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“Right here, right at the top, where you’re standing now.”
“Who kissed whom?”
“I think it was kind of a mutual kiss, because if I recall it started off more like a headbutt.”
“Yes, that I do remember.”
Thom turned around, his back to the steps. The wind was kicking up but Wendy thought that Thom was swaying more from the effects of the gin. It’s a perfect murder, she thought, not for the first time. Even if she were suspected, there was no way to prove that he hadn’t fallen down the stairs on his own. He’d been publicly drinking all night. In fact, he’d probably told some friends and colleagues that he’d fallen down the stairs in his own house. And it was a perfect murder because his last moments, besides the moment that would involve careening down a hundred concrete steps, would have been a great meal in a beautiful city on a cool, spring night. She took a step toward her husband.
vi
Thom felt unwell. Maybe it was the somewhat fiery food they’d eaten for dinner, or maybe it was the brandy he’d ordered for dessert that he definitely didn’t need. But standing at the top of the steps from that movie that Wendy loved so much, he was a little queasy. Sad as well.
It had started with the girl he’d met at the Tombs earlier. He’dbeen drinking his first beer of the day with half an eye on the baseball highlights on the television above the bar when she’d stood two stools over from him and ordered a glass of Champagne.
“Celebrating?” Thom had said automatically.
She’d turned and faced him, less pretty, he thought, than she’d looked in profile. “I finished a first draft of my thesis paper this afternoon.”
“Oh, congrats,” he said. “What’s your discipline?”
“I’m getting an MA in English lit.”
“Here at Georgetown?”
“Yes.”
He was about to tell her that he was an English professor himself, maybe even mention his recent publication, but he could hear Wendy in his ear telling him that he didn’t need to try to impress the entire female speciesallthe time. Instead, he said, “What was the subject?”
“Punishment in Victorian literature. I mean, a little more specific than that, but that was the general gist.”
“Oh,” Thom said, pursing his lips and nodding.
“You’re either baffled or you’re confused.”
“No, I’m neither. I’m interested. I’m an English professor myself—not here at Georgetown—and I’ve long been interested in punishment. In fact, I’m writing a book right now, sort of a mystery novel, and I’d say that punishment is its central theme.”
The young woman’s Champagne had arrived, poured into a wineglass instead of a proper tulip, and Thom watched her flick her eyes toward the front door of the bar.
“Sorry. Ignore me,” Thom said. “The last thing you probably want to talk about is the fucking paper you just finished writing. And you must be... waiting for someone?”
“I’m expecting friends. And yes, no more talk of punishment.”
“You’ve been punished by it,” Thom said, and he felt the imagined presence of Wendy at his shoulder groaning at his bad joke.
“It feels like it,” the woman said, and then slid onto the stool, a commitment that Thom guessed was an even toss-up between her being slightly intrigued by him and her deciding that this old man with the dad jokes was not an actual threat of any kind.
“I’m Alice,” she said.
Thom introduced himself as well, then said, “And that Champagne is on me, by the way. I insist.”
She looked less than pleased, so Thom awkwardly mentioned that he was waiting for his wife, due any moment.
“Tell me about your novel,” Alice said, taking a tentative sip from her glass.
“Well, it’s actually aboutnotbeing punished, my novel. The main character commits a crime and then he spends his whole life waiting to pay for it, but it never happens.”
“Oh, that’s interesting. How does it end?”