Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

Or what had to have been the old town, a block behind what had become the new main street, on the mountain side of the highway. It was a dead area of boarded-up buildings with dilapidated signs like Bill’s Hardware, Dave’s TV & Appliances, and Bea’s Luncheonette hanging every which way in sad neglect.

I caught a look at myself in the dark, dirty window of what had been Mel’s Grocery, and despite the new me, I had the chicken-skin feeling I was home.

Which did little to lighten my mood.

After another half hour’s walk, I took a mountain shuttle bus back to my cabin and spent the rest of the afternoon inside, fretting some more about the wisdom of dating too soon and watching Oprah.

With women who hate their bodies.

Dilly was prompt and looked great in a black dress and white leather jacket. She drove us down off the mountain, through Big Pine and all the way to the outskirts of Portland — which seemed a long way to go for dinner, but this was her neck of the woods so I didn’t question it — to a steak-house she told me was the best in the Northwest. She had an inch thick New York cut, and I had fish.

Which wasn’t half-bad.

Later, over coffee (mine decaf, hers straight) and cigarettes (hers Benson & Hedges, mine merely memories), she remarked, “You’re more health-conscious than I remember.”

“A little,” I agreed.

“A little!” she laughed. “You used to smoke like a chimney.”

“I quit just recently.”

“And ordering fish in a steakhouse,” she went on with an amused lilt, “is like asking for smoked baby dolphin hearts in a vegetarian diner.”

I laughed.

“I mean it,” she said. “You’re a lot different now.”

I didn’t know exactly how to respond, so I didn’t. Instead I cocked my head toward the sounds of an electronically assisted country and western band that were coming from another part of the building and asked if she wanted to dance.

Which she did. We followed the music, but the dancefloor was packed, so we took a table and watched while the band performed. When they were done, we danced to a couple of slow ballads from the jukebox.

Back at our table, over a couple of light beers, she said, “I’m having a good time.”

“So am I,” I told her.

She laughed again shortly, then said, “Would you believe I haven’t been out on a date for almost a year?”

I cocked my head. “Why is that?”

“No opportunities,” she said without conviction.

“Really.”

She made a face, sipped at her beer, then sat back and said, “I’ve wanted to be in law enforcement all my life. And I have been. My first job after college was with the Portland P.D. — first parking control and then in records.” She smiled ruefully. “Meter maid, then clerk.

“I came up here three years ago,” she went on, “thinking things would be different, but Barrel had me on radio for the first year. He only let me go out on road patrol after I threatened to sue him.

“So,” she said. “I learned the lesson. As a woman, if I want to get ahead in this line of work, I have to be more of a man than most men.”

I frowned at her. “So — you haven’t dated?”

“It would have compromised me,” she said. “The image I need to cultivate.”

I laughed. “Until I came along and destroyed your will to resist.”

She laughed back. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe it’s hard keeping up the act.”

I sipped at my beer and sat back feeling very relaxed.

“How about you?” Dilly asked.

“How about what?”

“That friend of yours?” she said. “The one who was going to teach you how to ski.”

“Oh,” I said, putting a small smile on my face. “Sandy.”

Loretta nodded expectantly.

I sighed. “Well, she’s a lieutenant,” I said. “And she’s a little young for me, I guess.”

I see.

“I suppose we really never should have gotten involved. So we’ve... decided to call it off.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No big thing,” I told her.

“How do you feel about it?”

I put a mild look of concentration on my face. “I don’t really know.”

“Why?” Dilly asked.

“Why?”

She opened her mouth to rephrase the question but changed her mind. “Never mind,” she said with a smile. “None of my business.”

I made myself laugh. “I suppose,” I said, “it’s because I’m not letting myself think about it.”

“Why not?”

“I’m — on leave,” I replied stupidly.

“I see,” she said. “So, you’re just — on cruise control or something?”

“Something like that.”

She gave me a knowing kind of look then, and I thought she was going to ask more about it, but thank God, she dropped it.

We chatted a bit more about nothing much at all, but the psychochemistry of our species was hard at work; so when the place closed, on our way back to her car, Dilly and I held hands, and once we were inside, we kissed, and after we were on the highway, headed toward Big Pine, the sense that things were going too fast for me became acute and I didn’t really know what to do about it.

Which is something one expects more from a teenage girl than a forty-three-year-old man, but there it was.

I was confused.

This hadn’t been something I’d anticipated. Or rather it hadn’t been something I’d thought through. This was crazy. I needed to think about this. I needed to...