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again for letting me use it while my house is a construction zone. I’d never have been able to work with all those people around.” He scowled at the wall as the noise from across the hall battered against it. “Not that it’s much better here tonight. My neighbor seems to be celebrating something.”
    “Cybil? She’s my granddaughter, you know. Sociable child.”
    “You’re telling me. I didn’t realize she was your granddaughter.”
    “Well, in a roundabout way. You ought to shake yourself loose, boy, and join the party.”
    “No, thanks.” He’d rather drink drain cleaner. “I think half the population of Soho’s crammed in there. This building of yours, Mr. MacGregor, is full of people who’d rather talk than eat. Your granddaughter appears to be the leader.”
    “Friendly girl. It comforts me to know you’re across the hall for a bit. You’re a sensible sort, McQuinn.
I
don’t mind imposing by asking you to keep an eye on her. She can be naive, if you get my meaning. I worry about her.”
    Preston had the image of her flattening a mugger with the speed and precision of a lightweight boxer and smiled to himself. “I wouldn’t worry.”
    “Well, I won’t knowing you’re close by. Pretty young thing like Cybil … she is a pretty thing, isn’t she?”
    “Cute as a button.”
    “Smart, too. And responsible, for all it seems like she’s fluttering through life. You can’t be a dim-witted flutterer and produce a popular comic strip day after day, now can you? Got to be creative, artistic and practical enough to meet deadlines. But you know about that sort of business, don’t you? Writing plays isn’t an easy business.”
    “No.” Preston rubbed his eyes, gritty from fighting with work that refused to run smooth. “It’s not.”
    “But you’ve a gift, McQuinn, a rare one. I admire that.”
    “It’s been feeling like a curse lately. But I appreciate it.”
    “You should get yourself out, take your mind off it. Kiss a pretty girl. Not that I know much about writing—though I’ve two grandchildren who make their living from it, and damn well, too. You should make the most of being right there in the city before you take yourself back and lock the doors on your house.”
    “Maybe I will.”
    “Oh, and McQuinn, you’ll do me the favor of not mentioning to Cybil that I asked you to mind her a bit? She’d get huffy over it. But her grandmother worries herself sick over that girl.”
    “She won’t hear it from me,” Preston promised.
    Since the noise was going to drive him crazy, Preston took himself off. He played at the club but found it didn’t quite get him past the thoughts that jangled in his brain.
    It was too easy to imagine Cybil sitting at the table in the back, her chin on her fists, her lips curved, her eyes dreamy.
    She’d invaded one of his more well-guarded vaults, and he resented it bitterly.
    Delta’s was one of his escapes. There were times he’d drive into the city from Connecticut just to slip onto the stage with André and play until all the tension of the day dissolved into, then out of, the music.
    He could drive home again or, if the hour grew too late, just drop down on the cot in Delta’s back room and sleep until morning.
    No one bothered him at the club or expected more than he wanted to give.
    But now that Cybil had been here, he’d started to look at that back table, and wondered if she’d slip in again. To watch him with those big green eyes.
    “My man,” André said as he stopped to take a long drink from the water glass he kept on his beloved piano. “You ain’t just playing the blues tonight. You got ’em.”
    “Yeah. Looks like.”
    “Usually a woman tangled up there when a man’s got that look about him.”
    Preston shook his head, scowling as he lifted the sax to his lips. “No. No woman. It’s work.”
    André merely pursed his lips as Preston sent out music that throbbed like a pulse. “You say so, brother. If you say so.”
    * *