"It must be four years ago. It was a couple of years after I left Mars."
I dropped Mike Gregory, and tried to learn something about Stella Emerson.
She was twenty-eight. She'd worked for two years on Mars, and then she came back and got a job as private secretary with a small firm manufacturing plastic textiles. She made enough money for her own needs, and was able to save a little. She liked having a place of her own. She had a sister in Boston, and an aunt over in Newark, and they visited her occasionally. She led a quiet life, with books, and visits to the art institutes, and working with her hobby, which was photography.
It all sounded wonderful to me. The quiet life. A detective gets enough excitement on the job. If he can't relax at home, he's going to be a blight on the mortality tables.
We were on our second cup of coffee, by then, and I motioned the old fiddler over to our table.
His bloodshot eyes peered out ever a two-week growth of beard. I slipped him a dollar bill. "How about giving us a melody."
He gave us a clumsy serenade and Stella reacted just as I'd hoped she would. She blushed furiously, and kept right on blushing, and I just leaned back and enjoyed it.
I took her back to her apartment, and said a friendly farewell at her door. We shook hands!
And she didn't invite me to spend the night with her, which was just as refreshing.
I rode the elevator with chiming bells and a wisp of the old man's music floating through my mind. I stepped out on the ground level, walked dreamily out the door and hailed an aircab with my pocket signal.