Romance

3

STANDING AT THE SQUADROOM WATER COOLER, DETECTIVE/Second Grade Stephen Louis Carella could not help over-hearing Kling’s conversation at the desk not four feet away. He filled his paper cup and turned away, standing with his back to Kling, looking through the wire-grilled window at the street below — but he could still hear the conversation. Deliberately, he tossed the empty cup at the wastebasket, and headed back across the room toward his own desk.

Carella was close to six feet tall, with the wide shoulders, narrow hips and gliding walk of a natural athlete — which he was not. Sitting behind his desk, he sighed and looked up at the wall clock, marveling at how the time did fly when you were having a good time. They were only three hours into the shift, but for some reason he was enormously weary tonight. Whenever he was this tired, his brown eyes took on a duller hue, seeming to slant more emphatically downward than they normally did, giving his face an exaggerated Oriental cast.

Four detectives had relieved the day shift at a quarter to four that Monday afternoon. Mayer and Hawes caught a liquor store holdup even before they took off their topcoats, and were out of the squadroom almost before they’d officially arrived. At around four-fifteen, a redheaded woman came up and told Kling somebody was trying to kill her, and he took down all the information and then discussed the possibility of a trap-and-trace with Carella, who said they wouldn’t have a chance of getting one. Kling said he’d talk it over with the boss soon as he came in. Lieutenant Byrnes still wasn’t here and Kling was still on the phone with someone named Sharon, whom he kept asking to meet him for coffee when the shift was relieved at midnight. From the snatches of conversation Carella could still over-hear, Sharon wasn’t being too receptive. Kling kept trying. Told her he’d be happy to take a cab to Calm’s Point, just wanted to talk to her awhile. By the time he hung up, Carella still didn’t know if it had worked out. He only knew there were five long hard hours ahead before they’d be relieved.

They caught the theater squeal at eight minutes past seven. The Susan Granger, a small theater on North Eleventh, near Mapes Avenue. Woman stabbed in the alley there. By the time Carella and Kling arrived, the woman had already been carted off to the hospital. One of the blues at the scene told them the victim’s name was Michelle Cassidy and that she’d been taken to Morehouse General. Kling recognized the name. He told Carella she was the redhead who’d come to see him only three, three and a half hours ago, whenever the hell it was.

“Told me somebody was threatening to stab her,” he said.

The uniformed cop shrugged and said, “So now he did.“

They decided it was more important to talk to the victim than to do the neighborhood canvass just now. They got to Morehouse at about seven-thirty and talked to the ER intern who’d admitted Michelle Cassidy. He told them that two inches lower and a bit to the right and Miss Cassidy would at this very moment be playing first harp in the celestial philharmonic. Instead, she was in room two thirty-seven, her vital signs normal, her condition stable. He understood she was an actress.

“Is she someone famous?” he asked.

“She played Annie,” Kling said.

“Who’s Annie?” the doctor asked. His name was Raman-than Mehrota. It said so on the little plastic tag on his tunic. Carella guessed he was Indian. In this city, the odds on finding a doctor from Bombay in any hospital emergency room were extraordinarily good. Almost as good as finding a Pakistani cabdriver.

“They’ve got TV cameras up there,” Mehrota said. “I thought she might be someone famous.”

“She is now,” Carella said.

The TV reporter was doing their job for them. All they had to do was stand at the back of the room and listen.

“When did this happen, Miss Cassidy?”

Carella recognized the woman as one of Channel 4’s roving reporters. Good-looking woman with curly black hair and dark brown eyes, reminded him of his wife, except for the curls; Teddy’s hair was straight, but just as black.

“Everybody else had already gone to dinner,” she said, “but I had a costume fitting, so I was a little late leaving. I was just coming out of the theater when…”

“What time was this?”

“A little after seven. We’d been rehearsing all day long…”

“Rehearsing what, Miss Cassidy?”

“A new play called Romance.”

“What happened when you left the theater?”

“A man stepped out of a doorway there in the alley. He said, `Miss Cassidy?’ And then he stabbed inc.”

The camera came in on the reporter.

“Michelle Cassidy, stabbed tonight outside the Susan Granger Theater, where she is rehearsing — ironically — a play about a man who stabs an actress. This is Monica Mann, Channel 4 News, live at Morehouse General Hospital.”

She stared into the camera for a moment until the operator gave her the signal that she was clear. She turned to the bed then, said, “Terrific, Miss Cassidy. Good luck with the show,” and then turned again to her crew and said, “We’re out of here.”

The hot lights went out. The TV people cleared the room, and the nurse went outside to let in the newspaper people. The two city tabloids had each sent a reporter and a photographer. Carella could just see tomorrow’s head-lines:

Or:

The stately morning paper hadn’t deigned to send anyone to the hospital; maybe the editor didn’t realize a former child actress was the victim. Or maybe he simply didn’t care. Cheap stabbings were a dime a dozen in this town. Besides, there’d been a riot in Grover Park this past Saturday, and the paper was still running postmortem studies on the causes of racial conflict and the possible remedies for it.

Again, all Carella and Kling had to do was listen. They realized at once that this was to be a more in-depth interview than television, with its limited time, had been able to grant.

“Miss Cassidy, did you see the man who attacked you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What’d he look like?”

“A tall slender man wearing a long black coat and a black hat pulled down over his head.”

“What kind of hat?”

“A fedora. Whatever you call them.”

“A brimmed hat?”

“Yes. Black.”

“Wide-brimmed? Narrow-brimmed?”

“Wide. He had it pulled down over his eyes.”

“Was he wearing gloves?”

“Yes. Black gloves.”

“Did you see the knife?”

“No. Not really. I sure felt it, though.”

Nervous laughter.

“You wouldn’t know what kind of knife it was, would you?”

“A sharp one.”

More laughter. Not as nervous this time. The kid was being a good sport. She’d just been stabbed in the shoulder, inches away from the heart, but she was able to joke about the weapon. The reporters liked that. It made good copy. Good-looking woman besides. Sitting up in bed in a hospital gown that kept slipping off one shoulder. As the reporters asked their questions, the photographers’ cameras kept clicking.

Kling noticed that neither of the two reporters had yet asked her what color the man was. Maybe journalists weren’t allowed to. As cops, he and Carella would ask that question the minute the others cleared the room. Then again, they were looking to find whoever had just attempted murder. The reporters were only looking for a good story.

“Did he say anything to you?” one of the reporters asked.

“Yes. He said, `Miss Cassidy?’ Same thing he calls me on the phone. ”

“Wait a minute,” the other reporter said. “What do you mean?”

“He’s been calling me for the past week. Threatening to kill me. With a knife.”

“This same man? The one who stabbed you tonight?”

“It sounded like the same man.”

“Are you saying his voice sounded the same? As the man on the phone?”

“Exactly the same. Just like Jack Nicholson’s voice.”

Both reporters were scribbling furiously now. Jack Nicholson stabbing a young actress in the alley outside a rehearsal theater? Jesus, this was made in heaven!

“It wasn’t Jack Nicholson, of course,” Michelle said.

“Of course not,” one of the reporters said, but he sounded disappointed.

“Who was he?” the other one asked. “Do you have any idea who he was?”

“Someone familiar with Romance,” she said.

“Someone familiar with romance, did you say?”

“Romance. The play we’re rehearsing.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because what happened in that alley also happens in the play.

Carella could now see the subhead on the story:

Now they wanted to know all about the scene in the play, and who else was in the play, and who had written it, and who was directing it, and when it would be opening here, and whether there were plans for moving it down-town, the cameras clicking, the reporters tirelessly questioning her while a black nurse fluttered about the bed telling them they mustn’t exhaust her, didn’t they realize the poor woman had been stabbed?

A man wearing a maroon sports shirt open at the throat, a gray sports jacket, and darker gray trousers rushed into the room, went immediately to the bed, took Michelle’s hands in his own and said, “Michelle, my God, what happened? I just heard the news! Who did this to you? My God, why you?”

The reporters asked him who he was, and he introduced himself as Johnny Milton, Michelle’s theatrical agent, and handed cards to both of them, and said he’d heard the news a few minutes ago, and rushed right over. Somewhat imperiously, he asked who the two men in the suits at the back of the room were, didn’t they realize a woman had been stabbed here?

“We’re the police,” Carella said quietly, and showed the agent his shield.

“Hello, Detective Kling,” Michelle said from the bed, waggling her fingers at him.

And suddenly all reportorial attention was on Kling, the two journalists wanting to know how he happened to know the victim, and then soliciting from Michelle herself the fact that she’d reported the threatening calls to Kling at approximately four-fifteen that afternoon, before she went back to rehearsal.

“Got any leads yet, Detective Kling?” one of the reporters asked.

“None,” Carella said. “In fact, if you’ve got everything you need, we’d like to talk to Miss Cassidy now, if you don’t mind.”

“He’s right, boys,” her agent said. “Thanks for coming up, but she needs some rest now.”

One of the photographers asked Michelle if she would mind one last picture, and when she said, “Okay, but I’m really very tired,” he asked if she would mind lowering the gown off her left shoulder to show the bandaged wound, which she did in a demure and ladylike manner, while simultaneously managing to show a little bit of cleavage.

The moment everyone was gone, Kling asked, “Was the man who stabbed you white, black, Hispanic or Asian?”

The black nurse seemed about to take offense, but then Michelle said, “White.”

At nine that night, Ashley Kendall was still rehearsing his cast, but instead of Michelle up there playing the Actress, her understudy was filling in for her. Kendall hated Corbin’s pretentious naming — or non-naming — of the characters in his play. Right now, he was rehearsing the Actress’s under-study, who happened to be an actress named Josie Beales, but on the same stage with her was an actress named Andrea Packer, who was playing the character named the Under-study, although her understudy was an actress named Helen Frears. It could get confusing if you weren’t paying attention.

Josie was twenty-one, with strawberry-blond hair that was only a timid echo of Michelle’s fiercer tresses. But she was taller than Michelle, and less cumbersomely endowed, and therefore moved more elegantly. In Kendall’s opinion, she was also a far better actress than Michelle. In fact, he’d wanted to cast her as the Actress, but had been outvoted by Mr. Frederick Peter Corbin III. So now Miss Tits had the leading role, and Josie was a mere understudy who moved furniture and props and played a variety of non-speaking roles. Such was the tyranny of playwrights. Josie hadn’t expected to be here tonight. She’d been interrupted at home, eating dinner — actually a container of yogurt and a banana — and watching Love Connection in her bathrobe, when the stage manager called to say, “You’re on, babe.” She’d thrown on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and rushed right over. Now she waited with the other actors for the rehearsal to resume.

Kendall supposed he could have called off the rehearsal, but Michelle’s earlier behavior and stormy departure had left the other actors feeling confused and miserable. Besides, he was grateful for the opportunity to run through the scenes with an accomplished and disciplined young woman like Josie standing in, and without Mr. Moneybags Morgenstern sitting by witnessing a tantrum. The producer was gone now. In his stead in the sixth row center sat the exalted playwright himself, who had been home earlier today rewriting some lines that were troubling him, when he should have been rewriting three or four scenes that were troubling Kendall. Or maybe even the whole damn play, for that matter.

Everyone in the theater already knew that their “shtar” had been stabbed in the alley outside and taken to Morehouse General. Chuck Madden, the show’s stage manager, had called there a few minutes ago. Now he leaned into the sixth row, and informed Kendall and Corbin that some blue-haired volunteer had told him Miss Cassidy’s condition was stable and that she’d be released from the hospital some-time later tonight.

“Thank you, Chuck,” Kendall said, and rose and said, “People?”

The actors chatting onstage, waiting for things to start, turned and squinted out into the darkened theater.

“I know you’ll all be delighted to learn that Michelle’s okay,” Kendall said. “She’ll be going home tonight, in fact.”

“Terrific,” someone said without enthusiasm.

“Who did it, do they know?” someone else asked.

“I have no information on that,” Kendall said.

“Not germane, anyway,” someone else said.

“I heard that, Jerry!”

“Sorry, boss!”

“Chuck? Are you back there yet?”

“Yes, sir!”

Chuck Madden sprang out onto the stage as if he’d almost missed a cue. He was wearing high-topped workman’s boots, a rolled, blue woolen watch cap, and painter’s coveralls that partially showed his bare chest and muscular arms. He was twenty-six years old, some six feet tall, with chestnut-colored hair and brown eyes. He shielded those eyes now and peered out toward the sixth row of the theater.

“Do you think you can do something with the lights when she comes out of the restaurant?” Kendall asked.

“Like what’d you have in mind?”

“It’s supposed to be dark, the stabber is supposed to come out of the shadows. We’ve got Jerry popping out with the lights up full…”

“Yeah, give me some atmosphere,” Jerry said.

“I know this is far too early to be discussing lighting…”

“No, no, what’d you want?”

“Can you give me a slow fade as she makes her cross?

So that the stage is almost black when Jerry comes at her?”

“I like it, I like it,” Jerry said.

“Let me talk to Kurt, see what he…”

“I heard it,” the electrician called. “You’ve got it.”

“Start the fade just as she comes through the door,” Kendall said.

“Got it.”

“People? Shall we try it?”

“Uno más,” Chuck said. “From the scene at the table.”

Corbin had constructed his play in an entirely predictable manner. Once you recognized that there’d be a short quiet scene followed by a yet shorter scene intended to shock, and then a lengthy discourse on the shocker, you pretty much had the pattern of the play. As a result, there were no surprises at all; Corbin had given birth to a succession of triplets, most of them malformed.

The triplet they were now about to rehearse yet another time…

It was Kendall’s conviction that this particular stretch would never play…

… consisted of a scene between the Actress and the Director sitting at a table in a restaurant, followed by a scene in which someone non-germane stabs the Actress, which is then followed by a scene in which the Detective interrogates ad infinitum the other two principals. There was simply no way to make this drivel come alive. The writing in the restaurant scene was so foreboding, so portentous, so fraught with foreshadowing, that any intelligent member of the audience would know the girl was going to get stabbed the minute she left the place.

“Why haven’t you told me this before?”

The Director speaking.

The one onstage. Not Kendall himself sitting out here in the sixth row.

“I… I was afraid you were the one making the calls.”

“Me? Me?“

This from Cooper Haynes, the dignified gentleman doctor of soap opera fame, looking thoroughly astonished by the mere idea of being the person making threatening phone calls to the actress he was directing. His stupefaction looked so genuine that it almost evoked a laugh from Kendall, exactly the wrong sort of response at this point in the play’s time.

“I’m sorry, I know that’s ridiculous. Why would you want to kill me?”

“Or anyone.”

Another line which — when delivered in Cooper’s wide-eyed bewildered way — could result in a bad laugh. In the dark, Kendall was furiously scribbling notes.

“You must go to the police.”

“I’ve been.”

“And?”

“They said they can’t do anything until he actually tries to kill me.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Yes.”

“With whom did you speak?”

“A detective.”

“And he said they could do nothing?”

“That’s right.”

“Impossible! Why… do you know what this means?”

“I’m so frightened.”

“It means you can be sleeping in your bed…”

“I know.”

“… and someone could attack you.”

“I’m terrified.”

“It means you can leave this restaurant tonight…”

“I know.”

“This very moment…”

“I know…”

“And someone can come at you with a knife.”

“What shall I do? Oh dear God, what shall I do?”

“I’m going home right this minute to make some calls. I know a few people downtown who’ll get on this detective of yours and see that he does something about this. Finish your coffee, I’ll drop you off on my way.”

“That’s all right, go ahead. I thought I’d walk, anyway. It’s just a few blocks.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, go ahead.”

“I worry about you, darling.”

“No, don’t.”

“I worry.”

“Good scene,” Corbin whispered.

Kendall said nothing.

He watched as Cooper walked over to Helen Frears, who was playing the cashier, and settled his check, and then pushed his way through the imaginary revolving doors to the street outside. As he walked off into the wings, Josie sat finishing her coffee at the table.

“Here’s where the fade should start,” Kendall said, and made a note to cue the fade earlier. Josie finished her coffee, picked up a napkin, delicately wiped at her mouth, with it, milking the moment, rose, put on her coat, still milking it — God, she was so good — pushed her chair back under the table, walked to the cashier, settled her bill, and then pushed through the same imaginary revolving doors.

The fade began.

As Josie began crossing the stage, the restaurant behind her — the table and chairs first, and then the cashier’s stand — slowly went to black. Clutching her coat collar to her throat as if protecting herself against a fierce wind, she moved out boldly, the light continuing to vanish behind her with each step she took. And then, ominously, the light ahead of her began to grow dim as well, so that now she was moving into deeper and deeper shadows beyond which lay only blackness.

Out of that blackness there suddenly appeared a tall man in a long black coat and slouch hat, Jerry Greenbaum himself, no jokes this time, Jerry Greenbaum playing it for real in a costume he had salvaged someplace and was wearing for the first time. Where in earlier rehearsals he had used a wooden stick to simulate the knife, now — and possibly inspired by the lighting — he was wielding a bona fide bread knife he’d picked up backstage someplace, holding it high above his head like Tony Perkins coming at Marty Balsam in Psycho, coming at Josie with the same stiff-legged long-skirted stride Perkins had used, enough to chill the blood from memory of the scene alone, if not exactly what Kendall himself had directed in this scene.

The knife descended viciously, its blade glinting with pinpoint pricks of light as Josie turned to shield the fake thrust from the audience. The stabber ran off into the blackness. Josie fell to the stage, lay there motionless.

And now the other actors materialized like mourners at an Irish wake, surrounding the stricken Actress, the Detective firing questions at each of them as if she were really dead, asking the Director what they had talked about at dinner, asking the Understudy whether they had argued recently, and finally turning to the Actress herself, who — surprise of all surprises! — wasn’t dead at all, but who rose from the stage now and fell back into a chair doubling as a hospital bed, and weakly answered the Detective’s questions along with the rest of them in a scene outstanding only for its sheer boredom and longevity.

“Thank you, people, it’s beginning to come together,” Kendall said. “Take ten and I’ll give you my notes.”

As the actors began moving off, Jerry popped onstage, still wearing the long coat and the wide-brimmed hat.

“How was that, boss?” he shouted to the theater. “Scary enough?”

“Very nice, Jerry,” Corbin said, and Kendall gave him a look.

“Little Hitchcock there, huh?” Jerry said.

“Very nice,” Corbin said again, and Kendall gave him another look.

The two men sat silently for a moment.

“She’s very good, isn’t she?” Corbin said at last.

“Josie? Yes. She’s wonderful.”

“Made it come alive for the first time,” Corbin said.

Kendall said nothing. The play was a long way from coming alive. Josie’s performance had given it a good boost tonight, but unless Corbin sat down and rewrote the damn thing from top to bottom…

“Almost a shame,” Corbin said.

“What is?”

“That he missed.”

The two men came into the theater while Kendall was giving the cast his notes. Both were wearing topcoats. No hats. In the light that silhouetted them from the lobby as they came through the doors at the rear of the theater, he could see that one was blond and the other had dark hair. They were both tall, wide-shouldered men of about the same height and weight, both in their thirties somewhere, he guessed. The blond had hazel-colored eyes. The one with the dark hair had slanted brown eyes.

“Mr. Kendall?” the blond one called, inadvertently interrupting him in the middle of a sentence, which Kendall didn’t appreciate one damn bit.

“Sorry to bother you, I’m Detective Kling, 87th Squad, this is Detective Carella, my partner.”

He was showing a shield now.

Kendall was unimpressed.

“Miss Cassidy told us you might still be rehearsing here,” Kling said. “We thought we’d save some trouble if we caught you all in the same place.”

“I see,” Kendall said dryly. “And just what sort of trouble were you hoping to save?”

“Few questions we’d like to ask,” Kling said.

“Tell you what,” Kendall said saccharinely. “Why don’t you and your partner here go out to the lobby together, and have a seat on one of the red plush velvet benches out there, and when I’m finished giving the cast my notes — which I was attempting to do when you interrupted — we’ll all come out there and play cops and robbers with you, okay? How does that sound?”

The theater went suddenly as still as a tomb.

“Sounds fine to me,” Kling said pleasantly. “How does that sound to you, Steve?”

“Sounds fine to me, too, Bert.”

“So what we’ll do,” Kling said, “is go find that red plush velvet bench in the lobby, and sit out there hoping the person who stabbed Michelle Cassidy won’t make California by the time you finish giving the cast your notes. How does that sound to you?”

Kendall blinked at him.

“See you when you’re done,” Kling said, and turned and began walking toward the back of the theater again.

“Just a minute,” Corbin said.

Kendall blinked again.

“The notes can wait,” Corbin said. “What did you want to know?”

Which cued a scene outstanding only for its sheer boredom and longevity.

“You look tired,” Sharyn said.

“So do you,” Kling said.

“I am,” she said.

It was almost midnight. Sharyn had called the squad-room at eleven to say she was in the city…

To any native of this town, there was Calm’s Point, Majesta, Riverhead, Bethtown — and the City. Isola was the City, even though without the other four, it was only one-fifth of the city. Sharyn had called the squadroom to say…

… she was in the city and if he still wanted to have a cup of coffee she could meet him someplace uptown, which is where she happened to be. At St. Sebastian’s Hospital, as a matter of fact. As an afterword, she mentioned that she was as hungry as a bear. Kling mentioned that he hadn’t really eaten yet either, and suggested a fabulous deli on the Stem. At eleven-thirty — fifteen minutes before the shift was officially relieved — he dashed out of the squadroom.

Sharyn was now wolfing down a pastrami on rye.

She licked mustard from her lips.

“I’m glad you called,” he said. “I was going to throw myself out the window otherwise.”

“Sure.”

“What were you doing at St. Sab’s?”

“Trying to get a cop transferred to a better hospital. Right after you called me this afternoon, an officer got shot on Denver and Wales…”

“The Nine-Three.”

“The Nine-Three. Ambulance took him to St. Sab’s, the worst hospital in the whole damn city. I got there at six, found out who was in charge, got the man moved before they operated. Police escort all the way down to Buenavista, sirens blaring, you’d’ve thought the Mayor was in that ambulance.”

“So you were in the city, anyway…”

“Yes.”

“So you called me…”

“Well, yes.”

“… just so it shouldn’t be a total loss.”

“Right. Also, I was very hungry. And I owed you a meal.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did. How’s your hamburger?”

“What? Oh. Yeah. Good. I guess,” he said, and picked it up and took a big bite of it. “Good,” he said.

“Why do you keep staring at me?” she asked.

“Habit of mine.”

“Bad one.”

“I know. You shouldn’t be so beautiful.”

“Oh, please.”

“Why’d you walk out last night?”

“I didn’t walk out.”

“Well, you cut things short.”

“Yes, well.”

“Why?”

Sharyn shrugged.

“Was it something I said?”

“No.”

^“I kept trying to figure out what I’d said. All day today, I kept trying to figure it out. I almost called a dozen times. Before I finally did, I mean. What was it I said?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me, Sharyn. Please. I don’t want this starting on the wrong foot, really. I want this… well… tell me what I said.”

“You said the color I was wearing was good for me.”

Kling looked at her.

^“So?” he said.

“I thought you were saying that the color was good for my color.”

^“That’s what I was saying.”

“So that started me wondering if the reason you’d asked me out was that I was black.”

^“Yes, I know. You asked me…”

“And I started wondering what it was you wanted from me. I mean, was this just de white massa hittin on de l’il house nigguh? I guess I didn’t want to risk finding out that was all it might be. So I thought it’d be best if we just shook hands and said goodnight, without either of us exploring the question too completely.”

She bit into the sandwich again, sipped at her beer, her eyes avoiding his. Kling nodded and took another bite. They both ate in silence for several moments, Sharyn polishing off the sandwich as if she hadn’t eaten in a week, Kling working less voraciously on the hamburger.

^“So what are you doing here now?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, and shrugged. “I guess I figured you were really being nice, saying the color suited me, the color was good for me, and that this wasn’t very much different from what you might have said to a blonde wearing black or a redhead wearing brown, or whatever colors it is dat de white girls wears, hmmm?”

She had done it a second time, he noticed. Falling into a sort of exaggerated black English whenever she was saying something he was sure made her uncomfortable.

“And I guess I finally realized you didn’t want anything from me that you didn’t want from any other woman…”

^“No, that isn’t true,” he said.

“Which is okay, I mean, vive la difference, n’est-ce pas? What the hell. A man is attracted to you…”

“I am.”

“You don’t go asking is it the color of my eyes, or the color of my skin…”

“It is.”

“… the same way you don’t go asking yourself is it because he’s so white.”

“Is it?”

“I mean, blond hair and light eyes, does he have to be so white? Where are the goddamn freckles? I mean, the first time I date a white man, couldn’t he…”

“Is it?”

“… be a slightly darker shade of Charlie, couldn’t he…”

“The first time?”

“Yes.”

“Me, too. You, I mean. You’re the first black woman I’ve ever known. Getting to know, that is. That is, I hope I’m getting to…”

“Yes, you are.”

“I hope so.”

“I hope so, too.”

“Would you like some coffee?”

“Yes, please.”

He signaled to the waiter.

“Also,” she said, “I thought it was kind of cute, your calling me and telling me you were willing to come all the way out to Calm’s Point again, at midnight no less, for a cup of coffee. Just so we could talk awhile. I thought that was very cute. And you were so persistent, oh my! I thought about that phone call all the while I was driving in to St. Sab’s. I began thinking This is fate, this cop getting shot, my having to drive into the city. It wasn’t meant that we should leave it where we left it last night. I shouldn’t have been so rejecting on the phone, I shouldn’t have dissed him that way. What did the poor guy say, for God’s sake? He said he liked the color of my suit. Which, by the way, is a terrific color for my color…”

“It is.”

“Sure, so what was I getting so upset about? A man paying me a compliment? I kept thinking all this while I drove in, and then I put it out of my mind when I got to the hospital because the only thing I wanted to do then was find the person in charge and let him know a police department representative was here now and that the cop in there better get the best medical treatment in the world or there’d be holy hell to pay.”

“Is he all right now?”

“Yes, he’s all right. Shot twice in the leg. He’s all right.”

“I hate cops getting shot.”

“Tell me about it,” Sharyn said, and nodded grimly. “Anyway, I didn’t think about it again, about you again, about your calling and being so persistent on the phone, until the cop was safely on his way to Buenavista, where he won’t scream in the middle of the night, thank God, and no one’ll come. I was going out to my car, figuring I’d drive back out to C.P., when all at once I thought again of you saying you were willing to drive out there after you’d put in eight hours, just to have a cup of coffee and talk. And I thought about the cop getting shot and bringing me into the city, and I said to myself Listen, who’s being the stupid one here, you or him?”

“Who was it?”

“Anyway, I was starving to death.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I hate to eat alone.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So I called you.”

“And here we are,” he said.

“Alone at last,” she said.

Alone with him in bed that night, she told him how frightened she’d been. How frightened she still was.

“No, no,” he said, “don’t worry.”

Soothing her. Stroking her thighs, kissing her nipples and breasts, kissing her lips.

“Everything happened so fast,” she said.

“No, no.”

“Someone’s bound to realize…”

“How could they?”

“People aren’t stupid, you know.”

“Yes, but how could…?”

“Suppose someone saw us tonight?”

“But no one did.”

“You don’t know that for a fact.”

“Did you see anyone?”

“No, but…”

“Neither did I. No one saw us. Don’t worry.”

Kissing her again. Gently. Her lips, her breasts. His hand under the gossamer gown, stroking her, touching her.

“Everything’s happening so fast,” she whispered.

“It’s supposed to.”

“They’ll ask…”

“Sure.”

“Me. You. They’ll ask.”

“And we’ll tell them. Everything but.“

“They’re not stupid.”

“We’re smarter.”

“They’ll realize.”

““No.”

“Hold me, Johnny, I’m so scared.”

“No, baby, no, Michelle, don’t worry.”