Free Fun with Brady and Angelica (Kit Tolliver #10 (The Kit Tolliver Stories) by Lawrence Block Page B

the edge of the warehouse district. It catered to lesbians, but men were not unwelcome, so long as they didn’t make unwelcome advances to the women customers. There was a sad-looking older gentleman he’d seen there once or twice, always by himself, always wearing a suit and tie, always with a glass in his hand. But the fellow wasn’t here this evening, and he himself seemed to be the only man.
    His name was Brady. That was his last name, but it was all anyone ever called him. He’d never cared for his first name, which was Winston, and had thought of changing it from Winston Brady to Brady Winston. Or perhaps to Brady Brady. With B for a middle initial. B for Brady, naturally.
    He was tall, and he’d maintained the same weight effortlessly in the twenty years since college. He didn’t care that much about food, sometimes missed a meal. He didn’t run or go to a gym or do martial arts, but he somehow got enough exercise to maintain good muscle tone. The only thing he could be said to work at was his suntan, a deep bronze tone courtesy of the beach in the summer and a tanning salon in the winter. He was handsome, with strong facial features and high cheekbones, and he knew it, and knew the tan added to it.
    His hair was dark, with just a touch of gray at the temples. He hoped it would stay like that, but knew it wouldn’t. A touch of gray was all right, it was even an asset, but he didn’t feel ready for a full head of gray hair. Maybe he’d dye it, if it came to that. But in any event he’d preserve the gray at the temples, because he liked the effect.
    On the jukebox, an Anne Murray record ended and a K.D. Lang record followed in turn. A waitress came to their booth, took their drink order. She was neither tall nor short, a little thick in the waist but not objectionably so. She came back with two glasses of Chardonnay, and Brady watched her walk off.
    “I wouldn’t mind,” he told the woman.
    “Hands off the help.”
    “Oh, I know. It was an observation, not a suggestion.”
    “Anyway, she’s Girls Only. It sticks out all over her.”
    “Not the only thing that sticks out.”
    “She wouldn’t like it,” the woman said, “and you’d try to make her like it, but it wouldn’t work.”
    “So? It could still be interesting. But it’s idle speculation, because, as you so kindly pointed out, it’s a case of hands off the help.”
    “Exactly.”
    “All the same,” he said, “I wouldn’t mind.”

    Missy was sitting alone at the bar. She had ordered an Orange Blossom, straight up, without being all that certain what it was, but she’d heard the name and liked the sound of it. And wasn’t it something a sweet young thing named Missy would order? This one showed up in a stemmed glass, like a martini, and it was orange, which figured, and garnished with an orange slice. She took a small sip and identified two of the ingredients, gin and orange juice, but there was an undertone of something else, some cordial, that she couldn’t place. Triple Sec? Cointreau?
    She kept her eyes facing forward but surveyed as much of the room as she could out of the corners of her eyes. She felt someone looking at her, actually felt the gaze, and she turned her head just enough to catch an oblique glimpse of them. A man and a woman, and she was a beauty while he was movie-star handsome. And they were looking at her, and wasn’t that interesting?
    But someone else was looking at her, and not from a distance. And walking toward her, no, not simply walking, striding toward her, with an aura of butch self-confidence overlaid upon a core of nervous anxiety.
    “What’s that you’re drinking?”
    “An Orange Blossom.”
    “Good?”
    “It’s all right.”
    “Well, drink up and I’ll buy you another.”
    A deep voice, probably deeper than the one God had given her. She’d read about a film star—a gay man, actually, although he kept it a secret until AIDS got him. He’d started out with a high-pitched voice, and did