Out on the Cutting Edge

"I don't think so. I don't think I'd have that much curiosity on the subject."

"I wonder what I would do. Probably watch it and then wish I hadn't. Or not and wish I had. What's her name?"

"The girl who disappeared? Paula Hoeldtke."

"And there was no connection between her and Eddie Dunphy?" I said there wasn't. "Then why did you want to see him?"

"We were friends."

"Longtime friends?"

"Fairly recent."

"What did the two of you do, go shopping for magazines together?

I'm sorry, that's a callous thing to say. The poor man's dead. He was your friend and he's dead. But the two of you seem like unlikely friends."

"Cops and criminals sometimes have a lot in common."

"Was he a criminal?"

"He used to be, in a small-time way. It was an easy thing to grow up into, raised in these streets. Of course this neighborhood used to be a lot rougher than it is now."

"Now it's getting gentrified. Yuppified."

"It's still got a ways to go. There are some hard people living on these blocks. The last time I saw Eddie he told me about a homicide he'd witnessed."

She frowned, her face troubled. "Oh?"

"One man beat another to death with a baseball bat in a basement furnace room. It happened some years ago, but the man who swung the bat is still around. He owns a saloon a few blocks from here."

She sipped her whiskey. She drank like a drinker, all right. And I don't think it was her first of the day.

I'd noticed something on her breath earlier, probably beer. Not that that meant she was a lush. When you stop drinking, you become unnaturally sensitive to the smell of the stuff on other people. She'd probably just had a beer with her lunch, the way most of the world does.

Still, she drank neat whiskey like an old hand. No wonder I liked her.

"More coffee, Matt?"

"No thanks."

"You sure? It's no trouble, the water's still hot."

"Not just yet."

"It's pretty lousy coffee, isn't it?"

"It's not that bad."

"You don't have to worry about hurting my feelings. I haven't got a whole lot of ego tied up in my coffee, not when it comes out of a jar.

There was a time I used to buy beans and grind my own. You should have known me then."

"I'll settle for knowing you now."

She yawned, extending her arms overhead, stretching like a cat.

The movement drew her breasts into relief against the front of her flannel shirt. A moment later she had lowered her arms and the shirt was once again loose on her, but I remained aware of her body, and when she excused herself to go to the bathroom I watched her as she walked from the table. Her jeans were tight on her butt, worn almost white on the cheeks, and I stared after her until she was out of the room.

Then I looked at her empty glass, and the bottle standing next to it.

When she came back she said, "I can still smell it."

"It's not in the room, it's in your lungs. It'll take a while to get rid of it. But the windows are open up there and the apartment'll air out fast enough."

"It doesn't matter. He won't let me rent it."

"Another one for him to warehouse?"

"I expect so. I'll have to call him later, tell him he lost a tenant."

She gripped the base of the bottle with one hand, spun the oversize cap with the other. There were no rings on her fingers, no polish on her nails.

She wore a digital watch with a black plastic strap. Her fingernails were clipped short, and one thumbnail showed a white spot near the base.

She said, "How long has it been since they took the body out? Half an hour? Any minute now there'll be somebody ringing my bell, asking if his apartment's available. People are like vultures in this town." She poured a little whiskey into her glass and Fred Flintstone grinned his silly grin. "I'll just say it's rented."

"And meanwhile people sleep in the subway stations."

"And on park benches, but it's getting too cold for that now. I know, I see them all over, Manhattan's starting to look like a Third World country. But the people on the streets couldn't rent one of these apartments. They haven't got a thousand a month."

"And yet the ones who do get city housing wind up costing more than that. The city pays something like fifty dollars a night to house people in single rooms in welfare hotels."

"I know, and they're filthy and dangerous. The welfare hotels, I mean. Not the people." She sipped her

drink. "Maybe the people, too. As far as that goes."

"Maybe."

"Filthy and dangerous people," she sang tunelessly, "in filthy and dangerous rooms. Now there's an urban folk song for the Eighties." She put both hands behind her head and fiddled with the rubber band that was holding her hair in place. Once again her breasts pushed against the front of her shirt, and again I was drawn to them. She unfastened the rubber band, combed her hair with her fingers, gave her head a shake.

Loose, her hair fell past her shoulders and framed her face, softening its lines. Her hair was several different shades of blond, ranging from very light tones to a medium brown.

She said, "The whole thing is crazy. The whole system is rotten.