“Well?”

“Well what?” She was enjoying herself.

I picked up a greasy spare rib and cocked my arm.

She held up her hands. “OK, OK. Billy’s going to run a check for us, find out if she’s used any of their offices. She can’t have survived on two hundred dollars since the nineteenth. Not in this city anyway.”

“And when’s Billy going to get back to us?”

“He couldn’t do anything today. He said his boss would be suspicious if he hung around for too long after the end of his shift, and his shift ended five minutes after I called. He’ll have to do it tomorrow. Said he’ll call us by noon.”

I nodded. Behind Angie the dark sky was streaked with four fingers of scarlet and the slight breeze blew the thinnest wisps of her hair from behind her ear onto her cheekbone.

Van Morrison was singing about “crazy love” on the boom box behind me, and we sat in the cramped office, staring at each other in the afterglow of the heavy Chinese food and the humid day and the satisfaction of knowing where our next paycheck was coming from. She smiled, a slightly embarrassed one, but didn’t look away, and began tapping that pencil lightly against the chipped tooth again.

I let the stillness settle between us for a good five minutes before I said, “Come home with me.”

She shook her head, still smiling, and swiveled the chair slightly.

“Come on. We’ll watch a little TV, chat about old times ”

“There’s a bed in this story somewhere. I know it.”

“Only as a place to sleep. We’ll lie down and... talk.”

She laughed. “Uh-huh. And what about all those lovely young things who tend to camp out on your doorstep and tie up your phone?”

“Who?” I asked innocently.

“Who,” she said. “Donna, Beth, Kelly, that chick with the ass, Lauren ”

“That chick with the ass, excuse me?”

“You know the one. The Italian girl. The one who goes” her voice rose about two octaves ’“Oooooh, Patrick, can we take a bubble bath now? Hee!’ That one.”

“Gina.”

She nodded. “Gina. That’s the one.”

“I’ll give them all up for one night with ”

“I know that, Patrick. I hope you don’t think that’s something to be proud of.”

“Well, gee, Mom...”

She smiled. “Patrick, the major reason you think you’re in love with me is because you’ve never seen me naked ”

“In ”

“In thirteen years,” she said hurriedly, “and we both agreed that was forgotten. Besides, thirteen years is a lifetime to you where a woman is concerned.”

“You say it like it’s a bad thing.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “So,” she said, “what’s on tomorrow’s agenda?”

I shrugged, drank some beer from the can. Summer was definitely here; it tasted like tea. Van had finished singing about “crazy love,” and was heading “into the mystic.” I said, “I guess we wait for Billy to call, call him at noon if he doesn’t.”