Free CONCOURSE (Bill Smith/Lydia Chin) by S.J. Rozan

isolation,” I said. “It’s not normal; or maybe it is, but it isn’t right.” I swallowed some spicy broth. “The neighborhood’s going to hell in a handbasket and thatplace has fruit trees and a big high wall. It’s weird, and I’m not sure it’s what they’d want, if you asked them.”
    “The old folks?”
    “Uh-huh. They’re cut off. It’s like an island. They’re stuck for the rest of their lives with nobody but each other and they don’t have anything in common except being old. Christ, Bobby, I don’t know. It’s like doing time, except that it’s beautiful.”
    Bobby said, “You remember that place I was in?”
    “The rehab place? Yeah, I do.”
    “That’s what I was afraid of,” he said. “Being stuck there forever. Just that damn yellow room, all those damn people in those other damn yellow rooms wetting their beds and drooling. I was scared to death.”
    He looked at me when he said this, and I met his eyes, but it was hard. I’d visited Bobby almost daily through the four months he was in the rehab hospital, but I’d never wanted to go, and that still shamed me. At first it was Bobby, helpless to control his body or any part of his world. Later, as Bobby got better, got ready to leave, it was the other people, the ones who weren’t going to get better, would never leave. I’d done six months behind county bars once, in another state. I used to look at the guards and visitors, people who could come and go when I couldn’t, the same way the people at the hospital looked at me.
    “Kid, do you think I’m crazy?”
    “Crazy how?”
    “About this whole thing. Maybe Lindfors is right. I’m just a crazy old man. Maybe because I can’t do anything about what happened, I’m trying to make it into something I can do something about.”
    “You never operated like that. If your gut says there’s something else going on here I’ll buy it.”
    “And you wouldn’t just be humoring a crazy old man?” His eyes didn’t waver but his voice did, a little.
    There were a dozen comebacks to that, cracks that would have broken the mood, but what I said was, “I would never do that, Bobby. Not to you.” I hoped it was true.
    As I was polishing off the chicken stew the door opened, and I looked up toward it for the twentieth time since I’d sat down. A compactfigure, her hands in the pockets of her unzipped leather jacket, stood for a moment in the doorway. She looked around, registering everything. When she spotted me she smiled; I felt a warmth that didn’t come from Latin spices, or from bourbon.
    She moved through the room, waved to Shorty behind the bar. When she reached our booth I rose. Bobby half stood also, then sank back. Lydia kissed my cheek, slipped in beside me on the bench. I moved over to make room, but not so far that I couldn’t feel the warmth of her thigh, an inch from mine, or smell the freesia in her hair.
    “Hi,” I said.
    “Hi.” Lydia flashed me the smile again, then turned to Bobby. Her face softened. “Hi, Mr. Moran. Bill told me about your nephew. I’m really sorry.” She squeezed Bobby’s hand.
    “Thanks,” Bobby said. There was a short silence; then Lydia lifted her hand to my eye. Her touch was soft and cool. “Was it fun, the fight where you got this?”
    “Five on a one-to-ten,” I said. “But I’m getting a lot of mileage out of it. Are you hungry?”
    “Oh, no, thanks. My brother Andrew came for dinner with a friend, and my mother put on a show. Steamed pork buns, watercress soup, and a thing that translates as ‘peculiar chicken.’ I don’t think I’ll eat for a week.”
    “Was it peculiar?” Bobby asked.
    “It was wonderful. I wish I could cook like my mother.”
    “You just don’t get enough practice, that’s all,” I said. “You could practice on me. I could buy all kinds of strange ingredients and you could cook them and teach me their Chinese names. I promise I’d eat anything you fed me.”
    “As long as I swallowed