was even more startling for its stark simplicity. People lived on these streets. Teens were corralled into prostitution on these corners. There was a great deal more lost out there every day than in all the glittering casinos combined. I wanted people to recognize and think about that.
“We all become who we need to in order to survive,” I said stiffly.
“And who have you become, Joanna? A warrior? Some superwoman bent on vengeance who needs no one and nothing?”
Strange choice of words, I thought, pursing my lips. “Criticizing?”
“Simply asking.” But we both knew there was nothing simple about it.
“I was changed too, Ben,” I said, taking up the offense. “When someone holds out their hand to me I don’t grab it readily. I’m always on the lookout for the fist behind their back.” My eyes automatically traveled to the lone man sitting at the bar.
“Most women don’t think that way.”
“Yeah, and I envy those women. I even remember, vaguely, what it was to be one of them.” I leaned back in my chair and blew out a long breath, aware that I sounded way too bitter to be just twenty-five. “But more than envy them, Ben, I fear for them. I especially fear for the ones who will become like me.”
We used our waiter’s return with the food and the wine as an excuse not to talk, but when we were alone again, Ben said, “There’s no one like you, Jo.”
I rammed my fork into my pasta. “Don’t try and sweet-talk me now. You’ve pissed me off.”
He smiled and I wished he wouldn’t. I felt myself toeing that precipice again.
“The knowledge of violence is my playmate, Ben,” I said, twirling angel hair around my fork. “I bed down with it in the evening and wake with it again in the morning. That’s never going to change.”
“I know about violence, Jo. Seeing what I see every day on the job…” He shook his head, poured wine into our glasses, and took a sip, his eyes growing dark. “It’s enough to make me want to head out onto the streets with you instead.”
I drew back. “But that’s—”
“Wrong?” he finished for me, mistaking my puzzlement for disagreement. “Why? How’s it different from the way you scour the streets? Searching. Stalking.”
“I take photos. I just look. I’ve never…touched someone,” I lied. I had. Once. But to be fair, he’d touched me first.
“You think I shouldn’t feel this way because of my badge.” It was a statement, not a question.
His defensiveness intrigued me, even as it gave me pause. “That badge gives you access, power over other people.” Maybe I was oversensitive to the power one person chose to wield over others just because he could, but this seemed pretty straightforward to me.
But Ben was already shaking his head, breaking a piece of bread apart in his hand, dipping it in the oil. “What this badge gives me is a second pair of eyes. Good thing too, because if I had to filter every foul rotted thing I see in this city through my own eyes I’d go mad. But this way it’s bearable. It won’t climb into me.”
Then what was that look? I wanted to ask him. What was that flicker I saw skirting his gaze, adding a hard glint to his narrowed eyes?
It occurred to me then that this was just as much of a blind date as the one with Ajax. I didn’t know who Ben really was. I knew the boy he used to be—the one tormented by his father, disappointed by his mother—but where had the past ten years taken him? What had he been doing? Why did he get divorced? And when did he get the tribal tattoo I’d seen branding his left shoulder when he reached for the bread?
“Has it ever, Ben?” I said, thinking his answer might tell me a little about all those things. “Gotten into you, I mean?”
He didn’t reply for a while, staring into the flame of our hurricane lamp as he chose his words carefully. “There was this call last week, the third time a unit was sent to this guy’s house in a month. Typical asshole wife- beater…except this time he’d decided to beat on their two-year-old son. So the boys show up, he greets them with open arms, throws the door open, calls them by name. ‘Hey, Harry! Hey, Patrick! How ya doin’?’”
Ben shook his head in disgust, gesturing with his fork. “Invites them right in because he knows his wife isn’t going to say shit. Meanwhile, the only thing holding that boy’s left leg together was his unbroken flesh. The hammer was right there on the coffee table.”
“Oh my God.”
“Yeah,” Ben said, still shaking his head. “And that prick is standing there with this shit-eating grin because we know he did it, he knows we know, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.
“So the boy gets taken to the hospital, patched up—though everyone knows it’s like putting a Band-Aid over a bullet wound—and sent home with that bitch who won’t lift a hand or say a word to save him.”
“Ben,” I said softly, knowing he wasn’t really talking about that woman, but another. “That’s not fair.”
He looked at me for a moment, then his expression cleared and he shook his head on a sigh. “No, maybe not. But it’s not fair having to watch this man go free either, hoping next time he’ll make a mistake. That there’ll be a witness around who isn’t too scared or young to speak up against him. And that’s what really gets me. Sometimes, all I want is to be that witness.”
I nodded, because I could see what he was saying, easily. What was a little bit of patty cake with some bastard’s face when he’d just sent his kid to the E.R.? It wasn’t the same, Ben was right about that. Child abuse and wanting a little payback weren’t even in the same universe.
But it still made me take a second look at the man across from me. Where was the boy who’d seen everything in terms of black and white? When had he become comfortable with that particular shade of gray? Granted, most people never even had to entertain these sort of moral questions. His job planted him firmly in that muddled area, and who was to say I wouldn’t feel the same? That I too would need, as he called it, a second pair of eyes?
There was silence again, and when the scraping of our forks across the plates became the loudest thing in the room, I began to fear we’d reached an impasse, that this was where it would end between us—the idea of violence between us—the same as it had all those years ago.
“How’s Olivia these days?”
Back to neutral territory, I thought, not knowing whether that made me want to laugh or cry. “Great,” I managed, over the lump that’d grown in my throat. “She’s an engineer at a space sciences laboratory. She devises innovative new ways to enhance sexual performance in a weightless environment.”
“Remind me not to fly NASA.”
I had to smile at that. Ben was one of the few guys who had never fallen under Olivia’s spell, and believe me, he was in a definite minority. Then again, Ben Traina had only ever had eyes for me.
“She’s still beautiful and flighty and trusting,” I said, aware of those eyes on me now. I thought about that for a moment. “You’re one of the few people who never put her down, you know that? I always loved that about you.”
He looked surprised. “Why would I? She’s as beautiful inside as she is out. Tough in her own way too.”
“Yeah, but nobody else seems to realize that.”
“Maybe it’s because she doesn’t let them.” At my raised brow, he said, “Hey, you’re the one who said we all become who we need to be in order to survive.”
True. I nodded, though it made me wonder again. Who had he become?
“Anyway,” he said, laughing self-consciously, like he knew what I was thinking, “I don’t want to talk about Olivia tonight. Go back to what you always loved about me.”
That surprised another laugh out of me. “Narcissist.”
“Damn right.”
I decided to risk a little. “I can’t tell you everything,” I said, leaning forward. “I’d need all night and we don’t have time.”
