By nightfall I was exhausted, but the game was on. I hated waiting until Monday, but I had no choice. Maybe it was better this way, the time would give the killer a chance to stew. Let him simmer and twist, wondering what my cards really were. Fear would seep in, imagination would dominate reality. If I read the killer right, he was a gutsy player. He would take one risk too many and lose it all. All I had to do was believe. I could do it at the card table and in the courtroom. Could I do it on Monday?
I was more scared than I wanted to admit.
I drove past my empty house but didn’t want to go in.
I checked the hospital, where my father was asleep, under the vigilant eyes of the Pep Boys.
I parked at the Four Seasons, but they had given my room and all the others to a dentists’ convention.
I stopped by the Italian Market, which smelled overripe on this humid night. Saturday was the Market’s busiest day, and the muggy air was dense with the fetid odor of rotted fruit and vegetables. The stalls were dark, closed up. A Mafia trash hauler screeched in the stillness. I pulled up in front of my father’s shop, closed since LeVonne’s murder. A residual strip of crime scene tape hung limply from the door. The neon pig flickered orange in the dark.
I went into the shop and quickly got what I needed, then locked the door again, leaving the closed sign rocking silently. I avoided thinking about how it used to be, with me sitting on the vinyl stool watching my father trim fat or LeVonne smiling silently, over his broomstick. I put my mind on cruise control, and the car as well.
When I finally cut the engine, I was only partly surprised where I ended up.
“You look like you need a drink,” Tobin said. He padded to the kitchen in his bare feet, DREXEL UNIVERSITY T-shirt, and gym shorts.
“Cold water would be fine,” I called after him, sinking into a black leather sofa. The living room was expensively furnished, with exposed brick walls and Japanese black-and-white photographs mounted gallery-style around the room. Legal pads and Xeroxed cases were spread in a semicircle on the maroon rug, next to a Rosti bowl full of candy. “You having M amp;M’s for dinner?”
“I’m out of Snickers.”
“You ever eat anything without sugar, Tobin?”
He returned with a Pilsner glass of beer and handed it to me. “No, I watch my diet. Especially when I’m working.”
“You were working?”
“I do that, you know.” He eased into a matching chair opposite me. “Drink your fake beer.”
I sipped the beer, which tasted bitter and cold. “It’s too young.”
He rolled his eyes.
“How come you’re alone?”
“I do that, too.”
“On a Saturday night?”
“Did you come here to give me shit or to say hello?”
I didn’t know why I came, in truth. “Both?”
He smiled. “You’re tired.”
I smoothed back my hair and wondered vaguely how bad I looked. “I am. I worked hard today.”
“Too hard to return my calls, I guess.”
“I haven’t been home.”
“I was worried about you. I called you all day. I felt like Lesley Gore. I even waited for the three rings.”
“What are you talking about?” I sipped the beer, and he watched me drink.
“The three rings? Didn’t your mother ever tell you to leave three rings when you got home?”
Let’s not get into it. “No.”
“So what happened? I heard you found the murder weapon. How’d you pull that off?”
“It’s a long story.”
“So tell me.” He leaned forward over his bare knees. “You’re alive, so I guess Richie Rich didn’t kill you.”
I didn’t want to get into that either. “Not yet.”
“You’re talkative tonight.”
I set the beer down. “I just don’t want to talk about Paul.”
He slipped back into the sofa. “What do you want to talk about? Work? Criminal procedure?”
“No.”
“Jujyfruits? Sno-caps? I like Baby Ruth, don’t you? I like New York in June, how about you?”
“No.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
An honest question. I thought of Fiske saying that the Queen took from a distance, by blindsiding. I didn’t want to be that kind of woman. But I didn’t know what kind of woman I wanted to be. “Tobin, I only know one thing for sure.”
“What?”
“I only know what I don’t want from you.”
“Which is?”
“I don’t want you to play any games with me.” Like Paul did.
“I never played games with you, or any woman.”
Sure. “I’ve seen you at office parties. It’s a different date each time.”
He looked stung. “So what if I’ve dated a little?”
“A little? You’re pushing forty.”
“Or a lot? I haven’t met the woman I want to commit to yet. How about you? You bring the same man to the parties, but you’re not committed to him either. So what’s the difference?”
There was none.
“I can’t hear you.” He laughed, cupping a hand to his ear.
I hated to admit it. “Not much, in that regard anyway.”
“In that regard! You know who you remind me of, more than anybody?”
“Cindy Crawford?”
“Me.”
Please.
“We’re alike, you and me,” he continued. “We have a lot in common.”
“We both have ponytails, that’s it.”
“Are you kidding? We have similar backgrounds, we grew up here. We work too hard, we like to laugh. We’re loners. And we’ve never been married, which doesn’t mean we can’t commit.”
Maybe.
“What?” he asked.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“I know. You have a bad habit. You think a lot of things you don’t say. You’re too internal. It all goes on inside your head.”
It took me aback. “Thanks a lot.”
“But it’s true. I watch you. I notice things.” He leaned over, closing the space between us. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re thinking. Right now.”
Fine. “I was thinking, maybe it does mean we can’t commit.”
He winced, but it softened into a smile. “Maybe it does. Want to find out?”
Gulp. “I don’t know.”
He touched my cheek gently.
“I’m not sure.”
He nodded. “That’s honest.”
“I don’t want to play any games with you, either.”
“You don’t have to. In fact, you shouldn’t, because I don’t like that.”
Women taking indirectly.
“Rita, spit it out.”
I remembered Patricia’s high-risk game, then what Paul had said, about poker being such a safe game. Patricia and me; how much were we alike, how much were we different? And my mother, too. “Don’t you like women who play games, Tobin? Women who like action? Don’t you find them exciting? Adventurous? The thrill of risk, all that?”
“No,” he said flatly.
“Tell me why.”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“Not to me.”
He reached for my hand and took it in his. It felt warm, different. Not as refined as Paul’s, but still strong. “The way I see it, risk-real risk-is not playing any games at all. Real risk is you, coming here. Real risk is you and me.”
It made me edgy.
“If you really want to take a risk, then you have to start telling me what you’re thinking. You have to stop playing games.” He paused, tracing a bumpy vein on my hand with his forefinger. He was so close I could smell the summer heat on his brow. “I hope you can do that, because I would really like to try. With you.”
I listened to his words, heard the timbre of his voice near my ear, the slight roughness there. It was all new, this, and everything about him was new. The rules were different now, there was no game at all. I wanted to avoid the mistakes I’d made with Paul. I wanted to be different, too. So I did the first thing that came into my mind.
I leaned over and kissed him.
It turned out to be exactly the right thing.
And later, when we made love in his soft bed, that was all different, too. His smells, his sounds. I let him touch me, and take me, and I closed my eyes and took pleasure in him without pretending I was anywhere else, or in another time. I didn’t have to hide any doubts about him. I didn’t have to avoid any feelings of distrust or anger. Or pain, and fear.
In the end I cried a little, and he held me close and made me laugh. Tumbled me around, handled me. Then hoisted me up and onto him with both arms, steadying me. Held me fast to him with his hands at my hips, moving me, encouraging me. I took him freely then. Justly. Directly. And every time I tried to turn out the light, he stopped me.
But I like it that way, I told him.
Learn a new way, he said. He wouldn’t be denied.
So I learned about that, too.