Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

'So is tonight over now?' Suzi asked.

'For me it is, but listen, tomorrow night can go on as long as we like it to.'

'Are you married?' Suzi asked.

'No, of course I'm not. Hey, I'm only twenty. Why would I be married?'

'Some people are.'

'I'm not. Will I see you tomorrow?'

'Where are you going now?'

'To the men's room.' -""' rf

'Do you do drugs, Lou?'

'Jesus, I don't. What is this, an interrogation?'

'It's just that you've been going to the loo all night.' It was true he had, just to get himself noticed, seen, remembered.

'No, I don't. Listen, sweetheart, you and I'll have a great night out tomorrow, go wherever you want, I mean it.'

'Yeah,' she said.

'No, not Yeah… Yes. I mean it.'

'Goodnight, Lou,' she said, hurt and annoyed. And picked up her jacket and walked out into the night.

He longed to run after her. Was there ever such bad timing? How miserably unfair it all was.

The minutes crept by until it was time for action, then he went to his car, the last to leave the club. He waited until the minivan filled and the lights went on. At that very moment he shot backwards in its path. Then he revved the engine over and over, flooding it, ensuring that it wouldn't start.

The operation worked like clockwork. Lou looked at none of it, all the time he played the part of a man desperate to start his car, and when he realised that dark figures had climbed a wall and got away he watched astounded as the scarlet-faced manager came running out crying help and wanting the Guards and panicking utterly.

Lou sat helpless in the car. 'I can't get it out of here, I'm trying.'

'He's one of them' shouted somebody, and strong hands held him, bouncers, barmen, until they realised who it was.

'Hey, that's Lou Lynch,' they said releasing him.

'What is all this, first my car won't start and then you all jump on me. What's happening?'

'The takings have been snatched, that's what's happened.' The manager knew his career was over. He knew there would be hours ahead with the Guards. And there were, for everybody.

One of the Guards recognised Lou's address. 'I was up there not long back, a crowd of kids broke in and stole all before them.'

'I know, Guard, and my parents were very grateful you retrieved it all.'

The Guard was pleased to be so publicly praised for what had been, after all, a tip-off out of the blue. Lou was regarded as the most unlucky accident to have happened for a long time. The staff told detectives that he was a very nice fellow, couldn't be involved in anything like that. He got a good report from the big electrical store, his car payments were up to date, he hadn't an ounce of alcohol in his body. Lou Lynch was in the clear.

But he didn't spend all the next day thinking about Robin and wondering when the next envelope would come and how much it would contain. He thought instead about the beautiful Suzi Sullivan. He would have to lie to her and tell her the official account of what had happened. He hoped she wasn't too annoyed with him.

He went to her restaurant in his lunch break with a red rose. 'Thank you for last night.'

There wasn't much of last night,' Suzi complained. 'You were such a little Cinderella we all had to come home early.'

'It won't happen tonight,' he said. 'Unless you want to, of course.'

'We'll see,' said Suzi darkly.

They met almost every night after that.

Lou wanted them to go back to the disco where they had met. He said that it was out of sentimental reasons. In reality it was because he didn't want the staff to think that he never came back again after the Incident.

He heard all about the Incident. Apparently four men with guns had got into the van and told them to lie down. They had taken everyone's carrier bag and left in minutes. Guns. Lou felt a bit sick in his stomach when he heard that. He had thought that Robin and his friends were still in sticks. But of course that was all five years ago, and the world had moved on. The manager lost his job, the system of banking the takings was changed, a huge van with barking dogs picked them up each night. You'd need an army to take that on.

It was three weeks later when he was leaving work that he saw Robin in the car park. There was again an envelope. Again Lou pocketed it without looking.

'Thank you very much,' he said.

'Aren't you going to see what's in it?' Robin seemed disappointed.

'No need to. You've treated me well in the past.'

'There's a thousand quid,' Robin said proudly.

That was something to get excited about. Lou opened the envelope and saw the notes. That's absolutely terrific,' he said.

'You're a good man, Lou, I like you,' said Robin, and drove away.

A thousand pounds in his pocket and the most beautiful redhead in the world waiting for him. Lou Lynch knew he was the luckiest man in the world.

His romance with Suzi developed nicely. He was able to buy her nice things and take her to good places with his stash of money. But it seemed to alarm her when he pulled out twenty-pound notes.

'Hey, Lou, where do you get money like that to throw around?'

'I work, don't I?'

'Yeah, and I know what they pay you in that place. That's the third twenty you've split this week.'

'Are you watching me?'

'I like you, of course I watch you,' she said.

'What are you looking for?'

'I'm hoping not to find that you're some sort of a criminal,' she said quite directly.

'Do I look the type?'

'That's not a yes or a no.'

'And there are some questions to which there are no yes and no answers,' Lou said.

'Okay, let me ask you this, are you involved in anything at the moment?'

'No.' He spoke from the heart.

'And do you plan to be?' There was a pause. 'We don't need it, Lou, you've got a job, I've got a job. Let's not get caught up in something messy.' She had beautiful creamy skin and huge dark green eyes.

'All right, I won't get involved in anything again,' he said.

And Suzi had the sense to let it rest there. She asked no questions about the past. The weeks went on and they saw more and more of each other, Suzi and Lou. She brought him to meet her parents one Sunday lunchtime.

He was surprised by where they lived.

'I thought you were posher than this place,' he said as they got off the bus.

'I made myself seem posher to get the job in the restaurant.'

Her father was not nearly as bad as she had said he was, he supported the right football team and he had cans of beer in the fridge.

Her mother worked in that supermarket that Robin and his friends had done over a while back. She told them the story, and how Miss Clarke the supervisor had always thought there must be someone in the shop who had left the door open for them but nobody knew who it was.

Lou listened, shaking his head at it all. Robin must have people all over the city loosening bolts, parking cars in strategic places. He looked at Suzi, smiling and eager. For the first time he hoped that Robin wouldn't contact him again.

'They liked you,' Suzi said, surprised, afterwards.

'Well, why not? I'm a nice fellow,' Lou said.

'My brother said you had a terrible frown but I told him it was a nervous tic and he was to shut up about it.'

'It's not a nervous tic, it's a deliberate attempt to look important,' Lou said crossly.

'Well, whatever it is, it was all they could find fault with so that's something. When am I going to meet yours?'

'Next week,' he said.

His mother and father were alarmed that he was bringing a girl to lunch. 'I suppose she's pregnant,' his father said.

'She most certainly is not, and there'll be none of that talk when she comes to the house.'

'What kind of things would she eat?' His mother was doubtful.