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said.
    “Yes?”
    “When we talked before?”
    “You mean when you shot me down?”
    She chuckled. “Yes. When I shot you down. I feel bad.”
    “Don’t worry about it.”
    “Oh, I don’t feel bad on your account.”
    “No?”
    “No. I feel bad on my account.”
    “You mean…?”
    “Sure. How’s this coming Friday?”
    “Boy, I don’t know. I don’t bounce back well when I’ve been shot down.”
    “Oh, shit,” she muttered.
    “I’m just kidding. Friday would be great. Where?”
    “You mind driving out here? I get off around five-thirty, I’ll need to get cleaned up, and frankly I hate to drive into the city. There’s a neat Italian place near me. Want to meet there?”
    “I love Italian,” I said. And I love Italian women, I thought.
    She told me how to find a little place in Acton called Ciao. Seven-thirty, Friday.
    I fooled around with paperwork for the rest of the afternoon. I found myself humming tunes from My Fair Lady and remembering Terri Fiori’s wicked wink.
    But my thoughts kept swinging back to Mary Ellen. I found myself wanting very much to bring her together with Susan. I didn’t know if she was avoiding me.
    That evening, after a microwaved Salisbury steak, green beans, and mashed potato and gravy dinner, I walked from my apartment on the harbor back to Beacon Street. With the sun down the air had quickly chilled. I wore jeans and a sweatshirt and my running shoes. Not that I ran. I don’t run. Ever. As Mel Brooks’s 2000-year-old man advised, never run for a bus. There’ll always be another.
    I didn’t work up a sweat at all. So much for global warming.
    I climbed the steps and for the second time that day entered Mary Ellen Ames’s Beacon Street building. I peered through the glass door. A young guy was sitting where Harold Wainwright had sat earlier. Donald, I presumed. He was thumbing through a magazine and drumming his fingers on the desktop. I rang the bell. He looked up and saw me.
    “Yeah?” came his voice from above me.
    “Brady Coyne. To see Mary Ellen Ames.”
    “Just a sec.” Like Harold, Donald picked up the telephone and pecked at the buttons of his console. Like Harold, he waited a moment and then replaced the receiver. “Nope. No answer.”
    “You’re Donald?”
    “Yup.”
    “I was here earlier. I asked Mr. Wainwright to tell you…”
    He nodded. “Oh, yeah. Right. Hang on.”
    He got up and sauntered over. He opened the door. “Come on in.”
    I went in and followed him across the lobby. He resumed his seat behind the desk. A transistor radio sat on the corner. It was playing a rap song, if “song” is the right word. He switched it off. “So what’s up?” he said. “Old Harold said you were trying to get ahold of Ames. She ain’t in now.”
    “It’s really important,” I said. “I’m her mother’s lawyer. She’s dying of cancer and I have to talk to Mary Ellen.”
    “Yeah. That’s a bitch.” He shrugged. “Don’t know what I can tell you.”
    “When was the last time you saw her, can you remember?”
    He was in his early twenties. He had a pasty complexion and a scrawny neck and a fuzzy adolescent mustache. I suspected he was holding at that moment the most important job he’d ever have in his life. He closed his eyes for a moment, pretending, at least, to concentrate. Then he opened them and shrugged. “I dunno,” he said.
    “I mean, recently? Tonight? Last week?”
    “Not tonight, not last week. I’d notice. Nice-looking broad. Most of ’em here, they’re old. I mean, really old, you know? They piss and moan and hobble around. The Ames chick, she’s somethin’ else.” He gave me the sort of grin that invites an answering leer. I didn’t give it to him.
    “Try to remember,” I said. “It’s important.”
    He shook his head slowly. “Week before last, maybe. I don’t know.”
    “What about friends? Has anybody been around looking for her? Besides me, I mean?”
    “Nope.” He paused. “Wait a minute. Harold