The Burglar in the Library - By Lawrence Block Page 0,36

sort of sound a cop would make (“Put your hands on the wall!”), nor was it the clanking of chains or the wail of a banshee.

The sound was akin to that of a very expensive and well-bred motorcar, its powerful engine idling, waiting for the light to change. In a word, it was purring.

I bent down and scooped it up in my arms, hoping it would stick to purring and not switch to anything as attention-getting as a full-throated miaow. And then, while a pair of invisible Anatrurian provocateurs went on inaudibly plotting a coup, I played the perfect counterspy—I walked the cat back to my room.

I guess he was hungry. That’s what it usually means when Raffles does his ankle-brushing number, although it’s tempting to interpret it as a display of affection. (Maybe that’s what any display of affection really means, regardless of the source—“Hi there! I want something from you!”)

Back in Aunt Augusta’s bedchamber, I found the red plastic bowl we’d brought along, and the box of Friskies, poured the latter into the former, and put it down where he could get at it. He stood there in the dark, eating, and I stood there and watched him, and then he walked over to the door, which I’d closed, and made pathetic declawed scratching noises until I opened it and let him out.

I closed it again, took off clothes and put on pajamas, then opened it and left it ajar. In the double bed provided for us, Carolyn rolled over and snarled softly in her sleep. She’d been sleeping on one side of the bed, but now she was smack in the middle.

Outside our window, the snow went right on falling. If it had ever stopped or even slowed its pace, you couldn’t prove it by me; every time I’d looked out a window, there it was, great big flakes of it, falling in great profusion. From where I stood there was no way to gauge its depth, but I figured there had to be a foot of it out there at the very least.

I got into bed, trying to pick the side with the most room. I settled my head on the pillow and got an elbow in the ribs from Carolyn. I tried to make do with the space available to me, but that didn’t work. I’d start to drift, and then Carolyn would move around enough to rouse me with a knee or an elbow, or I’d draw so close to the edge of the bed that I’d start to fall out of it.

After a little of this I decided I had to risk waking her, and I put one hand on her hip and the other on her shoulder and shoved her gently but firmly over toward her side of the bed. That seemed to work, but then she came rolling back, and her arm wrapped around me as her face wound up nestled against my chest.

I had to lie there and decide how I felt about this. Carolyn is certainly an attractive woman, but it’s safe to say she’s not my type, even as I am emphatically not hers. One of the ways in which women differ from men, it seems to me, is that the distinctions between gay and straight are a little more apt to blur for them. A lot of straight women seem inclined to experiment with a female lover now and then—Carolyn keeps getting involved with women of this sort, and keeps swearing it’s a mistake she’s made for the last time. And I’ve known lesbians with a similar inclination to try something different once in a blue moon.

Not Carolyn. She’s no more interested in having sex with a man than I am. That was clear from the day I met her, and it made it easier for our friendship to develop. We were best friends, we were buddies, and one thing we were not destined to do was share a pillow.

But that was what we were doing. She may have had a pillow of her own, but her head was on my pillow now, and so was mine.

No problem. If I hadn’t had that interlude with Lettice in the East Parlour, maybe my body would have had other ideas. But it was a tired and depleted old body by now, and all it wanted was a good night’s sleep. Toward that end, huddling together for warmth like this was just what the doctor ordered. Snug in the arms