by Robert Daley
"There's an Italian restaurant on the corner," he said, but now he sounded much less sure of himself, as if convinced in advance that she would refuse. "Do you like Italian food?”
His discomfort was oddly pleasing. To put him at ease she smiled and said: "I like everything about the Italians.” But when she realized how this sounded she was appalled at herself. "I mean--” But it was damage that could not be undone so she stopped.
"We can order a bottle of wine, and maybe we can make each other laugh.” He added hesitantly, "and if we can't, at least we can talk about the case.”
She said: "I'm not sure whether I want to talk about it, or don't want to talk about it."
"Well, what do you say?” It seemed to her he was almost pleading.
For various reasons, sitting in a restaurant with him seemed unwise.
"I'm not exactly dressed for it.” She looked down at herself.
He looked down at her too. Again it was in no way objectionable. He seemed to acknowledge who she was, what she looked like. In his eyes she read acceptance on her own terms.
This seemed to her exceedingly strange.
"Change into something. I'll wait."
McGillis was parked outside her door, and would see them come out together. She did not want that. If he had seen Barone come in, probably he had the clock on them already.
Her decision was not to go to lunch with him. Instead she should get rid of him as quickly as possible.
He said: "When we arrested Epps I was supposed to be sitting on the fire escape outside his window with my gun cocked. He wouldn't have been in a position to do anything except surrender. I never expected to meet him coming across a rooftop firing shots at me."
He looked away. "All the arrests I've made, I never was shot at. I've taken weapons off guys who were going at their wives in family fights. I've arrested many guys who were armed. One time we had a call. Stickup in a liquor store. I walked in on two guys with guns and disarmed both of them. Sure I was scared, but not like on that rooftop."
"Sit down," Karen said, gesturing toward the sofa, and she busied herself putting the vacuum away, the dust rag, the can of Endust. She put the silver back in the breakfront, and the polish under the kitchen sink. She sniffed the stink of silver polish on her fingers and put the faucet on and washed her hands.
All this time they talked of the trial, or rather Barone did, coming to stand in the kitchen doorway when she was in there, retreating when she came out. She had conducted the trial impeccably, he told her. Just because the jury had been out a few days was no reason to fear the worst, no reason to blame herself for some imagined failing in the way she conducted the trial.
Karen nodded, for this was what she needed to hear.
But the fact remained that there had been no verdict for three days. "Then why hasn't the jury convicted?" she asked.
"They will. Relax."
By now they were sitting on the sofa, their knees pointed toward each other but not touching. Suddenly he jumped up, reached down for her hand and pulled her to her feet.
His touch had sent a jolt through her. My God, she thought, he's going to lead me into the bedroom. It's impossible. He's a detective and I'm district attorney of New York County. He wouldn't dare.
"Come on," he said, and led her down the hall. The bedroom was indeed the direction in which they were headed.
"Change your clothes, and let's go out to lunch," he said. He had stopped in the doorway, as if he planned to stand there and watch her do it. All she had to do was peel off her sweaty t-shirt. If she did, then whatever would happen, would happen.
"Lunch?" she said.
"It's not a fancy restaurant," he said. "You don't have to get dressed up. Pants and a sweater will be fine."
"The telephone. I mean--” Was he going to go to the closet, pick the clothes out for her, help her into them? She freed her hand. It was a long time since she had felt hunted, and she no longer knew how to handle it. "I really don't think I can leave the apartment," she said. "I mean I can't go out. I don't want to be too far from the phone.” It was a long ragged speech. Avoiding his eyes, she tried to regain control of her breathing.
"Maybe I can fix something here," she said, moving past him out into the hall. I don't know what there is. I mean--"
She was in the kitchen and he was right behind her. She was in shorts and a t-shirt and barefoot, and this strange man, this detective was right behind her.
She opened the fridge and bent over to peer into it.
"Would you like a beer?"
"A beer would be nice.”
He was at her shoulder, both of them looking into the open fridge. For some reason she was vulnerable today, she did not know why. She was reasonably certain he sensed it.
He said: "I don't want to put you to any trouble."
Not much you don't, she thought, and turned with the beer bottle in her hand and it slipped and she grabbed for it and missed and it crashed to the floor and exploded, soaking her to the shins.
She began pulling at the roller of paper towels. "I'll just clean that up, won't take a moment."
"It's my fault," he said.
"It's not your fault, I dropped it."
"Let me do it.”
She was frantically sopping up beer. "I don't know what's the matter with me. I'm not normally a clumsy person."
He said: "Look at your feet.” He tore off fresh towels. She felt his hands on her feet, her shins. It made her start blinking.
He stood up and they gazed at each other.
She looked away. She said: "It's going under the stove," and bent to stop it, and then began to push the shards of glass into a central spot, dropping wads of sodden paper into the sink. Barone in his nice suit was bent over beside her. But Karen's fingers had ceased to bend properly, she was working too fast, and she knew before she looked that a splinter of glass had become imbedded in her thumb.
Finally the shards were in the garbage pail, the wrung out paper towels as well. Barone washed his hands in the sink, and then she did.
"You're bleeding," he said.
She held her thumb under the water. "I think there's a piece of glass in it."
He held her hand and studied it. Finally she pulled her hand back, found band aids and a tweezers in one of the cabinets and moved out to the living room where there was more light and sat down on the sofa and tried to work on her thumb. Barone was beside her sitting almost in her lap. It was her right thumb, and she couldn't make her left hand work the tweezers properly, they seemed to be trembling.
He said: "I'll do that for you."
She said: "I'm not much good with my left hand, unfortunately.”
With her hand gripped in his, he delicately probed her thumb. Their heads were very close together. It could not be helped, she could not do it herself, and the splinter had to come out, didn't it. In a moment he lifted the tweezers, holding up a sliver of glass to show her. "There."
He dried her thumb on another paper towel. She let him do it. He tore open a band aid and wrapped the thumb tight, and that was the end of the waiting. His face got bigger and bigger, closer and closer, it was still not too late to change her mind, she might have turned away or stood up suddenly or even said something, but she did none of these things and he kissed her. The kiss went on and on. Her mouth opened of its own accord it seemed, she had been unable to stop it. By the time the kiss ended she was out of breath again, and she looked down at herself. His sleeve or wrist had been brushing her left breast and her nipple had popped up and was showing under the cloth, and the other one he hadn't even touched was showing too.
He stood up taking her hand, murmuring something, she didn’t know what. He had pulled her to her feet. All the strength had gone out of her, and it seemed to her there was nothing she could do to stop him, to stop herself.
In the bedroom she reached to pull the shades down, and the room became darker though not dark enough. Making love in the sunlight was for teenagers with their perfe
ct bodies, she too had been practically new once but wasn't now, she had had two children, she was a woman not a girl. But he had turned her, was peeling the sticky t-shirt off her. Her bra came unstuck too. His head went down. She held his head in her hands and felt him sucking at her and she murmured: "I must taste pretty salty.” She could smell herself, she was faintly embarrassed.
"You taste delicious to me.” His head came up for a moment, then went back to what he was doing, which felt oh so nice.
It had always amazed her some of the things men liked about women, liked to do with women and to women. Icky things she had thought at first. With their fingers, with their tongues sometimes. The first time a boy ever put his hand inside her underpants, which was where Barone's hand had somehow got to by now, she had nearly fainted with amazement or embarrassment, maybe both. Not now. She wanted to spread her legs wider, as wide as they would go, but with difficulty restrained herself, did not move.
He shucked his jacket. His hands went to his tie. His shirt came off. She raked her fingers through his chest hair.
She moved around the bed, first one side then the other, pulling the bedspread down. Even at times like this a woman had chores to do. Chores after, too, she would have to change the sheets. He had a nice body, what she glimpsed of it as she worked. She did not want to see too much. She didn't want to see what he had in store for her, she would feel it soon enough, it couldn't be soon enough. She folded the spread hurriedly, and lay back exposed, undignified, the longest wait of all. The most vulnerable moment of all. It had never happened to her, but a man could always walk out on you now, and how would you feel?
There were a dozen reasons she should not be doing this, they crowded into her head in no particular order, all of them there at once. She was Manhattan district attorney, so how could she be lying naked on a bed being gazed at by a detective she hardly knew. And if he talked, as he would, as all men did, it would be worse, she would have no reputation left. Even if he kept silent, McGillis downstairs would not, why should he, something as juicy as this. She was a public figure, and also a woman. A man, a politician for instance, might be seen in her current role, here on this bed, and no one would notice, much less be shocked. But in the case of a female district attorney, the first one ever, the news might sweep the city, Hank would hear, the voters would spurn the adulterous wife and in November vote her out, as Hank might too, she did not think so, but he might.
What about Hank? He was conducting swimming practice at the moment, she believed, would not burst in on her, she was safe on that score at least. There was no way he could find out unless she told him, which she would never do, unless she threw it in his face during an argument some day, but she would never do that either. She was going to take what she wanted, what at the moment she needed. It was her right. She had paid her dues. This wasn't the middle ages anymore.
There would be no interruptions unless the telephone rang with the verdict. At the moment she did not care about the verdict, not one bit, all that worry was gone, the nicest feeling of all.
Barone had turned away from her, was tearing something open. She knew what his furtive movements signified, and before he had completed them sat up, breasts swinging, took the half opened package from his fingers and put it on the bedside table. It signified still other reasons why to do what she intended to do, was dangerous and absurd. "You don't need that," she said, feeling for a moment how she felt men must feel: much of the excitement, maybe almost all of it, was in the risk.
"I hate those things," she said.
He studied her with some care: "You're sure?"
"If you are."
Barone could be the most dangerous problem of all. How did she get rid of him afterwards? Or even worse, suppose she didn't want to? He embraced her, sweaty breasts tight against his scratchy chest, kissed her as if he were in love, which he could not possibly be, though she herself was in a way, and that seemed to her still another amazement. She wanted to murmur endearments but stopped herself, said only: "You have no idea how much I want you right now."
When he knelt between her knees, his fingers went to his mouth, and she saw him gathering saliva to lubricate himself with, and she said: "You don't need that either," feeling herself sopping, gaping even, and proud of it.
"You are the most delicious woman," he said. He was smiling, rearing up in two senses, all of him, and all of a sudden she thought of Hank again. It was inevitable, and it made her catch her breath. Where Barone now knelt no one but Hank had knelt since she was eighteen years old.
He came down over her, and in a moment had reached, it seemed to her, as high as her heart.
The campus pool, five lanes wide, twenty five yards long, was in a long, low ceilinged room. The water was kept at 68 degrees, considered the optimum temperature for fast times, so this was the air temperature as well. A boy was swimming for the wall. Above him, wearing a sweat suit, stop watch in hand, breathing the moist, chlorine laden air, waited his coach, Henry Henning.
The boy hit the wall, and Henning, leaning down, showed him the face of the stop watch.
"Not bad," Henning said.
The boy lifted himself out of the pool. "No better than last week," he complained. "I've got to get it down.” He thought about it a moment, then said: "Professor Henning, suppose I shave off all my body hair like they do at Ohio State and the other big schools?"
"All your body hair?” Henning nodded thoughtfully and wondered what to do or say next. The boy's name was Gilfoyle. There were other boys in the pool or standing near the edges who needed his attention, in one way or another problems every one, but none as immediate a problem as the one represented Gilfoyle. Putting his arm around the boy, he led him off into the corner.
"My head, my eyebrows, everything," said Gilfoyle earnestly.
The room was of course extremely humid. In places mildew showed on the ceiling or high on the walls. The odor of chlorinated water hung heavy in the air.
"Shaving off all my body hair ought to be worth at least three tenths of a second," Gilfoyle said.
This was a small college and the boy was no world record holder.
"Well, what would your parents say?" Henning hedged.
"I won't tell them."
"Maybe they would guess," Henning said, studying him. "You could eat dinner with your hat on, I suppose. But if you have no eyebrows they might get suspicious."
This was just a kid seeking the approval of his teacher. Henning felt he had to be careful. A boy this age was vulnerable, easily crushed.
"Have you thought this out?" he said carefully. "For instance," he said, reaching for arguments, "how will your girlfriend react?"
"I don't have a girlfriend right now."
Did Henning detect a wistful note? Not every kid was able to make a connection with the female sex, whatever the mores of the times. Older people, Henning knew, imagined that college kids fucked like rabbits. They had no idea what actually went on. The insecurities of the age group had not changed all that much. A boy like Gilfoyle, inexperienced and suffering from acne, was possibly afraid to approach girls at all.
"I know you'd like to have a girl friend," Henning told the boy. He was speaking slowly, thoughtfully. "And I worry that all the girls on campus might begin to call you skinhead, and refuse even to date you."
This argument appeared to stop Gilfoyle, though only for a moment. He said: "But I can't think of any other way to get my time down.”
Seeking approval the boy looked at the man and found resistance instead. It shook him, and he began to have second thoughts. "Don't you like the idea?" he asked.
"The season's not nearly over," said Henning. "You're getting stronger every day. Why don't we wait a couple of weeks until you stop improving. Then you can shave your head, shave off your body hair, and if your time drops as a result, we'll know why, and maybe I'll ask all the other kids to shave themselves too."
The boy was nodding. He seemed even a bit relieved. "That sounds good, Professor
Henning. You'll tell me when to do it?"
"Sure will. Now get back in the tank."
Another crisis averted, Henning thought, and he wanted to smile but couldn't lest Gilfoyle think he was laughing at him. All he could do was call out to other swimmers. "Tancredi, Mulligan, Revet, in the tank. Ten laps flat out."
He had no way of knowing what his wife might be doing at that moment but thought that when he talked to her tonight on the phone--unless she came home which she probably wouldn't--tonight on the phone, then, he would describe this conversation with Gilfoyle, it would make her smile, he was rather proud of the way he had handled the boy.
Barone proved to be nothing special as a lover. If she closed her eyes she could easily imagine that the man on top of her was Hank. It was herself who was different, her soaring sense of power, this reveling in herself, her body, her sensations, her excitement. When it was over there was even a faint disappointment. On the basis of this new experience and very little else she concluded that men were pretty much all the same, there was nothing different out there.
Nonetheless, she was still on a high, still pleased with herself, excited, almost lightheaded, nothing to hold back anymore, no dignity or ceremony to stand on now, nothing to hide from herself, nor from him either, certainly not her naked body which he had gazed upon from every point of view, and she jumped out of bed saying: "And now if you don't mind I'm going to take a shower."
He reached up for her. "Don't leave me."
"Can't you smell me? I stink."
"No you don't. I love the way you smell."
But she laughed and as she crossed toward the bathroom wiggled her bottom at him.
She did not lock the bathroom door. He would have heard that, the idea seemed to her under the circumstances rude, and in addition perhaps she knew what would happen if the door were only closed not locked, perhaps even wished it to happen. She had the curtains shut, the water hitting her straight on top of the head and coursing down her flesh. Her eyes were closed, a half smile on her face, and she heard him spread the curtain and step in beside her.
