Free Valediction by Robert B. Parker Page A

the stove. It had a long funny Scotch name. "Single malt," she said. "On the rocks for me, with a twist."
    I made two drinks and gave her one. The Scotch was remarkable. She took a sip and turned to the steaks. I began the salad. We moved easily about the small kitchen, not getting in each other's way although there was very little room.
    The steaks sizzled on the grill. Linda turned from the stove and looked up at me. She was smaller than Susan and had to tilt her head more. She held her drink in her right hand. I looked down into her face, and her eyes were very dark and had a kind of swimming quality.
    "This is very strange," she said. I nodded.
    "Aside from looking across the street these years, I don't even know you and yet we somehow fit."
    I nodded again. She raised her face toward me. I bent forward and kissed her. She opened her mouth and kissed me back, her body arching against me, her left hand pressing me against her while her right held the drink out. The kiss was long and openmouthed and she moved a little against me as we kissed. When we stopped she stayed against me and leaned her head back to look up at me.
    She looked at me silently. "You're intense," she said.
    I shrugged. "I'm just at the beginning of trying to figure out what I am."
    "You're wonderful," Linda said, and put her face up and kissed me again.
    We ate our steak and salad and French bread on a glass-topped table in front of the picture window looking out over Boston Harbor. It was dark now, but one could see ship lights occasionally, and the sense of ocean was inevitable and vast.
    "What if Susan has another man?" Linda said.
    "Painful," I said.
    "Endurable?"
    I sipped a little Beaujolais. "We'll see." She put her hand out toward me. I took it and we held hands silently, squeezing each other, my eyes looking directly into hers.
    "I am committed to Susan," I said. My voice sounded rusty. "If I can rejoin her, I will."
    "I know," Linda said.
    We finished eating our supper. The silence was not awkward. We cleared the dishes and Linda served Sambuca and coffee. We sat on the couch to drink it and Linda turned toward me and stared with her melting gaze at me and then pressed her mouth against mine.
    I had never been with anyone like her. In her passion and the wide openness of her abandon, she was breathtaking. Her power suit was in a heap on the floor, tangled with her lavender undergarments and my suit.
    We made love--on the couch, and on the floor, at one point rolling against the coffee table and slopping our coffee and Sambuca onto the marble surface. Later we were beneath the glass-topped dinner table. Sometime later we went to bed.
    Linda lay on her side, propped on an elbow, looking down at me as I lay on my back beside her.
    "It would be absolutely idiotic," she said, "to be in love with you having just met this evening."
    "I know," I said.
    She said something that sounded like "ohhhh" and pressed her mouth against me again and we made love again. She cried out and dug her nails into my back. Sometimes we were crossways on the bed, and once we fell off and didn't pay any attention. Back in bed, long into the dwindling night, we fell asleep with our arms around each other. And I did something I had not done since Susan left. I slept.

CHAPTER 21

    I walked back from Linda's apartment in the hot morning feeling somehow encapsulated, as if a fine high keening surrounded me, and the pavement were undulant and somewhat insubstantial. The space in which I moved seemed crystalline and empty. What I felt was shock. To feel for someone other than Susan what I had felt for Linda was so startling that the world seemed unlike the one I'd walked in yesterday morning. The Quincy Market area was nearly empty at that time of day. Newly scrubbed and shining, its shops and restaurants freshly open, full of promise. Hopeful.
    In front of my apartment on Marlborough Street, Vinnie Morris was parked on a hydrant, the motor idling, the windows of his TransAm