Free Crang Plays the Ace by Jack Batten

met me halfway. We closed our eyes and kissed. It was a chaste kiss, nothing touching except lips, but it lingered long enough for something to go ping in the region of my solar plexus.
    Annie opened her eyes.
    â€œNice,” she said.
    â€œWant to do something unspeakable?” I said. “Or shall we just make love?”
    â€œGiven your propensities, the food would spoil before we were sated. Do I mean that or satiated?”
    â€œSpoil the food?” I said. “I could never face the Daniels again.”
    â€œNor I.”
    We ate and drank and giggled, and after a couple of hours, we drove to the Carlton Cineplex and had cappuccino and watched a new French movie. Philippe Noiret played a police inspector who looked like he was bearing the weight of most of the universe’s secrets.
    â€œI think I’ll find a mirror and practise my worldly expression,” I said to Annie when we came out.
    â€œYou want to be Philippe Noiret when you grow up.”
    â€œYou guess all my ambitions.”
    Alex and Ian, my downstairs tenants, had invited us for dinner. They wrapped a whole salmon in silver foil and put it on their stand-up barbecue that comes with more attachments than the Kennedy Space Center would know what to do with. While we waited for the salmon to cook, we sat on the patio and drank margaritas and took turns shooing away the tenants’ slobbering Irish setter. His name is Genêt. Ian told funny stories about his early life as a devotee of leather and motorcycles and a club where the jukebox played Village People hits. By midnight we were full of salmon and asparagus and white wine and Alex was doing his impressions of Prince Charles chatting up Joan Collins. Annie succumbed to another fit of giggles, and after I steered her upstairs, we left a trail of clothes in a path that led to my bed. Annie lost her giggles and we made love until both of us were sated. Or satiated.
    I tiptoed out at ten o’clock next morning to buy some croissants hot from the ovens of a bakery on Queen. I picked up a Sunday Sun on the way back. Annie turned to the entertainment section, and while I squeezed the orange juice and plugged in the coffee, she read her article on Alberti.
    â€œOh gawd,” Annie said, “nobody’s going to mistake me for Pauline Kael.”
    I said, “I’ll take the original Annie B. Cooke any morning.”
    â€œJust don’t read this thing while I’m watching.”
    I didn’t. Annie took her juice and coffee and croissants into the living room. I sat in the kitchen and read. When I finished, I picked up my cup of coffee and crowded into the living room chair beside Annie.
    â€œFresh information for your everyday interested reader like me,” I said, “and the writing flows.”
    Annie was quiet for a couple of seconds.
    â€œYou’re not just bucking up my spirits?” she asked.
    â€œWould I lie about things like that?”
    Another pause.
    â€œProbably not,” Annie said.
    I drove her home at five o’clock and spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening shifting the heaps of files and books on my office floor back to their proper homes. I didn’t want Mrs. Reid, my part-time secretary, to deal with the mess. Never ask the help to do a job you wouldn’t do yourself. It was one of my mottoes. I tried to think if I had other mottoes. By eleven o’clock when I fell asleep in bed with the Whitney Balliett collection, I hadn’t come up with any.

11
    T EN HOURS LATER , I walked out the front door wearing my lightweight grey suit. It was James Turkin’s sentencing day, the kid who’d done the number on the cab driver in the underground garage. The sentencing would be held in one of the courtrooms in Old City Hall, and I didn’t need to wear my counsel’s gown for the occasion. As Toronto buildings go, Old City Hall is dowdy and lovable. It’s made of red sandstone and sits in its