Lucy Chenier said, "If that was a play on Great Expectations, it's too obscure."

I said, "Hi." My heart speeded up and my palms went damp. We are often not as tough as we make out to be.

Lucy said, "I want to apologize for the way I acted. I'd like a chance to explain."

"It's not necessary."

"Jodi phoned me from the plane. She told me a little of what's going on, and, as before, she asked me to a.s.sist you in anyway possible." She sounded mechanical, as if she were nervous.

"All right."

Lucy didn't say anything for a moment, and I wondered if the line had gone dead. Then she said, "I'm making dinner. If you'd like, you could join me and we could talk about these things."

"That would be very nice. Thank you."

"Do you remember the way?"

"Of course."

There was another pause before she said, "Then I'll see you soon."

"Yes."

"Good-bye."

I hung up and stared at the phone. Well, well. I threw away what was left of the turkey, took a quick shower, then talked the bartender in the hotel bar into selling me a bottle of merlot and a bottle of Chardonnay for three times what they were worth. I made it to Lucy's in fourteen minutes. Try getting across Los Angeles in fourteen minutes. You'd need a Klingon battle cruiser.

Lucy's neighborhood was quiet, and her home was well lit and inviting. The same man and woman were walking the pinto Akita. I parked in the drive behind Lucy's Lexus, and nodded at them. The woman said, "It's such a lovely night."

I said, "Yes. It is, isn't it?"

Lucy answered the door in jeans and a soft red jersey top and dangling turquoise earrings, and I thought in that moment that I had never before been in the presence of a woman who looked so lovely. My heart pounded, hard and with great intensity. She said, "I'm glad that you could come."

I held up the bottles. "I didn't know what we were having."

She smiled and looked at the labels. "Oh, these are wonderful. Thank you."

She showed me into the kitchen. The kitchen was bright, but only a single light burned in the family room, and Janis Ian was on the stereo. Lucy and her home and the atmosphere within it seemed to have a kind of hyperreality, as if I had stepped into a photograph featured in Better Homes Gardens, and I wondered how much of it was real and how much was just me. I said, "It smells terrific."

"I have rumaki in the oven for an appetizer, and I'm making roast duck with black cherry sauce for dinner. I hope that's okay."

I said, "Wow."

"I was having a gla.s.s of wine. Would you join me?" A bottle of Johannesburg Riesling was on the counter near a mostly empty winegla.s.s. The bottle was mostly empty, too.

"Please."

"Why don't we save your wine for dinner and have the Riesling now."

"Sounds good." She seemed to be moving as carefully around me as I was around her.

I opened the merlot to let it breathe while she brought out another gla.s.s and poured. I said, "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Everything's done except for the cherry sauce. Why don't you sit at the counter and bring me up to date about Jodi while I do that."

Lucy opened a can of black pitted cherries and poured them into a saucepan with lemon juice and port and a lot of sugar, and then put the pan over a low fire. I told her how I had given Jodi the tour of Eunice and Ville Platte and how Jodi had introduced herself to Edith Boudreaux and what had happened when they met. Lucy nodded every once in a while and frowned when I got to the part about Jodi steaming into Edith's dress shop while there were customers, but mostly she sipped at her wine and concentrated on her cherry sauce. Nervous, I thought. Distracted. She finished her gla.s.s of wine and refilled it and added a drop to mine. The Riesling bottle was empty, and I'd only had one gla.s.s. I wondered how long she'd been working at it. I said, "I think the rumaki's burning."

She said, "Oh, d.a.m.n," and took the rumaki from the oven. The rumaki were little bits of water chestnut wrapped in bacon and held together with toothpicks. The toothpicks were black and smoking, and a couple of the rumaki were overdone, but mostly they were fine. She put them on the stove.

I said, "I like them like that."

She smiled lamely and had another belt of the wine.

I said, "Are you okay?"

She put down the winegla.s.s and looked at me. She'd been working at it, all right. "I really like you."

Something clutched in my stomach. "I like you too."

She nodded and looked at the rumaki. She began taking them off the cooking pan and arranging them on a serving plate. I was breathing faster, and I tried to take it easy and slow the breathing. "Lucy?"

She finished arranging the rumaki and put the little plate on the counter between us. She said, "Would you please eat one of these things and tell me that it's wonderful."

I ate one. "They're wonderful."

She did not look happy.

"They're great. I mean it."

She drank more wine. I was breathing so fast that I thought my head might fill with blood and explode. I put my hand across the counter and she put her hand into mine. I said, "It's okay."

She shook her head.

I said, "It's going to be fine."

She took her hand back and walked across the big kitchen, and then she came back again. She put both hands flat on the counter and looked directly at me and said, "I'm drunk."

"Big secret."

She frowned. "Don't laugh at me."

"If I don't laugh at something I'm going to have a stroke."

She said, "When you went back to Los Angeles I realized how much I was liking you. I don't want to be involved with a man who lives two thousand miles away. I was mad at you for going. I got mad at you for coming back. Why'd you have to come back?"

The blood seemed to be rushing through my head, and my ears were ringing and I was blinking.

She said, "I have this rule. I don't get involved with people I work with. I'm feeling very confused and stupid and I don't like it."

I got a handle on the breathing, but I couldn't do anything about the ears. I looked at the table in the dining area. Candles. Elegant seating for two. I said, "Where's Ben?"

"I sent him to sleep over at a friend's."

I stared at her and she stared back.

She said, "Jesus Christ, what kind of lousy detective are you? Do I have to draw you a map?"

I looked at the table and then I looked at the wine and then I looked at the rumaki. I went around the counter and into the kitchen and I said, "Help me detect some coffee." I started opening cabinets.

She waved her arms. "I just offered myself to you and you want coffee?"

I found a jar of Folger's Mountain Grown. I started looking for cups. "We're going to have coffee. We're going to eat." I found cups. I looked for a spoon so I could fix the G.o.dd.a.m.ned coffee. "I do not want you to go to bed with me if you have to get drunk to do it!" I stopped all the slamming around and looking and turned back to her. "Do you understand that?"

Lucy opened her mouth, then closed it. She put one hand to the side of her head, then lowered it. She nodded, then thought for a moment, and then she shook her head, confused. "Is this some kind of male power trip or something?"

"Of course. Isn't that why men do everything?" I think I was yelling.

Lucy grew calm. "Please don't yell."

I felt the way I had when I'd lied to the Ville Platte librarian.

She crossed the kitchen and took my face in both her hands. She said, "I think the coffee is a good idea. Thank you."

I nodded. "You are absolutely beautiful."

She smiled.

"You are all that I think about. You have filled my heart."

She closed her eyes, and then she put her head against my chest.

We had the coffee, and then we had the duck. We sat on the couch in the dim family room and we listened to Janis Ian and we held hands. At a quarter to ten she made a phone call and asked how Ben was doing and then she wished him a good night. When she hung up she came back into the family room and said, "Watch this."

She stood with her feet together, held out her arms, then closed her eyes and touched her nose with her right index finger. She giggled when she did it, then opened her eyes. "Do I pa.s.s, officer?"

I picked her up and carried her to her bedroom. I said, "Ask me that in the morning."

"Studly, you probably won't last until morning."

Chapter 23.

I woke the next morning relaxed and warm and at peace, with Lucy snuggled beside me in her king-sized bed, small beneath light gray sheets and a comforter. Her breathing was even, and when I burrowed under the sheet and kissed her back, she said, "Mrmph."I touched my tongue to her skin, and she said, "Sleepin'."

Her back was salty with sweat dried from the hours before. The bed and the room smelled of us and our lovemaking and the warmth of our bodies, and under it was the sweet smell of her fragrance and shampoo and soap. I lay there for a time, enjoying the warmth of her and the memories that the smells triggered, and after a while I could smell the food from the night before and the jessamine that grew around her home. Lucy's bedroom was large, her bed facing toward double French doors that opened toward the backyard.

There were drapes, but the drapes were open so that I could see the used-brick patio and the Weber where we'd grilled the hamburgers. Three or four cardinals and maybe a half dozen sparrows were cl.u.s.tered around the bird feeder, chirping and scratching at the seed. We had cardinals in L. A., but you rarely saw them. The patio and the yard beyond it were filled with bright light, and somewhere there was the two-cycle whine of a lawn mower. It seemed as if there was always the sound of a lawn mower in Louisiana. Maybe that was the nature of this place, that the land was so fertile that life grew and expanded so quickly that a never-ending maintenance was in order, and without it the people who lived here would be overcome. I wondered for an instant if it could be that way with love, too, but then the thought was gone.

I eased out of the bed, careful not to wake her, then pulled on my underwear and went into her bathroom. I brushed my teeth with my finger, then went out to the kitchen. We had probably burned twenty thousand calories last night, and it was either make breakfast or fall upon Lucy and end up arrested for cannibalism.

I washed the dishes from the night before, then searched through her cupboards and fridge until I found Bisquick and frozen blueberries and some low-fat cottage cheese. There was a pancake griddle in a tall drawer beside the dishwasher, but I found a large skillet instead. Old habits. I poured a cup of the blueberries into a little bowl and covered them with water, then found a larger bowl and made a batter with the Bisquick and the cottage cheese and some nonfat milk. I sprayed the pan with b.u.t.ter-flavored Pam, then put it on a medium fire. While it was heating I ran out into the garden, clipped a pink rose, then ran back inside. I drained the blueberries and was mixing them in the batter when Lucy Chenier squealed, "Somebody help! There's a strange man in my house!"

She was standing on the other side of the counter, wrapped in a sheet. I gave her Groucho. "Don't be scared, little girl. That's not a chain saw. I'm just happy to see you."

"Ho, ho. Keep dreaming."

I held out my hand, fingers spread. She laced her fingers between mine. Her fingers were warm and felt good. I said, "Good morning."

"Good morning." We grinned at each other. She made a big deal out of looking around and shook her head. "You cleaned up. You're making breakfast."

I turned back to the berries. "We're a full-service agency, ma'am."

She let the sheet drop and came around the counter and snuggled against me. "You can say that again, trooper." She looked ort from under my arm at the batter. "Pancakes. Yum. What can I do?"

"Find me a spatula?"

She did.

I gave her a kiss. "Will you go in today?"

She snuggled against me again. "Maybe after lunch. I can barely walk, you animal."

I increased the heat under the pan, then spooned in four equal amounts of batter, making sure each pancake had a like number of berries. I made the batter dry so that the cakes would be thick and fluffy. I said, "A woman of your advancing years needs regular workouts, else she gets out of shape."

"Pig." She dug her thumb between my ribs, then hugged me again and widened her eyes. "Hmm. I could think of something to eat besides pancakes."

I adjusted the heat down. When they're thick like that you have to be careful with the heat, hot at first to set the cake and keep it from spreading, then low so that it will cook through without burning. "A man of my advancing years needs enormous sustenance to even pretend to keep up with a woman of your years."

"I guess that's right. Female superiority."

"Tell me about it." I put down the spatula, touched the tip of her nose, then her lips. I said, "You are devastatingly beautiful."

She nodded. "Um-hm."

I ran my finger down between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and along the flat plane of her belly. "Perfect in all discernible ways."

She made a purring sound. "Ah."

"And a pretty fair lay." I turned back to the pancakes.

"That's not what you said last night, big guy." She pressed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s into my back, and then she stepped back and touched the places on my lower back and side. "What are these?"

"I caught some frag in Vietnam."