“It’s not running,” I said. “Can we go somewhere and have a drink?”

“We’re in a bar, Bern. We can have a drink right here.”

“Someplace a little quieter.”

“The tables are quieter. You want to take a table?”

“Someplace really quiet,” I said, “and where I won’t be the only person in the room with a Y chromosome.”

“Let’s see. There’s Omphalos on Christopher Street. Everyone there’s got a Y chromosome.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Not Slumgullion’s, that’s all college kids and noise. Oh, I know. There’s that place around the corner on Leroy Street. They don’t get a gay crowd or a straight crowd. Nobody goes there. It’s always dead.”

“It sounds perfect,” I said. “I hope we can get in.”

It was just us and the bartender. He gave us our drinks and left us alone, and I brought Carolyn up to date.

“That’s just so strange about Ilona,” she said. “The last you saw of her…”

“She was sleeping like a lamb.”

“And you never spoke to her afterward? No, you called and there was nobody home. And then you went there, and there was really nobody home. It’s hard to believe she moved out, Bern. Are you sure she wasn’t downstairs doing her laundry?”

“She took everything, Carolyn.”

“Well, maybe everything was dirty. You know how a person’ll put off doing the laundry, and the first thing you know there’s nothing to wear, so you do it all at once.”

“And she took the dry cleaning the same day,” I said. “And all her shoes to the shoemaker.”

“I guess it’s pretty farfetched, huh?”