The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr) (14 page)

“All that new business,” I said. “Think of the custody fights.”

“Maybe it’s not fair to make you do all the drinking,” she said, and filled her glass. “Not only is it gonna be more complicated to split up, but it gives couples something brand new to fight about, when one wants to get married and the other doesn’t. Which just amounts to deciding whether to split up before or after the marriage ceremony.”

“I never thought of any of this.” And the thoughts kept right on coming. “You know what? The next time we see
The Gay Divorcée
, it’ll be a remake with a whole new slant to it.”

Once we’d each reached a particular peat-flavored plateau, the drinking lost its urgency and became a sort of background music for our conversation. The two of us found no end of things to talk about, and I’m sure the exchanges I don’t remember were every bit as interesting as the ones I do.

“I can see why a person might want to get married,” I said, when that topic popped up again. “You’ve met someone and you’re in love, and you want a life together, with maybe a kid or two. And maybe that would involve a house in the suburbs—”

“Ugh.”

“—but maybe not, because if I was going to raise a kid I’d rather bring him up right here in New York. Right in my own neighborhood, so we’d be within walking distance of the American Museum of Natural History.”

“That’s important, huh?”

“People go on about how they want to leave the city so their kid’ll know what a cow looks like. So they move way to hell and gone, and the poor little bastard never gets to see a dinosaur.”

“I never looked at it that way. Bern, if they want all that, why do they have to get married?”

“They don’t,” I allowed, “but at the same time I can see why they might want to. But isn’t that a step you decide to take after you’ve met the person and fallen in love? Janine had it the other way around.”

“Janine of Romania.”

“She had this picture in her mind—the house, the two kids, and her with a ring on her finger. That’s what she wanted, so she was out hunting for the man to stand next to her in the picture.”

“And put a ring on her finger, and two buns in her oven.”

“It seems backwards to me,” I said, “but maybe not. If you go ahead and fall in love first, suppose he turns out to be Mr. Not Quite Right?”

“You’ve got your heart set on cows, and he’s holding out for dinosaurs.”

“Whatever. It’s something to think about.”

And, a little later:

“Bern, what’s funny is the Romanian girl missed the point completely.”

“I don’t really think she’s Romanian.”

“I don’t care if she’s Etruscan, Bern. She looked at your clothes and your bookstore and your apartment, and everything screamed low rent.”

“Well, of course my apartment rent is low. The place is rent-controlled. I’d be an idiot to move.”

“Right.”

“And market rent on the store is as low as it gets, because I don’t have to pay any. Otherwise it would be sky-high.”

“I know, Bern.”

“And my clothes—what’s the matter with my clothes? I told you that blazer’s from Brooks Brothers.”

“Via Housing Works, Bern.”

“It didn’t say so on the label. You said she missed the point. What point did she miss?”

“The point that you were actually a pretty good prospect, at least from a financial standpoint. She thought you were irresponsible to pay two hundred dollars for dinner. What you were was a man celebrating a nice windfall. So what if the bookstore wasn’t jammed with buyers? You’d just made thirty-five grand in a matter of hours.”

“Sure, but how often does that happen?”

“Often enough to keep you from missing any meals. And your apartment may not be packed full of high-ticket furniture, but there’s a painting hanging on one wall that would bring a seven-figure price at auction.”

“If I could sell it.”

“It’s worth the money, whether you can sell it or not. And the fact of the matter is that you could sell it if you wanted to. Not for full price, and not openly, but there are collectors who’ll buy something knowing they can never show it to anyone. Like your Mr. Smith with his manuscript.”

“So I was actually just the guy she was looking for all along, and she was too dumb to know it. I was that Scarsdale Galahad from the song, ready to buy her a split-level colonial in Westchester and support her in style by breaking into the neighbors’ houses. And if anything went wrong, I’d be just half an hour away in Sing Sing.”

And later still:

“Carolyn, I don’t want to get married.”

“I’m glad you told me, Bern. Here I was building up my nerve to propose, and you just saved me a lot of embarrassment.”

“Seriously, Carolyn?”

“Oh, God, of course not.”

“I didn’t think so, but I wanted to make sure. You know what I want?”

“I hope it’s not pizza. They’re closed at this hour.”

“I want everything to stay the same,” I said.

“So do I.”

“I want to have lunch with you every day, and drinks after work at the Bum Rap. I want Maxine to keep that dead-end job forever, just so she can go on being our waitress.”

“She wouldn’t dare leave. She knows I’d kill her if she did.”

“I don’t want to sell books online. I want to keep the bookstore, even if most of the time it’s just me and Raffles in there.”

“And some girl with a Kindle.”

“That girl with the Kindle,” I said, “set me up for the hottest night I’ve had in years.”

“And when it was over—”

“I felt bad, but it was worth it. And I’ll get over it, and do you know why?”

“Because there’ll be other girls.”

“There will,” I said, “and I’ll keep thinking one of those relationships has a future, but it never will, and that’s really the way I want it. One hopeless romance after another, with a lot of good times along the way.”

“Me too, Bern.”

“You want to know something? Even when I was in bed with her—”

“Janine.”

“Janine, Marie, whatever. Even when we were in outer space, smack in the middle of the Asterisk Belt, there was a part of my mind that knew I’d want to be rid of her sooner or later.”

“You want to hang on to that part of your mind, Bern. It’s called sanity.”

“If you say so. Never mind marriage. I knew we’d be through with each other by the time the summer was over.”

“That soon?”

“With maybe the occasional one-nighter down the road, for old time’s sake. Is the bottle empty?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Well, that’s okay. I guess we’ve had enough. Where was I?”

“Done with Janine, except for an annual reunion.”

“
Same Time Next Year.
That was a great play, and then it was a great movie. How often does that happen?”

“Not too,” she said. “And what it really is, Bern, is a beautiful fantasy.”

“The best. Carolyn, I’m glad she’s out of my life, I really am. But I’d give a lot for one more night with her.”

“It was that good, huh?”

“Yeah. It really was.”

She thought about it. “I haven’t even met her myself,” she said, “but I think I’ve got a pretty good sense of her from you. And I think she’s gonna find the guy she’s looking for, and she’ll get married.”

“Oh, I’m sure of it.”

“And she’ll have two kids, and maybe even three, but my guess is she’ll stop at two. And then they’ll get a divorce.”

“Why?”

“Who cares? One way or the other, the odds are pretty good that the marriage will go in the toilet.”

“Well, I don’t want her to be unhappy, Carolyn. I had a good time with her and I wish her well. I won’t sit around praying for her marriage to fail.”

“But it probably will, Bern, with or without your prayers. And then she’ll move back to the city, the way people do, and you’ll get another shot at her.”

“Jesus.”

“Say the whole process takes seven years. She’ll be what, thirty-five? She’s sure to be a yoga-Pilates-personal trainer kind of girl, so she’ll be in good shape. Of course, she’ll be that much more experienced by then, so God only knows what kind of stuff she’ll want to do in bed . . .”

A note on the kitchen table assured me that she’d feed Raffles on her way to work. “Stay as long as you like. Food in the fridge if you can face it.”

I couldn’t, nor could I face the world without a shower and a change of clothes. She’d anchored the note with a bottle of aspirin, and I got down a couple of tablets on my way out the door.

By the time I’d had a shower and a shave I felt surprisingly good. I remembered I’d been meaning to get a haircut, and left the barbershop with my appetite restored. I stopped at the diner, stayed for a second cup of coffee, and it was getting on for noon by the time I got downtown to my store.

Raffles did his oh-I’m-starving-feed-me number, rubbing against my ankles the way he learned in cat school. “Not a chance,” I told him. “Carolyn already fed you. You think we don’t talk to each other?”

Speaking of which. I called her to tell her I’d pass on lunch today, thanked her for the use of her couch, and for thinking to feed the cat. “And for being such a good friend,” I said. “I hope I wasn’t too bad last night.”

“You were fine,” she said. “You didn’t puke, and you didn’t even get particularly maudlin. I’d have given you the bed and taken the couch myself, because I’m a better fit there, but you, uh—”

“Passed out. Uh, am I remembering this right? Ginger and Joanne?”

“Jim and Joseph.”

“Do they stay in touch?”

“They’re good buddies, Bern. They go to ballgames together.”

“Ballgames.”

“You know. Guy stuff.”