Out on the Cutting Edge by Block Lawrence

Author:Block, Lawrence. [Block, Lawrence.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 2011-10-27T02:44:45+00:00

170Lawrence Block

I hadn’t intended to drop in on her. I’d gone out walking after my call to Hoeldtke. I was passing a florist and had the impulse to send her flowers, and after he’d written up the order I found out he couldn’t deliver until the following day. So I’d delivered them my self.

She put the flowers in water and we sat in the kitchen with them on the table between us. She made coffee. It was instant, but it was a fresh jar of a premium brand and no killjoy had taken the caffeine out of it.

And then, without needing to discuss the matter, we’d moved to the bedroom. Reba McIntyre had been singing when we entered the bedroom and she was still hard at it, but we had heard some of the songs more than once.

The tape reversed automatically, and would play over and over if you let it.

After a while she said, “Are you hungry? I could cook something.”

“If you feel like it.”

“Shall I tell you a secret? I never feel like it.

I’m not a great cook, and you’ve seen the kitchen.”

“We could go out.”

“It’s pouring. Don’t you hear it in the airshaft?”

“It was raining very lightly earlier. What my Irish aunt used to call a soft day.”

“Well, it turned hard, from the sound of it.

Suppose I order Chinese? They don’t care what OUT ON THE CUTTING EDGE

171

the weather’s like, they hop on their kamikaze bicycles and ride through hailstorms if they have to. ‘Neither rain nor snow nor heat nor gloom of night shall keep you from your moo goo gai pan.’ Except I don’t want moo goo gai pan. I want—would you like to know what I want?”

“Sure.”

“I want sesame noodles and pork fried rice and chicken with cashews and shrimp with four flavors. How does that sound?”

“Like enough food for an army.”

“I bet we eat all of it. Oh.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Are you going to have time? It’s twenty to eight, and by the time they deliver and we eat it’ll be time for your meeting.”

“I don’t have to go tonight.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. I have a question, though. What’s shrimp with four flavors?”

“You’ve never had shrimp with four flavors?”

“No.”

“Oh, my dear,” she said. “Are you ever in for a treat.”

We ate at the tin-topped table in the kitchen. I tried to move the flowers to give us more room but she wouldn’t let me. “I want them where I can see them,” she said. “There’s plenty of room.”

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