Stardust by Robert B. Parker

myself.
    â€œYou mean it?” she said.
    â€œAbsolutely,” I said.
    She fumbled some Kleenex out of her purse and dabbed at her eyes.
    â€œShow must go on,” I said.
    â€œGive me five minutes,” she said, “in the ladies’ room.”
    â€œOkay.”
    We walked to the ladies’ room.
    â€œI’ll be right outside the door. You need me, you holler.”
    â€œAnd you’ll come in and catch all the Cambridge ladies making peepee?”
    â€œCambridge ladies don’t do that,” I said.
    She smiled at me softly, with her head down, moving only her eyes to look up at me. It was a wan smile, I think. Then she went into the ladies’ room and I leaned on the wall outside. For more than five minutes. One of the suburban ladies who’d admired my watch cap admired it again as she went past me into the ladies’ room, and admired it at even greater length when she came out a few minutes later.
    â€œThis a technique for picking up girls?” she said.
    â€œHave you fallen for me because of my watch cap?” I said.
    â€œNo,” she said and walked off.
    It was maybe fifteen minutes and I was beginning to wonder when I heard Jill Joyce scream, “Spenser!”
    I slammed through the ladies’ room door with my gun out, did a little deke around a partition, and there I was. A startled woman in a green paisley dress was just emerging from a stall. She froze when she saw the gun and then ducked back into the stall. At the far end of the ladies’ room in front of the handicapped stall Jill Joyce stood with her mouth a little open, her eyes glittering, her arms folded across her breast, right hand holding left elbow. There was no one else in there. The other stall doors were ajar.
    â€œTesting?” I said.
    She laughed. It wasn’t a good laugh; it was off-key and it wobbled up and down the scale, teetering on hysteria. I slid my gun back under my arm out of sight, inside my jacket.
    â€œI wondered if you’d really burst into a ladies’ lounge.”
    â€œYou through in here?” I said.
    She did her fluty laugh again.
    â€œFor now,” she said.
    I jerked my head toward the door and started out. She followed me. We walked across the lobby and into the cocktail lounge. There was a bar with stools along the left wall. In the rest of the room were couches and easy chairs grouped around low cocktail tables. We got a grouping for two in a corner near the big windows that opened out onto the courtyard. In the summer there were umbrellas out there and tables and jazz concerts on Wednesday nights. Now there was a huge Christmas tree and the residue of vigorously removed snow. People walking from the shops to the hotel hunched stiffly against the cold.
    The waitress came by. Jill ordered a double vodka martini. I had a beer. When she came back with the drinks she brought two dishes of smoked almonds. I nodded toward the bartender. He nodded back and gave me a thumbs-up gesture.
    â€œWhy two?” Jill said.
    â€œBartender knows me,” I said and took a handful of nuts. Jill took a long pull on her martini. She looked at my glass.
    â€œBeer?” she said.
    â€œVery good,” I said.
    â€œYou don’t have to be a wise guy,” she said. Her eyes were only a touch red now, and her makeup was all back in place. Her eyes were the color of cornflowers.
    â€œI know,” I said. “I do it voluntarily.”
    She drank another third of her martini and with only a third left her eyes already began to flick about looking for the waitress.
    â€œAside from the doll hanging,” I said, “what instances have there been of harassment?”
    She drank the rest of her martini, and again her eyes flicked around the room. I looked over at the bartender, who saw me and nodded. Jill shook a cigarette from the pack she’d placed on the table and put it in her mouth and leaned toward me. There were matches in the ashtray.