A Date You Can't Refuse (42 page)

“But I could have.” I started to cry.

“I should hope so. It means you have a life wish and not a death wish.” She looked over my shoulder. “One more time around the block!” she called to Simon.

“You don't understand,” I said.

“No, I'm stupid that way,” she said, straightening my shirt and un doing one button. “So explain it to Simon. He'll understand. It's probably some spy thing you two have in common now. Along with everything
else.” She did the thing with her eyebrows, going up and down fast, signaling something very significant.

“I don't want to talk about that. You said Simon doesn't know anything about that.”

“The baby? That's right, sister. Just you and me and Joey and Dr. Hurwitz and a couple of lab technicians and four of the nurses. Nobody else.” She rooted around in her purse. “And I purposely haven't brought it up, because if there's one thing I know, it's that a baby's no guarantee of anything, especially happy endings for grown-ups. It's just one more damn thing to fall madly in love with.”

“If it even survives,” I mumbled. “After what I put it through.” My resolve was crumbling, my longing for Simon growing.

“What you put it through is nothing compared to what it's gonna put you through. You just wait till middle school.” She pulled a huge handkerchief out of her purse. “Hang on to this in case you throw up again. Here he comes. Simon!” she called and gave a whistle that could have hailed a cab in Manhattan, three thousand miles away. “Go get him, honey,” she said and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

The Bentley pulled up to the curb. The passenger-side window went down, along with the music he'd been listening to. Opera. And there sat Olive Oyl. How despicable, using the dog as bait to lure me in. Hadn't she been through enough? And why did she look so happy?

“So,” I said, pointedly not getting in. “Is this car yours? Or is it just part of the cover story for Daniel Lavosh, Agent on the Take?”

“It's mine, but only as long as I stay with the bureau.”

I let the implications of that hang in the air.

“And the penthouse on Wilshire?” I asked. “Is that yours?”

He shook his head. “It belongs to the company.”

“Where do you live?”

“Mandeville Canyon.”

“What part?”

“Mango Way.”

“Apartment?”

“House.”

“Nice?”

“Small. I've been working on it. Putting in an extra room.”

“For what?”

“A n artist studio. For a friend of mine. She does greeting cards.”

“I didn't know you could build rooms. Like, with a hammer and nails?”

“There's a lot you don't know about me,” he said, snapping his fingers at Olive Oyl, who obligingly lumbered over the front seat into the back. “And probably one or two things I've yet to discover about you.”

“Baby, you don't know the half of it.”

“So let's take it from the top,” he suggested. “Start over.”

I stood on the sidewalk and looked around.

The month of May had slipped away while I'd lain in a hospital bed, and most of this day was gone as well. The morning fog had long since burned off, June gloom giving way to an afternoon suitable for surfing and picnics and kite flying. Relentless happiness. The fog would roll back in by midnight, but now people were heading home to fire up barbecues and open bottles of wine or driving to Dodger Stadium with their tops down. Olive Oyl sniffed the air through the back window, gathering information, smiling the way dogs do.

It was too much. I had no defenses against such optimism.

“Okay,” I said. “But this time around I drive.”

The look of fear that passed over Simon's face was gone in a second, but not before I'd seen it. I laughed for the first time in a week.

“Gotcha,” I said, and climbed into the passenger seat and turned up the music. Simon put the car in gear.

And away we drove, westbound on West Third Street, off into the sunset.