“I know, but I do.” Kristin managed a right-angle turn without touching the brake.
Blume surprised himself with his next statement. “I could come with you. Get my broken back teeth fixed. Americans are good at dentistry. Teeth are important there.”
She turned and smiled. “You could.”
“I’ve got a lot of saved holiday time. Sick leave, too, if I choose. I just need to finish this case.”
“How’s that going?”
Blume finally clicked his seatbelt into place. “Almost there. All we have to do is catch the person responsible.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all. But I think everyone is more interested in closing the case as it is. I don’t think they want to believe in my killer.”
“Your killer. That’s an unlucky way of putting it.” Kristin accelerated as a light turned amber, then thought better of it and braked hard. “So what d’you think of the wife? It’s almost like not catching her husband’s killer is a favor.”
“It’s complicated. Well, the thing itself isn’t all that complicated. The people are. People are complicated.”
“Corrupt, you mean.”
“That, too,” he agreed. “Where in the States?”
“New York, then Washington, and then Vermont.”
“I used to be from Seattle,” said Blume.
“Used to be. You don’t feel American?”
“Sometimes I do.”
“Can you understand me if I say I am happy to be American?” Kristin emphasized her happiness by blasting the horn at two youths who were jay-walking their way across the road.
Blume said, “Happy? I thought we were supposed to be proud to be American. Happiness is something we pursue. Like criminals.”
“The sort of people who go around saying they’re proud to be American are embarrassing for those of us who have reason to be.”
“ ‘An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it,’ ” quoted Blume. His plastered arm prevented him from grabbing on to the assist grip above the door, so he had to clutch the dashboard as Kristin took another left.
“Very good. That’s Don Marquis. America used to have a lot more people like him in it.”
“I didn’t know who had said it,” admitted Blume.
“Now you do.”
“Not really. I still don’t know who Don Marquis was.”
“He was a midwesterner.”
“Oh. Don as in… Don. Not a priest then.”
Twenty minutes later, Kristin parked. She got out with him, accompanied him across the courtyard. When they arrived at the front door of Blume’s building, she remarked, “You look like Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon with your arm like that. Your nose helps, too. Maybe you want to have it seen to?”
When they reached the apartment, Blume hurried into his parents’ study and leafed through their LPs. He put a scratched copy of Wavelength on the old Ferguson turntable, Van Morrison sang “Hungry for Your Love,” and she appeared in the frame of the door.
Kristin smiled. “You’re supposed to seduce, then abandon, not the other way around.”
She walked in, sat down beside him on the old velvet couch his mother used to like. Words alone are certain good, he thought, then couldn’t think of any. He and Kristin sat in the study studying one another. Her glances seemed tinged with hostility, but her knees were inches from his. Blume wanted to bury his neck and his breast and his arms in her bright hair.
“I don’t like this shrine,” said Kristin.
“What shrine?”
“This place. Your parents’ undisturbed study. I don’t like it.”
“Oh.”
Kristin crossed her legs, brushing the side of his leg. She was wearing a simple black cotton skirt, and Blume felt his groin, stomach, and chest twinge and pulse as he glimpsed the inside of her thigh. He could see the underside of her calf tauten and relax as she circled her foot.
“You have a big, lost, lonely, angry face.”
She said it gently, without contempt.
“No. I’m OK. I’ve been here a long time. I’m not lost anymore.” Blume switched to Italian, bringing out his Roman accent to the full: “Pure tu, pero, non c’hai nemmanco l’ombra di un’accento se non vuoi.”
She touched the side of his face with the back of her hand. “I thought you’d prefer it if my Italian sounded a bit more beginner’s level, bring out your protective side. But, yes, I’m pretty good. I do a lot of interpreting of Italians who think they can speak English. It’s amazing how many of them believe that.”
“You interpret into Italian, too? You can do that?”
Kristin replied in perfect Roman dialect: “Er mestier mio e a fa’ capi’ fra loro du’ persone che parleno lingue differenti; e cosi ripeto a tutt’e due quello che je farebbe comodo d’ ave’ detto. I’m a diplomat.”
“Ammazza,” said Blume. “You still look American, though.” He lowered his gaze to her ankles and the faded geometry on his mother’s thinning carpet, and said, “You said you were a legat. Do you carry an FBI badge around?”
“What do you think?”
“I bet you don’t.”
Kristin stood up, undid the bottom button of her green silk blouse, and put her hand into the waistband of her skirt, briefly exposing her navel.
Then she pulled out what Blume at first took to be part of the inner lining of the skirt, but turned out to be a black silk bag.
“It’s not some special-issue FBI thing,” she said in response to his stare.
“It’s a perfectly ordinary Eagle Creek money belt.”
“I wasn’t looking at the belt.”
She unzipped the bag, pulled out a plastic-covered ID badge, and tossed it to him. He could feel the warmth of her body on it. He cupped it in his hands, then examined the gold-and-blue emblem.
“Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity,” he read out. “The FBI seal is the same as the European Union flag.”
“Here.” She held out her hand, and he put the card into it.
Her green blouse still hung loose, and the silk money bag sat on the sofa between them like a discarded undergarment. Blume felt suddenly parched.
“I’m going for a glass of water. Can I offer you something?” Blume moved over to the door.
“No, thanks.”
When he returned to the study holding a glass, Kristin had stood up and was standing in the doorway. The slight breeze flowing from the kitchen window rippled her blouse.
“It’s stuffy in there.”
“My shrine, as you called it.”
He set down the glass and kissed her. A fractional thought or phrase crossed his mind, something to do with lips sucking forth his soul, but flew completely out of his mind when he felt her mouth part under the pressure. All thoughts drained out of him, to be replaced by a single, all-embracing sense of joyful disbelief. With his one functional arm, he fumbled at her blouse. The straps of her bra felt rough and tight against her skin. He pushed and she walked backward into the room. He guided her feet over the creases and furrows of the Persian carpet without allowing her to fall until they reached the sofa. He labored at unbuttoning her blouse, then pulled down her bra until it was below her breasts, plumping them up. Kristin held up a warning finger, sat up and deftly released the fastener at the back while Blume gazed transfixed by a whirl of light freckles running down from her right shoulder. He started pulling at her skirt. It bunched and folded and rose, but he did not seem to be able to reach the end of it. Frustrated, he pulled his arm out of its sling and tried to get a better purchase on the sofa.
