The Moonlight Read Online Free PDF Page B

temptation to ask her to run through the list again, just for the pleasure of listening to her.
    “What do you like?”
    She seemed to give the matter about ten seconds of very serious thought before she said, “I like the chocolate mousse cake, but then I’m a chocolate freak.”
    She smiled with something between embarrassment and pleasure, as if she had let him in on the secret of her success.
    “Chocolate mousse cake then.”
    “Regular coffee, decaf or tea?  Everybody’s got an opinion on that. ”
    “Regular coffee.”
    “You want it with your dessert or now?”
    “Whichever’s easier.”
    “O-kay,” she answered, stretching out the first syllable and then letting the word go with a snap.  He noticed that as she left she glanced at him again over her shoulder.
    It was been a long time since he had flirted with a woman, if that was what he had been doing.
    Dinner was good and even the chocolate mousse cake wasn’t bad, although he wasn’t a big fan of chocolate.  He left a bigger tip than he could afford and the waitress gave him another one of her great-hearted smiles and said, “Bye now.  Don’t be a stranger.”
    He decided he would eat here a couple of times a week and maybe strike up enough of an acquaintance to ask her out for a drink sometime.  Except how would he do that if he didn’t have a car?  He would have to get a car—maybe lease one.  It didn’t have to be a Rolls Royce.
    In town for not even one day and he had a house, was planning to get a car, and had a semi-serious lead on a lady.  Maybe his luck was changing.
    He walked back through the darkness, since out here they didn’t seem to believe in street lights, carrying two plastic shopping bags from the Grand Union.
    About a quarter of the way along the Old River Road—was there a river anywhere near here? he hadn’t seen one—he shifted both bags to his right hand and tried to get a cigarette out of his shirt pocket.  The problem was that the pack, which was still half full, came out with the cigarette and dropped into the impenetrable blackness.
    “Oh shit,” he murmured, stooping over to feel around in the weeds which, just there, were knee-high and wet.  He looked up to notice the glittering silver spray of somebody’s lawn sprinkler coming at him and managed to dodge out of the way just in time.
    Deciding that there were limits to what anyone should be prepared to risk for half a pack of cigarettes, which, in any case, were probably soaked through, he lit his last remaining smoke and continued on his way.  Fortunately, he was well provided for at home.
    Except for a quart of milk and two pint cartons of ice cream, which went in the refrigerator, he just left everything on the kitchen counter, not even bothering to take them out of the shopping bags.  He discovered he was tired.  It had been a long day, and he wasn’t used to walking.  He went upstairs to his newly-designated bedroom.
    It was only about twenty to nine, and Phil knew that if he went to bed now he wouldn’t be able to sleep.  Too much had happened, and lately he had grown unaccustomed to an eventful life—he needed some time to wind down.
    There was no television set around and, except for the prehistoric National Geographics upstairs, there was nothing to read.  Fortunately, smoking was a vice that could be practiced under almost any circumstances.  He opened his night table drawer.
    He had shaken a pack out and was almost ready to put the carton back when he realized that three packs were gone.
    He had opened the carton that afternoon—he knew that.  He had taken out one pack, which he had lost on the way back from dinner, and he was holding a second in his hand.
    So where was the third pack?
    Maybe it had fallen out into his suitcase.  He checked, but it wasn’t there.  How could it be?  He had opened the carton after he had taken it out.  So what was going on?
    The house was locked, and there were no signs that anything had been