should have looked better for not working weekends. He looked wiped out, like he hadn’t slept in days. He was unsmiling until he surveyed the food in front of Lily—a BLT, a Greek salad, a slice of cheesecake, Jell-O, and bread pudding.
“Hungry today?” He smiled slightly.
A little sheepishly she told him she never knew what she was going to feel like until it was right in front of her.
Jeanette brought Spencer his brown paper bag, placed it in front of him and said, "Here’s your stuff, Detective O’Malley. Would you like me to ring you up now?”
Spencer said, “On second thought, I will stay and have it here. Could you bring me some mustard, please?”
They ate their food quietly. She was a bit more chatty than he. She asked him why the jacket in the heat and Spencer pulling it open and revealing the holster with a weapon in it, said, "I prefer not to brandish the Glock when I’m off duty. Makes people nervous."
She asked why he carried a piece if he was off duty.
He said, “The gun may be smaller, but I’m required to carry it at all times. Off duty is just for pretend. To deceive us into believing we’re fairly compensated for our trouble. We’re never off duty. New York City would go broke if they had to pay us for 24/7 of service.”
She asked if he lived around here, if this was his local diner. He seemed to be so well-known by Jeanette—though Lily didn’t say that.
“No, I live on 11th and Broadway.”
Oh, she said, that’s so close to Veniero’s! that sublime bakery.
“I wouldn’t know. Never been there. Don’t care much for sweets.” He eyed her dessert buffet. She shrugged, and said that she did care a little bit for sweets.
They finished eating and paid their separate checks. Jeanette seemed pleased by the separateness. Spencer opened the door for Lily, and Lily was pleased by that.
“You spell your name oddly,” Spencer said, as if making a statement of extreme importance and fascinating fact.
“Oddly, why?”
They were walking back from Odessa. It was dark now and warm; they were full. Spencer slowed down a bit, Lily slowed down a bit, they were sauntering. From a bar they passed on Avenue A, loud music blared. Bruce Springsteen was out in the street/walking the way he wanted to walk. Spencer hummed part of the song before he answered. “I don’t know. Lily-Anne. I’ve heard of Lilian with one ‘el’ and Lillian with two. But Lili-ANNE?”
Lily couldn’t tell if he was teasing her, she didn’t know whether to tease back or proceed with solemn caution. In the end she opted for caution. “I was born sixteen years after my brother was born, and my mother, having forgotten that she already named my oldest sister Anne, wanted to name me Anya, or Anita, or something like that. My father said they already had an Anne, but my mother didn’t see his point. They didn’t have an Anita. My father asked if they were Hispanic. That’s when my mother came up with Anya. No Anya, my father said. No Anastasia, no Anika! They had an Anne. No more Anne. So my mother’s valiant compromise, as she calls it to this day, was to name me Lilianne. So she could still get that Anne in there. I don’t know how my dad agreed.”
Spencer smiled and when he looked at her, he looked at her differently, with more familiarity. “I know how he agreed. The way my father agreed. When I was born my mother put on my birth certificate Patrick O’Malley, and never told my father. She called me Baby for the first three months of my life, so my father never even knew the truth, and never asked, God bless him, until I started to smile.”
“You didn’t smile for three months?”
“Would you smile if you were called Baby for three months?”
“Good point. What was wrong with Patrick?”
“They already had a Patrick.”
Now it was Lily’s turn to look at Spencer differently. “They named you Patrick and there already was a Patrick?”
“Yes.”
“How many of you were there? Please tell me more than two.”
“Eleven.”
Lily’s eyes widened. “You might want to forgive your mother,” she said. “Eleven kids.”
“Who said I didn’t forgive my mother?”
“So did she nickname you Spencer for Spencer Tracy?”
“Correct.” Again looking at her with friendly approval.
“Spencer is a nice Irish name.” She stared at the pavement.
“Quinn is a nice Irish name. Why does your friend Paul call you Harlequin?”
Lily was discomfited. “Once he saw a clinch novel in my room. Has never let me forget it.”
“Oh, yeah? My sisters read those and never stop torturing me. According to them the only way I’ll get hitched is if I become more like the man from one of those novels. From which series was your book? Temptation or Intrigue?”
“Blaze,” said Lily, flushing with embarrassment and then laughing when she saw Spencer’s amused face. They were at her apartment, and she had a tinge of regret that the stroll was over so soon.
“So why did your mother like the name Anne? Who is Anne?” “I don’t know. My mother just likes that name.”
“Likes that name a lot,” Spencer said thoughtfully.
Lily glanced at him from the top of her stoop. “Detective O’Malley,” she said, teasingly, “I’m sorry to inform you but my mother’s preference for the name Anne is not one of your MP investigations.”
“Don’t be so sure. What about your other sister? She’s just plain Amanda.”
“That was my mother’s continued subterfuge over my father. AmANNEda.”
Spencer grinned. “Your brother? Was he spared?”
“ANNE-drew.”
Spencer laughed. And then he said, “Oh, of course—your brother is the Andrew Quinn, the congressman for the first district?”
“Yes. The Andrew Quinn.”
“Well, congratulations. He was just re-elected last year, wasn’t he? I remember it vaguely. That was a squeaker.”
“You can credit me for that squeaker, I campaigned for him. Me and Amy. And it was a landslide compared to his first election against Abrams.”
She opened her front door, while he remained at the bottom of the stoop. “Very, very interesting, Lily Blaze Harlequin. Well, good night. I still say you might want to look into your mother’s regard for the name Anne.”
“Thank you, Detective O’Malley, in my copious free time I’ll do that.”
“Miss
