The Delilah Complex

Twenty-One

The next night, I left the institute at eight-thirty, after my last session. The night air wasn’t cold and my black leather jacket was enough to keep me warm. I looked at the people walking on the avenue, on their way home or out to dinner. I window-shopped the boutiques that offered up designer goods more expensive than I could afford. There was a tempting pair of tall black boots in one store, a simple but elegant navy silk suit in another. No matter how much I ever made at the institute, these items would still be obscenely expensive.

I took my time that night because Dulcie’s father had picked her up from the studio and I was on my own. She’d be staying with him for the next four days. Usually it was a week every month plus every other weekend, but he had a shoot that was taking him out of town when she was due to stay with him next, so we’d rearranged the schedule.

I’d worked harder at an amicable breakup with Mitch than I had at anything I’d ever done, never forgetting that awful year when my mother had left my father and the two of us had lived in the small, pathetic apartment in a walkup on the Lower East Side until she died, leaving me to think I hadn’t been smart enough to save her. But I’d tried. That whole year.

My mother was often sick. And when she was, I did for her what she did for me when I was sick: I told her stories-the only ones I knew by heart. I sat by her side on the lumpy couch in the living room that she used for a bed, held her hand, fed her saltines and ginger ale, and recounted each episode of her TV show, playing all the parts myself. And when I ran out of the real ones, I made up new ones.

I always ended by delivering my mother’s co-star’s final line. “And what happened next?”

“They all lived happily never after,” my mother would say in a faraway voice.

No matter how bad off she was, she always remembered her sign-off. I have a recurring dream where she finally changes the line to: “They all lived happily ever after.”

But that was just a dream. She didn’t. And by the time I was old enough to understand that my mother hadn’t been ill most of those nights, but drunk, and that my words probably hadn’t even made sense to her, it was too late. I already knew I’d failed her. I hadn’t been able to save her.

I was on Madison Avenue and Seventieth Street when my cell phone rang. I kept walking as I pulled it out of my bag. If it weren’t for Dulcie and my concern for her well-being, I doubted I’d ever answer the damn thing. It’s wrong that we can never escape from people who want to reach us.

Instead of a name on the LED display, the screen read “private caller,” and because there was a chance-albeit a slight one-that the call was about Dulcie, I answered it.

“Hello?”

I had reached the corner just as the light turned red, and as I waited I heard a man’s voice say my name.

“Morgan.”

It was as if he was trying it out, letting it slide from a thought into a word, as if he had not heard it or said it in a long time and was unsure that he was pronouncing it right, as if it were the name of a foreign spice in a store that has many things you have never heard of.

I looked around for somewhere to go. To get away from the voice, because I really didn’t want to hear it, but there was nowhere to go. There never is when the problem is inside your own head. “Hello, Noah.”

At the other end of the phone, I heard the detective take a breath. Suddenly, I was picturing his face, close up, the way it had looked the one night we’d spent together, months before. How could a man I had not talked to for months cause my hand-the one holding the phone-to tremble? He was just a police detective from New Orleans. Except he played exquisite jazz on the piano, cooked like a five-star chef, made love like some crazy kind of dream come true, and intuited more about me than I wanted anyone to know.

“How are you?” Noah asked.

The sound of his voice reminded me of his fingers stroking my face. Of his arms holding me. How his lips felt. I stopped the deluge of impressions and forced myself to talk. “I’m okay. Overworked.”

“If you are admitting it, even a little bit, it must be extreme.”

I laughed. Had we only known each other for a few weeks? Stop thinking, I said to myself silently. Find out what he wants, then get off the phone. “So, how can I help you, Noah?” I asked, cringing. Why when I spoke to him did I always wind up sounding like I was flirting?

I was impatient for him to state his reason for calling so I could get rid of him as fast as possible. I was instantly exhausted.

“I was wondering if you have some time to meet up with me. Either at my office, yours, or if you happen to be as hungry as I am, for dinner.”

“I meant to call you back,” I blurted out, not realizing it was a non sequitur.

“No, you didn’t,” he said.

I couldn’t argue and so I said nothing.

“Morgan?”

“Yes?”

“Where are you? Let’s grab some dinner.”

I’d stopped walking and was leaning against the red stone wall of St. James Church. The night sky had turned from electric cobalt-blue to a blue-black velvet, and I had the feeling that if Noah kept talking, I’d keep standing there until stars came out and not even notice that any time had passed.

“I’m here.” No, that didn’t make sense. “I’m on the street, actually, Seventy-first. I just left the office.” Not good, I thought. I didn’t sound like I was in control.

“So, where can you meet me? I need to talk to you. I need to ask you in what way you are involved with Timothy Wheaton’s death.”