“Are you telling my readers you have nothing to hide?”
“I'm not telling your readers anything. You can tell them whatever crap you want, just like Randall did.”
“What did you think of him?”
“Randall? I already told you.”
She shook her head, her soft hair swaying. “McCaffery.”
One missed beat, and then: “He was a hero.”
As though he hadn't answered, with no change of tone, just the way he himself would have done it, she repeated, “What did you think of him?”
BOYS' OWN BOOK
Chapter 12
By the time Jimmy gets home, Marian's there already. She has her own place, shares it with two other girls, because how would that look, if she just moved right in with him? And on the new job she stays late a lot, and Jimmy's working straight tours, so it's not that often they get to spend the night together. Jimmy sees her through the window as he's coming down the stairs from the sidewalk, stops a minute just to look at her.
She's reading, bare legs crossed Indian-style on the big leather chair. Her back's to Jimmy. The light from the lamp is soft on the side of her face, makes little swells and shadows on her T-shirt. As he watches, her black hair —short, sharp, simpler than the other girls wear theirs—sweeps across her cheek. She lifts a hand to tuck it away again: she doesn't like to be distracted, she always says, when she's reading. So many different colors of black in Marian's hair: this has always amazed Jimmy, and amazes him now.
Marian looks up, sees him through the window, smiles. He realizes he's grinning like a kid, wonders how long he's been doing that.
They kiss at the door, before they speak. The night's gotten cool, but Jimmy only realizes this when his hand's touching Marian. He's aware—he's always been aware—of the solidity under the creaminess of her flesh: Marian plays volleyball with her girlfriends, she rides her bike everywhere, in high school she was on the girls' softball team, she was captain. All that just makes her skin's silky softness better for Jimmy, like it was somehow honest, somehow earned.
Jimmy's other hand can't resist touching Marian's midnight hair.
Marian's lips play with Jimmy's, but she does not embrace him: she snakes her arms around him, slips her hands into the back pockets of his jeans, moves him toward her that way.
Oh God, thinks Jimmy.
After, they lie in the darkness for a while, just together. This is not a deep, heavy darkness, like the smoke at the center of a fire, all directions the same and the blasting air itself almost solid, itself your enemy; not like your dreams, where your eyes are open, wide open, but you can't see anything and you try to shout, scream, tell someone but you make no sound. This is just the apartment in the basement of where the Cooleys live, the apartment that's Jimmy's now. It doesn't get dark that way here.
Beyond the swaying, half-closed curtains, the soft glow from the Cooleys' porch light is backed up by lights from other porches and yards, by lit windows in the neighbors' places, and by streetlights that rise over the rooftops. The place is quiet, but the silence never gets so huge you could wander around lost in it. It's bordered, hemmed in, by a dog's bark, someone's laugh, the left-to-right flare of a car radio in the street out front.
So, Superman, Marian says to Jimmy, and her voice close to his ear sounds to him the same way her skin feels, satin with metal under it, though he doesn't think it's iron under her voice like under her skin, he thinks it's silver, maybe gold. She asks him, How many people did you save today?
'Bout a hundred, says Jimmy.
Marian gives him a poke in the ribs. You weren't even on duty today.
That's how I saved them. Stayed out of their way.
Marian laughs, nibbles on his ear.
How about you, he says, you save anyone?
Nope, slow day. She rearranges the sheet they're under, smooths it. I tutored that little Jeanine, worked on her reading, but that kid, she doesn't even need me, Jimmy. She'll do great, no matter what.
Jimmy grunts. Wasn't for you, she'd end up like her old lady. Any chance that kid has, it's because you made a project out of her.
Well, she's a good kid. She can't help it if her whole family is bums.
I know, Jimmy says. It's not that. It's more like, on one side is you, on the other side is her whole family and her whole life. Jimmy's hands, palms up, balance above the sheet like scales; one rises, one falls.
Yes, I know. Marian nods. But you can't tell. One little pebble might do the trick. You can't tell unless you put it there.
The tip of Marian's finger barely touches the palm of Jimmy's up hand. She draws little delicate circles. Then she presses, pushing down.
Jimmy's hand resists. What if it doesn't? he asks. Do the trick?
