Gospel by Wilton Barnhardt Page B

link of sausage there. And that delicacy is black pudding.” He pointed with his knife to the two black disks that Lucy mistook for American-style sausage patties.
    â€œI’m sort of a vegetarian,” Lucy confessed.
    â€œLucille, anyone who eats a vegetable now and then is ‘sort of a vegetarian.’ Are you telling me I ordered all this for nothing?”
    â€œNo, but I’d rather you had the bacon and the banger-thing. I think it’s important to try other nations’ cuisines.”
    O’Hanrahan ate steadily while talking. “England doesn’t have a cuisine. Look at the word cuisine. They even had to borrow that.”
    Lucy slowly chewed a bit of her black pudding. Not bad, but it tasted odd somehow. “What is this?”
    â€œCongealed animal blood with bits of fat and scratchings.” Lucy swallowed quickly, irrevocably, and washed her mouth out with orange juice. Then went back on the offensive:
    â€œLook, there are only twelve disciples. I virtually know what you’re after, so why don’t you tell me?”
    â€œBecause,” he enunciated, as he cut his bacon, “I don’t know you.”
    â€œI’m real trustworthy, honest.”
    â€œThat’s what Gabriel said.”
    She was dying to ask about Gabriel, but that seemed to be the dead end of all dead ends, so she held off. “If I guess what you’re looking for,” she asked politely, “will you tell me?”
    Lucy imagined this would earn a quick rebuff, but O’Hanrahan stared at her oddly as he had a moment before. And surprised her: “Yeah.”
    â€œYou would?”
    â€œBecause I know you’ll never guess it.”
    â€œHow many guesses do I get?”
    â€œOne.”
    â€œOne’s not very sporting.”
    â€œWhat would you suggest, Miss Dantan?”
    â€œTen would be nice.” He didn’t dignify this with a response. “Okay, six. Fifty-fifty chance.”
    He ran a piece of steak around in the béarnaise sauce. “With ten, you still wouldn’t get it.”
    Oh yeah? thought Lucy.
    â€œBut what’s in it for me? ” said O’Hanrahan, now enjoying a mouthful of herring in sweet sour cream.
    She hadn’t thought about this. “I could go back to Chicago and tell everyone that what you’re up to is very exciting and important and…”
    O’Hanrahan pretended he was shaking a New Year’s Eve party favor. “Whoopdie-doo. That would mean,” he bent his head in sarcasm, “so very, very much to me.”
    â€œWell, let’s make some kind of deal then,” said Lucy.
    â€œFor allowing you six guesses?”
    â€œYeah, for allowing me six guesses.”
    He looked to the ceiling. “How much money do you have? How much can you get ahold of?”
    â€œThey gave me $500 spending money, and this breakfast will probably cost that.”
    â€œJust $500?”
    â€œMaybe I can get more,” she suggested weakly.
    O’Hanrahan rose and patted his belly. “Miss Dantan, you make some phone calls and see what kind of additional funding you can get me. Then we’ll talk, all right?”
    Lucy nodded quickly and reached for her handbag. “Yeah, okay sure, but wait—wait, what about your sister’s letter?”
    â€œThe flames, the flames!” he said, as he walked by her without ceremony.
    And he was gone.
    And so, moments later, was £60.32 … or, as she figured, $100. As Lucy walked down the historic Broad Street between the elegant Sheldonian Theater on one side and a row of quaint shops, a pub, and the venerable Blackwells bookstore on the other, she contemplated how to invent some money for O’Hanrahan.
    There was, after all, her older sister’s credit card.
    Cecilia, the married, responsible sister who gave her mother all the angelic grandchildren the other daughters didn’t. Ceece didn’t want to surrender her