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“That would seem to suggest there was more for you in what happened than one more notch on your gun.” Louise said.

“If I wasn’t afraid it would trigger one of your smartass replies, I would tell you it’s never been that way for me before,” Peter said.

She pushed herself into a sitting position and looked down at him.

“For me, either,” she said. “I mean, really, I had to ask you.”

“Oh, come on,” he said.

“Yes, I did,” she said. “And that suggests the possibility that I’m queer for cops. What do they call those pathetic little girls who chase the bands around? ‘Groupies’? Maybe I’m a cop groupie.”

“This is what I was afraid of,” Peter said. “That you would start thinking.”

“Why shouldn’t I think?”

“Because if you do, sure as Christ made little apples, you’ll come up with some good excuse to cut it off between us.”

“Maybe that would be best, in the long run,” she said.

“Not for me, it wouldn’t,” he said.

“ ‘He said, with finality,’ “ Louise said. “Why do you say that, Peter? So ... With such finality?”

“I told you before, it was never that way for me. before,” Peter said.

“You don’t think that might be because you saw a friend of yours slumped dead against the wall of a diner yesterday afternoon? That sort of thing would tend, I would suppose, to excite the emotions. Or that I might be at a high emotional peak myself? I was there, too, not to mention poor little Jerome?”

“I don’t give a damn what caused it, all I know is how I feel about what happened,” Peter said. “I gather this is not what they call a reciprocal emotion?”

“I didn’t say that,” Louise said quickly. “Jesus Christ, Peter, I didn’t know you existed this time yesterday!” she said. “What do you expect from me?”

He shrugged.

She looked into his eyes for a long moment. “So where does that leave us? Where do we go from here?”

“How would you react to a suggestion that it’s a little warm in here, and you would probably be more comfortable if you took the robe off?”

“I was hoping you would ask,” she said.

****

“Where the hell have you been?” Leonard Cohen demanded of Louise Dutton when she walked into the WCBL-TV newsroom. “I called all over, looking for you.”

“I was a little upset, Leonard,” Louise said. “I can’t imagine why. I mean, why should something unimportant like walking into a room and finding someone you knew and liked hacked up like ... I can’t think of a metaphor— hacked up?”

“It was a story, Lou,” Cohen said.

She glared at him, her eyebrows raised in contempt, her eyes icy.

“It was pretty bad, huh?” he said, backing down.

“Yes, it was.”

“What I would like to do, Lou,” he said, “is open the news at six by having Barton interview you. Nothing formal, you understand; he would just turn to you and say something like, ‘Mr. Nelson lived in your apartment building, didn’t he, Louise?’ and then you would come back with, ‘Yes, and I found the body.’ “

“Fuck you, Leonard,” Louise said.

He just looked at her.