She took a very deep breath and put her hands on her hips. For a moment she stood with her back to him, her head lifted and her shoulders erect. Then her arms fell limply at her sides, her shoulders drooped. It was as though something heavy was pressing down on her.

Corey lifted himself from the chair and went to the window. He stood looking out at the rain. He said, “How long you been married to him?”

“Seven months.”

“And before that—?”

“Well, I hadn’t known him long.”

“How long?”

“A few weeks,” she said.

Some mist was clouding the window. He wiped it away with his hand and peered out at the rain. It had subsided and there was a slow, quiet drizzle that sounded like fingers tapping softly on drums. Ain’t nothing jazzy in that sound, he thought. That sound is on the heartache side. Goes along with the color of the sky up there, that dark gray making everything dark gray down here.

And through the dreary drumming of the rain he heard her saying, “—met him one day in a restaurant across the street from Chatworth Leather. I was working there then. So anyway, I was in the restaurant sitting at the counter and having coffee and he sits down beside me and—”

“Skip that,” Corey cut in. “I didn’t ask how you happened to meet him.”

“I thought maybe you wanted to know.”

“Why should I wanna know?” he muttered. “What the hell do I care how you met him or where you met him? I don’t even wanna hear about that.”

“Why not?”

Corey couldn’t answer. He kept looking out at the rain.

“Why not?” she asked again. “Ain’t that what you’re here for? To find out about him? To check on him?”

He winced. He said to himself, you walked right into that one. And then, turning away from the window, wanting to look at her but knowing he couldn’t, knowing he mustn’t show what he was feeling, he affected a detached frown and said, “I’m checking only what I think is important.”

“For city hall.”

“That’s right.”

“For the records only.”

“That’s right.”

“For the official report on the investigation-—”

“That’s absolutely right,” he said, and turned and looked at her and saw she was smiling thinly. Her eyes were drills going into his head. He turned quickly and faced the window again.

He heard himself saying, “All right, go ahead and tell it.”

“Well, like I said, we met when I was working at Chatworth Leather—”

“Hold it,” he cut in. “How come you’re not working there now?”

“He don’t want me to work.”

“Any special reason?”

“Like what?”

“Like maybe you’re knocked up.”

“You asking me?”

“I’m asking you,” he said. “You knocked up?”

“No,” she said. And then, “You wanna make a note of that?”

“For what?”