“You wanted to talk, so talk.” Her voice was brittle and her lips were drawn in a tight line across her face.

I took a long swallow of my beer and lit a cigarette. “I don’t blame you for being hostile. I don’t imagine it makes much of a difference, but I’m ashamed of my behavior the other night. Not just the, the physical stuff. I’m pretty embarrassed about choosing Amalfi’s to meet.”

“And why is that?” Her voice challenged, but her eyes showed interest.

“Too close to the crap of a couple of years ago.”

“So why do you do it?”

I finished my drink and waved for another. She hadn’t touched hers.

“I don’t have any single answer. Somehow treating me decent was something to take advantage of. I seem to have trouble belonging to clubs that’ll take me.”

She drank from her glass. “Give me one of your cigarettes, will you?”

I lit and handed her one.

“You think you took advantage of me the other night?”

I offered a grim smile. “What would you call it? I had an explosion coming for a hell of a long time and I had just enough balls to explode on you. Not exactly what I’d call ‘real man’ material.”

She started to say something and I leaned over and put my finger on her lips. “Wait a second.” I was gratified that she didn’t pull away from my touch. I took a deep breath and willed myself to keep talking. “I spent the rest of the weekend full of hate. During the day I hated myself, at night, everyone else. But, at no time over the weekend did I hate you.”

Her eyes flashed the rest of the way alive. “Why should you? We did Friday night.”

I shook my head. “I don’t hate you, Boots, never have. I hated me and couldn’t stand the fact that you didn’t.” I felt my words starting to run out. “I don’t know, I don’t have any brilliant interpretations about Friday night. I’m just sorry. You’ve always been good to me and I’ve always been rotten to you. I’m just sorry about it.”

All the words from this morning were gone. I felt stripped down to my beer and cigarettes. I couldn’t explain myself to anyone else; I couldn’t explain myself to me.

I heard her voice and looked up. Much of the tautness was gone from her face. “You didn’t take any more advantage of me Friday night than I took of you. You weren’t there by yourself. This idea that you weren’t some sort of ‘real man’ the other night is part of the bullshit. You were as real as it gets. And so was I. You didn’t control what happened, we agreed. I put my face where it met your hand; to think otherwise is macho bullshit.”

I watched as she picked at the cigarette’s filter with her free hand. After a moment she stopped and looked back at me and continued, “Toward the end of our relationship I realized that your backhanded treatment of me was a turn-on. Your hostility attracted me. In that respect you were right about the slumming, though not because of class. You were a piece of me I wouldn’t admit to. I stopped seeing you because I fell in love with you, but I was beginning to despise myself.”

She smiled and touched my hand. “I didn’t come here expecting to say this, but you’ve been so damn honest. I had planned to take the self-righteous high road. To make you pay.”

She stubbed her cigarette hard into the ashtray. “I wanted us to be together like that. I wanted it like that since we met.”

Her eyes narrowed and grew hard. “Wanted it. Past tense. No more losers, no more abusers for me.” She smiled again, only a bit more ruefully. “If we’re different as a result of Friday, maybe we ought to thank each other.”

The rest of the people in the bar had long since disappeared. There were just the two of us. Or maybe just her. “What’s the matter with us, Boots? It’s not as if we’re bimbos.”

She finished her drink. I lit two more cigarettes and passed her one. She took a deep drag, “You once told me that people play the hands they’re dealt. I guess we’re helping each other see our cards.”

“I’m not sure I like what I see.”

“You never did.”

“Then I couldn’t see the cards. Now I can.”

She grinned, waved to the waitress, and signaled for the check. “It’s a start.”

“I wish I knew to what.”

She didn’t say anything and, as we sat there, the room began to slowly reemerge. I leaned forward. “Where does all of this leave us?”

She looked at me and shook her head. “Sometimes you really surprise me. That’s the last question I imagined you would ask.” She pushed her half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray and sucked on the ice in her glass. “Give me another one, will you?”

I lit one and handed it to her. On my way I pushed the still smoldering cigarette deeper into the ashtray.

“I don’t know where this leaves us, Matt. I don’t have many friends.”

Before I could think of what to say I heard words pop out of my mouth. “Well, what about sex?” My voice dropped with the last word. It didn’t matter; she heard.

Her eyes widened and she burst out laughing, “I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you, you’re just amazing today. I don’t know any more about sex than you do. Less, if our last encounter is any indication.”

Her attitude about Friday was a relief. I felt my cheeks grow hot. “I didn’t mean that, exactly. I, uh, meant …”

“I know what you meant and I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. If we are going to be friends we’ll talk things over. We’ll wait and see.”

The operative word was wait. I decided to forego my dinner invitation, I felt disappointed and relieved. “Can I ask a favor?”

“Why not?”

“It’s a work thing. I’m not sure what your job is exactly, but Simon thinks you can trace things.”

“Are you kidding? I’m Ma Bell. Information Ma can’t get isn’t worth having.”

“I have a partial license plate I need matched with a cream-colored Lincoln. I want the name and address.”

“A day.”

I fished what I had out of my head, told her and added, “It’d be a real help to have it.”

“You’re doing repo work?”

I laughed. “No. Nothing like that.”

The bill came but we ignored it. “What then?” she teased. “You have to give some information to get some. Anyway, why didn’t you just have Simon check? He certainly can.”

“I don’t want him involved. This is a tricky situation.”

“Don’t tell me you care about confidentiality. Not when you ask me to jack into the matrix.”

“What the hell is ‘jack into the matrix’?”

She tossed her head. “It’s information mining. What’s this about?”

“I’m not sure you really want to know.”

“You don’t want Simon involved and now you’re protecting me?”

“Maybe you should be the detective.”

My words fell on deaf ears. Boots was staring straight ahead. I knew I was back in focus. “This has something to do with Fran. That’s what you were doing at that building? You were following her?” Tension and suspicion filled her voice. “Whatever you are working on better not hurt her. She is one of the few real friends I have.”

I thought about denying it all. Telling her that her imagination was overheating. Or relating the car to Dr. James’ case. But I had been too honest for too much of the day; it was a variation of Newton’s third law. “I’m not trying to hurt her. That’s why I don’t want Simon involved. The trace is an attempt to get Simon to stop prying into Fran’s private life. Nothing else.”

She looked into me. “You know about her affairs, don’t you?”

I nodded. “I know about one.”

She didn’t blink. “What’s this about?”

I told her. I suppose I wanted to. It was a relief to talk about it with someone other than Simon. Someone I didn’t have to lie to. She changed her order to rum and coke and we added a couple more drinks to the tallied check as I detailed Simon’s request and my thinking. I didn’t leave anything out. I even managed to weave in the James case. By the time I finished she had smoked more of my cigarettes and I was feeling lighter. It was in moments like these I appreciated the rite of confession.

Unfortunately my relief was short-lived. I hoped Catholics had it better. She slowly shook her head. “I don’t buy it.”

“Of course not. Simon’s idea was crazy from the jump.”

“I don’t mean Simon’s idea. I just don’t believe that Fran’s affairs have very much to do with her problem.”

“Nightmares.”

“I think it’s more than nightmares.”

“You sound like Simon.”

“So what? Maybe he’s onto something.”

I didn’t buy that. “Do you know anything about her dreams?” For a moment I felt like a gossip. I had to remind myself that this was work.

“She won’t tell me.”

I still thought the reason for her problem wore pants. “I don’t see why you are so sure the pressure from her affair”—I wasn’t comfortable surrendering to the plural—“couldn’t be the reason for her breakdown.”

“It isn’t a breakdown.” Boots’ voice flared with protective anger.

I moved my fingers in a gesture of peace. “Could Fran be pregnant?”

“I don’t know. It’s not something she’d tell me. But even if she were I don’t think it would get to her like this.”

I shrugged. “If it means anything, Alex agrees with you.”

She took a deep breath, tucked her head into her shoulders, and leaned forward. “How close did you get to the guy Fran is seeing?”

“Pretty close.”

She bobbed her head upward. “God, I feel like a shit talking this way. What did you think of him?”

“Not much. Why?”

“If you know Fran it’s obvious. I don’t even know which one you saw, but no guy she sleeps with is much. They’re a tension release, not a cause for concern. None of them has the capacity to cause her any anxiety. That’s how she picks them.”

I felt uncomfortable about Boots’ attitude. “You seem pretty confident about Fran’s judgment. It seems possible that she could have made a mistake along the way.”

“Her judgment about anything else might be questionable, not men.” Boots shook her head in her characteristic manner and grinned. “Some of us don’t travel blind when it comes to sex.”

I lifted my bottle in her direction, then took a swallow. “If her act is so together why is she breaking it off? How long has she been doing this to become so good at it?”

I caught Boots eyeing me with a mixture of annoyance and pity. “This bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“Not in the abstract, but Simon is my friend.”

“Does my relationship with Hal bother you?”

“Hal?”

“The man who pays my rent.”

“Some,” I admitted.

She kept her eyes on me until I grew uncomfortable. “Maybe you’re the one who needs protection?”

“I don’t do so good with mothers.” I kept talking through my discomfort. “I never thought Fran was getting any real harassment, just bothered by her guilt.”

“That’s what she says.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“No I don’t. I’m not saying there’s no connection, only that guilt about affairs isn’t causing this amount of panic.”

I wondered whether her certainty had more to do with herself than Fran. “How can you be so sure?”

“Intuition.”

“Well, we’ll see. If I’m right we may have to question your intuition.”

“Don’t patronize. My intuition has been plenty right about our relationship.”

I smiled and raised my arms in mock surrender. “Okay, okay.” I began to gather the social debris strewn on the table. “Are you going to help with the license plate?”

She stood and looked at me with surprise. “Don’t worry, I’ll get your information.”

I rose and left plenty of money to cover a revised bill and tip, followed her through the thinning crowd to the door, and stepped outside. I was surprised to see it was dark into the evening.

We stood outside the doorway and talked. “Since I opened a possibility in Simon’s mind, I want to close it down. Also, at this point I’m curious.”

She took my hand and walked toward the trains. “It’s nice to hear about your curiosity.”

I shrugged and matched her pace. “You don’t need to take the train, I’ll drive you home.”

“No thanks. Was it your curiosity that got you beaten up?” We were standing at the top of the subway station steps.

“Not mine, my client’s. Why won’t you let me take you home?” I paused. “A friend thing.”

She started down the stairs and I watched as she turned back toward me and held the rail as a train shook the station below. She had a wide grin stretched across her face and she had to shout to make herself heard above the sound. “If I stay with you for another ten minutes I’ll want to be best friends and neither of us is ready for that.”

She blew me a kiss which I caught. I stood watching until she disappeared into the station. I lit a cigarette and strolled back to my car relaxed and pleasantly hungry. Relaxed, that is, until I saw my windshield. I couldn’t believe it. I pulled the red ticket out from under the wiper to decipher the coded violation and a small scrap of paper fell onto the hood. I picked it up, read it, then stuffed it and the ticket into my pocket. I opened the car, got in, and started home. I didn’t even feel angry. Just deflated. The note read, “For the hell of it.”