he asked.
“No, it’s got a cartridge in it. Unscrew the end.”
He twisted the barrel and the nib-end rotated away from the pen, and after a few more turns it came loose in his hand, exposing a duplicate of the ink-cartridge he had in his pocket.
“Pull the cartridge off,” she said suddenly, “and lick the end of it. Didn’t she tell you about my ink?”
“No,” he said, his voice unsteady. “Tell me about your ink.”
“Well, it’s got a little bit of my blood in it, though it’s mostly ink.” She was flipping through the pages of the book. “But some blood. Lick it, the punctured end of the cartridge.” She looked up at him and grinned. “As a chaser for the rum I smell on your breath.”
For ten seconds he stared into her deep green eyes, then he raised the cartridge and ran his tongue across the end of it. He didn’t taste anything.
“That’s my dear man,” she said, taking his hand and stepping onto the living room carpet. “Let’s sit in that chair you were napping in.”
As they crossed the living room, Sydney slid his free hand into his pocket and clasped the rum-and-ink cartridge next to the blood-and-ink one. The one he had prepared this afternoon was up by his knuckles, the other at the base of his palm.
She let go of his hand to reach out and switch on the lamp, and Sydney pulled a pack of Camels out of his shirt pocket and shook one free.
“Sit down,” she said, “I’ll sit in your lap. I hardly weigh anything. Are there limits to what you’d do for someone you love?”
Sydney hooked a cigarette onto his lip and tossed the pack aside. “Limits?” he said as he sat down and clicked a lighter at the end of the cigarette. “I don’t know,” he said around a puff of smoke.
“I think you’re not one of those normal people,” she said.
“I hate ‘em.” He laid his cigarette in the smoking stand beside the chair.
“Me too,” she said, and she slid onto his lap and curled her left arm around his shoulders. Her skirt and sleeve were damp, but not cold.
With her right hand she opened the book to the sonnet “To My Sister.”
“Lots of margin space for us to write in,” she said.
Her hot cheek was touching his, and when he turned to look at her he found that he was kissing her, gently at first and then passionately, for this moment not caring that her scent was the smell of crushed ants.
“Put the cartridge,” she whispered into his mouth, “back into the pen and screw it closed.”
He carefully fitted one of the cartridges into the pen and whirled the base until it was tight.
George Sydney stood up from crouching beside the shelf of cookbooks, holding a copy of James Beard’s On Food. It was his favorite of Beard’s books, and if he couldn’t sell it at a profit he’d happily keep it.
He hadn’t found any other likely books here today, and now it was nearly noon and time to walk across the boulevard to Boardner’s for a couple of quick drinks.
“There he is,” said the man behind the counter and the cash register. “George, this lady has been coming in every day for the last week, looking for you.”
Sydney blinked toward the brightly sunlit store windows, and in front of the counter he saw the silhouette of a short elderly woman with a halo of back-lit white hair.
He smiled and shuffled forward. “Well, hi,” he said.
“Hello, George,” she said in a husky voice, holding out her hand.
He stepped across the remaining distance and shook her hand. “What –” he began.
“I was just on my way to the Chinese Theater,” she said. She was smiling up at him almost sadly, and though her face was deeply etched with wrinkles, her green eyes were lively and young. “I’m going to lay three pennies in the indentations in Gregory Peck’s square.”
He laughed in surprise. “I do that with Jean Harlow!” “
That’s where I got the idea.” She leaned forward and tipped her face up and kissed him briefly on the lips, and he dropped the James Beard book.
He crouched to retrieve the book, and when he straightened up she had already stepped out the door. He saw her walking away west down Hollywood Boulevard, her white hair fluttering around her head in the wind.
The man behind the counter was middle-aged, with a graying moustache. “Do you know who your admirer is, George?” he