-Sorry to wake you, he said not sounding it. I'm Sergeant Finneran. This here's Detective Tilson.
It must have taken me a while to hear them, because Tilson was sitting on the stairs interrogating his nails.
-Do you mind if we come in?
-Yes.
-Do you know a Katherine Kontent?
-Sure, I said.
-Does she live here?
I pulled my robe tighter.
-Yes.
-Is she your roommate?
-No . . . I'm she.
Finneran looked back at Tilson and the detective looked up from his nails as if I'd finally roused his interest.
-Hey, I said. What's this all about?
The station house was quiet. Tilson and Finneran led me down a back stair into a narrow passage. A young cop opened a steel door that led to the holding cells where the air smelled of mold and ammonia. Eve was laid out like a rag doll on a cot without a blanket. Over a little black dress, she was wearing my flapper's jacket, the same one that she'd worn the night of the accident.
According to Tilson, she had passed out drunk in an alley off Bleecker Street. When one of the beat cops found her, she didn't have a purse or a wallet, but in the pocket of the coat they found-believe it or not-my library card.
-Is that her? Tilson asked.
-That's her.
-You said she lives uptown. What do you figure she was doing around Bleecker Street?
-She likes jazz.
-Don't we all, said Finneran.
I stood by the door waiting for Tilson to open the cell.
-Sergeant, he said, get a matron to put her in the showers. Miss Kontent, why don't you come with me.
Tilson took me back upstairs into a little room with a table, chairs, no windows. It was obviously an interrogation room. Once we both had a paper cup of coffee in front of us, he leaned back in his chair.
-So, how do you know this . . .
-Eve.
-Right. Evelyn Ross.
-We were roommates.
-Is that right. When was that?
-Until January.
Finneran came in. He nodded at Tilson and then supported the wall.
-So when Officer Mackey roused your friend in the alley, Tilson continued, she wouldn't tell him her name. Why do you think that was?
-Maybe he didn't ask nicely.
Tilson smiled.
-What does your friend do?
-She's not working right now.
-How about you?
-I'm a secretary.
Tilson put his fingers in the air and pretended to type.
-That's it.
-So what happened to her?
-Happened?
-You know. The scars.
-She was in a car accident.
-She must have been going pretty fast.
-We were hit from behind. She went through the windshield.
-You were in the accident too!
-That's right.
-What if I were to say the name Billy Bowers. Mean anything to you?
-No. Should it?
-How about Geronimo Schaffer?
-No.
-Okay, Kathy. Can I call you Kathy?
-Anything but Kathy.
-Okay then, Kate. You seem smart.
-Thanks.
-It's not the first time I've seen a girl end up like your friend.
-Drunk?
-Sometimes they get battered about. Sometimes it's a broken nose. Sometimes . . .
He let his voice drift off for emphasis. I smiled.
-You're way off the page on this one, Detective.
-Maybe. But a girl can get in over her head. I understand that. All she wants is to make a living. Like any of us. It's not how she thought she was going to end up. But then who ends up like they thought they would? They call em dreams for a reason, right?
Finneran grunted in appreciation of Tilson's turn of phrase.
When they brought me back to the front of the station house, Eve was there slumped on a bench. The matron stood by in full uniform. She helped me get Eve into the back of a cab while Tilson and Finneran looked on, hands in pockets. As we drove away, Eve with eyes closed began mimicking the sound of a trumpet.
-Evey. What's going on?
She gave a girlish laugh.
-Extra! Extra! Read all about it!
Then she leaned on my shoulder and purred herself to sleep.
She looked done in, all right. I stroked her hair like she was a little kid. It was still wet from the precinct showers.
At Eleventh Street, I gave the cabby an extra buck to help me get her up the stairs. We dumped her on my bed with her legs dangling off the mattress. I called the apartment at the Beresford but no one answered. So I got a pot of warm water from the kitchen and washed her feet. Then I took off her dress and tucked her in bed in a camisole that cost more than my entire outfit, shoes included.
Back at the station house, after the desk sergeant got me to sign for Eve's belongings, he had poured a single item from a large manila envelope. It fell on the desk with a delicate clunk. It was an engagement ring and it had a diamond you could skate on. From the second I picked it up, it made my palms sweat. So I took it from my pocket now and put it on the kitchen table. The flapper's jacket, I threw that in the trash.
Looking at Eve asleep, I wondered what the hell was going on. How did she end up drunk in an alley? What happened to her shoes? And where was Tinker? Whatever their story, Eve was breathing easy now-for the moment forgetful, vulnerable, at peace.
It's a purposeful irony of life, I suppose, that we never get to see ourselves in that state. We can only pay witness to our waking reflection, which to one degree or another is always fretting or afraid. Maybe that's why young parents find it so beguiling to spy on their children when they're fast asleep.
In the morning as we drank coffee and ate fried eggs with Tabasco, Eve was her chipper self-telling me what a bore the south of France had been with its moldy buildings and crowded beaches and Wyss making a scene over every von This and von That. If it weren't for the croissant and casinos, she said, she would have walked all the way home.
I let her chatter on for a while, but when she asked me how work was going, I pushed the ring across the table.
-Oh, she said. We're talking about that.
-I think so.
She nodded a second and then shrugged.
-Tinker proposed.
-That's great, Eve. Congrats.
She made a startled face.
-Are you kidding? For Christ's sake, Katey. I didn't accept.
Then she brought me up-to-date. It was just like Generous had said: Tinker had taken her out on the yawl with the bubbly and the chicken. After lunch they went for a swim, toweled off, then he got down on one knee and plucked the ring from the saltcellar. She turned him down on the spot. Actually, her exact words were: Why don't you just drive me into another lamppost?
When Tinker presented the ring, she wouldn't even touch it. He had to close it in her palm and insist she think it over. But she didn't need to. She slept like a baby. Then she got up at dawn, stuffed an overnight bag, and slipped out the back door while Tinker was sound asleep.
Ambitious, determined, no-nonsense, whatever you wanted to call her, Eve never ceased to surprise. I thought of Eve six months earlier dressed in white, draped across the couch in Tinker's apartment dissolving barbiturates in tepid gin. From that lotus-eating repose, she had roused herself to run the city ragged as the rest of us watched with varying degrees of admiration, envy, and contempt, convinced she was angling for a proposal. And all the time, she was laying in wait for everyone's smug assessments like a cat in the barnyard grass.
-I wish you'd been there, she said with a nostalgic smile. You would've peed in your pants. I mean, he takes a week to engineer this song and dance and as soon as I tell him no, he sails his buddy's yacht right into the ground. He didn't know what to do with himself. He must have gone in and out of that cabin a hundred times looking for a flare gun. He trimmed the sails. Climbed the mast. He even got out and pushed.
-What were you doing?
-I just lay there on the deck with the rest of the champagne. I was listening to the whistle of the breeze, the flap of the sails, the lap of the waves.
Eve buttered a piece of toast as she recalled it, her expression almost dreamy.
-It was the first three hours of peace I'd had in half a year, she said. Then she stuck the knife in the butter like it was a banderilla in the back of a bull.
-The irony, of course, is that we don't even like each other.
-Come on.
-You know what I mean. We've had some fun. But mostly, it's he says po-tay-to and I say po-tah-to.
-You think that's the way he saw it?
-Only more so.
-Then why'd he propose?
She took a sip of her coffee and scowled at the cup.
-What do you say we liven these up?
-Suit yourself. But I've got work in thirty minutes.
She found a fifth of whiskey in a cabinet and Irished her cup. When she sat back down, she tried to change the subject.
-Where the hell did all the books come from?