'Night, Kate. Thanks for the pizza.'
She stood and watched him drive cautiously down Green Street; then his left signal went on and he turned south toward his own, increasingly seldom-used house in the Sunset district. She lifted her head to the sky, where no stars were visible, and then turned and dug around for her key. Damn and blast, she thought; the one thing in my life just now that I thought was uncomplicated turns out to be on the edge of an explosion. Jules, what the hell is up?
Gideon was prowling about the edge of the patio and heard her come in. When she crossed the living room to the glass doors, he was staring in at her, nose against the glass, his small eyes glittering malevolently from the burglar's mask of his markings. She cracked open the door, tossed out a handful of the multicolored dog biscuits, and watched him waddle over and choose one. He sat with his back to her and crunched his way through one after another, then hoisted himself up and stalked away into the shrubbery. The small dog next door barked hysterically until the neighbor cursed and a door slammed. Silence descended. Kate locked the door and went sober to bed, and it was not until her head was on the pillow that she remembered Al Hawkin's earlier little torpedo, before the revelation about Jules and her problems.
Jesus, she thought, staring up at the pattern of lights on the ceiling, Lee left because I was smothering her, and now Al says I'm still smothering her from a thousand miles away. It's not enough that I nearly killed her; I have to suffocate her, as well.
Nineteen months before, Kate had nearly been the death of Lee. It was Kate's job that gave Lee a bullet in the spine, and the fact that she was against Lee's involvement in the case from the beginning had nothing to do with it. She should have insisted.
But she had not, and Lee had nearly died. The doctors had told Kate that Lee probably would die, but she had not. They had told Lee she was almost certainly a paraplegic, but she regained the use of her feet. Then they warned her that she was about at the limits of what could reasonably be expected in the way of recovery, but Lee no longer listened to doctors. She no longer listened to anyone, for that matter; certainly not to Kate.
The months since the shooting had been a constant round of adjusting to Lee's varying needs. When Lee was feeling strong, Kate would back off; when Lee was immersed in despair, Kate was a bastion of encouragement. A year and a half of guilt and struggle and financial problems, week after week of Lee's agonizingly slow progress, losing ground and clawing back, all of Kate's existence, even at work, geared to her lover's ever-changing needs, her physical suffering and her blind determination and those odd pockets of cold air that appeared without warning, unexpected areas of extreme sensitivity such as Lee's Saab: symbolic, emotionally charged, tabu.
After all these months, Kate no longer paused to think, just reacted automatically in her role as counterpoise, shifting as required, making all the minute adjustments that kept the marriage balanced, because the one thing that could not be allowed, that must not happen no matter the cost, was that the balance collapse. The end of the marriage was the end of everything.
But now, there was no weight to balance. Caring for an invalid might not be addictive, but it was clearly habit-forming. She had to admit that she'd been sent sprawling when her burden was removed; it was time now to adjust, she told herself. Get used to an empty house. There might even be a degree of satisfaction to be found in having only her own wants and needs to take into account.
She lay there, considering Al's brutally honest judgment, running her mind over the texture of her relationship with Lee, becoming more and more convinced that he was right. She was smothering Lee. She would stop it. She contemplated how she would go about freeing Lee and herself, and as she lay there, she grew more awake every minute, until she was twitching as if she'd had two or three double espressos rather than a cup of weak decaffeinated coffee. Finally, she threw off the covers, went into Lee's study, and began to write a letter.
It was a long letter, full of love and understanding, of apology and the commitment to change for the better. The phrases flowed, two pages filled, three: 'Lee,' she wrote, 'I am so grateful to Al for pointing out what I was doing; it must have been intolerable to you, even though you knew I was only trying to help. But I'm aware of it now, and I promise to keep hands off your life. I'll let you walk through the SoMa district at midnight if you want; I'll —'
She stood up so rapidly, the chair fell over backward, and she hurled the pen across the room and took the letter and tore it down the middle, then again, and a third time. She walked out of the study, turning off the lights behind her, then, picking up a warm blanket from her bed, went out onto the balcony. There she sat, bundled up, looking out across the northern edges of the city at the waters of the Golden Gate, reflected in lights from shore and ship and the island opposite.
Yes, Al, I'm terrified. I'm so angry at her, I never want to see her again, but if she doesn't come back, I don't know what I'll do. I can't imagine life without her; it would be like imagining life without air. I love her and I hate her and I'm lost, completely lost without her, and all I can do is wait for her to tell me what she is going to do with me.
She slept, finally, and woke in the deck chair, with a mocking-bird singing and Saturday's sun coming up. She watched the dawn, and as the sky lightened, her inner decision dawned as well, until, with a peculiar mixture of bitter satisfaction and gleeful mischief, she knew what she was going to do.
Sunday morning, Al Hawkin pulled open the door of his fiancee's apartment and stood blinking at the apparition in the hallway. He had reassured himself through the peephole that the unidentifiable figure had no visible weapon, and now he pulled the belt of his robe a bit tighter and ran a hand across his grizzled hair.
'Can I help you with something, er, ma'am?' he asked uncertainly. 'What apartment number were you —' The figure before him reached a gloved hand up to the helmet strap, bent over to remove it, and straightened up, shaking her hair out of her face. Even then, for a split second he failed to recognize her; she had more life in her face than he'd ever seen there.
'Kate!' She grinned at him, glowing with enthusiasm and exuding waves of fresh air. He ran an eye over her, new boots, new gloves, old leather bomber jacket a bit snug around the waist, the massive new helmet under one arm. 'Let me guess,' he said, stepping back to let her in. 'You bought your new car. What kind?'
Jules came out of the kitchen behind him and stopped dead. 'Why are you wearing that outfit, Kate?' she asked, but Kate answered her partner.
'A Kawasaki.'
'Kawasaki doesn't make an automobile,' he said, studying her leather jacket.
'By God, the man's a detective.'
'You're not thinking of taking Jules out on it?'
A cry of protest rose from the kitchen door, but Kate ignored it. 'Of course not,' she said, and her grin became even wider. 'Can I borrow the car keys, Dad?'
OCTOBER,
NOVEMBER
FIVE
October came. Jon arrived back from Boston and London, flitted around the edge of Kate's vision for a few days, and, before she could catch hold of him, was off to Mexico with his friend. Short letters from Lee: She was well, getting stronger. Yesterday she'd dug clams for dinner; had cut a cord of stove wood already, could Kate believe that? And the trees were so beautiful, so calming. Finding herself, yet still filled with confusion, and sorry, so very sorry, to be putting Kate through all this, but…
But she still couldn't say when she'd be home.
In October, Kate's baffled anguish began to turn, to harden. Her letters north became shorter, sharper. She bruised her thigh once too often on Lee's chair lift at the top of the stairs, and in a fury at two o'clock one morning she took a wrench to it, dismantled it, and heaved the seat, followed by the wrench, into Lee's room, the room that had once been theirs. The next things to go were Lee's books in the dining room, again into Lee's room. She began deliberately to leave the dishes in the sink overnight, for two nights, a thing neither Lee nor Jon could have tolerated. She even began to leave the bed unmade and the cap off the toothpaste.
October settled into a pattern of work and home. Her new form of transport set off another flurry of raucous comments and irritating harassments from her co-workers, and she lost count of the number of Xeroxed articles about Dykes on Bikes she had found on her desk or tucked into the cycle, but she had, after all, expected something
