The Third Twin Page 0,82

there was a fluid physical grace about her that gave him the same awestruck sensation.

"You're resilient," she commented. "Last time I saw you, you looked awful. It was only twenty-four hours ago, but you seem completely recovered."

"I got off lightly. I have a sore place where Detective Allaston banged my head on the wall, and a big bruise where Porky Butcher kicked me in the ribs at five o'clock this morning, but I'll be okay, so long as I never have to go back inside that jail." He put the thought out of his mind. He was not going back; the DNA test would eliminate him as a suspect.

He looked at her bookshelf. She had a lot of nonfiction, biographies of Darwin and Einstein and Francis Bacon; some women novelists he had not read, Erica Jong and Joyce Carol Oates; five or six Edith Whartons; some modern classics. "Hey, you have my all-time favorite novel!" he said.

"Let me guess: To Kill a Mockingbird."

He was astonished. "How did you know?"

"Come on. The hero is a lawyer who defies social prejudice to defend an innocent man. Isn't that your dream? Besides, I didn't think you'd pick The Women's Room."

He shook his head in resignation. "You know so much about me. It's unnerving."

"What do you think is my favorite book?"

"Is this a test?"

"You bet."

"Oh ... uh, Middlemarch."

"Why?"

"It has a strong, independent-minded heroine."

"But she doesn't do anything! Anyway, the book I'm thinking of isn't a novel. Guess again."

He shook his head. "A nonfiction book." Then inspiration struck. "I know. The story of a brilliant, elegant scientific discovery that explained something crucial about human life. I bet it's The Double Helix."

"Hey, very good!"

They started to eat. The pizza was still warm. Jeannie was thoughtfully silent for a while, then she said: "I really messed up today. I can see it now. I needed to keep the whole crisis low-key. I should have kept saying, 'Well, maybe, we can discuss that, let's not make any hasty decisions.' Instead I defied the university, then made it worse by telling the press."

"You strike me as an uncompromising person," he said.

She nodded. "There's uncompromising, and then there's dumb."

He showed her The Wall Street Journal. "This may explain why your department is oversensitive about bad publicity at the moment. Your sponsor is about to be taken over."

She looked at the first paragraph. "A hundred and eighty million dollars, wow." She read on while chewing a slice of pizza. When she finished the article she shook her head. "Your theory is interesting, but I don't buy it."

"Why not?"

"It was Maurice Obeli who seemed to be against me, not Berrington. Although Berrington can be sneaky, they say. Anyway, I'm not that important. I represent such a tiny fraction of the research Genetico sponsors. Even if my work really did invade people's privacy, that wouldn't be enough of a scandal to threaten a multimillion-dollar takeover."

Steve wiped his fingers on a paper napkin and picked up a framed photograph of a woman with a baby. The woman looked a bit like Jeannie, with straight hair. "Your sister?" he guessed.

"Yes. Patty. She has three kids now - all boys."

"I don't have any brothers or sisters," he said. Then he remembered. "Unless you count Dennis Pinker." Jeannie's face changed, and he said: "You're looking at me like a specimen."

"I'm sorry. Want to try the ice cream?"

"You bet."

She put the carton on the table and got out two spoons. That pleased him. Eating out of the same container was one step closer to kissing. She ate with relish. He wondered if she made love with the same kind of greedy enthusiasm.

He swallowed a spoonful of Rainforest Crunch and said: "I'm so glad you believe in me. The cops sure don't."

"If you're a rapist, my whole theory falls to pieces."

"Even so, not many women would have let me in tonight. Especially believing I have the same genes as Dennis Pinker."

"I hesitated," she said. "But you proved me right."

"How?"

She gestured to indicate the remains of their dinner. "If Dennis Pinker is attracted to a woman, he pulls a knife and orders her to take off her panties. You bring pizza."

Steve laughed.

"It may sound funny," Jeannie said, "but it's a world of difference."

"There's something you ought to know about me," Steve said. "A secret."

She put down her spoon. "What?"

"I almost killed someone once."

"How?"

He told her the story of the fight with Tip Hendricks. "That's why I'm so bothered by this stuff about my origins," he said. "I can't tell you