Invasion of Privacy

ten minutes of their small talk, I whispered to Nancy , “This is what siege warfare must have been like.” She was about to reply—something cutting, from the cast of her lips—when the lights went down over the seats and came up on the stage, showing twenty or so fiddlers, sitting concert-style on chairs with music stands, other instruments like guitar, cello, and piano sprinkled in their midst. The music started immediately, reminding me at first of the soundtrack to a John Ford western. Then the playing stopped for a few minutes, the director introducing the club and its purposes to us before bringing on four teenaged girls from Cape Breton , one of them our program aide, I thought. They step-danced through a loud, lively song—not a “march,” but the theater too dark to read whether it was a “reel” or an “air.” About midway through their performance, I found myself tapping my foot on the floor.
    Nancy leaned over and nearly shouted in my ear, “See?”
    The director next presented a Cape Breton fiddle soloist, his style a cross between folk and bluegrass music. While he was good, the next performer was incredible. Introduced as Alasdair Fraser, the bearded, bearish guy addressed the audience in a thick Scottish burr, every other word going right by me. But then Fraser began to play, his foot keeping time, his body weaving and bobbing as the bow made the fiddle laugh, scream, and weep. I found myself stomping my own foot against the floor, and after he finished, the man received from all of us the kind of ovation given when the best in the world has done his best for you.
    This time Nancy just smiled.
    “Why do I ever doubt you?” I said.
    “Don’t ask me.”
    We enjoyed another half an hour before intermission, then a rousing second set with the step-dancers and the soloists and a remarkable Highland dancer, noticeably past her teens, who literally flew around the stage. After the second encore, we moved out into the lobby, me stopping at one of the tables and picking up a cassette tape of Alasdair Fraser.
    Nancy said, “And why are we buying that?”
    “Because I don’t have a CD-player.”
    The smile that always reminds me, for no good reason, of Loni Anderson scoring points against the males on the oid WKRP in Cincinnati .
    “Don’t gloat, Nance.”
    She tuned the smile down but not off, leading me into the crowd moving outside.
    * * *

    We drove to the place Nancy rents in South Boston , the top floor of a three-decker owned by a police family. As we climbed the interior stairs, Drew Lynch, the son in the family, quietly opened and closed the door on his landing, nodding to us in between.
    I said, “It’s nice that they still check on your visitors.”
    “They’re the best landlords an assistant DA could have.”
    On the third floor, Nancy opened the door into her apartment, her cat scurrying out to meet us. Renfield had needed surgery on his rear legs a while back, and he’s managed only a gimpy, crablike way of moving ever since. But there seems to be no pain, and because I was the one who picked him up from the animal hospital, the vet thought Renfield had “imprinted” on me as a kind of surrogate parent.
    Right then, though, he was chewing on my right shoelaces, his clawless front paws trying to burrow down past the leather to sock and flesh below. “Well named.”
    Over her shoulder Nancy said, “Sorry?”
    “Renfield. After the guy in Dracula who eats small mammals.”
    She turned, smiling down at him. “He’s a toughie, but you know he loves you, John.”
    “Pity he shows it through a foot fetish.”
    Nancy said the word “Yummies,” and Renfield immediately forgot about me, scurrying back into the kitchen and watching intently as Nancy took down a small can, popped the top, and mashed the contents into the remains of his cereal food from the morning.
    Laying the Alasdair Fraser tape on the shelf near her telephone, I said, “What’s he having tonight?”
    “Savory Salmon.”
    “Why not Chunky Chicken or Tender Beef?”
    “He had those last week. I don’t want him developing gastronomic ennui.”
    “Not exactly marinated pork and veal marsala .”
    She set the bowl on the floor, then came over to me, wrapping her arms around my neck and aiming a saucy smile roughly at my collarbone. “A certain prosecutor was thinking about Irish sausage for dessert.”
    With the knuckles of my right hand, I tilted her chin up. “She’s in luck.”

    Afterward, we