Loving Time

fifteen

Mike and April exited the Psychiatric Centre and crossed to the no-parking area where they’d left their unit. The sky had thickened into a dense rain cloud that was just beginning to unburden itself in a very fine drizzle. It was colder, too.

At the car, Mike smoothed back his hair and held out the keys. “You want to drive?”

April shook her head. She opened the passenger door and slid in, slamming it harder than she meant to.

Mike jogged around to the driver’s side. Just as he reached for the door handle, the sky opened up. Sheets of fat raindrops plummeted down. He dove into the car, banging the door and sprinkling water all over the front seats, shaking his hands in April’s face.

“Hey, watch that.” Cold on April’s cheeks, the rain felt fresh after the hot dance in the executive offices upstairs. She laughed, relieved to be out of there.

Mike settled in his seat, adding to the musty old car a mix of aromas that included fruity Caribbean aftershave, Old Spice deodorant, and wet wool. He didn’t make a move to start the engine. He was busy with the rain on his face, with his sleek wet hair. The torrent streamed down the windshield, completely blocking the world outside.

This was how he liked it, stuck with April in a very tight space. This was when he was tempted to tell her the stories of his life and ask to hear hers. This was when he most wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her. All the windows were fogged up. From outside in or inside out no one could see a thing. He glanced at her, but she was studying the rain pummeling the windshield, didn’t say a thing. He knew if he tried to kiss her, she might take her gun out and kill him. April seemed to think love was some kind of curse. He didn’t know why any woman would be as hard and unyielding as that.

“I’ve decided to move,” he said suddenly.

“When did you decide that?”

He laughed. “This morning. In the shower. I was thinking of you, and I decided it was time to get a place.”

Sitting in the car with the rain hammering at them, April could almost imagine it. The downpour sounded like a shower. She didn’t want to think of Mike without his clothes. “Let’s go. I’ve got a lot to do. I’m hungry. It’s almost two-thirty.”

“What do you think of it?”

She shook her head. “It’s hard to get a shrink to tell a straight story. Even in homicide cases, they always claim patient confidentiality.” She sighed. “Maybe we’ll never know what happened to Cowles.”

“Not that.”

April laughed. “Well, I’m glad you shower, if that’s what you mean. But thinking of me? I don’t know, Mike.… You got a hundred and one girls crazy about you. Why think of me?” She turned to him, her face appropriately blank.

“You’re the detective. You tell me.”

“Nope. I’m not in your head.”

“Yes,” he said. “You are in my head.”

She shifted uneasily. Uh-uh, she wasn’t going for monkey business in a unit. Why didn’t he give it a rest?

“Okay, then, what about you?” he said.

“What about me?”

“You shower or bathe? This is important.”

She made a tsking noise with her tongue. She knew of officers who had gotten up to things in their units. Knew the cooping places along the Henry Hudson Parkway. Precinct life was practically living together. There would have to be some monkey business among the uniforms. Some of it consensual, some of it not so consensual. Nobody liked to talk about it, but sexual harassment happened. A lot.

As for the detectives, they were so together there were bunk beds down the hall from the squad room for people who didn’t want to go home on night shift-day shift turnarounds. With the exception of Sergeant Joyce, April was the only woman in the detective squad. Sergeant Joyce went home to her kids. April went home to her parents even if it turned out to be for only two or three hours. She went home, thought about Mike, then came back, saw him, and wanted to get away again. It was weird.

“I’ll tell you what,” April said. “If I’m so much in your head, I’ll think it and you tell me.”

“Fine.”

Although April showered every morning, she thought of all the bath beads and bubble baths lined up on the shelf above her bathtub. She bathed at night and on weekends.

“You do both,” he told her. “Bath and shower. How’s that?”

“Adding the third option gave you only a thirty-three-percent chance of being right.”

“Well?”

Well, she could lie and say he was wrong, but she wasn’t much of a liar. “You’re right,” she admitted.

“Good. You should trust me more.” The rain had slowed to a trickle. With a grin, Mike wiped the fog off the inside of the windshield, then started the car. “So what do you think about my moving out on my own?”

That wasn’t a good question to ask April, who had moved out only as far as the second floor herself. “I don’t know. You ever live alone?”

“Entirely all by myself alone? No.”

“Me neither.”

He swung around in a wide U-turn. “You ever live with that guy—what was his name?—Jimmy?”

“No.”

“Thank you.”

“What for?”

“You were honest. I asked you a question, you didn’t slide around on it, saying it wasn’t my business. You answered the question.”

“Well, I didn’t live with him,” April said, indignant now. “Why would I want you to think I did?”

“Doesn’t mean you weren’t sleeping with him.”

“I’m not a nun.”

“Querida! I’m relieved.” Mike laughed, then hit the hammer and ran a red light.