Singer 02 - Long Time No See by Susan Isaacs Page A

over-tanned skin and graying arm hair.
    “I know it’s hot,” I acknowledged. “And you having to stand in a garage, waiting for me, with the door shut and no air circulating—”
    “Lemme help you with that bag.”
    “No. No thanks,” I chirped much too quickly. “Really, I can manage!” I sounded revoltingly hearty.
    “So you can get to your key.” Obviously Fancy Phil was perceiving a smidgen of unease on my part because he took a step back—although he remained within easy stabbing/strangling/stomping distance. “We could sit down inside, where it’s cooler. You don’t have to be scared of me. I want to talk business.”
    “Business?”
    “Yeah. I’m here on business. You are the history lady? Right?” His “his-tor-y” was three deliberate syllables. No uncouth “histry” for Fancy Phil. My guess was he picked up the pronunciation from watching Public Television against his will during his last stopover at the Elmira Correctional Facility. Two and a half years, according to the news. For aggravated assault on the person of one Ivan “Chicky” Itzkowitz during a contretemps over certain funds obtained by withholding gasoline sales tax from the state of New York. “You’re a history professor.”
    “That’s right.”
    He smelled clean but insanely citrusy. This was one badass lime cologne, a scent for capos and rappers. “A doctor of history. Now listen, Doc. Don’t worry about Gregory, about him saying he wasn’t interested.”
    Who knows what happened in that instant? It could have been I recognized that Fancy Phil had indeed bothered to put on aftershave, or made the effort to grant “history” its three syllables. But suddenly I sensed that if I wasn’t safe, at least he had no intention of murdering me right away, although I was not unaware that he might delegate the job to some discount contract killer who hung out on the fringes of the Mafia or the Russian mob. My throat made a swallowing movement even though all my saliva was still sloshing in that secret reservoir to which bodily juices flow in times of terror.
    “Maybe I overstepped my bounds,” I began to apologize. “Going to his house—”
    He cut me off: “It don’t matter Gregory wasn’t interested. I’m interested.”
    And then we were inside. Fancy Phil offered to help me unpack the groceries, but seemed relieved when I said no thank you. I sat him at the kitchen table, an overly long, narrow, rickety quasi-antique of dark wood that was more appropriate for a Castilian monastery than a Long Island Tudor. But I’d bought it (along with a Swedish wood-burning stove and a frightening Art Nouveau umbrella stand) in the year I’d taken leave of my senses, after Bob died.
    Anyhow, I opened the back door, muttering something inane about loving the evening smells this time of year, although both of us knew I needed to see a way out. The air outside the screen door was cooling down fast: Summer was still a month away. I glanced around the kitchen. Being too nervous to think of a novel hors d’oeuvre to please the discriminating criminal palate, I microwaved a bag of popcorn and poured it in a salad bowl shaped like a deformed daisy—one of those hideous, indestructible wedding presents that lasts longer than the marriage. For a millisecond Fancy Phil’s boulder of a head wobbled on his shoulders, which I took to mean “Thank you.” He also accepted the only kind of beer I had in the refrigerator, some microbrew of Joey’s, one of those concoctions that have the hue and aroma of rancid pumpkin pie.
    “Essentially,” I said, at last feeling capable of uttering a simple declarative sentence, “your son didn’t want my services. He said he’d hired a detective.”
    After a couple of glugs of beer, Fancy Phil’s chubby cheeks and domed forehead were no longer that alarming aubergine, as if he were on the verge of a cardiovascular incident. His color subsided to a rosy flush—almost an exact match for the bright