Bookman's wake

I was, for once in my life, speechless.

“Wanna hear it again?”

“No…I really don’t think I do.”

“Do you know what I did to the last man who tried to raise a hand to me?”

“I’ve got a feeling I’m about to find out.”

“Think of a hot-oil enema and maybe you can relate to it.”

“Ayee.” Beyond that I didn’t dare laugh. I tried to reach out to her, but she looked at my hand the way you’d look at a spittoon.

“Come on, Trish.”

She stared off at the graying sky.

“Come on.”

She didn’t move.

“Come on. Please.”

“Please what?”

“Get up, tell me it’s okay, and let’s get on with it.”

“Is that the full and complete text of your apology? Now I know why you’re so successful with women.”

“I am sorry. I really am.”

She didn’t respond, so I said it again. “I’m sorry.”

“How sorry are you?”

“I don’t know. How sorry do you want me to be?”

“I want you to do something for me.”

I didn’t say anything. I seemed to know what she wanted.

She gripped my wrist and I pulled her up. She smoothed her skirt with her free hand and said, “I want you to go in and talk to Quintana.”

I moved on past her to the top of the porch.

“I’m serious about that,” she said, losing no ground behind me.

I turned and she was right there, so close we bumped together.

“He’s gonna treat you right. But you’ve got to do it now.”

I unlocked the front door and stood aside so she could go in first. The house smelled musty and looked golden and gray. A light rain had begun, with the sun still shining off to the west, the dark places broken by splashes of streaky sunlight. She came in reluctantly, like an infidel desecrating a holy place, and I followed her on through the front room toward the kitchen. She stopped for a moment, seemed to be listening for something, then turned and looked at me across a shaft of watery yellow haze. “Am I imagining this,” she said, “or is something happening between us?” The question was sudden and improbable, infusing the air with erotic tension. I thought of the midnight supper we had had and how easily she had done the impossible, taken Rita’s place at the other end of the table. “It does seem to be,” I said. But I didn’t yet know the shape it might take or where it might go from here. She lived in Seattle and I lived in Denver, and neither of us had had time to give it much thought.

She looked away, into the clutter of the kitchen. I came up behind her, close enough to touch. But she was not a woman you did that to until you were very sure.

She sensed me there behind her, took a half-step back, and pressed herself lightly against me.

I put an arm around her, then the other. She leaned her head back and I hugged her a little tighter.

“Something’s certainly happening,” she said. “I know that s not my imagination.”

“In Rome they had a term for it.”

“ Lustus profundus ,” she said, stealing it.

“The next best thing to a chariot race.”

She laughed and pulled herself away, moving across the room. “God, I don’t know what to do with you. I wish I knew.”

“Whatever you want. It’s not that complicated. I don’t come with a Japanese instructional booklet.”