Lawrence Block - The Burglar on the Prowl

"And whom were you representing? The buyer or the seller?"

"The lender. Like, who cares who gets the better of the deal, because our client's just holding paper. Anyway, wheels are coming off left and right, and it has to close but it looks like it won't, and on top of everything the paralegal I'm working with is a moron, because the one I like, the one who always gets everything right, has to leave the goddam office at six oh fucking clock to go on a date." She held her glass aloft. "Pardon my Latvian, but I get carried away just thinking about it."

"Latvian?"

"I got in the habit of not saying French. You know, like Freedom Fries?"

"Oh, right."

"Which is getting old now, but I like the way it sounds. 'Pardon my Latvian.' You take really small sips, don't you? How was it that time?"

"Almost delicious. I'd offer you a taste, but you'd hate it."

"Never mind then." She looked at me, her brown eyes intent. "I'm Barbara," she announced.

"Bernie."

She thought about it. "Barbara Creeley."

"Bernie Rhodenbarr."

"I don't know that name."

"You're not alone. Millions of people don't. Why, in China alone-"

"And you don't look familiar, either. I could swear I've never laid eyes on you before."

"You and all those folks in Shanghai."

"Unless I saw you in my peripheral vision or something. Do you come here often?"

"No. What's your sign?"

"Yeah, I can't believe I asked a question like that. 'Do you come here often?' And anyway that's not how it feels."

"How what feels?"

"The feeling," she said. "I have this feeling that I really know you on some almost mystic level. More than that, I have the feeling that you really know me." She frowned. "This is ridiculous. I didn't think I was feeling the drinks, but evidently I am. I'm babbling away like an idiot."

"More like a brook."

"What a sweet thing to say! Bernie?"

"Bernie."

"If you drink up I'll buy you another La-whatchamacallit."

"Laphroaig," I said. "But one's plenty. Why don't I buy you another of those instead?"

"Thanks, but no. I'm not really much of a drinker, although you wouldn't know it by the way I made the first one disappear."

"You needed it."

"I guess. I'm in here more nights than I'm not, but it's rare for me to have more than two drinks. Although the other night…"

"What?"

"Well, it was weird. I had my usual two drinks, nothing fancy, plain old gin and tonic, and I think I must have had a blackout."

"Oh?"

"I can't even remember leaving the bar. I woke up with the worst hangover I ever had in my life. I mean, I don't have hangovers. I don't have blackouts, either. I think the only time I had one before was in my freshman year in college, when we played this version of Truth or Dare where you kept having to take a drink. God only knows what I drank that time, but it was a whole lot more than I had the other night."

"Ah, youth."

"I was young, all right. And I didn't have a hangover, I woke up feeling fine, but I didn't remember the last hour or so of the evening. But everybody told me I was perfectly fine, I didn't do anything weird or outrageous."

"No harm done, then."

"But the night before last," she said, and frowned. "You weren't here that night, were you? Wednesday, it would have been."

"The only other time I've been here," I said, "was earlier this evening. I stopped in after work and had one drink."

"Laphroaig?"

"Pellegrino water. You can't really develop a taste for it, but you don't need one."

"You just drink it. And you liked it here and came back."

"Uh-huh."

"After work, you said. What kind of work?"

"I have a bookstore."

"Really? Are you Mr. Barnes or Mr. Noble?"

"Well, nobody ever called me Mr. Noble. Actually I'd have to say I'm more like Mr. Strand. It's a secondhand bookstore. But a whole lot smaller than the Strand."

"It sounds like fun. Half the lawyers I know would love to quit and open a used bookstore. The other half can't read. Where is it? Right here in the neighborhood?"

" Eleventh Street between Broadway and University."

"And you dropped in here after work?"

She was wasted on real estate deals, I decided. She should have been taking depositions and cross-examining witnesses. I'd been in the neighborhood delivering a book to a good customer, I told her, and Parsifal's had caught my eye.

"And you popped in for a Pellegrino."

"For a Perrier, actually, but Pellegrino's what they had."

"And you're adaptable." She put her hand on mine. It was just conversational, but I've noticed something. When a woman starts touching you, it is a Good Sign.

"This is really strange," she said. "See, I didn't go home alone Wednesday night."

"You're just saying that to shock me."

"Silly," she said, and touched my hand again. "There's no reason for you to be shocked, butI am, a little. Not at the idea of going home with somebody. I mean, if two grownups get a sort of mutual urge, what's wrong with that?"

"Nothing that I can think of."

"But I don'tremember it, Bernie! I don't know who the guy was or what happened, and that shocks me. In fact it scares me a little. Who the hell did I bring home? It could have been Mr. Goodbar." She'd been looking down, and now she raised her eyes to mine. "It wasn't you, was it?"

"I wish."

"That's the second really sweet thing you've said in, what, ten minutes? Bernie, I know it wasn't you, there's no way it could have been you, you've never even been here before. But why do I have the feeling we've been-"

"Lovers?"

"Well, intimate, emotionally if not physically. I had that feeling the minute I walked in here."

"Past lives," I said. "Karmic ties."

"You think?"

"What else could explain it?"

"Do you feel the same way, Bernie?"

Somehow I'd taken her hand, and I liked the way it felt in mine. There was something going on, and it had been so long that I didn't recognize it at first.

"This apartment you took someone home to," I said. "Is it nearby?"

"Right around the corner."

"I wonder," I said, "if I'll have the feeling I've been there before."

"Do you think it's possible, Bernie?"

"I think we should find out."

"I think you're right," she said. "I think we owe it to ourselves."

If it's all the same to you, or even if it's not, I'll omit details for the next half-hour or so. Suffice it to say that there are certain things which, unlike a taste for Laphroaig, don't wear off and needn't be reacquired. Things which, once learned, are never forgotten. Like falling off a bicycle, or drowning.

"One thing's certain," she said. "It wasn't you."

"What wasn't me?"

"Wednesday night. I mean, I knew it wasn't, but now I really know."

"How's that?"

"If it had been you," she said, "I'd have remembered."

"If it had been me," I said, "I wouldn't have waited until tonight to refresh your memory."

"It was the damnedest thing, Bernie. I woke up with a splitting headache, and of course I'd forgotten to set the alarm, so I had to rush to get to the office. I swallowed some aspirin and took a quick shower and was out the door without my usual cup of coffee. I hopped in a cab, hit the Starbucks across the street from my office, and was at my desk at nine o'clock."

"I'm impressed."

"And I sat there wondering what had happened. I knew I'd been talking with somebody at the bar, but I couldn't picture him or remember anything about him. And the next thing I remembered was waking up with a headache."

"So maybe you didn't bring him home after all."

She shook her head. "I thought of that myself, but when I got home last night I could tell that someone had been here the night before. Whoever he was, he'd evidently made himself at home. It's sort of creepy. I mean, he'd been in my things, and he'd moved stuff around."