Gold Coast by Elmore Leonard Page B

to smile then. “Will you tell me something else?”
    “Probably,” Maguire said.
    “What’s the difference between a porpoise and a dolphin?”
    Maguire found a note on his pillow that said, in a forward-slanting Magic Marker scrawl, “Knock if you are not mad!!!”
    He reached across the bed to the wall—to a fading garden at Versailles, green-on-yellow wallpaper—and rapped on it three times.
    Lesley came in wearing a short see-through nighty and several rollers in her hair, head somewhat lowered to gaze up at Maguire with a practiced, hurt-little-girl expression.
    “I thought you were gonna take me out to dinner.”
    “I must’ve got mixed up, who was mad at who,” Maguire said. “I had something over on the beach.”
    “I was mad,” Lesley said, “but I’m not anymore.”
    “How come?”
    “You didn’t have to talk to me like that.”
    “Did you go out?”
    “No”—pouting—“I sat there with Aunt Leona watching TV all night.”
    Poor little thing—he was supposed to comfort her, tell her he was sorry. He wasn’t annoyed or upset. In fact, he didn’t feel much of anything toward Lesley, one way or the other. He was catching glimpses of Karen DiCilia in the glow of the torch, part of her face in shadow, the light reflecting on her dark hair. Dark but not Italian-dark, the woman not anything like he’d imagined the wife of Frank DiCilia.
    Lesley said, “Are you going to bed or you gonna read?”
    It was strange, in that moment he did feel a little sorry for her, standing there in her see-throughnighty and her curlers. He said, “It’s late. Might as well go to bed.”
    “You want me to get in with you?”
    “You bet,” Maguire said, getting undressed as she turned off the light and pulled back the green and yellow spread.
    “There,” Lesley said. “God, isn’t it good?”
    “It sure is.”
    “Shit, I forgot my curlers.”
    She sat up, took out the ones in back and got down there again.
    “Ouuuu, that hurts. But it’s okay. Now it’s okay. Ouuuuu, is it ever.” After awhile she said, “Cal?”
    “What?”
    “If my aunt knew we did this? She’d shit. You know it?”
    “I guess,” Maguire said.
    “We’re watching TV? She goes on and on about in Cincinnati she’s at a picnic with this guy named Herman or Henry or something and how he grabbed her and kissed her. God, it was like it freaked her out, and she was my age. In the guy’s car. I want to say to her, ‘Aunt Leona, you ever go down on him?’ She’d actually shit, you know it?”
    “I bet,” Maguire said.
    “No, she was twenty- three . It was just before she got married. But not to Herman. My uncle’s name was Thomas. That’s what they called him all thetime, Thomas. I can’t imagine them doing it. Can you imagine Aunt Leona doing it?”
    “No,” Maguire said.
    “She’s in there snoring away, all this beauty cream on. You should see her.”
    He didn’t say anything.
    “Well, I better get my ass beddy-by. I’ll see you in the morning.”
    “Night,” Maguire said.
    “Don’t play with it too much,” Lesley said.
    “I won’t.”
    The door closed.
    He could see Karen DiCilia in shadow and firelight, the clean-shining dark hair, features composed. Karen DiCilia, Karen something else, Karen Hill originally. He’d found out a few things. If she could ask questions he could, too. And then she had asked a few more. Calvin, is it? Yeah. Calvin doesn’t go with Maguire. It should be Al instead of Cal, Aloysius Maguire, a good mick name. Well, Karen doesn’t go too well with DiCilia, does it? And the good-looking woman saying, No, it should never have gone with DiCilia.
    Sometimes we’re bored, willing to try something new and different. Change for the sake of change.
    Maguire saying, Right.
    Sometimes, then, we’re too impulsive, we make up our minds too quickly.
    True.
    Sometimes we talk too much, say things we don’t mean.
    Very true. (Talking, but what was she say ing?)
    And we get into a bind, a