The murmur of David's voice still sounded, so she rinsed the sink, straightened towels, capped the tooth-paste and uncapped his after-shave lotion for a quick whiff of spicy fragrance. So bound up in memories of their most intimate moments was that aroma that she'd once gone weak-kneed when she smelled it on a stranger on a crowded bus.
Tenderly she tucked the little bottle back into the medicine cabinet and went out to rejoin her now pensive lover.
"What did he want?" she asked as she passed him maple syrup and stirred cream into his coffee.
"I'm not really sure," said David. His eyes were puzzled behind his wire-rimmed glasses. He lifted a forkful of French toast, then returned it to his plate. "You know how he always goes off on tangents?"
Sandy nodded.
"He said the apartment on the top floor of his house has an extra bedroom that could be used as a study. He also said his present tenant doesn't have a lease."
"He's offering you an apartment?" she asked, perplexed.
"Us. You and me. Cheap."
"Just how cheap?" Sandy asked, knowing to a penny how far her salary would stretch. Her mouth dropped when he told her, "That's practically free, David! And it's only two blocks from school. No bus or subway fare!" She jumped up and hugged him exuberantly.
"It's charity," David said ominously, pulling away.
"No, it isn't! Don't you see? It's worth it to him to have your help organizing that mountain of notes for his book. It would be an equal exchange. Free rent instead of salary. Isn't that what quid pro quo means? And best of all, we wouldn't have to go to Idaho while you're finishing your dissertation."
Her voice had hit a strident tone he'd never heard.
"You really don't want to leave New York, do you?" he asked, frowning as he finally realized that her foot-dragging was more than a comic reluctance to trade city for country.
"Not me, darling; it's you I don't want to leave the city. Oh, David, I couldn't bear it if you got stuck in some backwater college! You're too brilliant for that. New York 's the art center of this country, not Idaho! I'd do anything" she said "to help you stay here!"
Strange, thought David, that he'd never before noticed how strongly determined the line of her chin could be, how resolute her eyes. He'd always thought of her as a silky blue kitten, and it made him vaguely uneasy to realize she might have a fiercer nature than he'd suspected.
Tendrils of a pungent aroma wreathed themselves around Piers Leyden's nostrils and brought him back to consciousness. Groaning, he sat up on the furry chaise longue. His neck was unbearably stiff, and a dull red pain, beginning at the back of his head, pulsated up through his temples with each small movement he made.
The aroma defined itself: cinnamon. Hot cinnamon buns lavishly smeared with thick sugar frosting, drenched in butter and studded with disgusting raisins and-merde- was that the smell of bacon mingling with the spice?
His stomach recoiled at the idea of bacon, too. Thick slabs of Canadian bacon browning in the kitchen below. Sizzling in grease. Greasy strips of meat that would be laid on a greasy plate next to a couple of greasy eggs fried sunny-side up and oozing yellow, viscous-
Leyden pushed off from the chaise longue and lurched for Doris Quinn's red-and-gold bathroom.
When he emerged, whitish green, shaken and weak, he found Doris waiting for him with sympathy, tomato juice and the news that Riley's sister was on her way down from upstate.
"So you'll just have to pull yourself together and leave soon, poor sweetie," she crooned, stroking his neck with cool fingers while he forced himself to drink the juice. Her eyes were clear and unbloodshot, her milky-white skin translucent. In fact, Leyden thought resentfully, her whole body radiated as much dewy freshness as a field of goddamned daisies.
He built himself a backrest of ruffled pillows on her bed and gingerly eased himself down.
"It isn't fair," he grumbled. "You drank twice as much of that scotch as I did. Why aren't you hung over, too?"
Her vitality always amazed him. It was one of life's ironies that she landed in a Manhattan brownstone instead of an Iowa cornfield.
No, cornfield's the wrong image, he decided, watching as she brushed her golden curls into a sunny aureole. She was too decorative and expensive for any farmyard.
He was suddenly reminded of a little rococo church in southern Germany a few years ago. After a glut of Italian Renaissance cathedrals with their ponderous dark marbles and richly somber stained-glass windows, that German church had burst upon his senses like an explosion of light. Clear crystalline windows on three levels had flooded the interior with sunlight, and everything seemed gold and white: a frothy exuberance of gilt-tipped white marble columns; gold-leafed statues, a bright celestial blue ceiling decorated in gaily colored frescoes; and everywhere sunlight glinting and dancing on sparkling white walls and silver gilt trim.
Such rococo frivolity would have been too much like whipped cream and pineapples for a steady intellectual diet; but for dessert or for dalliance…
There must have been some hair of the dog in that tomato juice, Leyden thought, reaching out to gather in her gold-and-whiteness; but she eluded him easily. Half giggling, half shocked, she pushed away his hands and continued dressing.
"Sweetie! You know we can't. Not with poor Riley…"
"What about last night?" he demanded.
"I was in shock last night. All those people. Besides, we only got pickled."
"That's for sure! You were being the brave little widow, comforting everyone with flagons. No apples, though."
Doris looked blank. She was better acquainted with the spirit of the Song of Solomon than with its actual contents. She shrugged it off. "Anyhow, we didn't-I mean-well, wasn't Oscar here?"
"Yeah, he was the last to leave. He helped me carry you up here. But then it seems like there was some female who-uh-oh!"
"What?" asked Doris, who'd decided that a simple off-white sheath trimmed in Irish lace looked chaste enough for her new status. She glanced at him in the mirror and, alarmed by his expression, turned to face him. "What is it, sweetie?"
"Did I tell you that the police officer investigating Riley's death is a woman?"
Doris 's leaf green eyes widened. "She was here-in this room-last night?" Horrified, she reconstructed the room's appearance when she awoke that morning, and then she let out a sigh of relief.
"It's okay, sweetie. You were on my polar-bear longue, and you had all your clothes on."
"But you didn't." Leyden reminded her dryly, "and she could hardly have taken me for your chambermaid." He shrugged "Oh, what the hell? She'd bound to hear about us anyhow."
"Will she think you had anything to do with Riley's getting poisoned?" A thought struck Doris and she frowned. "You didn't, did you, Piersie?"
Leyden winced at that pet name. "Don't be stupid. It's her job to suspect everybody. Anyhow, I'm not the only one who hated Riley's guts."
"You're the only one who could've taken me away from him, though," Doris declared dramatically and threw herself upon him.
Leyden realized that she was suddenly seeing herself in a flattering new light: a woman worth killing for. Oh, dear Lord!
Now he was the one to push away entangling hands. "Didn't you say Riley's sister was on her way?"
"And she's such a dreary, dishwatery sort of person," Doris sighed, "Always complaining about her children," She untwined herself reluctantly. "I guess you'd better go, sweetie. Uncle Duncan's coming over, too. He's going to handle all the funeral arrangements. Poor Riley!"
Uncle Duncan was J. Duncan Sylvester, owner and publisher of The Loaded Brush, probably the country's most widely read and certainly its most influential art journal. He was a shrewd businessman and a thoroughly doting bachelor uncle. There were some who said that Quinn's entrée to the pages of The Loaded Brush had been Sylvester's wedding present to Doris. Her dowry, said the cattier. At any rate, subsequent acceptance by that prestigious magazine had been the final entrenchment of Riley Quinn's reputation.