“I’m pushing thirty,” she said. “Which does pose something of a problem for you, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
She laughed, just a little nastily.
“As does the fact that I am behaving very oddly indeed about your gun, not to mention the fact that I am married. Right?”
He could think of nothing whatever to say.
“So we will leave the decision up to you, Matthew Payne. Do I say good night and thank you for showing me your etchings, or do I take off my dress?”
“Do what you want to do,” Matt said.
She met his eyes, and pushed her dress off one shoulder and then the other, and then worked it down off her hips.
Then she walked to him, put her hands to his face, and kissed him. And then he felt her hand on his zipper.
When Margaret McCarthy got in Charley McFadden’s Volkswagen he could almost immediately smell soap. He glanced at her and saw that her hair was still damp.
Charley immediately had—and was as immediately shamed by—a mental image of Margaret naked in her shower.
“You didn’t have to do this, you know,” Margaret said.
“What? You got some guy waiting for you at the hospital?”
“Absolutely, and in my uniform we’re going to a bar somewhere.”
“I’ll break his neck,” Charley said.
“What I meant, honey,” Margaret said, “was that you didn’t have to stay up just to drive me to work.”
I really like it when she calls me “honey.”
“I don’t want you wandering around North Broad Street alone at midnight,” Charley said. “Are we going to argue about this again?”
“No, Charley.”
“Call me ‘honey’ again,” Charley said. “I like that.”
“Just ‘honey.’ Not ‘sugar’? How do you feel about ‘saccharine’?”
“Now, you’re making fun of me.”
“No, honey, I’m not,” Margaret said, and leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
“I like that too,” he said.
“Well, I’d do it more often if I didn’t wear lipstick. When I go on duty, no lipstick, and you get a little smooch.”
“Now you know why I had to drive you to work,” Charley said.
She laughed.
“What are you going to do now? Go home? Or go back to the FOP and have a couple of beers with Matt?”
“If I went to the FOP and Payne was still there, I would have to carry him home. Anyway, he had a date.”
“A date? He doesn’t have a girl, does he?”