“No, I mean about your atrocious taste in clothes,” she said with a smirk.
I glanced down at my gray suit. “You picked out this outfit. And come on, my shoes are hot.” They were killing me, too. Working in four-inch heels should be against the law.
“Okay, you look good today,” she allowed. “But I still have nightmares about those Birkenstocks.”
“This is San Francisco,” I shouted over the din. “Everybody wears Birkenstocks.”
“If everybody jumped off the bridge, would you jump, too?”
I rolled my eyes and turned on my stool to check on the bartenders. I’d lost count of the number of drinks I’d had, but that didn’t mean it was time to stop, did it?
The mirror behind the bar reflected both Robin and me as well as the burgeoning crowd and the lights of the bay behind us.
“So you didn’t call me stupid and I appreciate that,” I said. “But you did call my clothes stupid.”
“No, I didn’t. I called them atrocious.” She sipped her drink. “Atrocious. I like to say that word.”
I stared in horror. “Oh my God, you’re drunk.” I giggled. “You never get drunk.”
“I’m not drunk. I don’t get drunk. I’m a control freak.” She downed her drink. “We should go.”
“Not yet.” The Irish whiskey was definitely taking effect and I couldn’t quite figure out why I’d been so offended by Robin’s words.
Oh yeah, my atrocious clothes. But she’d hate to see me dead, which was nice, although it implied that I was stupid enough to get myself killed.
I pointed at her. “I have no intention of getting myself killed simply because I’m looking for a few answers.”
“Okay, good.”
“But if you think it’s a possibility that I could get myself killed, then you must think I’m stupid.”
“How do you figure?” she asked.
“Is that a trick question?”
She laughed, but I knew she was trying to confuse me. And thanks to the booze, it was working. Robin thought she had the upper hand just because she was relatively sober compared to me. Maybe I was two drinks ahead of her, but I was also a Wainwright. We did all our best thinking when our brains were marinated in alcohol.
And coffee fueled the brilliance. I was fast approaching the intellectual level of Albert Einstein.
“What was the question?” I asked.
Robin laughed and sipped her drink.
“Miss?”
“He’s talking to you, Brooklyn,” Robin shouted.
I turned. It was the bartender, the kid. What was his name? Oh yeah, it was right on his shirt. Neil. “Yes, Neil?”
“Anandalla’s at the end of the bar if you want to talk to her.”
I tensed up. Here was my chance. I leaned back on the stool but couldn’t see her from where I sat. Then I remembered the bar mirror. Now I could see the whole room, including the woman sitting at the end of the bar. She looked short, with dark curly hair, cute, probably in her mid-twenties. She twisted around in her stool, searching the crowd, her eyes wide, her jaw tight.
I watched her gaze drift to the mirror and her eyes suddenly met mine. She recoiled but recovered in a flash, threw some cash on the bar and disappeared in the bar crowd.
“Hey!” What was that about? Did she know me?
I jumped up. “Let’s go!”
“Are you nuts?” Robin said. “I’m not finished. We haven’t paid our bill.”
“Hold my bag,” I shouted. “I’ll be back.”
My heavy bag hit her in the stomach, but she managed to grab it before it slid to the floor.
“You’re insane,” I heard her say as I thrust myself into the horde.
Once I was out the door, I looked both ways and saw Anandalla sprinting up Hyde Street toward North Point. I took off after her, watched her reach the crest of the hill. She glanced left and right, chose right and disappeared.
The hill was unbelievably steep. Halfway up, I had to stop and hold my stomach, which was starting to cramp from the combination of alcohol, four-inch heels and a skirt that was tighter than it had been when I put it on this morning.
I leaned one hand against the building, panting and puffing like an old man.
It wasn’t my best moment.
But why had she run away from me? How did she know me?
I turned and saw Robin waiting patiently at the bottom of the hill. With another heavy breath, I shuffled back down and she handed me my bag.
“I paid the bill,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“You owe me.”
“I know.”
We crossed Hyde when the signal changed. For a few minutes we strolled without speaking, enjoying the evening air. We’d walked three blocks and were passing Ripley’s Believe It or Not when Robin finally spoke.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
“That was the girl I was looking for,” I explained as I stared at a two-headed ferret in the Ripley’s display. “That was Anandalla.”
“Anandalla? The one whose note you found in Abraham’s studio?”
“Right. And as soon as she saw me, she ran away.”