The Detective

A lesson in sleuthing, Thin Man srtyle, is imparted by a single mom.

I forget which parade it was...St Patrick's? Santa Claus?...only that a light snow was falling, and that as I trudged indifferently from my late morning rounds back to my apartment, she, to the out-of-tune sounds of horns and drums, stopped me. "Dan! It's me."

So it was, the girl last seen in a musty college doorway, diplomatically rebuffing me for impudently pressing my body against hers.

"Oh sure." I was cooler than the air - I hoped. "Hi."

Some more chitchat - Seen anybody from our Film Studies class lately? - and then the glimpse down at her feet. Beside her stylish boots, thoroughly involved in the parade, a child. Four? Five?

"I'll see you again some time," I offered fliply as the conversation petered out. "Yeah," she said, her voice charged with an anticipation that surprised me, "I'll definitely see you again." So what are you up to these days, we might as well have exchanged instead. Oh, I've become a single mom.

True to her word, this tiny blonde with the even tinier blonde did see me - in her miniscule walk-up, in a yellow cotton dress that gave her a prim, old fashioned aura, on a thin but welcome dinner-and-a-movie premise.

She had laid her finest porcelain inheritances out on her smallish dining room table - a hastily converted dining room I might add, badly hidden toys protruding from every cranny - and, to a scratchy recording of Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders, was serving us both some sort of quick-sale steak.

Almost all she spoke about was the scheduled after-dinner entertainment: a Top Ten of hers I had never seen, The Thin Man, with William Powell and Myrna Loy as husband and wife detective team Nick and Nora Charles, the witty, intelligent and playful couple we were in our own fashion desperately trying to imitate as we strived to achieve synchronicity.

More <i.Thin Man talk as we cleared, then, finally, after a quick check on her sleeping child, the film.

I had never seen somebody so into a movie. Yes, she had definitely shown enthusiasm during those college screenings, but nothing like this. Years later, taking my own daughter Jessie to the movies, Jess' total involvement and unbridled childish glee would take me back to that smallish apartment.

Yet suddenly, at the film's most involving moment, Nick Charles' revelation of the murderer, I felt the sudden, suggestive rubbing of a small, stockinged toe. Just a nudge I told myself; body language for, "Isn't this a great movie?", or "Wow! This part is so exciting I can hardly stand it!" But the more information Nick imparted, the greater the toe rubbed. By the time he had carved his suspects down to a short list, the toe was demandingly tickling the back of my knee.

What was going on here? Is this her regular game, I asked myself, using something of significant interest to both parties to measure the value of her sexuality against? Or was this especially cooked up for fellow-film-student me? And either way, is this what single motherhood does to women, even inarguably good looking ones, impart such desperate doubts about their attractiveness?

Not wanting to appear clueless, I scooped her tiny form into my arms, Gone With The Wind style no less, and - Nick Charles be damned! - led her to the bedroom. Yes, like Nick, I had definitely read the clues right. By the time Nora was congratulating him on a job well done, I was a mere halfway through a long roster of bodily contortions.

I awoke alone in a slice of sunlight, birds twittering, dishes clanging. I bounced out of bed, determined to cross to the kitchen, wrap my arms around the hostess appreciatively and, Nora Charles style, congratulate her on a job well done. What I had forgotten about was the possibility of a roadblock; it aimed its chubby, four-year-old face at me point blank: "Did you sleep with my mommy last night?"

I froze as if I had been put on pause. Then, with my best Grinch-to-Cindy-Lou-Who-smile, I came out faux-sweetly with, "Of course not. Your mommy and I watched a movie last night."

I had fooled her, but only, I knew, momentarily. I made a quick excuse about an early appointment, and, much to my hostess' disappointment, high tailed it out the door. You see, she had taught me a valuable lesson the night before: make your move before the detective figures it out.