Read Online The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr) by Lawrence Block - Free Book Online

plenty.”

    “About that book,” she said a week or so later.
    “ Swann’s Way ?”
    “I started it a few nights ago.”
    “How are you enjoying it?”
    “I got in bed with it,” she said, “and I enjoyed the first two pages just fine, and then my alarm clock went off.”
    “You fell asleep.”
    “Well, I’d made the rounds, Henrietta’s and the Cubby Hole, so I wasn’t exactly reading with a clear head. But I went to bed sober the next night, and this time I was out cold halfway down the third page.”
    “So you were five pages in, and—”
    “No, just three. I wasn’t too clear on what I’d read the first night, so I started over from the beginning.”
    “I see.”
    “And the night after that I’d had a few drinks, so I didn’t even bother to try. But the night after that—”
    “That would be the fourth night.”
    “Whatever. That was the night I had dinner with my aunt Amelia. I told you about that, right?”
    “That would have been after you scared the crap out of Maxine. I have to admit it gave me a turn when you ordered Perrier. For a minute I thought you were planning to go out and break into somebody’s house.”
    “Amelia’s in AA,” she said, “and she always tells me it’s perfectly all right to drink when I’m with her, that it doesn’t bother her a bit.”
    “But you don’t believe her.”
    “I had a drink once when I was with her. It was a glass of Chardonnay, and I don’t think it did bother her, but it bothered the hell out of me.”
    “You sensed her disapproval?”
    “She was watching me drink the wine, and she was watching me not drink the wine, and I could feel her getting ready to step on me.”
    “To step on you?”
    “They have these steps,” she said, “and one of them is to get other people to stop drinking, so they can all be miserable together and sit around in church basements and tell each other how much fun they used to have. I sat there with my one lousy glass of Chardonnay, and what I felt like doing was ordering a triple tequila martini and stepping right out of my pants.”
    “But you didn’t.”
    “Of course not. But ever since then, whenever I can’t get out of having dinner with Aunt Amelia, I make a point of showing up with nothing on my breath but an Altoid, and she gets to watch me drink Perrier. Bern, where the hell was I?”
    “Three pages into Swann’s Way .”
    “Oh, right. So I got home with a head that was so clear you could see through it, and it was early, so instead of trying to read in bed I sat down in the wing chair and got the reading light just right. One of my cats settled in my lap and the other curled up by my feet, and I figured a brandy would make the picture complete. But first I’d read a couple of pages, and then I’d fix myself a drink.”
    “How far did you get?”
    “Bottom of the fourth page. Next thing I knew the sun was coming in the window and the cats were letting me know it was feeding time. I was cold sober and I still managed to fall asleep sitting up in a chair with my clothes on.”
    “Marcel strikes again.”
    “If word gets around,” she said, “the people who make Ambien are out of business. It’s quicker and cheaper, and you won’t get up in the middle of the night and raid the refrigerator.”

    While she was not reading Proust, I was busy not developing a meaningful relationship.
    Truth to tell, I’d given up trying. I’d been seeing a woman for a few months, and we’d reached the point where each of us kept a few things at the other’s apartment, and I was starting to wonder what it would be like if we took the plunge and started living together, and then one day she announced that her firm was moving her to their London office.
    “Wow,” I said.
    “I didn’t say anything,” she said, “because I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to make the move, but it’s a big step up, and an even bigger step backward if I were to turn it down.”
    I could have said something. Like Don’t