The Accidental Detective and other stories: Short Story Collection. Laura Lippman

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СКАЧАТЬ for Barry, she never would have met Rory, and she was glad she had met Rory.

      “Open-ended?” he said. “What do you do, that you have such flexibility?”

      “I don’t really have to worry about work,” she said.

      “I don’t worry about it, either,” he said, rolling to the side and fishing a cigarette from the pocket of his jeans.

      That was a good sign—a man who didn’t have to worry about work, a man who was free to roam the city during the day. “Let’s not trade histories,” she said. “It’s tiresome.”

      “Good enough. So what do we talk about?”

      “Let’s not talk so much, either.”

      He put out his cigarette and they started again. It was even better the second time, better still the third. She was sore by morning, good sore, that lovely burning feeling on the inside. It would probably lead to a not-so-lovely burning feeling in a week or two and she ordered some cranberry juice at breakfast that morning, hoping it could stave off the mild infection that a bout of sex brought with it.

      “So Mr. Gardner has finally joined you,” the waiter said, used to seeing her alone at breakfast.

      “Yes,” she said.

      “I’ll have a soft-boiled egg,” Rory said. “And some salmon. And some of the pancakes?”

      “Slow down,” she said, laughing. “You don’t have to try everything at one sitting.”

      “I have to keep my strength up,” he said, “if I’m going to keep my lady happy.”

      She blushed and, in blushing, realized she could not remember the last time she had felt this way.

      “SHOW ME THE REAL DUBLIN,” she said to Rory later that afternoon, feeling bold. They had just had sex for the sixth time, and if anything, he seemed to be even more intent on her needs.

      “This is real,” he said. “The hotel is real. I’m real. How much more Dublin do you need?”

      “I’m worried there’s something I’m missing.”

      “Don’t worry. You’re not.”

      “Something authentic, I mean. Something the tourists never see.”

      He rubbed his chin. “Like a pub?”

      “That’s a start.”

      So he took her to a pub, but she couldn’t see how it was different from any other pub she had visited on her own. And Rory didn’t seem to know anyone, although he tried to smoke and professed great surprise at the new antismoking laws. “I smoke here all the time,” he bellowed in more or less mock outrage, and she laughed, but no one else did. From the pub, they went to a rather sullen restaurant, and when the check arrived, he was a bit slow to pick it up.

      “I don’t have a credit card on me,” he said at last—sheepishly, winningly—and she let Barry pay.

      Back in bed, things were still fine. So they stayed there more and more, although the weather was perversely beautiful, so beautiful that the various hotel staffers who visited the room kept commenting on it.

      “You’ve been cheated,” said the room service waiter. “Ask for your money back. It’s supposed to rain every day, not pour down sunlight like this. It’s unnatural, that’s what it is.”

      “And is there no place you’d like to go, then?” the chambermaid asked when they refused her services for the third day running, maintaining they didn’t need a change of sheets or towels.

      Then the calls began, gentle but firm, running up the chain of command until they were all but ordered out of the room, so the staff could have a chance to freshen it. They went, blinking in the bright light, sniffing suspiciously at the air, so fresh and light after the recirculated air of their room, which was now a bit thick with smoke. After a few blocks, they went into a department store, where he fingered the sleeves of soccer jerseys. Football, she corrected herself. Football jerseys.

      “Where do you live?” she asked Rory, but only because it seemed that someone should be saying something.

      “I have a room.”

      “A bed-sit?” She had heard the phrase somewhere, perhaps in a British novel, and was proud of being able to use it. Although, come to think of it, Ireland and Great Britain were not the same, so the slang might not apply.

      “What?”

      “Never mind.” She must have used it wrong.

      “I like this one.” He indicated a red-and-white top. She had the distinct impression that he expected her to buy it for him. Did he think she was rich? That was understandable, given the hotel room, her easy way with room service, not to mention the minibar over the past few days. All on Barry, but Rory didn’t know that.

      Still, it seemed a bit cheesy to hint like this, although she had played a similar game with Barry in various stores and her only regret was that she hadn’t taken him for more, especially when it came to jewelry. Trips and meals were ephemeral and only true high-fashion clothing—the classics, authentic couture—increased in value. She was thirty-one. (Or thirty, possibly thirty-two.) She had only a few years left in which to reap the benefits of her youth and her looks. Of course, she might marry well, but she was beginning to sense she might not. She did not inspire matrimony, not that she had been trying. Then again, it was when you didn’t care that men wanted to marry you. What would happen as thirty-five closed in? Would she regret not accepting the proposals made, usually when she was in a world-class sulk? Marriage to a man like Barry had once seemed a life sentence. But what would she do instead? She really hadn’t thought this out as much as she should.

      “Let’s go back to the room,” she said abruptly. “They must have cleaned it by now.”

      They hadn’t, not quite, so they sat in the bar, drinking and waiting. It was early to drink, she realized, but only by American standards. In Rory’s company, she had been drinking at every meal except breakfast and she wasn’t sure she had been completely sober for days.

      Back in the room, Rory headed for the television set, clicking around with the remote control, then throwing it down in disgust. “I can’t get any scores,” he said.

      “But they have a crawl—”

      “Not the ones I want, I mean.” He looked around the room, restless and bored, and seemed to settle on her only when he had rejected everything else—the minibar, the copy of that morning’s Irish Times, a glossy magazine. Even then, his concentration seemed to fade midway through and he patted her flank. She pretended not to understand, so he patted her again, less gently, and she rolled over. Rory was silent during sex, almost grimly so, but once her back was to him, he began to grunt and mutter in a wholly new way and when he finished, he breathed a name into the nape of her neck.

      Trouble was, it wasn’t hers. She wasn’t sure whose it was, but she recognized the distinct lack of her syllables—no “Bluh” to begin, no gentle hiss at the end.

      “What?” she asked. It was one thing to be a stand-in for Barry, when he was footing the bills, to play СКАЧАТЬ