Lawrence Block: The Burglar in the Rye

The Bum Rap, where Carolyn Kaiser and I meet almost every evening for a Thank God It’s Over drink, is a neighborhood saloon with an eclectic juke box and a bartender who can’t make a gin and tonic without looking it up first in his Old Mr. Boston manual. We have our usual table, although it’s no big deal if it’s taken and we have to sit somewhere else. It was taken this evening, I noticed. There were two women sitting there. Then I looked again and saw that one of them was Carolyn.

The other was Erica Darby, who’d come into Carolyn’s life recently in a big way. Erica did something at a cable TV company. I wasn’t too clear on what it was, but I was sure it was important, and probably glamorous. You sensed that about Erica. She was smart and polished and great-looking, with long chestnut hair and bright blue eyes and a figure I had the good sense not to notice.

“Hey, Bernie,” she said. “How’s the book biz?”

“Leisurely,” I said.

“That’s great,” she said. “When my business is leisurely, that means we’re about to be driven out of it.” She pushed back her chair, got to her feet. “Gotta run, kiddies.” She leaned over, kissed Carolyn on the mouth. “See ya.”

She swept out. I sat down. Carolyn had a tall glass of ruby liquid in front of her, and I asked if it was cranberry juice.

“Campari and soda. You wanna taste it, Bern?”

“It seems to me I had it once,” I said, “and it seems to me once was enough. Anyway, it has alcohol in it, doesn’t it?”

“They claim it does,” she said, “but you couldn’t prove it by me.”

“Well, I’ll take their word for it,” I said, and motioned for Maxine. When she came over I ordered a Perrier.

“You’re working tonight,” Carolyn said.

“I checked in this afternoon.”

“How’s your room?”

“Small, but who cares? It’s just a place to put my bear.”

“Huh?”

I explained about the loaner bears the hotel furnished, and Carolyn raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure why I took the bear,” I went on. “Maybe I didn’t want it to feel rejected.”

“That’s a good reason.”

“Anyway, I get the deposit back when I check out.”

“Unless you keep the bear.”

“Why would I keep the bear?”

“To keep it from feeling rejected,” she said, “and it would be a more serious rejection now, after all the two of you have been to each other. Bern, I know what your problem is.”

“You do?”

“Uh-huh. You’re too tense. You need to loosen up. I’d tell Maxine to bring you a scotch, but you wouldn’t drink it, would you?”

I shook my head. “I’m not positive I’ll pull it off tonight,” I said, “but I’ve got a shot. I paid cash at the Paddington for three nights-”

“Not to mention a bear, Bern.”

“So don’t mention it. Anyway, if I can get in and out in one night I won’t complain. And I know the room number, so that’s taken care of.”

“You’re staying in a room and you know the number? I guess you’re not losing your edge after all, Bern.”

“I know Anthea Landau’s room number,” I said. “You knew that’s what I meant, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah.” She picked up her glass of Campari, made the face people don’t usually make until they’ve had a sip of the stuff, and put it down untasted. “So you’re sticking to Perrier,” she said.

“Right.”

“That’s what I figured,” she said, and waved a hand for the waitress’s attention. “Hey, Max,” she called out, “bring Bernie here a drink, will you? Rye whiskey, and you might as well make it a double.”

“I just said…”

“I heard you, Bern. And I get the message. Tonight’s a working night, and you don’t drink when you work. Aside from soda water and fruit juice and coffee and other things that don’t count. I know all that.”

“Then why…”

“I understand your no-alcohol policy,” she went on, “even if it does strike me as the least bit extreme. And I certainly wouldn’t do anything to sabotage it.”

“But you just ordered me a drink.”

“I did,” she said, “and I made it rye whiskey, because you seemed to enjoy it the other night. What do you know, here it comes. Thanks, Maxine, and why don’t you take this and pour it back in the Lavoris bottle?” She handed Maxine the unfinished Campari. “Here’s mud in your eye, Bern.”

And she picked up my drink and drank it down. “It’s this deal I’ve got with Erica,” she explained. “She’s not much of a drinker herself, and she doesn’t really get it, you know? She ordered the Campari for me because it’s real easy to stop at one.”

“There’s a recommendation. ‘Order a Campari-you’ll never want another.’”

“The point is, she’s concerned about how much I drink.”

“You don’t drink all that much.”

“I know,” she said, “and if I ordered girly-girly drinks with fruit salad and little umbrellas, or if I put away a couple of bottles of chardonnay with dinner, why, she wouldn’t think twice about it. But because I happen to drink like a man, she’s all set to race off to an Al-Anon meeting and tell them all what a raging drunk I am.”

“You’re occasionally drunk,” I allowed, “but you hardly ever rage.”

“My point exactly. Anyway, she’s concerned that I celebrate a little too enthusiastically every time I get through one more day of dog washing. She wanted me to quit coming to the Bum Rap altogether. I told her that wasn’t negotiable. ‘Bernie’s my best friend in all the world, and I’m not going to force the man to drink alone. So get that right out of your pretty little head.’ And she really is pretty, Bern. Don’t you think?”

“Very pretty.”

“And what’s neat,” she said, tossing her head, “is she thinks I’m pretty. Isn’t that a hoot?”

I think so, too, though it’s not something I tend to dwell on. Carolyn Kaiser is a couple of inches shorter than the five-two she claims to be, which leaves her not much taller than some of the dogs she grooms at the Poodle Factory just two doors down the street (or up the street, depending which way you’re headed) from Barnegat Books. We lunch together during the week, at her place or mine, and we unwind after work at the Bum Rap, and she is my best friend and occasional henchperson. If she didn’t happen to be a lesbian (or, by the same token, if I didn’t happen to be a guy) we’d probably have a romance, as people do, and it would run its course, as romances do, and that would be that. But this way we can be best friends forever, and I honestly think we will. (It got a little complicated once when we were both sleeping with the same girl, but we got over that with no damage done.)

So yes, she’s pretty, with dark hair and a round face and big eyes, and sometimes I’ll compliment her on what she’s wearing, the way I might say something nice about a male friend’s necktie. But it doesn’t happen very often, because I don’t notice very often.

“She’s right,” I said now. “In fact, there’s something different about you. You’re letting your hair grow, aren’t you?”

“Everybody does, Bern. Between haircuts. It’s not like shaving. You don’t have to do it every day.”

“It looks longer than usual,” I said. As long as I’ve known Carolyn she’s worn her hair Dutch-boy style, perhaps in unconscious tribute to the resourceful lad who saved Holland from flooding by putting his finger where it would do the most good. “The bangs are the same as always, but it’s longer in back.”

“So I’m trying something a little different,” she said, “just to see how it looks.”

“Well, it looks nice.”

“That’s what Erica said. In fact it was her idea.”