“Well?” Petra asks when he gets back to the van.
“You're sort of a woman,” Boone says. “Do you remember what kind of scent Tammy wears?”
“CK,” Petra replies, ignoring the insult. “Why?”
He pulls out the bottle of nail polish and shows it to her.
“That's what she wore to our meeting.”
“She was just there,” Boone says, slamming his hand into the wheel. “She was just there. ”
Petra is a bit surprised, and pleased, to see him display a little frustration. My God, she thinks, could it be a sign of some drive in the man? She's also amused, and a little intrigued, that he has a knowledge of women's perfumes.
“They might have her,” Boone says. He explains what he saw in Angela's apartment.
“What do we do?” she asks.
“We cruise the neighborhood,” he says, “in case she's still around, not knowing what to do or where to go next. If we don't see her, you take a taxi back to your office while I canvass the neighborhood.”
He would have just said “while I hang out and talk to people,” but he thought she'd like “canvass the neighborhood” better. Besides, it might distract her from the “back to your office” part.
It doesn't.
“Why is my absence required?” she asks.
“Because no one will talk to you,” Boone says. “And they won't talk to me if I'm with you.”
“I'm some sort of social leper?”
“Yes.”
Sort of a woman, she thinks. Social leper. Then she says, “Men will talk to me.”
Pleased by his lack of response, she adds, “Hang Twelve talked to me. Cheerful talked to me. They gave you up to me in a heartbeat.”
They did, Boone thinks. In less than a heartbeat.
“Okay,” he says. “You can hang.”
Lovely, she thinks. I can hang.