Darkfall

this man Dawson?”
    “Yessss.”
    “Will he ask his superiors to remove him from the case?”
    “Never.”
    “Will he continue to do research into voodoo?”
    “Yessss.”
    “I’ve warned him to stop.”
    “He will not.”
    The kitchen had grown extremely cold in spite of the house’s furnace, which was still operating and still spewing hot air out of the wall vents. The air seemed thick and oily, too.
    “What can I do to keep Dawson at bay?”
    “You know.”
    “Tell me.”
    “You know.”
    Lavelle licked his lips, cleared his throat.
    “You know.”
    Lavelle said, “Should I have his children murdered now, tonight, without further delay?”
    V
    Rebecca answered the door. She said, “I sort of figured it would be you.”
    He stood on the landing, shivering. “We’ve got a raging blizzard out there.”
    She was wearing a soft blue robe, slippers.
    Her hair was honey-yellow. She was gorgeous.
    She didn’t say anything. She just looked at him.
    He said, “Yep, the storm of the century is what it is. Maybe even the start of a new ice age. The end of the world. I asked myself who I’d most like to be with if this actually was the end of the world-”
    “And you decided on me.”
    “Not exactly.”
    “Oh?”
    “I just didn’t know where to find Jacqueline Bisset.”
    “So I was second choice.”
    “I didn’t know Raquel Welch’s address, either.”
    “Third.”
    “But out of four billion people on earth, third isn’t bad.”
    She almost smiled at him.
    He said, “Can I come in? I already took my boots off, see. I won’t track up your carpet. And I’ve got very good manners. I never belch or scratch my ass in public-not intentionally, anyway.”
    She stepped back.
    He went in.
    She closed the door and said, “I was about to make something to eat. Are you hungry?”
    “What’ve you got?”
    “Drop-in guests can’t afford to be choosy.”
    They went into the kitchen, and he draped his coat over the back of a chair.
    She said, “Roast beef sandwiches and soup.”
    “What flavor soup?”
    “Minestrone.”
    “Homemade?”
    “Canned.”
    “Good.”
    “Good?”
    “I hate homemade stuff.”
    “Is that so?”
    “Too many vitamins in homemade stuff.”
    “Can there be too many?”
    “Sure. Makes me all jumpy with excess energy.”
    “Ah.”
    “And there’s too much taste in homemade,” he said.
    “Overwhelms the palate.”
    “You do understand! Give me canned any day.”
    “Never too much taste in canned.”
    “Nice and bland, easy to digest.”
    “I’ll set the table and get the soup started.”
    “Good idea.”
    “You slice the roast beef.”
    “Sure.”
    “It’s in the refrigerator, in Saran Wrap. Second shelf, I think. Be careful.”
    “Why, is it alive? ”
    “The refrigerator’s packed pretty full. If you’re not careful taking something out, you can start an avalanche.”
    He opened the refrigerator. On each shelf, there were two or three layers of food, one atop the other. The storage spaces on the doors were crammed full of bottles, cans, and jars.
    “You afraid the government’s going to outlaw food?” he asked.
    “I like to keep a lot of stuff on hand.”
    “I noticed.”
    “Just in case.”
    “In case the entire New York Philharmonic drops in for a nosh?”
    She didn’t say anything.
    He said, “Most supermarkets don’t have this much stock.”
    She seemed embarrassed, and he dropped the subject.
    But it was odd. Chaos reigned in the refrigerator, while every other inch of her apartment was neat, orderly, and even Spartan in its decor.
    He found the roast beef behind a dish of pickled eggs, atop an apple pie in a bakery box, beneath a package of Swiss cheese, wedged in between two leftover casseroles on one side and a jar of pickles and a leftover chicken breast on the other side, in front of three jars of jelly.
    For a while they worked in silence.
    Once he had finally cornered her, he had thought it would be easy to talk about what had happened between them last night. But now he felt awkward. He couldn’t decide how to begin, what to say first. The direct approach was best, of course. He ought to say, Rebecca, where do we go from here? Or maybe, Rebecca, didn’t it mean as much to you as it did to me? Or maybe even, Rebecca, I love you . But everything he might have said sounded, in his own mind, either trite or too abrupt or just plain dumb.
    The silence stretched.
    She put placemats, dishes, and silverware on the table.
    He sliced