He was in her apartment, lying back on her bed, his work boots on the thin chemise bedspread, watching her get ready for work. Her face moved in and out of the mirror on top of her cheap dresser as she crimped her eyelashes and applied shadow and took particular care with liner. She caught him in the reflection and said: "What?"
"I'm just amazed at the work you put into all that when your eyes are already so beautiful."
"Yeah? How do you think we keep them so beautiful? We cheat," she said, smiling at him without turning around.
The few weeks they'd been together had been good. Sure he was kind of private, didn't like to stay and hang out with any of the other regulars at the bar when her shift was done. Didn't like to talk much with the other patrons and had pointedly asked her not to let anyone else know he was a cop. He said he had to be careful because it was like that situation with that prison asshole who scared the shit out of her that night in the bar when she saw him flash his badge. He said it should be a secret between them because he could get caught up in off-duty stuff like that and then he'd end up being liable and it made sense the way he explained it.
"If I let that other pencil dick get his ass whipped and then his fucking lawyer gets onto it and starts saying: You're a cop, why didn't you step in and stop it?
"Then the department attorneys get on me: Why are you getting involved when you're off duty? Was the guy a physical threat to you or others?"
Better to just scare the guy off, he said. He'd catch that idiot on the street someday and he'd be glad to do some ass-kicking when he was in uniform and it was his turf.
She liked that about him, too. He wasn't like the wimpy guys back home or the bar clowns who were all mouth. He told her some stories about suspects who fought him on the streets. He was aggressive in bed, too. But she wasn't complaining. They'd had sex here in her apartment the first time and she was a little frightened by how intense he was, but she'd had an orgasm like nothing she'd ever had in the past. He was strong and bold in the way he took her. It was exciting. After that they'd done it at night on the beach, once in the pool after he'd slipped the lock to the utility room and turned the underwater lights off. They'd even done it in the backseat of his car one night out somewhere in the Everglades where there weren't any houses or traffic.
She looked at him now, stretched out on her bed. She didn't like the boots on her spread but she knew better than to say anything. She found her perfume among the mess on the bureau and dabbed some on. She found him in the mirror. He had that way of kind of dominating a space when he was with her. Like the time he was getting beer from her fridge while she was letting the shower water warm and she heard him punch on her message machine and listen to the whole tape. Or the time he walked into the apartment before her and scooped the mail off the floor and went through each letter before putting it on the counter. Yeah, it was all junk, but she called him on it anyway.
"What? You afraid I'm going to see something from your boyfriend in Minneapolis?"
"That would be a trick since I don't have a boyfriend in Minneapolis," she'd said, and it was the truth.
"You'd better not," he'd said and then slipped his hands around her from behind and nuzzled her ear just like he was doing now.
She looked at him in the mirror. It did feel good to be wanted. Then he slipped his hands up from her waist and cupped her breast over her blouse.
"Come on, baby. You know I gotta get to work," she said.
"Yeah?"
He put his mouth on her neck and started unbuttoning her top button.
"If I'm late again Laurie's gonna kill me."
"No she won't," he said, working on the next button.
"No? She fired Roxy just last week. Though it was probably because she was always drunk by the time her shift ended."
"So let her fire you," he said, and now he had himself pressed up against her from behind and she could feel him getting hard against her. "You don't need to work there. I'll take care of you."
"Oh, you're gonna keep me barefoot and pregnant?"
He was unfastening the front snap on her bra and she put her hands on his to stop him and he did that cop thing where he suddenly spun his wrists and grabbed hers and in a split second he had her arms locked up behind her. With her shoulders pulled back, the bra snap gave way and when he pulled her elbows tighter together her breasts came out of the fabric. In the mirror both of them could see that she was now excited, too, and she thought: OK, I won't fight it. Just this once.