by and didn’t say a word.
THAT NIGHT I FELL asleep on the couch shortly after Kim had gone to bed.
She woke me sometime after midnight with a long kiss on my lips. She was wearing only a T-shirt. She was kneeling beside me, and the T-shirt crept above her pale, round ass as she leaned in.
“Aren’t you tired of this arrangement?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Me too.”
She pulled down my blanket and straddled me, easing me into the folds of her dampness. I pushed her breasts together and kissed them, then her neck. Her hips moved with an even liquidity. I let her take me to it, and when I was there, it was if she were tearing a piece from me to keep in her lambent belly.
Afterwards I remained inside her. She laid her chest on mine and I listened to her breath.
We slept in my bed that night, with the cat between our feet. I woke early, showered, and dressed. I shook her awake and told her I was leaving to run some errands, then kissed her. Her eyes had closed again by the time I reached the door.
When I returned two hours later, she was gone. Her suitcase had been taken, as had all of the makeup and jewelry on the dresser. The rest of the apartment was orderly. There were no signs of struggle.
The photograph of the German shepherd still hung crookedly on the mirror, the only item Kim Lazarus had left behind, like the last discarded fragment of a childhood long since past.
TWENTY-FIVE
THE WEATHER THAT morning suddenly turned, to the kind of gray, windy October day that is a harbinger of winter. I put on my charcoal wool sportjacket over a blue denim shirt, filled the cat’s dish, secured the apartment, and headed downtown.
I had the desk clerk ring up Kim’s apartment from the lobby of her building. There was no answer and she had not been in to pick up her mail.
Out in the street, I turned my collar up and walked into the wind down the two blocks that ended at the river. I entered a seafood restaurant on the waterfront that was just opening for lunch, and had a seat at the empty bar.
The bartender was a thin man with a thin mustache wearing black slacks and a stained white shirt. He stopped cutting limes, idled over, and dropped a bev-nap on the bar in front of me. Then he ran a waxy fingernail along the edge of his mustache.
“What can I get you?”
“A bottle of Bud. And an Old Grand-Dad. Neat.”
He served me and returned to his cutting board. I downed the shot and lit a smoke, then drank deeply of the beer. When the bottle was empty, I ordered another and a shot to keep it company.
I watched a yacht leave the marina while I killed my second round. I settled up and walked back out, up the street and to my car. Heading northwest, I stopped at a liquor store and bought a sixpack and a pint of Old Crow.
Before my next stop I slammed two cans of beer and had a fierce pull off the bottle. I wasn’t really sure where I was going, but it didn’t much matter. I knew at that point that I was spiraling down into a black binge.
I parked in front of May’s, a glorified pizza parlor on Wisconsin between Georgetown and Tenley Circle. To the left of the dining room was a bar run by a fat Greek named Steve Maroulis. Maroulis also made book from behind the bar.
“Ella, Niko!” he shouted when I walked in.
“Steve,” I said, and took a stool at the bar next to a red-faced geezer in an Orioles hat.
“What’ll it be?” Maroulis asked cheerfully, with a smile on his melonlike face.
“A Bud and a shot.”
“You still drinkin’ Grand-Dad?”
“Yeah.”
He put both in front of me and I drained the shot glass. I lit a smoke and put the matches on top of the pack, then slid them neatly next to my bottle of beer. All settled in.
“Sorry to hear about Big Nick,” Maroulis said.
“He had a life.”
“Tough sonofabitches, those old Greeks.”
“That they were.”
“Not like us.”
“No,” I said. “Not like us.”
I drank my beer and watched a soap opera on the bar television. A pretty-boy actor was doing his impersonation of a man, while the young actress opposite him was trying to convince the audience that she could love a guy who wore eye makeup.
I ordered another round and finished watching the