“I can’t go out for dinner, I already have an engagement.”

I knew it was a dumb idea but when I got home from Julius’ the rest of the day and night stretched out before me like a Nebraska highway. I hadn’t wanted to do the ride alone. As soon as she turned me down I tried to remember where I’d put the coke.

“Well?”

I was ready with a snappy rejoinder. “Well what?”

“You are an oaf. You ask me out for dinner a couple of hours from now and because I have an engagement you act like a Turkish prison guard ripped out your tongue.”

“Yeah, you’re right. It was a bad idea.”

“No, it was a good idea. I’m not looking for apologies, I want a little more insistence.”

I could lose my breath trying to keep up with her. “I’m not sure I understand you.”

“Boy, you can say that again! What about ‘How long is your engagement supposed to last?’ Or, ‘Break the engagement.’ Anything but dead air. Were you really only looking for company while you ate?”

A shaft of sunlight through the clouds. “Okay, I’ll bite. How long will your engagement last?”

“Until my after-dinner headache. Where do you want to meet?”

She seemed to have lost a lot of caution between Wednesday and Friday. So had I. “I don’t know. Where are you going to dinner?”

The place she named was the kind that, no matter how old I was, always made me feel like a kid. I suggested we meet at Amalfi’s at nine.

There was a long pause. When she spoke her tone sounded guarded. “I’ll be overdressed.”

“I’ll even it out.”

She started to speak then stopped. There was another long pause during which I thought she was going to change her mind about the evening. I went back to thinking about the coke, but before I made any headway she said, “See you later,” and was gone.

I was left holding a dead telephone and reaching for my subsiding excitement. It had been a long time since I’d slept with anyone. I lit a cigarette, and remembered where I had hidden the cocaine. I thought about doing a line, but didn’t want to add to the crash I was already experiencing from the bourbon and dope. At least this way I’d be in better shape to start over again later.

I tinkered with one of my radios to kill time, and even managed to finish the laundry. There were no notes under the door from any of the tenants so I guessed there were no complaints. It felt like not being missed. I thought about dropping in on Mrs. Sullivan but I couldn’t face more questions about the cases. I decided to nap. I was hoping for a long night.

Sleep came and went in between thinking about my morning with Julius. I wondered about my stubbornness. A series of unwanted requests from Simon and Dr. James, requests which I resisted and resented, had become a lifeline. Julius’ prophecies of external violence and horror notwithstanding, it was an unknown interior edge I was flirting with. I guessed I would wait and see what happened.

What happened was a call from Dr. James. “Have you discovered anything yet?” There was excitement in her voice.

“I’m working on it, Dr. James.”

“Come on Matthew, I thought we were on a first-name basis.”

“Okay, Gloria. Do you want to tell me what you’re excited about?”

“What did you say?”

“What is it, Gloria?” It was eight o’clock, and I wanted to walk to Amalfi’s. Dr. James was a case, and tonight I didn’t want to work.

She was also my shrink and it almost felt like my mother calling right before a big date.

“You were wrong about the other offices.” Her voice sounded triumphant.

“What about the other offices?”

“They had records stolen as well. You said the thief got what he was looking for in my office and just used the others to throw off the police. Now that we know he took other people’s records we don’t have to believe it was mine he wanted.”

I wasn’t going to argue with her; she might be right. “I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me.”

“I’m telling you that we don’t have to be frantic about this.”

“Were we?”

She laughed. “I was. Heck, I even considered letting you look at my files. Thank god I didn’t.”

“You seem pretty sure that you are out of the woods.”

“I’m not positive, but I hope so.”

“So now that you figure you’re off the hook you don’t think I should continue, is that it?”

She laughed again. The other offices’ stolen records certainly cheered her up. “No, I want you to continue. I’m not sure I’m off the hook; it’s just not certain that I’m on it.”

Sometimes inspiration hits in the oddest moments. “Is the decision to continue one you made yourself, or was it a collective one?”

“What do you mean collective?”

“I mean Holmes. Eban Holmes. Was the decision for me to continue to work the case made during some therapeutic consultation with Eban Holmes?”

Her voice grew less cheerful. “I did talk with Dr. Holmes about it, yes, but I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

I couldn’t really blame her but I hadn’t wanted to be a case tonight either. I felt deflated. “Look, I gotta go. I’m meeting somebody. I’ll call you after I have a chance to think about what you’ve said.”

“What’s the matter? You suddenly sound very tired. It’s a tone I recognize.”

“The drugs are coming on.”

“What? What is it that you’re using now?”

“Nothing.” I forced some enthusiasm into my voice. “I was just kidding. I have to meet someone and I’m running late. Really. I’ll call you.”

“I don’t trust what you’re telling me. I know you are upset that I spoke with Dr. Holmes. Are you uneasy about continuing the investigation under these circumstances?”

“Don’t be silly, Gloria, nothing’s bothering me. I want to continue.” I couldn’t help myself. “It’ll be nice to have the check roll in the opposite direction.”

“Mr. Jacob.”

“Matt, Gloria, Matt. Hey, I gotta be able to joke with my clients. Look, I’m really late. I’ll call you.”

The phone rang a moment or two after I hung up. If it was Dr. James as I suspected, fuck her. If it was Boots I didn’t want to know about it.

I finished getting dressed with a fair amount of slammed doors and drawers. The image of Dr. James and Eban Holmes huddled, strategizing about the health and well-being of a patient in an awkward moment of his patienthood, infuriated me. For a moment I wondered whether the two of them might have plotted the burglaries as some avant-garde therapeutic approach.

That’s when I knew I needed to relax. I smoked half a joint, put it down, and rolled three more. The dope burned itself out before I finished, so I relit it and had a couple more hits. I debated about doing a line of the coke and compromised by pouring a bit onto the side of my hand and taking a little toot. I put the coke and dope into my jacket pocket, lit a cigarette, and went out the kitchen door into the alley.

The cool, early morning ocean breeze had long since faded. The night air hung thick and heavy. Air to walk through, not in. I had spare time to get to Amalfi’s so I wandered over to the park to find a basketball game. The lights were on and so were the players. Roberto Clemente Park could legitimately boast having the best street ball in the city. The same could not be said of the court itself. One basket was twisted on a downward angle and the other rattled anytime someone ran near it. The secondary courts were unusable. It made me angry.

During a pretty fast break the coke hit. I had been thirty years old before I saw a lead guard do a between the legs crossover dribble. A decade later eighth graders had it down cold. Maybe Western civilization really did boil down to Jesus, Marx, Einstein, Freud, and Julius Irving.

I decided to move on. I had taken the right amount of drugs. My body didn’t hurt and my sweat felt comfortable. I promised myself that I’d start working out again tomorrow. Or at least soon.

I got to the Arch and stood there. The hookers stood in small clusters on the Boylston side of the structure. Symphony nights they huddled on the park side. Since they began cleaning up lower downtown the Arch had become a comfortable place to work. Word was out that drugs and ripoffs would be dealt with harshly. Word was also out that discreet hustling would be permitted as long as it remained discreet. A simple service for the suburban rich.

Right after the accident, when I spent a lot of time walking around town, I’d sometimes pick a Symphony night to sit on a stoop by the Arch and watch the women work. After a while I even learned some names.

I was reminded that those nights were long ago the minute I walked into the tavern. Instead of the huge oval mahogany bar that had dominated the front, the place had turned into a restaurant. In front of me was an array of tables with clean-cut people sitting at them. I stood there for a moment, sweating and wondering where to go when a dark gloved hand waved from the rear. I looked at the clock on the wall with surprise. I was late.

I threaded my way between the tables and silver wine buckets and glanced at the food. Despite the coke, I was starving. Boots had secured a booth back in the corner. She and I used to hang out here occasionally and we often wound up in the back. I felt awkward sliding onto my bench but managed it without meeting her eyes. I mumbled my apologies and looked at her. She was wearing a midnight blue cape with matching gloves. Her hair hung straight down and was held close to her head with a gypsy cloth wrapped around her forehead. She looked like Amalfi’s felt; same place but very different. “You look terrific. I’m surprised the other place let you in.”

“I haven’t been anywhere else tonight.”

I felt my forehead scrunch. “I thought you had a date?”

“I lied.” Her eyes sparkled. I felt a dime short, a step slow. She smiled and said, “At least you showed up. Is that why you picked Amalfi’s? To make up for the last time?”

For a moment I didn’t know what she was talking about, then it registered. I had been pretty erratic during the time we spent together. Especially about time. I was always late, sometimes outrageously so. Occasionally I didn’t show at all. I was always contrite, she was usually forgiving. What I had forgotten was the last time I didn’t show we were supposed to meet at Amalfi’s. She wasn’t unforgiving; we just never saw each other again.

I remembered the night. I was in the process of renovating the building and we were going to meet for late-night drinks. On the way over I sat down on the stoop by the Arch and watched the street begin its nighttime undulations. Every twenty minutes or so I’d think about leaving, but something held me to the spot. I didn’t want to talk about Boots’ civilized world. I wanted to watch the street’s primitive, sweaty transactions. It was remarkable—I had completely repressed the memory, but still chose Amalfi’s for tonight. It was the kind of thing I would tell Dr. James—if I still had a Dr. James.

“I had forgotten.”

For a moment she looked annoyed but it quickly passed. “The sad part of it all is that I believe you.”

“I remember now.” I tried to smile but it wouldn’t work.

The waitress came by and I wanted to ask her to join us. Instead I ordered Amalfi’s version of the seven-dollar hamburger, and a Bass. Boots ordered the exact same thing, then turned her attention to her hands. The way she stripped off her gloves turned me on despite my embarrassment. I changed my mind about the waitress.

The interruption eased the tension between us. I lit a cigarette. She sat back in her seat and put her feet between my legs on my bench.

“I’m glad you remember now.”

“When we talked on the phone after that miss you said you understood.”

“At the time we both said a lot of things that seem different now.” She waved her arm toward the rest of the room. “Look,” she challenged, “we’re at Amalfi’s again; does it seem the same? Do I?”