The carpet got thicker as I stepped into the foyer; the living room furniture, in turn, crystallized for me something that I hadn't quite been able to place about her clothes: Both seemed outside of their own time. Not retro-hip, not campy, just intriguingly misplaced. The high life, circa 1961. Pointy bra and sectional sofa. Bad sculptures that were lamps, and black stockings under black silk pants. There was even a wet bar in a tiled and mirrored alcove. It had its own small fridge and a see-through cabinet full of highball glasses and pony glasses and martini glasses. She went to it and offered me a drink.
I felt like pinot noir but doubted I could get it. I asked for scotch and water. She poured me a quadruple and handed it over. Then she retrieved her own glass, which had ice and clear stuff in it. We clinked. We stared briefly at each other as we did so, then she dropped her eyes and I had the distinct impression she was checking out my legs. Have I mentioned I was wearing shorts? I'd put long pants on once that day—that was plenty. Of course, I'd forgotten to figure on the air- conditioning. The apartment was freezing and my leg hairs stood straight up in their follicles. I thought she smiled secretly as she waved me toward the sofa.
She sat down on the edge and used her palms to smooth a space around her. "So, Mr.—"
"Amsterdam. Pete Amsterdam. Pete." I'd staked out my own section of the sectional, from where I could look at her across a corner of the coffee table.
"I'm Lydia." She sipped her drink and crossed her legs. The silk of her pants made a nice slidey sound and the momentum turned her hips and torso toward me slightly. "What sort of business did you have with my father Pete?"
"Excuse me?"
She lifted one eyebrow and shot me a gamy, can't-kid-a-kidder sort of look. "Come on," she said. "You went to see him at the hospital. You came to the funeral."
Stalling for time, I thought I'd play it coy. "And this means we had something going on?"
"Pete," she said, "my father kept me in the background, but I know quite a lot about his businesses. I know the men he's in business with." She paused, gave her hair a toss that didn't quite work with the hairpins in. She leaned forward with her chest. "Some of them I know quite well."
Her tone left little doubt as to the sense in which she knew them, and I found it necessary to sip some scotch. I thought back to my deathbed chat with Lefty. Maybe he'd been raving, but he was pretty emphatic about a couple things. One was that his daughter had a problem. The other was that I shouldn't fuck her. I looked at her past the rim of my glass. Her lips were very red and moist. There seemed to be a hint of dampness in her cleavage too, even in the cold apartment. Her thighs wriggled so that fabric squeaked; her tongue didn't seem to rest quite easy in her mouth. Could this be her problem, I wondered—that she was a nymphomaniac? I'd never been quite clear as to whether, in reality, there was such a thing, or if the nympho was a male invention, a figment to whom he could ascribe his own glandular excesses and itchy drawers. And if nymphos really did exist, why hadn't I met one twenty-five years ago, when we could have squared off as more equal contestants and really wrecked a room?
"And now I'll be in charge," Lydia continued. "So there are certain situations I need to . . . get on top of."
With that she drained her glass and got up to refill it. Vodka. Before she turned away from the wet bar, she took a couple hairpins out. "How's your drink?" she asked me.
"Vast."
She came back to the couch and sat this time on my section of the sectional. Perfume wafted. There was a moment of somewhat awkward silence, then she gave a quick giggle and pointed to my naked knee. "You always wear shorts to visit a lady in mourning?" That Conch decorum thing, I guess.
"I guess I didn't think of it as a condolence call," I said.
"No?" she said, and she put her arm up on the back of the couch. It was that symbolic enfolding gesture, the first sly move toward an embrace that men are usually the ones to try. "How did you think of it?"
That stumped me for a second. I sucked at my drink. Then I said, "You invited me, remember?"
"That's right. To ask you one simple question that so far you refuse to answer: What was your business with my father?"
I tried to look like I was holding some marvelous and valuable secret. Her reasonable but wrong surmise had given me a handy smoke screen, after all. Only problem was, I had no idea what use to put it to. Finally I said, "You know, it's funny. You assume I had business with your father and your father assumed I was sent by somebody named Mickey."
"Mickey Veale?" She said it like she'd bit into something rotten.