"Listen, Henry," Penniman says. "I think you may lack a certain understanding of your current situation. There are stars in the firmament of sports radio, damned right there are — people like the Fabulous Sports Babe and Tony Kornheiser make six figures a year just in speaking fees, six figures easy — but you ain't there yet. That door is currently closed to you. But I, my friend, am one helluva doorman. The upshot is that if I say we ought to have one more drink, then — "
"Bartender," Henry says quietly, then shakes his head. "I can't just call you bartender; it might work for Humphrey Bogart but it doesn't work for me. What's your name?"
"Nick Avery, sir." The last word comes out automatically, but Avery never would have used it when speaking to the other one, never in a million years. Both guys tipped him five, but the one in the dark glasses is the gent. It's got nothing to do with him being blind, it's just something he is.
"Nick, who else is at the bar?"
Avery looks around. In one of the back booths, two men are drinking beer. In the hall, a bellman is on the phone. At the bar itself, no one at all except for these two guys — one slim, cool, and blind, the other fat, sweaty, and starting to be pissed off.
"No one, sir."
"There's not a . . . lady?" Lark, he's almost said. There's not a lark?
"No."
"Listen here," Penniman says, and Henry thinks he's never heard anyone so unlike "Little Richard" Penniman in his entire life. This guy is whiter than Moby Dick . . . and probably about the same size. "We've got a lot more to discuss here." Loh more t'dishcush is how it comes out. "Unless, that is" — Unlesh — "you're trying to let me know you're not interested." Never in a million years, Penniman's voice says to Henry Leyden's educated ears. We're talking about putting a money machine in your living room, sweetheart, your very own private ATM, and there ain't no way in hell you're going to turn that down.
"Nick, you don't smell perfume? Something very light and old-fashioned? My Sin, perhaps?"
A flabby hand falls on Henry's shoulder like a hot-water bottle. "The sin, old buddy, would be for you to refuse to have another drink with me. Even a blindman could see th — "
"Suggest you get your hand off him," Avery says, and perhaps Penniman's ears aren't entirely deaf to nuance, because the hand leaves Henry's shoulder at once.
Then another hand comes in its place, higher up. It touches the back of Henry's neck in a cold caress that's there and then gone. Henry draws in breath. The smell of perfume comes with it. Usually scents fade after a period of exposure, as the receptors that caught them temporarily deaden. Not this time, though. Not this smell.
"No perfume?" Henry almost pleads. The touch of her hand on his neck he can dismiss as a tactile hallucination. But his nose never betrays him.
Never until now, anyway.
"I'm sorry," Avery says. "I can smell beer . . . peanuts . . . this man's gin and his aftershave . . ."
Henry nods. The lights above the backbar slide across the dark lenses of his shades as he slips gracefully off his stool.
"I think you want another drink, my friend," Penniman says in what he no doubt believes to be a tone of polite menace. "One more drink, just to celebrate, and then I'll take you home in my Lexus."
Henry smells his wife's perfume. He's sure of it. And he seemed to feel the touch of his wife's hand on the back of his neck. Yet suddenly it's skinny little Morris Rosen he finds himself thinking about — Morris, who wanted him to listen to "Where Did Our Love Go" as done by Dirtysperm. And of course for Henry to play it in his Wisconsin Rat persona. Morris Rosen, who has more integrity in one of his nail-chewed little fingers than this bozo has got in his entire body.
He puts a hand on Penniman's forearm. He smiles into Penniman's unseen face, and feels the muscles beneath his palm relax. Penniman has decided he's going to get his way. Again.
"You take my drink," Henry says pleasantly, "add it to your drink, and then stick them both up your fat and bepimpled ass. If you need something to hold them in place, why, you can stick your job up there right after them."
Henry turns and walks briskly toward the door, orienting himself with his usual neat precision and holding one hand out in front of him as an insurance policy. Nick Avery has broken into spontaneous applause, but Henry barely hears this and Penniman he has already dismissed from his mind. What occupies him is the smell of My Sin perfume. It fades a little as he steps out into the afternoon heat . . . but is that not an amorous sigh he hears beside his left ear? The sort of sigh his wife sometimes made just before falling asleep after love? His Rhoda? His Lark?
"Hello, the taxi!" he calls from the curb beneath the awning.
"Right here, buddy — what're you, blind?"
"As a bat," Henry agrees, and walks toward the sound of the voice. He'll go home, he'll put his feet up, he'll have a glass of tea, and then he'll listen to the damned 911 tape. That as yet unperformed chore may be what's causing his current case of the heebie-jeebies and shaky-shivers, knowing that he must sit in darkness and listen to the voice of a child-killing cannibal. Surely that must be it, because there's no reason to be afraid of his Lark, is there? If she were to return — to return and haunt him — she would surely haunt with love.
Wouldn't she?
Yes, he thinks, and lowers himself into the taxi's stifling back seat.