Washing his hands in the men's room sink, Jaywalker happened to look up and catch his reflection in the mirror. Neither the full-length crack in the glass nor the accumu lation of city grime and cigarette tar could diminish the breadth of the grin on his face. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and silently thanked his I-know-there's- noGod-but-just-in-case-I'm-wrong for having granted the night's reprieve. Anyone who thought you spelled relief with the brand name of an antacid had it all wrong. Relief was making it to eight o'clock without a conviction. Relief was making it to the men's room without a catastrophe.
When Jaywalker opened his eyes, the grin was still there. It was still there as he checked the paper towel dis penser, with, as Detective Bonfiglio might have put it, negative results. It was still there as he shook his hands dry, or at least tried his best to. It was still there when he opened the door, stepped out into the hallway and found himself face-to-face with Samara.
'What's so funny?' she wanted to know.
'Nothing,' he said. 'Everything. We're alive. We're coming back tomorrow. Somebody in that jury room still believes in you.'
'And you?' she asked, looking up into his eyes, cutting off all escape routes, leaving him no place to hide. 'Do you still believe in me?'
'Yes,' he said, 'I still believe in you.'
'Do you mean that? I mean really, r eally mean it?'
'Of course I do.'
Could there possibly have been another answer?
Still her eyes wouldn't let go of his. It was as though she was testing him, challenging his faith in her innocence. He readied himself for whatever might come next. Would she ask him to take an oath, perhaps, or to repeat Samara didn't do it twenty times over?
What she actually did say took him by surprise. 'Then come home with me.' And the way she said it, it wasn't quite a command, yet it wasn't simply a question, either. It was something halfway in between. It was a request, he decided, a request with the please left out, lest it sound too much like begging. And, as before, there could be only one possible answer.
'Yes,' said Jaywalker, 'I'll come home with you.'
It was raining out on Centre Street, an icy rain that turned to sleet even as they stood there, waiting for a cab.
'C'mon,' Jaywalker said to Samara, and they bent into the sleet and began walking uptown, arms locked together. At Canal Street, a little old Korean woman was huddled in a doorway, hawking umbrellas. 'Faw dolla, faw dolla.'
Jaywalker reached into his side pocket for four singles. It was a New York thing, knowing never to carry your money in your wallet. Walking up to the woman, he asked, 'Is there any chance this one's going to last longer than the one you sold me two weeks ago?'
'Three dolla.'
'Deal.'
The sleet was coming down even harder, and by now the pavement had a coating of slush on it. Even huddled tightly together underneath their three-dolla special, Samara and Jaywalker were getting pelted. And still there were no cabs in sight. Another New York thing.
So they ducked down into the subway and rode the Lex ington Avenue local uptown, the about-to-be- convicted 'billionheiress' and her about-to-be-suspended lawyer.
By the time they emerged at Sixty-eighth Street, the sleet had changed over again, this time to snow. It was a wet, heavy snow, lit up by the streetlamps like soggy corn flakes, but it was better than what had preceded it. Jay walker wrapped one arm around Samara's shoulders, leav ing the other to carry both his briefcase and the umbrella, an easy enough task if it had had two hands attached to it. He pondered the situation for a moment. The trial was all but over, he knew, and with one day left on his ticket, chances were he would have no more use for the briefcase. Then again, life could be funny, and one of the best parts about it was that you never knew for sure. So, at the next corner, he tossed the umbrella into a wire trash can.
'Hey,' said Samara, 'you paid good money for that thing. I could've carried it.'
'No point,' Jaywalker explained. 'Once they get wet, they're no good anymore. That's the whole idea. That woman back there on Canal Street? She's their vice presi dent in charge of market research. In two years she'll have enough money to buy Manhattan, dismantle it and ship it back home.'
Samara laughed at the thought, a hearty laugh, totally free of self-consciousness. Like her tears on the witness stand, her frequent lapses into locker-room language and just about everything else about her, there was nothing re strained about her laughter, nothing contrived or con trolled. The tabloid writers who'd been so quick to tag her as a gold digger had gotten it all wrong. The truth was, she operated without a plan, Samara did. If something struck her as funny, she laughed at it like a child. If it struck her as sad, she bawled. And if it struck her as absurd, she came right out and said so, without measuring her words or both ering to pretty them up.
Her laughter now was infectious, downright contag ious. In spite of himself, or perhaps because of what the two of them had been through over the last couple of hours, Jaywalker found himself letting go and laughing right along with her. They laughed at his dumb remark, at the fact that they were laughing at it, at their dripping hair and their soaking clothes. They laughed because they were together. This time tomorrow she would be in jail and he'd no longer be a lawyer, but right now they were together, heading to her place for the night, and that was enough.
Or, as Samara would have so eloquently stated, fuck tomorrow.
When they reached her town house, Jaywalker noticed a gray Ford Crown Victoria idling across the street. There were two overfed white guys sitting in it, and the wind shield was fogged up where coffee containers sat on the dashboard. Tom Burke had evidently taken to heart Judge Sobel's suggestion of stationing detectives outside Samara's building. If Samara noticed them, she said noth ing. It took a cop to spot a cop, Jaywalker knew from his DEA days. Then again, Samara had done her share of flirting with the law, and not much got past her. Maybe she'd noticed them and just didn't care.
He let go of her just long enough for her to open the door to her town house. Once inside, they looked at each other in the light and began laughing all over again. They were completely covered with snow, both of them. Their cloth ing, their hair, their eyebrows, their eyelashes.
'You're going to look great when you're old and gray,' said Jaywalker. He'd meant it as a compliment; he'd always loved the contrast of a young face, whether male or female, against a shock of gray hair. But all it earned from Samara was a sharp jab to the ribs. He caught her by the wrist, and found the other one, as well. They were tiny, so tiny he could completely circle his fingers around them. Drawing them against his chest, he wrapped his arms around her. All he'd meant to do was to immobilize her, to tie her hands up and prevent them from inflicting further damage. Or maybe not. But if he'd expected her to struggle, she surprised him once again. He felt her body go soft in his arms, and his reaction was to look down at her, at the precise moment she'd chosen to look up at him. Their eyes locked, and Jay walker found himself experiencing the same sensation he'd felt the very first time he'd seen her, and then the first time he'd seen her all over again, six years later. Only this time they weren't sitting across a desk in his office or squinting through wire-reinforced glass in a visiting room on Rikers Island. This time she was in his arms.
They peeled off each other's snow-caked clothes, drop ping them in a heap on the hallway floor. Almost as if there'd been preset ground rules, Samara stopped when she got to his boxer shorts, Jaywalker at her bra, her dentalfloss thong, and her electronic ankle bracelet. He didn't actually know it was a thong until she turned away from him and motioned him to follow as she began climbing the stairs. God, he thought, looking upward at her, whoever invented those things deserves a Nobel prize. And for the first time in his life, he was prepared to forgive Bill for having been rendered totally helpless in front of Monica. Well, perhaps not exactly in front of her.
They ended up in the den, or perhaps it was the study; Jaywalker couldn't remember. It was a modest-sized room, dominated by a huge fireplace, which in turn was sur rounded by an equally oversize U-shaped sectional sofa.
