All the Flowers Are Dying by Lawrence Block Read Free Book Online Page B

office?”
    “A home office. That’s one reason we always go to my place. His is a mess, he says, with a sofa that he sleeps on. It’s not even a convertible because there’s no room to open it up, with his desk and filing cabinets taking up so much floor space. There’s a fax, there’s a copying machine, there’s his computer and printer and I don’t know what else.”
    “So you’ve never been there.”
    “No. I said I’d like to see it and he just said it was a mess, and a mess you have to climb four flights of stairs to get to. And it’s plausible enough, it could certainly be true.”
    “Or he could be married.”
    “Or he could be married and live anywhere at all. I thought I could go to his building and at least see if his name’s on the mailbox, but I don’t even know the address. I have a phone number for him, but it’s his cell. He could be married, he could be an ex-con, he could be a fucking axe murderer for all I know. I don’t honestly think he’s any of those things, but the problem is I don’t know for sure, and I can’t let go emotionally if I’ve got these worries in the back of my mind.”
    “And not that far back, from the sound of it.”
    “No, you’re right. It’s always there, and it gets in the way.” She frowned. “I get this spam, everybody does, links to these websites where they claim you can find out the truth about anybody, I’ve gone to the sites, and I’ve been tempted, but that’s as far as I’ve gone. I don’t know how reliable those things are, anyway.”
    “They probably vary,” I said. “What they do is access various publicly available data bases.”
    “You can find out anything on the Internet,” TJ put in, “but only part of it is true.”
    “His name’s David Thompson,” she said. “Or at least I think his name’s David Thompson. I did a Yahoo People search, and it’d be a lot easier if his name was Hiram Weatherwax. You wouldn’t believe how many David Thompsons there are.”
    “Common names make it tough. You must know his e-mail address.”
    “DThomps5465 at hotmail.com. Anybody can set up a free account at Hotmail, all you have to do is go to their site and register. I have a Yahoo account, FareLady315. That’s
F-A-R-E
, as in subway fare, because I ride it to and from work every day.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m all right. I live on Eighty-seventh Street, I rode down to Columbus Circle. Then I had a bagel and coffee, and then I came here, and my office is a five-minute walk from here. I’ll smoke a cigarette on the way over there, because it goes without saying we’re not allowed to smoke in the fucking office. I could keep a bottle in my desk and drink, that’d be fine, but God forbid I should smoke a cigarette. Did I mention that he smokes? David?”
    “No.”
    “I specified that in my ad. Not just that I smoked, but that I was looking to meet a smoker. People say they’re tolerant, but then they wind up waving their hand in the air, or run around opening windows. I don’t need that. I don’t drink a day at a time, and I don’t take drugs, I won’t even take fucking Midol for cramps, so I figure I can smoke all I want, and the hell with the mayor.” She let out a sudden yelp of laughter. “Jesus, listen to me, will you? ‘Hey, Louise, why don’t you tell us how you really feel?’ The thing is, I know one of these days I’m going to quit. I don’t even like to talk about it, but one of these days when I’m good and ready it’s gonna happen. And, just my luck, it’ll most likely happen in the middle of a terrific relationship with a guy who smokes like a chimney, and the last thing
he’ll
want to do is quit, and his cigarettes’ll wind up driving
me
crazy.”
    It’s a hard old world. “Does David know you’re in the program?”
    “Dave, he likes to be called. And yes, that was one of the first things I told him, when we were just DThomps and FareLady. He’d said something about it’d be nice to