Smoke

darkness with only the light from the living room shining.

“Our buyer got made and we had to go in fast. I killed a sixteen-year-old kid. He turned a MAC M10 on us, I guess thinking he’d shoot his way out; he could have killed us all.”

“I didn’t hear about it,” she said, standing and moving toward him. She could see the weight of it on him.

“It was a good shooting,” he said, taking a long draw on the beer and leaning against the counter. She moved near him and put a hand on his arm.

“I’m being investigated, of course,” he said with a slow shrug. “But I know I had no choice. Still… when I fired, I only saw that gun. When he was down, all I could see was this skinny kid lying there, bleeding out. He didn’t even have any hair on his face.”

She didn’t say anything, just waited for him to go on.

“He knew he was going to die,” said Dylan quietly. “He was scared.”

He stared at the kitchen wall as if it were all playing out for him there. His face was expressionless and pale but she could see the hand that held his beer shaking just slightly. In her years on the job, Jesamyn had only drawn her weapon twice and never fired it in the line of duty. Dylan worked buy-and-bust up in the South Bronx. It was one of the riskiest possible details. A cop goes undercover to buy drugs from dealers and once the purchase is made, a team moves in and makes the collar. Two cops had died last year in his precinct. But if you did your time, it was two years to a gold shield, something Dylan wanted badly. He envied Jesamyn’s quick rise to detective and it was one of the things that had contributed to the end of their marriage.

“I just thought about Ben and you all night last night,” he said, lowering his eyes to her face. “While I was in the station, waiting for my PBA rep-I just had a lot of time to think. I watched the life drain from someone. It just left him so easily and when he was dead, there was like this shuddering and he was just gone. There was no mistaking it, you know, that life had left.”

He rubbed his eyes like he was trying to wipe the memory from them. Jesamyn stayed silent; she was stunned. She’d never heard him talk the way he was talking or look the way he looked. So sad and lost.

“I looked around and there were all these drugs on the table. And this gun in his hand. He had all this jewelry on and these expensive sneakers and leather coat. And it all just seemed so pointless. Like I’d taken this life because of all this stuff.”

He didn’t say anything else but searched her face like he was looking for something he needed there. She moved into him, wrapped her arms around him. He put the beer down and held onto her as tightly as he ever had in their years together. She felt the magnetic draw of their sexual chemistry and the pull of his connection to her heart.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking up at him. “Are you okay?”

“I will be. I just needed to see him, you know? And you. I needed to remember what was real.”

She pulled away from him and walked into the living room. She needed to get away from him. She wanted to comfort him but it was too easy to get pulled into his universe, to let that familiarity and desire draw her back into his thrall. She sat on the couch and curled her legs up. He sat across from her.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to put the moves on you tonight, Jez. I just need to be here awhile, okay.”

She nodded and felt a wash of relief laced with disappointment.

“Okay,” she said, getting up with a nod. She walked to the hall closet and withdrew a blanket and pillows, brought them back to the couch. She stood beside Dylan and put a hand on his strong shoulder, touched the back of his neck. The urge to care for him was as strong as it had ever been.

“You can stay here tonight if you want, Dylan,” she said. “On the couch. Just be gone when he gets up, okay? I don’t want him to get confused.”

“Thanks, Jez,” he said looking up to her and taking her hand. “I never deserved you. Don’t think I don’t know that.”

She smiled, kissed him on the top of the head. “We’ve both made mistakes.”

Beware the man who thinks he doesn’t deserve you, her mother had famously warned. He knows himself better than you do.

It wasn’t even an hour before she saw him standing in her doorway. She didn’t stop him as he entered her room and closed the door.

“I’m sorry,” he said, sitting beside her. She moved easily into his arms and in the next moment, his lips were on her. There was something desperate about the way he kissed her and something primal within her responded to him the way she always had. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she chastised herself. But he felt too damn good to turn away. His soft, warm skin, the strong, defined muscles in his chest, her loneliness, her love for the man who had given her Benjamin, all of these elements formed a powerful alchemy that she could never resist.

He’d drifted off after making love to Katrina; it wasn’t like him. He didn’t like to linger at her place, but she’d let him sleep awhile. When he opened his eyes, she lay beside him on her side, propped up on her elbow. A blue light glowed in her window from the sign for an all-night livery cab company across the street. Her perfectly round breasts with rosebud nipples defied gravity, her thick, honey-colored hair draped over her slender shoulder and neck. The shadows from outside, the swaying branches of a tree, a passing car, drifted over her face and body, the wall behind her. She was so beautiful he could almost imagine loving her.

“You want to stay?” she asked.

“No,” he said, sitting up. “Thanks.” He smiled at her and touched her arm.

“You can, you know,” she said, holding onto his hand for a second. “I don’t have anyone else tonight.”

He looked at her; the expression on her face was open, sincere. She was young; he wasn’t sure how young. He’d never asked. He guessed in her early twenties. He wondered for a moment what it would be like to stay in her arms, to wake up beside her.

“I should go,” he said and rose, pulling on his boxers.

He saw her nod and get up, wrap herself in a purple silk robe. “I like it when you’re here, Mateo. I feel safe,” she said. “I know you’re a good man.”

He thought her standards must be pretty low, but he was not cruel enough to say it even as a joke. “No one has the right to hurt you, Katrina,” he said, turning to look at her. “If anyone does, or even threatens, you let me know.”

She smiled at him. “See what I mean,” she said. She walked over to the mirror and took a brush from the vanity there. She ran it through her hair.

“No one hurts me.” She gazed at him in the mirror with heavy-lidded eyes. “Don’t worry, Mateo.”

He watched her ass. It was perfect. Heart-shaped and soft as a down pillow. The sight of it beneath the purple silk made him go hard again. He turned away as he buttoned his shirt so she wouldn’t see.

When he was dressed, he walked over to her with two hundred-dollar bills folded in half.

“It’s too much, Mateo,” she said with a pout and a shake of her head. Her hair flipped prettily as her tiny hands, soft and carefully manicured, reached for the cash.

“Take it. Please,” he said, giving her a soft kiss on the mouth. It was a dance that they did. Somehow she knew he needed her to act like he didn’t have to pay. Maybe all men who came to see her needed that. But she had a way of making him feel like she wanted him there. He spent a lot of time wondering if she was sincere or not. He’d never been with a woman in this way before. He’d never paid for it. There were things about it that he liked. There were things about it that he hated. But he kept coming back.

At the door, she kissed him again and they both pretended that they didn’t hear her cell phone ring in her purse. On the stairs, he heard the tinkle of her laughter like ice cubes in a glass at a party to which he hadn’t been invited. He pretended it didn’t bother him as he got into his car where his own cell phone was ringing.

“What are you doing up?” he answered, seeing Jez’s number on the caller ID. It was nearly one in the morning.

“I wanted to tell you about something I saw on the news before I forgot. Did you hear about a weird shooting in Riverdale on Halloween?”

“Sounds vaguely familiar. It was a hoax though, wasn’t it?”

“I guess. Maybe,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “But I saw this item on the news that the police are looking for information. I thought we could at least get some info, a description of the woman who was supposedly shot.”