The Hard Way by Carol Lea Benjamin Read Free Book Online Page A

want me to go around asking questions for you?”
    â€œI want us to do that. You and me. Together. And I’ll pay you for helping.”
    Eddie looked over his shoulder, toward the large window in the small area where we were sitting, both of us on a pillow-covered banquette. I had my back to the window, to the snow that hadn’t stopped falling all day. Eddie watched the snow for a long time. Or maybe he was watching himself in the dark glass, wondering who he really was.
    I touched his arm. He turned to face me.
    â€œI’ll try to help you with that, too,” I said, as if he’d said aloud what I thought he was thinking.
    â€œWith what?”
    â€œYour identity. With finding out what your real name is.”
    I thought he’d perk up. I thought he’d be delighted. I thought he’d see, as I did, that it was good karma, our meeting the way we had, that we could help each other. But instead, he turned toward the street again, and when he blinked, his eyelashes became wet and his eyes shiny.
    â€œEddie?”
    â€œYou don’t have to do that,” he said, not looking at me this time.
    â€œIt’s okay,” I told him. “I don’t mind. I’d like to help you.”
    But Eddie shook his head.
    Perhaps he could see me in the dark glass. Perhaps he’d read my lips. Or he simply knew what was coming. Maybe I wasn’t even the first person to make the offer.
    â€œYou don’t want me to?”
    That’s when the waiter brought the pasta and set it down in front of us. He asked Eddie if he wanted fresh parmesan cheese sprinkled on it, and he said he did, only he didn’t know you were supposed to tell the waiter when to stop, the cheese coming down like the snow outside, covering Eddie’s pasta until you could hardly see it underneath. I touched the waiter’s arm and told him that it was enough, Eddie still watching the growing mound of cheese, mesmerized by the sight of food raining down on his plate.
    Whatever it was Eddie had been thinking, he never did answer my question. He bent his head toward the bowl of steaming pasta and ate with more pleasure than I would have thought possible, considering the way he’d been living. And when the pasta was gone, he mopped up the remainder of the sauce with the last piece of bread. The waiter was back with the chicken, and when he put that down in front of us, Eddie looked at me, for the moment his eyes round and innocent as a child’s. Then he dug in and I might have been at home dining alone with Dashiell for all the conversation we had.
    I knew to hold my questions, that Eddie would want his full attention on the food. He ate more slowly than I thought he would, savoring every bite. I watched him eat, feeling Dashiell’s head resting on my right foot, his gentle way of letting me know that if there was too much on my plate, he was ready and willing to do his part.
    â€œHow do you work it?” Eddie asked when the chicken and spinach and rosemary potatoes were gone, not a trace of anything left on his plate, as if Dashiell had had the chance to lick it clean.
    â€œHow do you, you know, become Eunice?”
    â€œThe outside’s easy.”
    â€œYou mean the costume?”
    â€œI guess you could call it that, but I don’t think of it that way. It’s all part of a whole. It’s part of getting into character, the old coat, the torn gloves, the shoes I wore when I painted my office. The important part, that’s the inside, what you think while you’re wearing what you’d wear if you were really the person you’re trying to be.”
    â€œBut why bother? Nobody can see the inside.”
    â€œI think they can. I think if the inside’s not right, you can really screw up badly.”
    Eddie just waited.
    â€œA long time ago,” I began, as if I were telling a bedtime storyto a beloved child, “I used to train dogs for a living.” Eddie