“And how about that armoire, huh?” He jerked his head at the cherry cabinet across the room. “Made to order, all by yours truly. With big drawers for my best girl’s shirts and little drawers for her lovely undies. Just like you asked, right?”
I didn’t say anything. I remembered him refinishing the armoire, hand-rubbing it with a chamois. I tried not to think about how good his fingertips felt on my leg.
“Wasn’t it just like you asked? Wasn’t it exactly how you wanted it? With the pull-out drawer for your extra decks of cards?”
I wanted to smile, but it caught in my throat. “Not for cards, you.”
“For poker chips then. Poker chips to your heart’s content.”
“Not for chips, either.”
“But it’s a pull-out drawer, is it not?”
“Paul-”
“Your Honor, please direct the witness to answer the question.” He caressed my leg. “My Honor says you have to answer. Yes or no.” He liked to play lawyer and was good at it, from a lifetime of hanging around judges, lawyers, and courthouses.
“Yes.”
“I rest my case. Call your next witness.”
“Give me a break.”
The light from the bedside lamp gave his amused expression a soft glow, and he rolled onto his side and played with my knee. “Do you still like this?” he asked softly.
I tried not to pay attention to the sensation of his touch or to his chest, twisted across the white bedspread toward me. I kept thinking of the doctor’s letter.
“Huh? Do you like this, Rita? You used to like it when I did this.”
I knew where he was going. I had a dim memory of it, growing more vivid with each stroke of his hand, like ember to flame. “I used to like a lot of things, Paul.”
“I know. I remember them all.” His hand traveled up to my thigh. “It wasn’t so long ago, you know.”
“Yes, it was.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“It was very long ago. When you liked me and I liked you.” I heard bitterness in my voice.
He drew a line up from my knee with his forefinger. “I never stopped liking you. I like you still. But you stopped liking me, and I’m trying to get you back.” He hoisted himself toward me, and his towel slipped down.
I averted my eyes as if he were a stranger. “You can’t get me back.”
He kissed my knee before I could object. “You wanted me on the first date, remember? I made you a salad for dinner and you were smitten, you said, and you wanted to make love. The first date, the very
I laughed, the memory was so unexpected. It dawned bright as daybreak, and as undeniable.
“Do you remember what I told you when you asked me, flat-out?”
I closed my eyes and remembered. His kiss traveled to the inside of my knee, slower this time, slightly wet.
“Miss Morrone, are you going to answer the question or do I have to ask My Honor to put you in jail?” His mouth moved along the inside of my leg, kissing me like he had that night in his apartment. The lights had been off. I’d turned them off, the way I liked it.
“No,” I said. “Paul-”
“I told you you had the most beautiful legs I’d ever seen, and as much as I wanted to know more about them, I liked you altogether too much to do that on the first date.”
I kept my eyes closed, remembering. His kisses passed my knee and made a trail on the inside of my thigh. I felt myself easing back into the pillow while he kissed me, this first date that had so much promise. He had thrilled me. An architect with a pedigree and an open heart.
“I told you I thought I was falling in love with you, do you remember? That I was in it for the long run.” I felt his kiss move up my thigh, under my robe. The notepad slipped from my lap and the sound it made as it fell to the carpet came from some other time and place. “I had to put you out that night, like a cat.”
He always said that,
“I love you,” he said, and I let myself hear it. Let myself believe it for just a moment. It pushed my problems away, swept aside Fiske and Patricia, my managing partner, and my new HPV virus. I wanted to forget it all, get lost for a while. Slip away. No one had to know, no one had to see. Not even me. I reached up and switched off the light.
“Do you remember what else I told you that night?” he asked, his voice soft in the darkness. Familiar. Like his sigh, and the throatier sound that would come later. “That it wasn’t one night, it was forever.” His mouth reached the top of my thighs, and he kissed them until my legs parted.
I remembered. It was the first date, then the first time we made love. Then the time after that and the time after that, too. All the times, all of the same piece, seamless. When the loving was still there and so palpable you could feel it like the bones on his back when he was on you. You could hear it in the sounds you made, and in his, too, deeper. You could feel it in the slickness between you, belly-level, in summer, and the way it warmed your feet in winter, no matter how cold it was.
That’s what I remembered, all of it came flooding back, and in a minute it was inside me, filling me up, suffusing me with good feeling.
He was right about one thing. I loved him still.
If I could think back.
And the lights were off.
9
The office wall was crowded with diplomas and certificates and the slick desktop reflected the squat and omnipotent silhouette of a unique breed of high roller: the managing partner of a law firm. I’d first met Ed “Mack” Macklin when I was a young associate and he had kissed off the last firm that wouldn’t ante up every time he sneezed. Mack became my mentor, although I never realized before this moment how much he resembled Edward G. Robinson. But maybe that was because I was feeling like the Cincinnati Kid.
“Why are you getting out of the
“The
“The judge called me last night, Rita. He was very disappointed. Said he expects us to stand behind him if he’s charged with murder.”
“Judge Hamilton called you at home?” Fiske was making all the right moves, and I was the sacrificial pawn. “What time did he call?”
“What’s the difference? He’s a friend.”
“Of yours? Since when?”