push-ups now. She did twenty-five of them every night. As the sportscaster read off the baseball scores, he watched her pushing against the carpet, watched the firm outline of her ass under the nylon robe, and unconsciously counted along with her. She stopped when he had counted only twenty-three; he must have missed a few. He got up and turned off the television set.
“Ah, blessed silence,” Augusta said.
“What time did the party break up?” he asked.
Augusta got to her feet. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked.
“Keep me awake,” he said.
“What time are you going in tomorrow?”
“It’s my day off.”
“Hallelujah,” she said. “You sure you don’t want any?”
“I’m sure.”
“I think I’ll have some,” she said, and started for the kitchen.
“What time did you say?” he asked.
“What time what?” she said over her shoulder.
“The party.”
She turned to him. “At Bianca’s, do you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“We left about seven-thirty.”
“And went across to Chinatown, huh?”
“Yes,” she said.
“By cab, or what?”
“Some of us went by cab, yes. I got a lift over.”
“Who with?”
“The Sanlessons,” she said, “you don’t know them,” and turned and walked out into the kitchen.
He heard her puttering around out there, taking the tin of coffee from the cabinet over the counter, and then opening one of the drawers, and moving the percolator from the stove to set it down noisily on the counter. He knew he would have to discuss it with her, knew he had to stop playing detective here, asking dumb questions about where she’d been and what time she got there and who she’d been with, had to ask her flat out, discuss the damn thing with her, the way he’d promised Carella he would. He told himself he’d do that the moment she came back into the room, ask her whether she was seeing somebody else, some other man. And maybe lose her, he thought. She went back into the bathroom again. He heard her opening and closing the door on the medicine cabinet. She was in there a long time. When finally she came out, she went into the kitchen and he heard her pouring the coffee. She came back into the living room then, holding a mug in her hand, and sat cross-legged on the carpet, and began sipping at the coffee.
He told himself he would ask her now.
He looked at her.
“What time did you leave the restaurant?” he asked.
“What is this?” she said suddenly.
“What do you mean?” he said. His heart had begun to flutter.
“I mean… what is this? What time did I leave Bianca’s, what time did I leave the restaurant — what the hell is this?”
“I’m just curious.”
“Just curious, huh? Is that some kind of occupational hazard? Curiosity? Curiosity killed the cat, Bert.”
“Oh? Is that right? Did curiosity…?”
“If you’re so damn interested in what time I got someplace, then why don’t you come with me next time, instead of running around the city looking for pills?”
“Pills?”
“You said Seconal, you said—”
“It was capsules.”
“I don’t give a damn what it was. I left Bianca’s at seven twenty-two and fourteen seconds, okay? I entered a black Buick Regal bearing the license plate…”
“Okay, Augusta.”
“… double-oh-seven, a license to kill, Bert, owned and operated by one Philip Santesson, who is the art director at…”
“I said okay.”
“… Winston, Loeb and Fields, accompanied by his wife, June Santesson, whereupon the suspect vehicle proceeded to Chinatown to join the rest of the party at a place called Ah Wong’s. We ordered—”
“Cut it out, Gussie!”
“No, goddammit, you cut it out! I left that fucking restaurant at ten-thirty and I caught a cab on Aqueduct, and came straight home to my loving husband who’s been putting me through a third-degree from the minute I walked through that door!” she shouted, pointing wildly at the front door. “Now, what the hell is it, Bert? If you’ve got something on your mind, let me know what it is! Otherwise, just shut up! I’m tired of playing cops and robbers.”
“So am I.”
“Then, what is it?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“I told you about the party, I told you we were supposed to…”
“I know you—”
“… be there at six, six-thirty.”
“All right, I know.”
“All right,” she said, and sighed, her anger suddenly dissipating.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I wanted to make love,” she said softly. “I came home wanting to make love.”