'And the child?'
'She got him. They always do.' He sounded very bitter. 'She took him back to New York. He comes to see me once a year, in the summer. He's twenty years old now. He's at Princeton.'
'Is he a fine boy?'
'He's a wonderful boy,' Conrad said. 'But I hardly know him. It isn't much fun.'
'And you never married again?'
'No, never. But that's enough about me. Let's talk about you.'
Slowly, gently, he began to draw her out on the subject of her health and the bad times she had gone through after Ed's death. She found she didn't mind talking to him about it, and she told him more or less the whole story.
'But what makes your doctor think you're not completely cured?' he said. 'You don't look very suicidal to me.'
'I don't think I am. Except that sometimes, not often, mind you, but just occasionally, when I get depressed, I have the feeling that it wouldn't take such a hell of a big push to send me over the edge.'
'In what way?'
'I kind of start edging toward the bathroom cupboard.'
'What do you have in the bathroom cupboard?'
'Nothing very much. Just the ordinary equipment a girl has for shaving her legs.'
'I see.' Conrad studied her face for a few moments, then he said, 'Is that how you were feeling just now when you called me?'
'Not quite. But I'd been thinking about Ed. And that's always a bit dangerous.'
'I'm glad you called.'
'So am I,' she said.
Anna was getting to the end of her second martini. Conrad changed the subject and began talking about his practice. She was watching him rather than listening to him. He was so damned handsome it was impossible not to watch him. She put a cigarette between her lips, then offered the pack to Conrad.
'No thanks,' he said. 'I don't.' He picked up a book of matches from the table and gave her a light, then he blew out the match and said, 'Are those cigarettes mentholated?'
'Yes, they are.'
She took a deep drag, and blew the smoke slowly up into the air. 'Now go ahead and tell me that they're going to shrivel up my entire reproductive system,' she said.
He laughed and shook his head.
'Then why did you ask?'
'Just curious, that's all.'
'You're lying. I can tell it from your face. You were about to give me the figures for the incidence of lung cancer in heavy smokers.'
'Lung cancer has nothing to do with menthol, Anna,' he said, and he smiled and took a tiny sip of his original martini, which he had so far hardly touched. He set the glass back carefully on the table. 'You still haven't told me what work you are doing,' he went on, 'or why you came to Dallas.'
'Tell me about menthol first. If it's even half as bad as the juice of the juniper berry, I think I ought to know about it quick.'
He laughed and shook his head.
'Please!'
'No, ma'am.'