TWILLY PHONED YUKI at the office, asked her to have dinner with him at Aubergine, a hot new restaurant on McAllister. “I’ve got so much work to do,” she moaned. Then she relented. “An early dinner, okay? That would be great.”
At six the restaurant was filling up with the loud pretheater crowd, but she and Twilly had a small table far from the bar, where it was quiet enough to talk. Twilly’s knees bumped against hers from time to time and Yuki didn’t mind.
“Davis is like an IED,” Yuki said, moving tiny bay scallops on her plate with her fork. “She blows up in your face at every checkpoint.”
“Her act is getting old. Don’t worry,” Twilly told her. “She’s probably up every night worrying about you.”
Yuki smiled at her dinner companion, said, “Hey. That’s enough about me.” And she asked him to tell her about his first true-crime book.
“Must I? It sold about two hundred copies.”
“It did not.”
“It did, and I know because I bought all of them myself.”
Yuki threw back her head and laughed, loosening up finally, feeling pleased that she had Twilly’s attention all to herself.
“I wrote it under a pseudonym,” Twilly said. “That way if you were to Google me, that bomb won’t come up on the list.”
“Well, now I know,” said Yuki. “So, what was the book about?”
Twilly sighed dramatically, but Yuki could see he was just revving1 his motor before rolling out a story he loved to tell.
“It’s about this country-western singer-songwriter in Nashville,” Twilly said. “Joey Flynn. Ever hear of her?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, well, about ten years ago, Joey Flynn had cut a couple of records and was making her way up the charts. ‘Hot Damn.’ You know that song? Or ‘Blue Northern’? No? Well, it doesn’t matter.
“Joey was married to a carpenter, Luke Flynn, her high school sweetheart, and they’d had four kids before they were twenty-five. One day a fan brought Joey a hundred roses at this saloon where she was singing, and her heart went zing.”
“A hundred roses . . . ,” Yuki said, imagining it.
Twilly grinned, said, “Joey messed around with this guy for three weeks before Luke found out and confronted her.”
“Confronted her how?”
“Rapped on the door at the Motel 6.”
“Ouch,” said Yuki.
“So that was the end of Joey’s affair, and Luke never forgave her. Over time, Joey caught on to the fact that Luke was planning to kill her.”
“Really? How?”
“How did she find out? Or how did he plan to kill her?”
Yuki laughed again, said, “Both, and I think I’m going to have that chocolate mousse cake now.”
“You deserve cake for the way you handled the governor today,” Twilly said, touching2 the sleeve of Yuki’s blue silk blouse, keeping his hand there for a long moment before he signaled the waiter. After ordering dessert, Twilly went on with his story.
“Five years after her fling with that fan, Joey opens the cache in Luke’s computer and sees that he’s been looking up how to poison someone.”
“Oh, my God . . .”
“Joey writes to her best friend saying that if anything should happen to her, the police should question her husband. Ten days later,” Twilly went on, “Joey was dead. Potassium cyanide shows up on the tox screen, and Joey’s best friend turns the letter over to the cops, and Luke Flynn is arrested and charged with murder.”
“This story reminds me of Nicole Simpson putting those Polaroids of her bruises3 in a lockbox for her sister in case O.J. hurt her.”
“Exactly! So I write a book proposal, get a big advance on a six-figure contract, and I start spending time with Luke Flynn, who’s cooling his jets in jail while he awaits trial. And let me tell you, there’s no food like this near the prison in Nashville.”
“Have the rest,” Yuki said, pushing two-thirds of her cake across the table.
“You sure you’re done? Okay, then,” Twilly said, accepting the cake.
Yuki said, “So what happened?”
The waiter dropped the check on the table and Twilly placed his platinum4 card on it, saying, “I’ll give you a lift to your car. Tell you on the way.”
“Why don’t you follow me home in your car,” Yuki said. “The least I can do is make you coffee.”
Twilly smiled.
1 revving | |
v.(使)加速( rev的现在分词 );(数量、活动等)激增;(使发动机)快速旋转;(使)活跃起来 | |
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2 touching | |
adj.动人的,使人感伤的 | |
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3 bruises | |
n.瘀伤,伤痕,擦伤( bruise的名词复数 ) | |
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4 platinum | |
n.白金 | |
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