Chapter 8
Larry broke the eggs cleanly on the edge of the glass bowl, looked for an egg beater, and took down paprika, salt, and pepper. Bessie humored him on Sunday mornings and let him scramble the eggs his way, well beaten and cooked over a low fire. Patiently Larry stirred, scooping his fork along the side of the pan. The August sun blazed through the windows. Larry knew that if he wanted the eggs right, they couldn’t be rushed.
Larry opened the refrigerator and saw cool slices of honeydew melon on white Wedgwood, and an oval platter of smoked salmon in neat rows. He uncovered a top-of-the-stove oven where six shiny bagel were heating, and sniffed. Bagel were doughnut-like rolls with tough, crisp crusts. He remembered them nostalgically from home.
A container of cream was on the stove to be added at the last moment. The cream splashed, and Larry mixed the eggs again before he spooned them onto heated plates and called Bessie to help carry them in.
They ate in the foyer, where Elizabeth Brett, Bessie’s old school chum, was waiting at the table. She sampled the eggs expertly. “They’re wonderful. How do you get them so smooth?” she asked.
“He won’t even tell me,” Bessie pretended to complain.
“I wish he’d tell my cook,” Elizabeth’s flowers bobbed on her white bouquet of a hat. “Mm-m,” she sighed contentedly. “I don’t know when I last tasted a bagel.”
“You have a standing invitation any Sunday, Liz,” Larry said, grinning. He looked through the graceful arch to the living room and felt grateful to Liz, as he often had before. On this shriveling August day the dark emerald walls soaked up the heat, and the bright white fireplace with its oblong of unframed mirror fitted the serene Brett color plan. Chintz for the easy chairs. A lemon-colored sofa and striped woolen draperies. Ivy in white stands. The color was Brett, as though she had stood by, adding white to the paint and weaving it into each clean-looking fabric.
It was her color, but their home. At first Larry had been afraid to tell her about the Soyer painting, the gift last year of a client who owed him a fee. Bessie and he had thought that the somber, grayish picture of a girl with legs askew and knob knees bent might offend Liz, but she felt the power in the picture at once, said the girl in the painting looked like a high school chum in the Bronx who had lost her job during the thirties and tried to commit suicide with a rusty pair of scissors. Her school friend had the Soyer’s overlarge hollows for eyes, Liz said thoughtfully, while she searched her handbag for a picture hook to hang the painting.
Liz had made her way from a cold-water flat in the Bronx to the shop on East Fifty-seventh Street. Elizabeth Brett, Inc., Interiors. Bessie first met her when she was Lizzie Browarsky and they were freshmen at Hunter. Already Liz was designing her own clothes and painting sets for the dramatic club. In her junior year she quit and went to art school at night, and apprenticed herself during the day to the home furnishings section of a department store. There Liz made friends with an editor of a decorating magazine who introduced her to a society woman who was looking for someone young and energetic as a partner. The woman’s husband had gone broke on Wall Street, and she supported herself by decorating for wealthy friends. Liz, who had brains and a fresh color sense, delighted her employer’s clients, and Brett jobs began to be talked about and photographed. Friends of friends and total strangers visited the cramped upstairs office. When the business moved a year ago to a spacious street location, Liz bought out her associate, changed the firm name, and hired three assistants to handle the traffic. Liz deserved a lot of credit, Larry admitted. In fifteen years she had put herself at the top. Watching her thick-knuckled fingers on the slippery roll, Larry wondered, as he often did, how coarse-fibered Liz with her mottled strawberry skin, gossipy mouth and emphatic hips managed to get along with the airplane trade. Her own scheme of dressing was the reverse of the rooms she designed. She used too much makeup, loaded herself with gaudy costume jewelry, and on a scorcher like today, she wore a long-sleeved black crepe dress. Her voice was Bourbon, straight, she said “yeh-uh” for “yes,” and was the last person anyone would associate with the pure cool beauty of an interior by Brett.
Judged by standards of self-made success, Liz was the counterpart among Bess’s college friends of Bemrose among his. Both had come up from a curbstone. They both served wealthy clients. Only the edges of Arthur H. Bemrose were engine-turned while Liz Brett had hangnails that snagged. Her energy exploded like a hundred firecrackers set off at once while Bemrose’s was a steady glow.
They were on a second cup of coffee when Bess said, “Tell him, Liz. What you were telling me before.”
“I’ve been having a little trouble with your pal, Bemrose,” Liz said, a cigarette between her lips.
Larry struck a match for her. “Where did you tangle with him?”
“He asked me to do over his old house on Eighty-second Street.” The white hat tossed as she inhaled. “I met him at a party of a client of mine. I did a house for this woman on the Cape. He seemed like a nice guy, and I hoped there was a little something between them. When I saw that he had married another girl, I wrote, congratulating him. About a month ago he called to ask me how I’d like to do over his house.” She tilted the fragile chair and blew a smoke ring. “I should have been smart enough to know when he called instead of Mrs. Bemrose——”
“Tell him about the bedroom paper,” Bessie prompted.
Larry looked curiously at his wife. The dark purple lips which usually curved with good nature twisted pouting, insistent, toward Elizabeth. Lightning threatened in her brown eyes which ordinarily were so warm and cloudless that they reminded Larry of a perfect stretch of weather. Thin lines of moisture had collected in the folds of her plump neck. Bess’s wavy dark hair which almost always obediently circled her face, accentuating its roundness, jabbed from the temples in straight, stubborn ends. The play of dark lips and blinding white teeth, a study of light-and-shadow which Larry never tired of watching, struck him now as greedy. He thought of a small, furry animal badgering its victim. This wasn’t his usual sweet, gentle Bessie.
“What about the wallpaper?” he asked.
“Nothing that will make any difference in a hundred years.” Elizabeth had caught his amused tone.
“About the stripes,” Bessie persisted.
“You know the house,” Elizabeth said. “It’s a mausoleum.”
Larry nodded.
“He won’t let her get rid of the old furniture,” Liz explained. “So Mrs. Bemrose thought that by keeping the walls light and slipcovering some of the heavy pieces, she’d brighten up the place.”
“Who thought of that?” Larry laughed.
“I did.”
Bessie motioned to him impatiently. “That’s what she is paid for, Larry. Go on, tell about the stripes.”
“We had agreed to use a pale blue sprig paper for the bedroom to keep it delicate,” Liz continued. “We had already selected a matching carpet and fabrics. Even samples for lamp shades. Her heart was set on that blue.”
“But he wanted stripes,” Bessie interrupted.
“Bottle green and tan stripes,” Elizabeth explained. “An inch wide. They would have been okay for the study, or in a man’s bedroom where the furniture was made to order, but——”
“She lost, I guess,” Larry said.
“She cried all the way through a good dress of mine. Scared to death that she’d never understand him. Children, it isn’t friendly at the Bemroses’. It isn’t friendly.” Elizabeth walked to the mirror and stroked her upswept coiffure with clumsy fingers.
“I guess they’ll sleep with stripes.” Larry shrugged.
“You haven’t heard about the cook,” Bessie protested.
“Let’s skip it,” Elizabeth ran a thumb along a pocket comb.
“No, he ought to hear,” Bess insisted. “To listen to Larry talk about Arthur Bemrose, you’d think he was— Well, sometimes you do make me sick,” she said defensively.
Larry looked more reproachful than he felt. He knew Bessie was jealous of the time he spent with Arthur, but it didn’t bother him. He attributed it to feminine possessiveness and was rather flattered by her jealousy.
“What about the cook?” Larry asked, to humor Bessie. “I might as well know everything.”
“If cooks are good, they’re usually a little crazy,” Elizabeth explained. “This one at the Bemroses’ makes like a genius, but he fired her because he claims she came home drunk.” Elizabeth smiled. “If she’d work for me, I’d gladly keep her in Scotch, cases of it. Anyway Mrs. Bemrose says the cook was sick, not drunk, and begged him to hang on to her, but he won, of course. Next day the cook was—” Elizabeth jerked a thumb toward the door. “I tell you, infants, it’s not friendly at the Bemroses’.”
Bessie watched apprehensively for Larry’s reaction, but he stacked the dishes unconcerned.
“Leave those. I’ll do them after Liz is gone,” Bessie said. “Don’t go yet, Liz. Tell him about the draperies.”
“Look, honey, how about letting him alone? He thinks we’re a couple of hellions.”
“Aren’t you?” Larry innocently asked.
“A thing like that shows up a man’s character,” Bess insisted. “Larry ought to know about it. For his own protection,” she added mysteriously.
“And you should get a job running a quiz program,” Liz said.
Larry pinched his nose delightedly. An embarrassed flush, rising on Bessie’s neck, colored her lower jaw.
“The other afternoon about five-thirty I was supervising the hanging of draperies for the upstairs study when Bemrose came in,” Liz continued. “He blurted out something at her and when I turned around, she was trembling. A lawyer named Harrison was waiting for him downstairs, and Bemrose had asked her to have her dinner sent up on a tray so that he and this other lawyer could be alone.
“I invited her to come home with me and look at a bedroom screen I had been trying to describe to her, thinking she might want to order one like it. Bemrose fell over himself thanking me. He can be damned ingratiating when you give him his way—”
“You bet he can. And sometimes even when you don’t give him his way,” Larry said.
“I decided he was getting off too easy, and it would do him good to suffer,” Liz said. “I asked, ‘How about inviting us downstairs for cocktails? I’ve been on my feet all day. I can use a drink.’”
She sat down and shifted her hips on the narrow chair. “Mrs. Bemrose tried to shush me and say they mustn’t be disturbed. She offered to have our drink sent up. But I put my foot down and said I wanted to get away from the mess in the sitting room.
“Bemrose finally saw he was licked. He asked us to join them,” Liz continued. “When we got downstairs, he fixed a nice, smooth Martini, and he went out of his way to behave. He kept cutting us into the conversation, and his friend Harrison—he told some good stories.” She smiled speculatively. “I like that little runt.”
“Make a try for him, Liz. He’ll keep you in sables.”
“Thanks. I’ll buy my own,” Liz said. “I think Bemrose would have asked us to dinner if he hadn’t been afraid of reversing himself. Harrison was having a good time. He thought I was the life of the party. What is he? A corporation lawyer?”
Larry nodded.
“Bemrose wouldn’t let on, of course, that he wanted to change his mind,” Liz said. “It’s no kinderspiel, living with that guy. It takes quite a woman.”
Elizabeth removed a cylinder of red paste from her bag. She used a fingertip to spot each cheek and worked in the daubs of color. “That poor little thing had better catch on quick or——”
“He has a heart as big as he is,” Larry protested.
“He wants Larry to manage his office,” Bess said. “What do you think, Liz? You’re a judge of character. It’s a big step for Larry, closing his own office. My father says going into business with a man is like marrying him.”
Larry was grateful that Bess never reminded him he had taken her from a home with two servants. She never suggested that they wouldn’t have this apartment if her father, a successful diamond merchant, hadn’t furnished it for a wedding present. For fifteen years Bess had plugged away with Larry, counting on him to become a Judge, or at least a Magistrate, but keeping the thought in the back of a bottom drawer. Bemrose’s offer was the first real professional break he had had since law school. Since he told her about it, Bess had gone around the house absorbed, thoughtful, looking questions instead of asking them. She pretended to resent Arthur and his success, but Larry knew the firm name of HAYNES and BEMROSE was an overbright sun that watered her eyes. In the small veins of her heart, Bessie probably hoped that he would accept the offer.
“Larry’s a pretty good judge of character. He doesn’t need my advice,” Elizabeth said, walking over and affectionately tugging the knot of his tie. “Now children, I really must—” She crushed some long white gauntlets at her wrist. “The eggs were scrumptious. Ask me again!”
Before Larry could say, “I’ve already turned down his job,” Elizabeth was on her way, and the door clicked.
Gratefully Larry took off his tie, unbuttoned his collar, and stretched out on the yellow sofa, placing a newspaper under his shoes. Bessie was busy in the kitchen. He’d have to tell her someday and might just as well line up how he was going to put it. He’d have to go back a month to that stinking evening——
Larry would never forget that night in the middle of July. It was impossible to get a breath of air if a man had a pair of lungs like Dempsey. The gang decided they might as well forget the humidity and play poker because it was better to be out and occupied than to stifle and be bored at home. There was no point in going to an air-cooled movie, either, and come out later to the steaminess of Times Square. They set up the game at Danny’s, and griped like hell because Danny had promised every summer to put in air conditioning and hadn’t done anything about it.
Although Bemrose was married the end of June, none of the gang had seen him since long before his engagement. The usual stag dinner which the boys would have liked to give him hadn’t been discussed. Larry, himself, hadn’t heard from Bemrose since the party at his house five or six weeks ago.
Naturally the boys wondered about Lucy, what she was like, and when Larry dealt, he tried to satisfy their curiosity. He put down the cards to illustrate Mrs. Bemrose’s symmetrical distribution when Bemrose unexpectedly walked in, and the evening was finished. The gang attempted to congratulate him, but their good wishes went stale as warm beer. Bemrose looked edgy, miserable. His coat slipped from the back of his chair, and he let it lie in Danny’s sawdust.
The first round of the game everyone stayed. There was almost a hundred dollars in the pot. Cy O’Malley raised, Bemrose called, and Cy put down three ten spots. Arthur beat him with four kings and hauled in the chips, a wedding present from the boys. The next hand was deuces wild, and Bemrose drew two deuces. He was four hundred bucks ahead in a half hour, a run of luck that happened once in a year of Saturday nights.
Ordinarily someone would have wisecracked, “What’s the matter? Your love life sour?”; tonight the boys were very careful. Very, very careful.
With the third beer, Tremont Friendly, punctilious Terry who answered every letter and remembered every birthday and the only one likely to be hurt because Bemrose hadn’t invited the rest of them to the wedding, decided to do the right thing. He cleared his throat, and precisely raised his glass. “A toast to Arthur’s wife, boys,” he said. “To Mrs. Bemrose’s health.” Self-consciously he pointed the glass at Arthur.
Bemrose grunted his thanks, put down his beer without drinking, and shuffled the cards for the next round.
Terry looked as though he had been slapped.
This furtiveness of Bemrose’s was a little silly, Larry decided, even if he had married late in life and wanted to appear matter-of-fact about it. A man couldn’t hide a new wife in his vest pocket, because he felt ill at ease as a husband.
“Give Lucy my love,” Larry said easily. “When you came in, I was telling the boys about her. By the way, how is she these days? I know she’s beautiful, but otherwise——”
“Not so well.” Bemrose sponged his neck with a paper napkin.
“The hot weather?” Larry asked.
“I don’t know. Not feeling well.” His tone said to forget about it and go on with the game.
A companionable murmur circled the table. “Too bad.” “It’s a helluva summer to be in town.”
Larry could tell that something was cooking with Cy. They called him total-recall O’Malley. He had a deceptive baby roundness—turned-up nose, second chin, football shoulders and talky blue eyes. If he telephoned to ask someone for lunch, Cy sometimes gabbed for an hour, then made the lunch date anyway and gabbed some more.
“Did you hear what happened to Danny?” Cy asked. “A drunk came in the other day with a live lobster and handed it across the bar, told Danny it was a present for him. You know Danny. He’s polite; so he says, ‘Thanks, I’ll take him home to dinner.’ This drunk shakes his head and says, ‘Naw, he’s had dinner, take him to the movies.’”
The joke wasn’t that funny, but it broke the tension, and the small, hot room went up in a roar. Chuck Adams grabbed his ankle, Hagerty delightedly shook hands with himself, and Paul Schmid put a hand on Bemrose’s arm. The releasing laughter, which seemed louder because Bemrose had kept them bottled up, rolled through Danny’s sagging door and down the rickety stairs.
There was a sudden conscious silence while the sound blew out like radio tubes. Bemrose turned on Cy without a word and his look was the closest thing to a right hook that Larry had ever seen.
The game broke up, and Larry left Bemrose waiting at the curb for a taxi. Larry didn’t even bother to offer to hang around and have a drink with him.
He had started down the street in his shirtsleeves, his coat uncomfortably weighing on his arm, when someone called to him, and there was Arthur H. in person.
“Have a heart. It’s no night for a track meet,” Bemrose complained.
They headed for Larry’s apartment. Bemrose was puffing and the sweat ran in rivers down his face.
“What have you been doing?” he asked amiably.
“Not a helluva lot,” Larry said. “I looked for you at that Red Cross dinner last week, the one at the Starlight Roof. I thought you usually went.”
“Shore always invited me,” Bemrose explained. “This year I took tickets, but he didn’t say anything about sitting with him. I didn’t want to go alone if he were there with a big party.”
“He must have figured you were on your honeymoon,” Larry said. “That’s what I figured when I didn’t hear from you.”
“I would have called and asked you up to the house, but we’re redecorating,” Arthur apologized. “Tonight is the first time in weeks I’ve been out. We haven’t seen a soul.”
“Don’t let it worry you,” Larry said. “Too hot anyway to see people.” He stuffed a damp handkerchief into his back pocket.
They had reached the denuded canopy frame in front of the apartment house where Larry lived. He and Bessie had been trying to get Bemrose down for fifteen years, but this was the first time he made it as far as the door. “Come on up. Bessie’s in Woodmere at her father’s place,” Larry urged.
Bemrose nodded and followed him. Upstairs he inventoried the room. “Nice place,” he said, walking around, and pausing in front of the Soyer. “That’s a powerful painting you have there.”
Larry raised the blinds and opened the front door to get some cross ventilation. He brought two bottles of beer from the kitchen.
“Have you heard anything from Janice Baldwin?” Bemrose asked casually. Too casually.
“Not a word.”
“The internal revenue man was in about a tax matter she turned over to me,” Bemrose said. “It’ll have to wait.” He drank the foam off his beer. “I suppose you have her address——”
“No, but Everett’s must have it.”
“Split another with me?” Bemrose pointed to the remaining bottle of beer which was on the tray. “Never mind about Janice. She’ll turn up.”
He left the room to wash, and when he came back, picked up a rose quartz ash tray from the table and traced the uneven edge with his finger. “I suppose she’s on her way home,” Bemrose said. “She must have seen everything there is to see in Sweden. It’s been more than two months.”
“Maybe she stopped in England,” Larry suggested. “She might be trying to get to the Continent.”
“Oh, she wouldn’t do that,” Arthur said quickly. “That’s too risky.”
There were risks and risks, Larry couldn’t help thinking. There was the risk of seeing Bemrose again. It might be a chance that Janice didn’t dare take at the moment.
“How would you like to come down to my office and give me a hand?” Bemrose asked. “I mean on a permanent basis.”
He must be having a brainstorm: Larry hadn’t thought seriously of being in an office with Bemrose since college.
“My time is taken with seeing clients and trying cases,” Arthur explained. “The office isn’t run right, I’ve neglected it. How about coming in as office manager?” He turned sharply toward Larry. “The practice is growing—I could offer you something substantial.”
Larry swallowed. “It’s swell of you to think I can do it——”
“It would mean security for you,” Bemrose interrupted. He tapped the table with the end of a fresh cigarette, shaking out the loose tobacco. “The way I see it, some years a fellow with a small practice makes out all right, and some years—” He shrugged. “This would mean a steady income for you. There wouldn’t be any bad years.”
With effort Larry located his voice. “It’s swell of you, but I have to think about my clients.”
“Go ahead and work for them. On the side. I don’t want any cut in your practice.”
And you aren’t planning to cut me into any of yours, Larry thought. A few years with Bemrose, and he might end up by not having a practice.
“It’s a big step, closing up shop. I’ll have to have plenty of time to think it over,” Larry said.
Bemrose surveyed the living room with his hand. “What does it cost you and Bessie to live? As high as eight or nine thousand?”
“I’m not sure about going into business,” Larry tried to explain. “At your shop I’d be taking care of detail, handling routine matters. I sort of like plugging away at the law and helping people. Office routine doesn’t sound like a helluva lot of fun.”
“You’re the one man who could run the place right. I could make the money interesting—I could do better than nine thousand. As a matter of fact, I could underwrite considerably more.”
“Let me think it over,” Larry promised. “You’d make a swell boss, but I’ve been on my own for a long time.”
Worry cut into Arthur’s forehead, and Larry felt sorry for him.
“Haven’t we always gotten along like silk?” Bemrose asked. “In the old days at school we used to talk about practicing together. I don’t see why——”
“A fellow gets used to working for himself. He gets used to doing things his own way. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If I decide that it’s too late now to come with you, I’ll help you find someone else. I’ll start looking around for you. There must be someone who’d jump at it.”
“How about Bessie? When is she coming home?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“Well, ask Bessie. And don’t forget to tell her I’ll make the price right. Have a long talk with her.”
Larry nodded. “I’d come in a minute if I didn’t have things set up for myself. There isn’t another office in town I wouldn’t quit to work for you, but there’s something about practicing for myself—well, you ought to know.”
Arthur buttoned the damp collar of his shirt. He stood up and put out his hand. “If you should happen to hear from Janice, I’d appreciate your letting me know.”
The next day Larry went swimming with Bessie at the Rockaways. The beach was a honeycomb of flesh that shaded from bright pink to bronze, and every inch of neat, fine sand had been disarranged by the bathers. Next to the narrow oblong that Larry and Bess had marked for themselves, a yowling infant who wouldn’t eat the banana it was being offered kept them from talking. By the time Larry finally got around to telling Bess about Bemrose’s proposition, his mind was just about made up. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that a junior partnership might have saved face for him and made the deal possible, but it was too great a defeat at this point for him to give up his practice for a straight salary. If Bemrose had thought it through, he would have seen it himself. A junior partnership would have been the thing to offer him, Larry decided.
On this Sunday afternoon at home, Larry went over the pros and cons. He had been arguing them with himself the past few weeks and began to see why Bemrose’s offer failed to interest him. He shied away from it, not for the reasons he had suggested to Arthur, that it was a blind alley which cut him off from the active practice of the law. The real reason he wanted to turn it down was because it came from Bemrose. It was rather startling to find out that he felt that way. He must be afraid of Bemrose. He must be scared of being pushed around by him. Thinking about it, here on the sofa, he felt the moisture on his forehead turn clammy. Was he also worried that Bemrose would try to high pressure him when he found out he was turning him down? Was he afraid that he might not be able to stand up to Bemrose? It was an uncomfortable thought.
“Feel any cooler?” Bessie flopped on the end of the sofa, and shoved the damp curls off her forehead.
“I think I’m going to turn down that offer,” Larry said.
“You’re not worried about the stories Liz told, are you?”
“No-o-o. But I’m afraid I wouldn’t be happy taking orders. It’s the queerest thing, Bess. I always thought I wanted to practice with Arthur. For years I’ve dreamed about it, and now when it’s offered to me, I don’t want it. Maybe I never really wanted it. I guess if I really had, I would have wormed an offer out of him long before this. What do you suppose made me stay away from it?”
“Don’t take it if you feel like that, Larry.”
“But it might not be the best thing for you, Bess. If I took it, we could afford a place in Westport maybe, for the summer. We wouldn’t have to go to Woodmere, or swelter in town. This is no fun for you.”
“Don’t you worry, Larry. Papa likes to have us come to Woodmere.” She plucked her flowered housecoat to let the air through.
“If I had the money to be independent, I’d cut loose from Tammany, and we’d move out of the district. This furniture would look a lot better in an apartment uptown. We ought to give some thought to that angle, Bess.”
“Don’t take something you don’t want on account of me.” She fanned herself with the sport section of the Sunday paper.
“I might not accept it for your sake, but I’d be turning it down for both of us. Say the word, and I’ll—” He took her hand.
“I always thought you didn’t care much about practicing law.” She held on to him and soothingly stroked his arm.
“Most of the time I don’t. Not my type of practice. But every once in a while I have fun. That Brunswick case I handled last week— It takes time to build the right kind of practice, but I’m not in any hurry, am I?”
“You’d rather do it yourself,” she said thoughtfully. “I understand.”
“Arthur H. Bemrose needs me like a hole in the head,” Larry laughed. “Wait and see, when he hears I’m turning him down. He’ll make me think I’m indispensable. Only who is? I know some fellows think there is such a thing, but the country’s too big. It takes more than one man to make any part of it click. Where do you find men that are indispensable? In business? In Washington? Where? No one individual is needed that bad, I don’t care who he is. HAYNES and BEMROSE is going to get along fine without me. You’ll see. In a few years—hell, next year at this time—it won’t matter a damn whether I work for Bemrose, or he works for me.
“That’s the way I feel. If it’s all right with you, kid,” he added.
“We have a nice life, Larry. Would you like to go to an air-cooled movie?” Bess asked, with the homely irrelevance he loved. It subtracted the universal from tough situations. It always made big decisions easier for him.
Later on the subway he told her, “Your friend, Liz, is a swell girl, but I’m glad you’re you.”
She rested her hand on his knee. “I’m glad you’re not Arthur Bemrose. Keep on being a Little Shot, Larry. I like Little Shots. They’re nice to live with.”
She sighed. “Warm, isn’t it?”