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We were there well past ht She had a small salad and a plate of the black-bean chili I had a cheeseburger, and we both drank a lot of coffee Jiood cup of coffee I used to drink it laced with bourbon, but it was even good all by itself

Toni lived at Forty-ninth and Eighth I walked her hoh-rise, then started back to onein Rich's after such a long absence Maybe it was the coffee, maybe it was the weather, maybe it was the phase of the o back to my little room and its four walls

I walked two blocks west and went to Grogan's

I had no business there Unlike Arinmill There's no food served, there's no classicalfro There's a jukebox, with selections by the Clancy Brothers and Bing Crosby and the Wolfe Tones, but it doesn't get much play There's a television set and a dart board, and a couple of mounted fish, and dark alls and a tile floor and a sta Guinness stout and Harp lager The Guinness is on draft

Mick Ballou owns Grogan's, although someone else has his nae and sudden violence Circuo, and soured it out yet

The croas sparse, and Ballou hilass of club soda and sat at the bar with it There was aon one of the cable stations, a colorized version of an old Warner Bros gangster movie Edward G Robinson was in it, and half a dozen others I recognized but couldn't name Five minutes into the movie the bartender went over to the set and turned down the color-level knob, and the filinal black-and-white

"So left alone," he said

I watched about half of the one I had a Coke, and when that was gone I put a couple of dollars on the bar and went home

Jacob was on the hotel desk He's a mulatto, with freckles on his face and the backs of his hands, and curly red hair that's starting to go thin on top He buys books of difficult crossword puzzles and Double-Crostics and works thehtly buzzed all the while on terpin hydrate and codeine The ement has fired him a couple of times over the years for unspecified reasons, but they always hire him back

He said, "Your cousin called"

"My cousin?"

"Been calling all night Four, five calls, eonhole, leaving the letters behind "One, two, three, four, five," he counted "Says call her whenever you come in"

Someone must have died, and I wondered who I wasn't even sure as left What fa since scattered far and wide Soreat while a phone call if an uncle or cousin was in town and at loose ends But what cousin did I have ould call ot to me?

Her, he'd said Call her

I reached for the handful of slips, scanned the top one Cousin called, it read Nothing else, and the time of the call was left blank

"There's no number," I said

"She said you'd know it"

"I don't even knoho she is Which cousin?"

He shook hihtened up in his chair "Sorry," he said "Getting a little too relaxed here I wrote her name on one of them slips I didn't write it each tiain"

I sorted the slips Actually he'd written it twice, on what seemed to be the first two slips Please call your cousin Frances, I read And, on the other: Call cousin Frances

" Frances," I said

"That's it That's the name"

Except I couldn't recall a Cousin Frances Had one of my male cousins married a woman named Frances? Or was Frances soed to learn?

"You're sure it was a woman?"

" 'Course I'm sure"

"Because sometimes Francis is a man's name, and-"

"Oh, please Don't you think I know that? It was a woman, said her name was Frances Don't you know your own cousin?"

Evidently I didn't "She asked for me by name?"

"Said Matthew Scudder"