Free All Our Yesterdays by Robert B. Parker

drink.
    “Make mine very weak,” Mary Ellen said. “I really don’t know how to drink very much.”
    “Plenty of time to learn,” Conn said. They drank and looked at the menus. Mary Ellen drank in very small sips, and Conn could see that she didn’t like the taste. He looked at himself in the mirror behind the bar. He was wearing a blue suit and vest and a red-and-blue tie with a collar pin. His white shirt fresh laundered by the Chinaman. His face had a healthy, wind-burned look and the blue suit set off his eyes and made them look even more piercing than they were.
    “What did you say,” Mary Ellen asked, “to make the waiter change his mind?”
    “Sweet reason,” Conn said. “I explained to him that while Prohibition was the law of the land, Knocko and I were the law of the city.”
    Mary Ellen smiled and took another tiny sip of her drink and tried to keep from wrinkling her nose at the taste.
    “It’s lovely, the way you speak, you’re born in Ireland.”
    “In Dublin,” Conn said. “Left ten years ago.”
    “Was it the troubles?”
    Conn smiled at her.
    “I was hoping to meet you,” he said.
    “You’re very gallant,” Mary Ellen said.
    “Just ask the waiter,” Knocko said. He had drunk two whiskies since the waiter brought the glasses, and his face was bright.
    “Oh, Francis,” Faith said.
    “You live at home?” Conn said.
    “Yes, and I work for Judge Canavan.”
    “Secretary?”
    “Yes. He’s a friend of my father’s.”
    “Judge Murphy?”
    Mary Ellen nodded.
    “You know my father?”
    “Just by reputation,” Conn said. “He’s a defendant’s judge.”
    “My father is very softhearted,” Mary Ellen said.
    Knocko mixed up another whiskey and soda. His tie was loosened, his collar open, and his vest gapped above his belt. He gestured the waiter to them.
    “We’ll have oysters,” he said.
    “For four, sir?”
    “Yeah, bring them for the table.”
    “Would you care to order anything else, sir?”
    “Just bring the freakin’ oysters,” Knocko said. “We’ll let you know what we want next.”
    Faith leaned forward across the table toward her husband. She spoke softly with her lips barely moving.
    “Francis, you straighten out.”
    Knocko smiled and drank his drink. But he seemed uneasy.
Pussy whipped
, Conn thought. He swallowed some whiskey, felt it cold at first, then warm. He smiled to himself.
Aren’t they all?
    The oysters came, on a silver platter served on a bed of ice. Mary Ellen eyed them uncertainly.
    “Was a brave man, first ate an oyster,” Conn said. He put one on Mary Ellen’s plate, and a tiny dab of horseradish, then he offered her the meat on the small fork provided. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth and Conn popped it in. She swallowed without chewing.
    “Like communion,” Conn said.
    Mary Ellen drank some from her whiskey and soda to wash it down.
    “Wasn’t so bad, was it?” Conn said.
    Mary Ellen smiled. “No,” she said. “It wasn’t.”
    “Next time you might chew it,” Conn said. “In time you might like it.”
    “I’m learning,” Mary Ellen said.
    “You certainly are,” Conn said.
    “You’re a good teacher,” she said.
    “Yes,” Conn said. “I am, in fact.”

Conn
    C onn sat quietly beside Mellen at Mass on a warm June morning. He enjoyed the scent of her: the soap she’d used in her morning bath, the floral shampoo with which she’d washed her hair, the perfume she’d sprayed lightly in the hollow of her throat. He liked the seriousness in her face as the Latin Mass rolled sonorously on. He liked the clear polish that made nails gleam as she fingered her rosary, and, when she knelt, Conn remained seated and studied the contour of her buttocks under the white summer dress.
Kneeling enhances a woman’s ass
.
    The parish was Irish. The sermon was about the Blessed Virgin and her Beloved Son. He could hear the reverential capital letters in the priest’s smug voice. Mother love and virginity. Echoes of his