A False Dawn

FORTY-ONE

When Leslie opened her front door, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. She looked stunning in a natural way. Her long brown hair was down, very little make-up, the skin on her face radiating a healthy glow, her eyes dancing in the light. She wore black designer jeans, three-quarter length that fit her like paint.

“Hi,” I said. Nice open pal.

“Come in,” she said, beaming.

“Hope you like this. The cab ought to go well with the steaks.”

She took the bottle and glanced at the label. “Perfect. Let’s open it. It can catch its breath, and then we’ll have a glass.”

Her home was small, but decorated in bright tones. Lots of green plants and furniture that Hemingway might have brought home from Burma or Africa. It had the look of an Asian-African fusion of the arts.

I said, “Looks like you have the Far East and the Dark Continent well represented. Sort of feel like I’m on safari here.”

“That’s the idea. I love Africa. Or maybe I love the idea of Africa since I haven’t been there. Friends who have been there told me you feel it’s where life on the planet began. I’d like to touch the soil. There’s something very old and earthy about the land.”

“I felt that way in Texas trying to drive across it.”

She smiled. “Never been to Texas. Think I’d like to see Africa first.”

“I’d like to start in Ireland. Begin my trip in a pub, work my way over to Africa.”

“You may not ever make it out of the pub.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

She laughed and stepped around the kitchen counter, handing me a corkscrew. “If you do the honors, I’ll finish the salad. We can toast Ireland and Kenya and then put the steaks on the grill.”

I poured the wine, handed her a glass, and said, “To the Dark Continent and to the place that makes the darkest beer, Dublin.”

She closed her eyes, savoring the wine’s aftertaste for a moment. “Very nice.”

Her lips were full, wet with the taste of wine. She simply looked at me, waiting for me to respond, a subtle coyness in her expression

“Glad you like it,” I finally said. Dumb. “What can I do to help?”

“Salad’s made. Steaks have been marinating in the fridge. I started the grill when I heard you drive up. Potatoes are in the oven.” She opened the refrigerator, took the steaks out, and removed the foil from the top of the glass dish. “Let’s go tell stories around the fire.”

“After you.”

The outdoor table was set with cutlery and two candles burning in the center of it all. Nice touch. I sipped my wine and watched Leslie turn the steaks on the grill. She was a pro, working the meat just close enough to the flames to sear it, but not scorch it.

“I can tell you’ve done this.”

“I like to cook, especially steaks. How do you like yours?”

“Medium.”

“Me, too. Used to like them with a cool center. Then along came mad cow and I went to medium.”

“Those cows weren’t mad, just misunderstood.”

Leslie laughed. Her smile was as warm as the fire. She sipped her wine, the flames playing in her eyes. She said, “I cook with hickory and mesquite.”

“You sure you’ve never been to Texas?”

“Positive.”

“That’s where mesquite began.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely. Cattle coming up from Mexico ate the mesquite bushes. They couldn’t completely digest all the seeds, so on cattle drives across Texas, the seeds were scattered. Fertilized at the same time, too.”

Leslie made a puckering motion with her mouth and cut her eyes up to me. “So that’s where mesquite gets its rich flavor. Comes from a long line of cow pies across Texas, or is this a little bit of O’Brien bullshit?”

“That’s where it began, in bullshit, but I’m sure today’s mesquite harvest is a few generations removed.”

“You’re quite the historian.”

“I’m full of needless information.”

“Watch the steaks, I’ll get the plates.”

Even though the steaks didn’t need turning, I yielded to the call of a hundred thousand year old carnivore gene, speared the meat, and flipped the steaks.

We refilled wine glasses and ate slowly, tasting, talking and laughing. The more I got to know Leslie, the more I liked her. She told me about her childhood, the fights her mother and father had, especially as she was in her early teens. The battles escalated to the point that she saw her father draw back his fist to hit her mother, stopping before he did, but more angry with himself than her. The next day, when Leslie got home from school, she found a note on the kitchen counter. It was a two-sentence goodbye he had written to Leslie’s mother. Two years later her father had remarried and moved to Seattle, completely severing contact with Leslie.

She said, “Maybe it’s why I got into criminal investigation. Learn how to track down my father to ask him why he never called me. Not even on my birthdays. Then I got to the point where I didn’t care anymore.” She sipped the wine, her voice disconnected, like it came from a documentary film flickering against her heart. “At least he’s alive. When you told me the other day that your father had been murdered, I could feel your pain.”

I was silent.

“Want to talk about it?” she asked.

“On routine patrol, he radioed in that he’d pulled over a car with a burned out taillight. The driver opened fire on my father. Dad was shot in the stomach. He died trying to crawl back to the car to call for help.”

“I’m so sorry. Was the perp caught?”

“He’s doing life at Starke.”

“Why’d he shoot? Couldn’t have been the taillight.”

“Investigators told my mother they found drugs, cocaine, and about a grand in loose bills near my father’s body. Press had a field day. The next thing we knew is that people were not quite so sorry that a cop was killed in what some believed was a drug deal gone bad. Many officers in his department didn’t attend his funeral.”

“Dear God…and your mother was suffering from depression, and you became her caregiver. Your childhood—”

“More wine,” I said, interrupting her.

She sipped the remaining bit of wine from her glass, closed her eyes for a long moment, and then looked straight into my eyes and said, “Sean, stay the night.”