I'd Rather Be in Philadelphia by Gillian Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

evaporate. Then you have an unwatched pot of carbonized chicken noodle traces trying to boil itself. My pot was halfway to the molten state.
    Mackenzie stood back—smugly, I thought—as I pulled the steaming, smoking mess off the range and opened the back window, thereby ensuring both humiliation and pneumonia.
    I coughed and sneezed and blew my nose and felt like crying.
    “Boy,” he said, which was probably pretty innocuous, but it sounded like a devastating condemnation to me.
    “I have a cold!” No sympathy whatsoever. Maybe colds got their name because of how chilly people are about them. Mackenzie could have commiserated, listened to my strained breathing, considered the dull ache between my ears. He could have provided tea and sympathy, but all he did was nod and say “Boy” again. He sat down on the sofa.
    I sat down across from him, on my one comfortable chair. I was determined to sound normal, not like a sneezing frump who’d unwillingly fumigated her house. “So,” I said. “How’s everything?”
    “Real good.” He grinned. I wanted to slug him.
    “Your…friend…she arrived, then? “I tried to sound casual, but I was enduring the irresistible tickle of a not-quite-here sneeze pinging through my sinus cavity, dancing up my nose, while I looked ever more stupid, my mouth half open, my tissue at the ready as Igasped— ah-aaaaah —andnothing happened.
    Mackenzie paid no heed. “She’s real stressed out. Y’know, her job’s tough, and she’s been through a rough divorce.”
    “But I have a cold!” Bud I hab a code. Stirring words, there.
    He stared. Sighed. Shook his head. “Fix your car yet?”
    I felt firmly put in my place. Still, if he actually expected me to sympathize with the emotional problems of his old flame who didn’t have a head cold and who could afford plane tickets and intact convertible tops—if he thought I cared one whit about the well-being of his camellia, he was even more stupid than I was, which was saying a great deal today.
    I tried to find a discreet way of asking what I wanted to know. I couldn’t. “Where’s she staying?” I blurted as subtly as a flare gun. I sounded precisely as jealous and hostile as I was. “I mean,” I added, “I’m interested in what hotel you suggest to out-of-towners.”
    “Actually,” he said.
    I understood.
    He looked uncomfortable, a tad uneasy.
    “She’s staying with you.” Now I felt congested all the way down to my ankles.
    “I wouldn’ say with. But in my apartment, yes. There’s that sofa bed contraption, you know. Besides, I’m out most of the time. Made sense to me. And to her.”
    I’ll bet it did. It also made sense to me, only I didn’t want to dwell on what it was I sensed.
    “I came over to ask if you wanted to join us tonight. There’s a trio down on Arch Street… but you look peaked. Maybe when you’re feelin’ better?”
    I tried to remember the last time Mackenzie had taken me to hear a trio, a duet, or a solo. Instead, I remembered times he’d intended to do so, and crimes that prevented it. Maybe Philadelphia’s dark side would prevail and Jinx would wind up with the late show, not Mackenzie. I felt a twinge of shame at more or less wishing for a homicide to detour the man, but a person can live with an occasional twinge.
    Instinctively, Mackenzie examined his surroundings as if he were at a crime site, and naturally, despite all the alternative stimuli, he spotted the book containing a million methods of meeting males. He held it up, turned it over, opened it. “Assigned readin’?” he asked.
    “By my mother.”
    Mackenzie nodded, then read out loud. What was it about this book that forced readers to recite its contents? “‘Find a church without white-haired people and join up.’” He raised his eyebrows almost to his salt and pepper curly hair. “There’s a certain religious spirit missin’, don’t you think?” He turned pages. “‘Choose a hobby men like. Buy or borrow