As we flashed past the patrol station and two alert faces checked the interior of our car, I said, "I think I know what you had in mind. You had me hooked on but good. Why didn't you go through with it?" I referred to the easy possibility of our shooting from the tube in each other's arms and thereby violating the safety code for tube passage. Such a simple frame would have put M.P. Investigator Klinghammer on the tabloid front page, if his feminine companion had chosen to file a complaint—with police witnesses to the act. Exit Klinghammer to a hobby of his own, probably less lucrative than building phantom symptom machines.
"I guess I overdid it," she said simply. She began to cry. Her white blouse quivered.
All I did was pat her gently on the shoulder, and the tears ran like mercury from a retort. "Let us not assume that we are enemies," I said, regaining a portion of my composure and all of my stuffiness. "So you are the frustrated Mata Hari; perhaps I'm on your side. Were you acting on orders? Was this a set up?"
She shook her head. "When we went into the tunnel I was in love with John Cunningham. I kissed you to frame you, all right, but it was my own idea. I'm impulsive, I guess." The only part I caught was the past tense of her first sentence.
"You mean you can change loves in the middle of a tunnel?" I blurted. Whereupon I learned one more "don't" that was never mentioned in lecture. The car slewed to the curb. She jabbed the emergency stop switch, leaned across me and slapped open my door.
"Walk!" she commanded. The remaining tears were fairly steaming from her red cheeks. I was smart enough not to fumble for an apology. I walked.
When I found a cab, I had no chance to think clearly. The cabby bored me the whole way with the excited news of the opening of the Brooklyn Centennial Celebration. Brooklyn in the spring meant baseball, and the Bums were celebrating their one-hundredth year in the league.
"Only we're changing the name from 'de Bums' to 'de Boids.' 'De Blueboids' woulda been prettier, but a hockey team got to that name foist."
Brooklyn in the spring. Baseball. Love out of the blue. Blueboids. Platitudinous slot-machines.