Read Looking for Rachel Wallace for Free Online Page A

you like some coffee and refreshments?”
    Rachel said, “No, thank you.” She jerked her head at me, and the three of us headed for the door.
    “You sure you don’t want any refreshment?” I said, as we went out the side door of the library.
    “I want two maybe three martinis and lunch,” Rachel said. “What have I this afternoon, Linda?”
    “An autographing in Cambridge.”
    Rachel shivered. “God,” she said.
    There was no one outside now except the two cops in the squad car. The pickets were gone, and the lawn was empty and innocent in front of the library. I shot at the young cop with my forefinger and thumb as we got into Linda Smith’s car. He nodded. We drove away.
    “You and the young officer seem to have developed some sort of relationship. Have you met him before?”
    “Not him specifically, but we know some of the same things. When I was his age, I was sort of like him.”
    “No doubt,” she said, without any visible pleasure. “What sort of things do you both know? And how do you know you know them?”
    I shrugged. “You wouldn’t get it, I don’t think. I don’t even know how we know, but we do.”
    “Try,” Rachel said. “I am not a dullard. Try to explain.”
    “We know what hurts,” I said, “and what doesn’t. We know about being scared and being brave. We know applied theory.”
    “You can tell that, just by looking?”
    “Well, partly. He had some combat decorations on his blouse.”
    “Military medals?”
    “Yeah, cops sometimes wear them. He does. He’s proud of them.”
    “And that’s the basis of your judgment?”
    “No, not just that. It’s the way he walks. How his mouth looks, the way he holds his head. The way he reacted to the protest leader.”
    “I thought him a parody of machismo.”
    “No, not a parody,” I said. “The real thing.”
    “The real thing is a parody,” she said.
    “I didn’t think you’d get it,” I said.
    “Don’t you patronize me,” she said. “Don’t use that oh-women-don’t-understand-tone with me.”
    “I said you didn’t understand. I didn’t say other women don’t. I didn’t say it was because you’re a woman.”
    “And,” she snapped, “I assume you think you were some kind of Sir Galahad protecting my good name when you punched that poor sexist fool at the library. Well, you were not. You were a stupid thug. I will not have you acting on my behalf in a manner I deplore. If you strike another person except to save my life, I will fire you at that moment.”
    “How about if I stick my tongue out at them and go
bleaaah
.”
    “I’m serious,” she said.
    “I’ll say.”
    We were perfectly quiet then. Linda Smith drove back through Watertown toward Cambridge.
    “I really thought the talk went very well, Rachel,” she said. “That was a tough audience, and I thought you really got to them.”
    Rachel Wallace didn’t answer.
    “I thought we could go into Cambridge and have lunch at the Harvest,” Linda said. “Then we could stroll up to the bookstore.”
    “Good,” Rachel said. “I’m hungry, and I need a drink.”

8
    In my mouth there was still the faint taste of batter-fried shrimp with mustard fruits as I hung around the front door of the Crimson Book Store on Mass. Ave. and watched Rachel Wallace sign books. Across the street Harvard Yard glistened in the fall rain that had started while we were eating lunch.
    Rachel was at a card table near the check-out counter in the front of the store. On the card table were about twenty copies of her new book and three blue felt-tipped pens. In the front window a large sign announced that she’d be there from one until three that day. It was now two ten, and they had sold three books. Another half dozen people had come in and looked at her and gone out.
    Linda Smith hung around the table and drank coffee and steered an occasional customer over. I looked at everyone who came in and learned nothing at all. At two fifteen a teenage girl came in wearing