Rachel opened the door to her apartment. She was holding an enormous drink in her little hand.
“Is that scotch?” I asked.
Her lips curled up in an approximation of a smile. “It might be. Care for a sip?” She held the glass up to me and offered me a taste.
I took the glass and tried some. It was scotch all right, and it was good.
“You made a sale. I’ll take four fingers.”
She led me into that enormous living room and sat me down on that enormous couch.
“I thought you’d like it. It’s as expensive as scotch gets.” She reached over to the cocktail table and poured me a glass-full from a decanter.
I took a couple of long, slow sips and thought about all the joys I’d been missing. Cheap scotch dulls the taste buds. Or was it just the passing of the years?
She put the decanter back on the table and glanced sideways at me with a hint of impatience. “Well, tell me. What did you find out?”
I hesitated. “Did you know that Alicia had been raped and badly beaten?”
She took a deep breath and shook her head slowly. “No, I didn’t know,” she said softly. “I thought we were friends. You should be able to tell your friend about something like that, you know. She never told me…”
She took a big drink of her scotch. Then she took another big drink. There was pain in her eyes. She looked down and closed her eyes so I couldn’t see the hurt. She didn’t say anything for a long time.
Then she looked up at me and said, “What else did you find out?”
“It’s not pleasant,” I said.
“I’m a big girl. I can take it.”
“You sure can.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“You were a lot closer to Alicia than you told me.”
It didn’t register at first. Then her eyes lit up as she got the picture.
“Tell me if you’re referring to what I’m thinking,” she said coolly.
There wasn’t any use pussyfooting around the subject, so to speak. I let her have it as plainly as I could. “You fucked Alicia.”
A nasty smirk played on her lips. “I didn’t fuck Alicia.”
I smiled too. “That’s technically correct. But you did have sexual congress with her.”
The smile left her face. “That’s like technically correct, if you must know.” She stared into the glass of amber liquid she cupped in both hands. “But, in my defense, I only have sex with people I like.”
I could buy that. “Tell me something,” I said. “Did you have a hard time convincing Alicia to do whatever it was you did?”
She took a large swallow of scotch. “Not really. I think she was like primed for it. I mean, she was surprised when I first suggested it, but she wasn’t angry or disgusted or anything like that. I think she was secretly flattered. It didn’t take long to convince her to do it.”
“How long?”
She gulped down the rest of her drink and quickly poured herself another glassful. She pursed her lips and said, teasingly, “Is this an official detective investigation or are you just curious?”
“How long?”
“Less than a week,” she said softly.
She kept rotating the glass in her hands so the ice cubes clinked. The glass was cut crystal with an intricate pattern that caught the light and gave off rainbow colors as it turned.
“What did you tell her to make her do it?”
Her eyes flashed. “I didn’t make her do it, buddy boy. She said she wanted to. She said she’d had it up to here with men. That they’d sold her like a bill of goods-and that included you.”
She pointed her glass at me for emphasis. “It was easy to get her into bed. I told her she’d understand her own sexuality better after she’d made love with a woman.”
Call me old-fashioned, but I had a hard time believing she was actually telling me all this. “I should have figured out you were bisexual.”
“Bisexual, ha,” she laughed. “I’m trisexual-I’ll try anything.”
I whacked her with the back of my hand. She wasn’t expecting that and it really shook her. She drew back and put her hand on her cheek. For the first time since I’d met her, she didn’t know what to say. She started to cry softly.
“You bastard,” she whispered. The tears ran down her cheeks.
Then, wordlessly, she made her way into my arms. And we had sex, her way. But it wasn’t really sex. It was more like warfare. Sudden, brutal, uncoordinated. Two armies of the night, struggling on a dark battlefield. Until both armies were battered, beaten and exhausted.