
“I wouldn’t?”
“The book, Mein Kampf.”
Three
They drove south down Woodward Avenue from Six Mile Road in a ’41 Olds sedan, property of the FBI, Honey looking at shop windows, Kevin waiting. Finally he said, “You and Walter started seeing each other and before you knew it you fell head over heels in love?”
Honey was taking a pack of Luckys from her black leather bag, getting one out, and using a Zippo she flicked once to light the cigarette.
“That’s what happened,” Honey said, “I fell in love with Walter because he’s such a swell guy, kind and considerate, fun to be with.” She handed the cigarette to Kevin, a trace of lipstick on the tip.
Now she was lighting another, Kevin glancing at Honey in her trench coat and black beret, pulled low on her blond hair and slightly to one side, the way girls in spy movies wore their berets. Honey was a new experience for him.
She said, “The whole time we talked, you know you didn’t once call me by my name? Which one do you have a problem with, Honey or Miss Deal?”
He was aware of it and said, “Well, if I called you ‘Honey’ it would sound like, you know, we’re going together.”
“My friends at work call me Honey. I’m not going with any of them. The day I was born my dad picked me up and said, ‘Here’s my little honey,’ and loved me so much I was christened Honey. The priest said, ‘You can’t call her that. There’s no St. Honey in the Catholic Church.’ My dad said, ‘There is now. Christen her Honey or we’re turning Baptist.’” She said, “You want to know something? Walter never asked where I got the name.”
“Did you tell him?”
“We’re coming to Blessed Sacrament,” Honey said, “where Walter and I met. It was after eleven o’clock Mass. Yeah, I told him but he didn’t make anything of it. He called me Honig, if he called me anything.”
