Unfinished Business (Kit Tolliver #12) (The Kit Tolliver Stories) by Lawrence Block Page A

moment,” he said, “just to cover the fact that you’d been caught using a word you couldn’t define. There’s a short story of Saki’s that you remind me of. ‘Romance at short notice was her specialty.’ That’s the last line, and doesn’t it just fit you to a tee? Aren’t you the plangent queen of romance at short notice? Now don’t go rolling your eyes, sweetie. That’s my trick. I’ll tell you this, Cordelia, or Lindsay, or whoever you are this afternoon. You’re the tiniest bit scary.”
    “Don’t worry,” she told him. “You’re safe.”

    She was in Salem, the capital of Oregon, working afternoons at the Bean Bag, and living in a rooming house near the Willamette University campus. When she left Provo she’d planned on heading back east, but the first bus available took her north to Salt Lake City, and from there she continued north and west to Boise, and she’d kept gradually drifting north and west, and here she was in Salem, and Google Maps had already informed her that she was less than two hundred fifty miles from Kirkland, Washington.
    Not hard to see a pattern here.

    When her shift ended she picked up a small pizza and a fruit-flavored iced tea on her way home. She ate in her room, took a shower, and wrapped up in a towel. She picked up her phone, then decided she wanted to be dressed for this conversation. She put on clean underwear, jeans, a loose-fitting top, and was on her way to the mirror when she told herself she was being ridiculous. She sat down in the room’s one chair and made the call.
    “Kimmie, two calls in what, three days?”
    “I guess. Listen, if you don’t feel like talking—”
    “You’re kidding, right? There’s never been a time when I haven’t felt like talking to you.”
    It was the same for her. But she wasn’t ready to say it.
    There were things, though, that you had to say whether you were ready or not. If you waited until you were ready they would never get said.
    She said, “Rita, there’s a conversation we need to have.”
    “Should I put on a nightgown? And get my toys ready?”
    “Not this time.”
    “Kimmie, this sounds serious.”
    “Sort of, yeah. See, there’s things you don’t know about me. I was never a graduate student, I didn’t have a thesis to write.”
    “Well, duh.”
    “You figured that much, huh?”
    “Kimmie, every time I hear from you you’re some place else and you’ve got a new phone number. It’s pretty obvious you’ve got a whole life that I don’t know anything about.”
    “And that doesn’t bother you?”
    “It makes me wonder. And, you know, I can’t help having my own fantasies.”
    “Oh?”
    “Which I’m sure are miles from the truth.”
    “For instance?”
    “This is just crazy guessing, but—”
    “Go ahead, Rita.”
    “Well, what I decided is you’re sort of a spy. Like with some super-secret government agency? And you travel around on assignments, and when I don’t hear from you for a really long period of time, that’s because you’re out of the country.”
    “Wow.”
    “I told you it was crazy. And then I thought—now this is even crazier, and maybe I shouldn’t say it.”
    “No, say it.”
    “Well, I thought whatever it is that she does, you know, it’s for our government, so it’s okay. And next I thought, well, suppose it’s not our government. Suppose it’s some other government, suppose Kimmie’s on the other side. Though it’s sometimes hard to know what the different sides are, anyway.”
    “I guess.”
    “But what I realized was I don’t care. What side you’re on, I mean. I don’t care if you’re really an alien and you’re working for the Flying Saucer people. It doesn’t matter. You’re still my Kimmie, and I get tingly when I pick up the phone and it’s you, and I’d rather jill off to one of your stories than fuck Brad Pitt while I’m blowing George Clooney.”
    “Although that does sound like fun.”
    “Yeah, it sort of does, doesn’t