The Devil in Her Way

by Bill Loehfelm

  She would run in the streets tonight, up to the park and back, her usual six-mile route.

  As she crossed Camp Street and walked along Third, frogs and cicadas going full-throat in the darkness around her, Maureen let her fingers play through the stems and vines overhanging the wrought-iron fences of her neighbors. The slightest contact doubled the strength of the scent of the night-blooming flowers. She wanted to snap off a bloom and take it home with her, but she knew watching it die in coffee-mug captivity, alone atop her refrigerator, would only depress her. Leaving the bloom intact meant she could visit it again and again as it thrived. At least until it dropped its petals to the bricks below.

  Sometimes she couldn’t believe she lived in a place where she walked under palm trees. She wanted a palm tree of her own one day. Even if she had to grow it in a pot on her porch. And parakeets would come and live in it, too. Because you could do that here, she thought, grow your own palm tree. All you had to do was pick which kind you wanted. The Garden District and the Sixth District. They were her life now.

  She raised her hands to drum a few notes on a low-hanging crepe myrtle branch. Pink petals knocked loose by the vibration, the glory days of July behind them, landed in her hair and on her shoulders. They smelled sweet and rotten at the same time. She brushed the petals off her sweaty T-shirt and crossed the street. She stopped short when she reached the curb by her house.

  There, sitting on the front steps, was Patrick. Really? Right now? She wasn’t happy to see him. They hadn’t made plans. They hadn’t hit the stage where surprises were okay. They probably never would. She hoped he couldn’t read the irritation on her face as she came through the gate. Patrick was her first New Orleans diversion. She’d enjoyed him. Now she feared he teetered on the edge of becoming her first New Orleans mistake.

  Dark-haired, blue-eyed, and sleepily handsome, Patrick was all limbs, a bit apelike, with his long, sinewy arms and powerful legs hitched to a set of narrow shoulders and narrower hips. He had a forward slouch that Maureen recognized as coming from long hours leaning over a cutting table and a grill. He had nimble, rough-skinned, beautiful hands with surprisingly few knife nicks, considering his trade. Only one burn on them that she could see, a faint one on the back of his left hand. Not bad for a guy who’d spent years keeping close company with a burbling deep fryer. He cooked at the bar and po’boy shop, the Irish Garden, across Magazine Street from her apartment.

  The night she’d met him at the bar, she’d strolled over in cut-off sweats, an NOPD T-shirt, and flip-flops, looking about as “cranky old lady” as she could look, to complain about the noise pumping out of the place. The Irish Garden had tall, narrow French doors that folded open, letting the noise inside pour into the street, along with the smells from the grill. The food was tempting, pretty much any time of day. The drunken cackling and screaming arguments over pool games and LSU were not. They had a good jukebox, but played it too loud and too late. Loud music, Maureen knew, kept the clientele from using their indoor voices. The obnoxiousness snowballed from there.

  Maureen had marched into the bar, elbowing customers out of the way, badge in her waistband, unable to decide which identity to lead with—her new one as a New Orleans cop or her old one from New York, where she’d walked a thousand miles in the bartender’s damp shoes. When the chubby, bitchy bartender answered Maureen’s complaints about the noise with her own snarling commentary about old bitch-ass neighbors looking to ruin everyone else’s good time, Maureen nearly went over the bar after her. Before things got worse, Patrick intervened.

  He stepped behind the bar and lowered the stereo. With a wave he beckoned Maureen down to the far end of the bar, away from Ms. Surly. While she made her way over to him, the boy opened two Harps. The boy was cute. Enough so that Maureen decided that he’d make a better antidote to the aggravation than a fistfight with the neighborhood barkeep. He was the easy and lazy choice. Maureen knew it and she didn’t care.

  She polished off that first Harp fast, then nursed another while beating Patrick two out of three games at the pool table. She’d caught him letting her win the first game, calling him out on it in front of his friends. He came back and won that game straight up. She beat him the next two. His friends jeered him loudly; she recognized some of their voices from hearing them in her apartment. He took the losing and the joking well. Points in his favor. He didn’t ask her where she was from, though she figured later her accent had answered the question. And it didn’t hurt that he didn’t once tell her she looked good. She didn’t. She looked like what she was, a neighborhood girl who couldn’t sleep, blowing off some steam. That seemed fine to him, and she liked that, too.

  They traded numbers that night. She took him home three nights later. That was two months ago. She’d never let him sleep over.

  It worried her some, but not enough to scare her off, that Patrick could see her apartment from where he worked. He could watch her walk home at night. He could see if her lights were on. On the other hand, in a box under her bed, she had blue ribbons in both hand-to-hand combat and target shooting from the NOPD academy. On her nightstand, she had a loaded gun she knew how to use. Patrick learned these things the first night he came over. He didn’t take any of it personally. He had, until showing up that evening on her front steps, respected her space.

  He wore his checkered chef’s pants and his black rubber no-slip shoes, which meant he hadn’t showered, which meant he’d come straight from work across the street, which meant he’d smell like fried catfish. Did look like he’d thrown on a clean T-shirt. Thank the Lord for small favors, Maureen thought. And who was she to complain, anyway? Anticipating a long run in the humid evening, she hadn’t showered after her workout at the Sixth. Just the combined funk they’d be bringing into her tiny apartment was reason enough not to let Patrick any closer than the front steps. In this humidity, she thought, the smell of everything is intensified. And it hangs around.

  Maureen passed through the front gate. Patrick raised the brown paper bag at his hip. A po’boy. “I made you dinner.”

  Despite herself, Maureen grimaced. “I can’t eat that, Pat. I gotta run tonight.”

  “You can save it, I guess. For after.” Patrick set the sandwich back on the step. “You’re moving up in the world. Congrats.”

  Maureen put her bag down on the walk, sat a couple of steps below Patrick. “What for?”

  “I hear you’re helping a detective work a murder. That poor bastard in the paper this morning. That’s a step up for you, right?”

  Maureen wondered how in hell Patrick had heard about her involvement in the Wright case. Atkinson’s name would be in the article as lead investigator, but her name wouldn’t appear. “I haven’t even seen you since then. How do you know about that?”

  “You know Goo? He buses the place sometimes on busy nights? Hangs over by the pool table with a crew when we’re not busy?”

  “I guess.” She couldn’t put a face to the name, even a name like that. “I mean, I think I’ve heard you talk about him.”

  “Anyway, he knows who you are,” Patrick said. “And he’s got a cousin that lives in the apartment complex where you kicked that guy’s ass the other day. The cousin saw you talking to Wright on the street, and saw you again at the murder scene last night. It’s not like everyone at the bar doesn’t know you’re a cop.”

  Maureen wasn’t sure what to say, if she should say anything. She felt even more invaded by Patrick’s knowledge of her job than she did by his surprise visit. There didn’t seem to be any point in denying the truth. Seems the NOPD weren’t the only ones putting in some detective work overnight. She wondered what else the neighborhood was saying about her.

  “So the cousin,” Patrick said, “told Goo, who told me.” He smiled. “New Orleans is a really small town sometimes.”

  “I’m finding that out,” Maureen said.

  “Y’all getting anywhere?” Patrick asked, grinning. “Any leads? Any suspects?”

  “Who�
��s asking? You or Goo or the cousin?”

  Patrick leaned away from her, trying to figure, Maureen could tell, whether she was serious or kidding. She wasn’t sure herself.

  “Okay, hey, just me,” Patrick said. “Just curious. You’re one of those cops who doesn’t bring it home, I get it. I watch TV.”

  Maureen tried to smile. “The only kind of cop I am right now is tired.” She reached out and grabbed his knee. “Look, I forgot we were getting together tonight. I’m sorry. You been waiting long?”

  “I shoulda called, I know. But I got news.” Patrick raised his chin at the bar across the street. “This here po’boy is the last one I’m ever going to make for you.”

  Maureen took her hand from Patrick’s knee and set it on the step below her. She leaned back into her shoulder for a better look up at him. Was she getting dumped? As minor as she considered what they had, she’d assumed the end of it would be her call. Maybe not. Again, she wasn’t so sure she wanted him gone, though she knew it was her ego, not her heart or her body, telling her that. An acidic humiliation simmered under her ribs. Had this boy gotten tired of sleeping with her? Gotten bored with her body, her company? Already?

  She knew she’d been pretty cavalier toward Patrick; it shouldn’t sting like it did when the feelings, or lack thereof, went the other way. But she was stung. Some lessons, it seemed, she had to keep on learning.

  “That sounds like a threat,” she said.

  Patrick laughed. The sound made her want to punch him. “I’m done across the street. Worked my last shift this afternoon.”

  Okay, not what she’d feared, but Maureen was surprised anyway. “Back to law school, then?”

  Patrick laughed again. He did that; he didn’t laugh loud or long, but he did laugh often. “I’m done with that, too. I told you, way, way done with that, no matter what my folks pray for every night.” He reached for Maureen’s shoulder, brushed stray strands of hair off her skin with his fingers. “I got a new gig. I got on the line at Lilette.”

  Maureen shook her head. It certainly sounded more serious, more upscale than the Irish Garden. But names could be deceiving. “I’m sorry. I haven’t found that place yet. That’s a good thing?”

  “John Harris’s place? Up Magazine, just this side of Napoleon?” He waited. “On a corner, painted yellow. The name of the place is painted in gold in the front window.”

  Suddenly, Maureen could see it. “Oh, I got it. Pat, that place is beautiful.”

  It was beautiful. She could see it. She didn’t have to fake it. Never did with Patrick, for that matter. Looked like a very elegant establishment, she thought, if only through the windows of the place while cruising by in a patrol car, or jogging by at night. Fine dining, servers in long white aprons and ties. French.

  She’d never worked fine dining. She had never worked back of the house like Patrick, hadn’t lived in New Orleans long enough to learn who John Harris was. The way Patrick beamed at her, though, she knew he’d scored a serious promotion. He wanted her to be proud of him. She was.

  Maureen thought of Detective Sergeant Atkinson. Maybe getting a spot on John Harris’s line matched getting an assignment from Christine Atkinson. Maybe Patrick looked at Harris the way Maureen looked at Atkinson. She was proud of Patrick, and hopeful for him. And she liked the way he looked at her right then. Okay, she thought, standing, one more time. His hand in hers, she used his fingers to trace a line on the slick inside of her thigh. One more time. A celebration. For both of them catching the right set of eyes at the right time. Patrick stood, grinning, a telltale bulge rising in the front of his cook’s pants. A good sweaty fuck, then, she thought, for new times’ sake. Maybe she’d even let him get behind her, like he was always asking and she was always refusing. Why not, just this once?

  They left the po’boy on the step.

  14

  Maureen strolled naked and triumphant through her tiny excuse for a kitchen, leaving Patrick catching his breath in the middle of the floor, tangled in the comforter with his arm draped over his eyes. She dropped the used condom in the trash. The water pressure in her place sucked. She didn’t need the prophylactic bobbing back up at her later like a dead jellyfish.

  She was on the pill, maybe the only regimen she followed with equal dedication to her workouts. So, no real risk of babies. Patrick swore he got regular AIDS tests, and she believed him. She’d been in the bar business too long, though, not to know her bar boys. Just ’cause he didn’t know he had something didn’t mean he didn’t have it, so protection was paramount.

  In a minor miracle, she’d made it through eleven years in the service industry, the last eight or nine involving some truly horrendous sexual choices, without picking up a single STD. Maybe sticking to older and more often than not married men those last couple of years, while no proof of advancement in her emotional decision making, had helped at least preserve her sexual health. Now that she was out of the business, she wasn’t about to break the clean streak. Patrick had complained once about using a condom. Once. She’d thrown him out for it, his quivering hard-on stuffed hurriedly and uncomfortably into his jeans. He had nothing to complain about, really. She only made him wear a rubber for intercourse.

  She turned on the tap in the tub and stepped in, stooping to rinse between her legs once the water warmed. Tonight, especially, he had nothing to complain about. They’d started with her on top, her preference, but right before he finished, she’d lifted her hips and slid him out. Then she’d turned around on all fours, flicked her hair over her back like she was sure he wanted and had fantasized about, and let him inside her from behind—where, and this was the big, big deal about it to Maureen, though Patrick didn’t know it—she couldn’t see him or what he was doing. He’d gripped one of her hips in each hand, so she hadn’t had to worry about where they were, and, since he was on the brink before she’d made her move, he came, shuddering, in no time. Ending it quickly had been crucial to the plan. In his grunting excitement, Patrick hadn’t noticed that she hadn’t come, and, this particular time, that miss was okay with her. She could sacrifice an orgasm during the act if also not having a panic attack in the middle of sex was part of the deal.

  With her fingers, she congratulated herself on the quiet victory she’d won on all fours in the middle of the living room floor.

  Relieved, she rinsed herself again and sat on the edge of the tub to catch her breath.

  Before everything had gone to shit in New York and done her head in, she’d liked fucking with the boy behind her. She’d never found the position submissive, like she always thought she was supposed to, like they showed in movies and on TV, slave women and whores and women meant to be taken as whores always getting it from behind like it couldn’t be a woman’s idea to do it that way. Men were the ones turned into knee-quaking, drooling, begging buffoons by doing it from behind. Her? She’d liked having her weight off her hips, her arms and legs remaining free and useful for bracing herself and for pushing back.

  But ever since Sebastian, who hadn’t raped her, had only tried to kill her, she couldn’t fuck a man she couldn’t see.

  Maureen passed her hand over her smooth, flat belly. She touched the close-trimmed auburn hair with her fingertips. That bastard Sebastian had put fear deeper inside her than his cock or any other cock could’ve reached. He’d left that fear and a hot fury like its twin lingering inside her like a disease. Sometimes she forgot she carried them. Sometimes they flared unprovoked. She’d done some penetrating of her own on him, with immediate, not lingering, results. And sometimes she felt like her police uniform acted like a poultice, drawing out of her the poison that Sebastian had put into her. She worried sometimes about what she did with that poison when it broke the surface, a bubble of noxious gas up from the seafloor, or was it the swampfloor now, bursting invisible and dangerous and spreading into the atmosphere around her like a contagion.

  She thought of Patrick’s hard thighs against the backs of hers, of him moving slick and easy insi
de her. Her idea, her choice. Her brain, her body. She made a fist with her right hand, her gun hand, the hand she’d used to lay out Arthur Jackson. She studied her fist. She was reclaiming herself, one small decision, one small move, one small piece at a time. The only thing she couldn’t stop doing was moving forward.

  Patrick called out from the living room. “You all right in there?”

  Maureen checked the tub. Whoops. Had the condom split? She hadn’t checked before ditching it. Looked like it—a sticky, clingy somethin’-somethin’ had collected in the drain screen.

  “Be right out,” she said.

  She hit the hot water tap again, washing the last remnants, the last evidence, of her last time with sweet Patrick down the drain. She snatched her robe off the wall hook and pulled it on, tying a snug knot in the belt. She needed to run. She needed to wash her hair; she needed sleep. But none of that till Patrick was gone.

  Back in the living room, she found him wearing only his boxers and sitting at her desk. Now the room smelled like sex and sweat and fried shrimp, a combo that left Maureen vaguely nauseated. She opened a kitchen window. Patrick reached over from his seat and turned off the AC.

  “Leave it on.” Crossing the room, Maureen pulled the cord on the ceiling fan to start the blades. She beat Patrick to the air-conditioner dial, cranked it to HIGH. “This place needs some air.”

  Patrick stood, scratching at his right buttock. “You got a cigarette?”

  Maureen sat on her bed. “Around here somewhere.”

  She didn’t move to get them from her bag.

  Patrick didn’t move, either, waiting for Maureen to provide a smoke. She knew he was respecting her space, not wanting to go through her drawers or her clothes or her bag, but she resented the expectation that she’d wait on him. Poor guy couldn’t win for losing. She waited for the snit to pass. Patrick sensed something and knew not to ask again. He picked up his chef’s pants from the floor, stepped into them. “I’ll get a pack at the Spur on my way.” He looked at her, running his thumbs along the elastic waistband of his checkered pants. “You need?”