The sight of Kathy, standing in the neon light coming from the window of a Vietnamese restaurant, made his heart give a little leap. Her curly black hair had captured the light in a faint halo, and a single lock fell onto her forehead. He stared at her, mesmerized by the power of a few stray strands of hair.
"Do you want to go in here?" she asked, looking back at him.
"Sure, this is fine. I've never been here, but it looks good."
They walked down the steep, cracked steps and into a steam-filled foyer, moisture condensing on the glass door of the restaurant. A middle-aged Asian woman conducted them to a table in the corner by the window and handed them large menus covered in red plastic. The woman was impersonal and businesslike as they settled into their seats.
As she handed them the menus, Kathy said, "Thank you. Do you have Saigon beer?"
The woman's face broadened into a smile. She looked at Lee.
"Two?"
"Sure, why not?"
As the woman left, he turned to Kathy. "You made her happy."
"I think it's because I asked for Vietnamese beer instead of Chinese."
"And you even knew the brand name."
"Well, they do have Vietnamese restaurants in Philadelphia, you know."
Lee laughed, surprised at how easily the sound left his body. He hadn't laughed much lately. "Let's not get an intercity rivalry going this soon."
"Okay. Just figured I'd establish my territory early." She bent her head to look at the menu, and the same lock of dark hair fell onto her forehead. Lee's stomach lurched again. He looked down at the menu, but he wasn't very hungry tonight.
It was a quiet Sunday night, and there were only a few other customers in the place, all of them Asian. Nelson always told him that was a good sign in Chinatown, and meant the food was decent, or at least authentic.
Kathy looked up from the menu. In the lamplight, her eyes were the color of the Hudson River on a cloudy day. "What do you think of chicken with lemongrass and chili?"
"Sounds good to me." The truth was, it could have been sawdust, and he would have said the same thing.
"Okay, let's get that. And how about this mushroom appetizer? Does that sound good?"
"Sure."
In the end they settled on another entree, something involving noodles.
"So," she said, putting her elbows on the table and leaning toward him, "how do you like what you do?"
"It can be very frustrating, but it feels like what I should be doing-right now, at least." He thought about telling her about the Internal Affairs investigation, but didn't want to spoil the evening.
"I know what you mean," Kathy said. "That's the main thing-not that work is easy, but that it feels right for you, somehow."
"You know, a lot of people think what I do is 'soft science.' They don't respect it much."
She gazed into her teacup as if seeking her answer in the dark liquid within.
"And what do you think?"
Lee smiled. "You sound like Dr. Williams."
"Oh. Is she…?"
"My shrink-yes."
Again she lowered her eyes, as if it wasn't proper to say the words.
"That's one of the things I like about bones," she said. "There's nothing 'soft' about them. They're so clean, so smooth-the last thing to surrender to the decay process. You know that properly preserved, they can last indefinitely? They're kind of heroic."
"I never thought about it that way."
"A lot of times bodies are found when only the bones are left, as the last physical reminder that this once was a human being. If it weren't for bones, even more crimes would go unsolved."
Somewhere, deep in the woods perhaps, Laura's bones were waiting for him-for someone-to discover them.
The woman came back with two beers and poured them into tall thin glasses, all the while smiling at Kathy.
"You've made a friend," Lee said after the woman had gone.
She looked around the restaurant. "It's different here now, isn't it?"
"Yeah," he said. "There was this feeling, in the weeks afterward, that's hard to describe exactly, but it was a kind of camaraderie-a feeling that we were all in this together."
"I know what you mean. It was sort of like that in Philly, too."
"And we all thought that there might be more attacks coming too-we didn't know what to expect. Where were you when it happened?" he asked.
"I'm ashamed to say. I was in the Caribbean."
"Why be ashamed?"
"I was snorkeling in St. Thomas when we heard the news. I guess I wanted to be back here-to help in some way, you know. And instead there I was, forced to stay an extra week at Crystal Beach. Poor me-another week of fried conch, Tecate beer, and palm trees."
"What was it like there? How did people react?"
"Disbelief, at first, and then shock. Just total, utter shock. I remember sitting around the bar that night. There was no television, but someone had brought out a radio, and we were all huddled around it, listening."
She looked at the raindrops gathering on the windowpane. "It's ironic, actually. One of the main selling points of this resort was that you could 'get away from it all'-you know, no TV, no phones in the rooms. We were all there because we wanted to be cut off from the rest of the world. And then this terrible thing happens, and we sit there together in the bar-I guess there were a dozen or so guests and about half that many staff-and we just sat and listened to that damn radio all night. By morning we were all on a first-name basis with each other. It was like instant bonding, you know? Like in wartime-our country had been attacked."
"So you were all Americans?"
"One couple was Canadian, and there were two elderly English ladies traveling together. We all thought they were lovers, but they were very 'discreet' about their relationship. We called them Gertrude and Alice when they weren't around."
"As in Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas?"
"Right."
The waitress brought steaming plates of food and set them down on the table. Kathy poured hot sauce on her chicken-a lot of hot sauce. Lee was amazed when she took a bite and swallowed it as though it were nothing.
"Up until that night everyone had been drinking pina coladas, margaritas-frozen drinks with fresh fruit and little paper umbrellas-but that night we all ordered scotch and whiskey and gin, straight up. People weren't drinking to have fun anymore; they were drinking to calm down. It was kind of surreal. All we could pick up on this little radio was this local station that was getting a feed from the BBC. The announcer sounded really upset. It was startling to hear this very formal, stiff-upper-lip-type Englishman almost lose it on the air."
She took a long drink of her beer and motioned to the woman for another one.
"But at least we were spared the pictures that night. Thank God for that. No one slept very much, but at least we were spared the pictures."
"Who were you traveling with?" Lee asked, feeling an unwelcome flicker of jealousy.
"My dad. We both love to snorkel. I'm an only child, and since Mom's been gone, I guess we sort of depend on each other, you know?"
She looked at him, her eyes serious. "Do you think that's weird?"
"No, I think it's sweet."
She reached for the noodle dish, almost knocking over her beer. She was a bit of a loose cannon, he thought. In spite of her scientific training and precise manner in professional settings, away from her work she had an open, childlike demeanor. When she talked there was a force behind the words, a passion for the minutia of life that made him want to drink up her words.
A thought flashed into his head, unbidden: In the midst of death, there is life.
He couldn't remember where he had heard it, but as he looked at Kathy Azarian's glistening, eager face, he understood what it meant.