The Venus Fix

Ninety-Five

Dulcie was still sleeping when I left on Monday morning. I asked Mary, our housekeeper, if she would try to convince her to have more than juice for breakfast for once.

“If she saw you eat something, she’d eat something. She does whatever you do, don’t you know that? She wants to be just like you,” Mary chided me and was confused when I broke into a smile.

There was enough sidewalk showing for me to walk to work again. Sure, it was cold, but the clean-smelling cold that is refreshing rather than painful.

Twenty minutes later, I was sitting at my desk. I’d just gotten off the phone with Blythe, who had called to tell me she thought she was almost ready to come back to work but thought she could use a few therapy sessions first. I was setting up an appointment when Allison stuck her head in my door.

“Alan Leightman’s ready to see you. Are you ready for him?”

I hadn’t expected him to keep his standing Monday appointment that first week.

In the first five minutes, he told me that after he’d been released on Friday, he’d moved into a hotel, and had offered to go to therapy with Kira.

“I’d like to have a real relationship. I don’t know if it can be with her, but I owe it to both of us to try. You asked me once about the first woman I’d seen naked and I told you how I’d watched her behind the glass in that theater. You knew that all the women are behind glass. The theater glass. The computer screen. Can we figure that out? Will we figure that out?”

I could encourage him, and I did. But no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t make that promise. The best we could do, the best we can ever do, is try.

At noon, I put on my coat, went downstairs and walked around the corner to the Regency Hotel.

The maître d’ showed me to the table. Noah stood up when he saw me. He was smiling, and while he still looked like he could use some more sleep, he clearly had gotten some rest.

“How’s your wrist?” he asked after I’d sat down and accepted some of the red wine he’d already ordered.

“Not bad. The doctor said I didn’t do any extra damage.”

“Didn’t do any damage? You smashed her nose. Broke it in two places.”

We talked about Blythe and how she was doing and Stella’s arraignment, and about the three women who had died because a daughter had not lived up to her mother’s expectations. I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable for a minute, thinking about my own expectations for Dulcie. We talked about the past four days, and about how Dulcie was adjusting to being back home with me.

“She’s going to be fine.”

I nodded, wanting to believe him. “I know I don’t have any control over what happens to her. I just want to help her find her way and make it as painless for her as possible. But I may not be able to do even that. No matter what, she’ll know I loved her. Not some idea of her.”

I was thinking about Stella Dobson and a young woman named Simone whom I’d never met.

“The best you’ve done with Dulcie has been to show her that she’s lovable for who she is. She’ll take that with her out into the world, and that will keep her relatively safe, Morgan. It will.”

I smiled at him.

“So, this is a little complicated,” Noah said, changing the subject.

“Meeting me?”

“Yes, well, what I’m here to talk to you about.”

A waiter appeared with a bottle of wine and topped off our glasses. Noah waited until he’d left.

“I think I’m here to offer you a job,” he said.

The last time we’d been alone together had been five days ago, on that morning that Noah had dressed me, when we’d made love, and afterward, over breakfast, fought for the second-or was it the third?-time about what I couldn’t tell him about Alan Leightman but wanted him to believe me. It wasn’t the first time we’d clashed over his profession and mine and I knew each time it happened it took its toll.

It felt like much more time than that had passed, but not this much.

“A job? Is this a joke?”

He shook his head and looked at me a little sadly. He was sitting close enough to me that I could smell his rosemary-and-mint cologne.

“No.”

“Okay, shoot. Sorry. Bad choice of words.”

He waved away the apology. “The New York Police Department, Special Victims Unit, is looking for a chief forensic psychologist. We have been for more than a month.” Noah’s voice wavered and he cleared his throat. “You have every qualification. We haven’t found the right person to fill the job. Or, I should say we have. You could do it. You’d be perfect. I thought that, at least, I should tell you about it. Not make the decision for you. It seemed to me that you might want a challenge.”

“In a million years, I never would have guessed that you would be talking to me about this.”

“No, me neither.”

The room wasn’t conducive to romantic encounters. It was all business. Clean, hard lines, crisp linens. Men and women in business attire. Noah was probably the most casually dressed man there, in his worn leather jacket, a black turtleneck and jeans.

I looked away. At strangers. Out the window. Anywhere but Noah’s face. The ragged edge of disappointment I was feeling reminded me that no one lives without regret. A splinter of fear cautioned me that loving someone meant a loss of power, and that even though power was sometimes all that kept me sane, it wasn’t always worth holding on to.

A week earlier, I would have thought Noah could read in my eyes all that I was thinking, but when I finally glanced at him, he looked back at me with eyes that were dulled. The electricity was turned off.

“Let me just get this straight,” I said. “If I were to take this job, we wouldn’t be able to see each other, right?”

“Well, we’d see each other, but not in a personal way anymore.” He shrugged. As if that shouldn’t matter to either of us.

“We’d finally stop this push-pull thing we have going on. We’d be friends.”

“Friends.” His New Orleans drawl slowed the word down and turned it into something lesser, something inadequate.

“Is that what you want?”

“It would be easier.”

“Is it what you want?”

He wasn’t going to tell me. He didn’t have to. Impulsively, I leaned over, getting as close to him as I could, put my good hand on top of his arm as if to anchor him there, and then I kissed him.

His lips were closed at first.

And they stayed closed.

I’d lost him. I’d waited too long.

And then…then, finally, he moved forward, his hands came up and cupped my face, he pulled me closer to him, as close as we could get in our chairs, and he kissed me back.

Not the way a man would kiss you who offered you a job.

No, not that way at all.