Born Under a Blond Sign

by V. J. Chambers

  “Crane isn’t my boyfriend. We’re just friends.”

  “You fuck him, though, right?”

  I sighed.

  He took another drink of his beer. “I’m not close with my family. I’ve done my best to distance myself from them as much as I possibly could. But my little brother? Gilbert? Ever since he decided to come to Keene College instead of going Ivy League like my family wanted, I’ve been looking out for him. We spend time together almost every week. And I never saw this coming. I never thought…” He picked up his beer again. This time, he upended the bottle into his mouth and finished the rest of the liquid in one long drink.

  “Miles, I’m so sorry.” My heart was breaking for him. I reached out to touch him again but remembered just in time and simply set my hand down on the table.

  He looked down at my hand, which was now inches from his body. He shut his eyes. His voice came out scratchy. “Can we… can we get out of here? Maybe go back to your place?”

  I nodded. “We can do that.”

  * * *

  The first time Miles and I were alone together—really alone—it was weeks into our dating. Miles always had some kind of excuse at the end of the evening as to why we couldn’t spend any more time together. He would say that we had a big case to work on, and that he needed rest. Back then, we were partners. It was before he’d been promoted to lieutenant. He’d say that he’d had a restless sleep the night before and yawn a lot. He’d say that he had to clean his bathroom. Really.

  Anyway, it was weeks before Miles ran out of excuses and we ended up together at my place.

  Miles was nervous the whole time. My place wasn’t exactly the cleanest. It wasn’t a pig pen or anything, but I wasn’t particularly concerned about keeping things tidy. There was a tangle of clothes on my recliner, because I tended to throw off my work clothes when I got into the living room and leave them there. And I hadn’t vacuumed in a while. The sink had a few dirty glasses in there, but nothing major. All in all, everything looked pretty good, at least in my opinion. But Miles didn’t seem to want to sit down on my couch or be near me or anything like that.

  He was sweating, and he kept his hands in his pockets.

  I remember that I kissed him, and he kissed back, and it was wonderful.

  But that he ran out of the room afterward and started washing my dishes. Said he just couldn’t handle seeing them sitting there like that.

  I guess I should have realized there was something up with Miles back then. But I was so in love with him. I brushed it off as quirky. Besides, we were good together. We were the best set of detectives on the force. We were both focused. Once we got on a case, we thought of nothing but that. Many nights we’d be out late, working the angles, pounding the pavement, or just sitting in the office going over the specifics. Neither of us could handle leaving things undone. We made sure to get it done right, every time. And because we were partners, we spent all our time together. We worked the same cases. We cared about the same things. It was only a matter of time before a bit of romance sparked.

  But it didn’t last. And after it was over, I really didn’t know what to do without him. He was everything to me, always had been. I missed him all the time. There was a constant ache for him. Sometimes, I was able to forget what the ache was, but I always felt it.

  After that first time in my apartment, we always spent time at Miles’s place, which was clean and neat. The only other time we’d ever been alone together at my place, Miles had come over to try to get it on with me, and there had been disastrous prematureness, after which he’d fled in embarrassment.

  So, anyway, I was a little worried about going back to my place. I knew that Miles wasn’t comfortable there, and it wasn’t as if I’d cleaned recently. The moment we got in the door, I ran ahead of him, scooping up arm loads of clothes and taking them to the hamper, grabbing some empty candy wrappers and putting them in the trash.

  “You don’t have to do that,” said Miles.

  I bit my lip. “I can vacuum if you want?”

  “Ivy.” He laughed a little. Then he looked around the living room. “Would you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Totally yes.” I got the vacuum cleaner out of the closet. It was a nice one that I’d found at Goodwill by luck. It was a canister vacuum, and with the proper attachment, it was excellent on hardwood floors, which I mostly had. I knew that some people did crazy things like polishing all their hardwood floors, but in my book, vacuuming was enough. It got up all the lint balls and hair and other nasties.

  I swept the living room pretty quickly, running the vacuum all over the place—over the tops of the chairs and my couch, up in the corners of the room to get the cobwebs, over my drapes. It was the way I always cleaned. My vacuum cleaner was my all-purpose cleaning tool. It picked up everything.

  When I turned off the vacuum, Miles was settled on the couch. “You vacuum like I do. I always vacuum everything.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But you probably do it once a week, and I only vacuum if someone’s coming over.”

  “Once a day,” said Miles. He rested his head on the back of the couch. “Is that weird?”

  I decided not to answer that. “Um, we need more booze.”

  He sat forward. “God, yes. Please tell me you’ve got something besides High Life in your house.”

  “You’re in luck,” I said. “I’ve got two bottles of wine.”

  “Wine? Do you even drink wine?”

  “Of course I do,” I said. “And last weekend, I was at a wine tasting, and I bought a couple of bottles.” I didn’t want to mention that I’d been there with Crane, because I thought that would just set Pike off. “Anyway, they’re both white. That okay?”

  “Sure,” he said. “At this point, I really don’t care as long as it’s alcoholic.”

  I poured us some wine and came back out into the living room. I sat down next to him.

  He took a drink and then set down his glass. He looked at me. “You’re sweet to do that.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Clean up for me,” he said. “You probably shouldn’t do it, because it just reinforces my neurosis, but it’s sweet that you did. You do care about me, and I know I said you didn’t, but it isn’t true.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  He seized my wrist and tugged me across the couch, so that we were very close.

  My breath caught in my throat. I was near enough to smell him—the clean fragrance of the soap he used and the masculine scent that was just him.

  He reached up to trace the outline of my jaw. His voice was a whisper. “I care about you too.”

  And then his mouth was on mine. He tasted like bourbon and white wine and desperation, and I was drowning in him.

  Abruptly, he pulled away.

  I sat back, my fingers going to my lips.

  Miles got up. He picked up his wine glass and started to pace. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have started something that I can’t finish.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  He gulped wine. “He was so young, and so… good. Ivy, he was good.”

  For a split second, I didn’t know what he was talking about, but then I remembered his brother. The reason we were here in the first place. The reason why Miles was falling apart.

  He stopped pacing and looked at me. “I never told you much about my family, but they aren’t… good. My family is rich and old fashioned. They use people. They step on people. They don’t care about anything except how they appear to the world. I didn’t want anything to do with them, so I left. You should have heard my father when he found out that I was going to be a police officer. He was livid. But I stood up to them. I broke off. And then Gilbert did the same thing. He told me that he couldn’t stand being part of that. He wanted to break free of all of it too. I was helping him. When he had issues, he called me instead of my father. But he didn’t have many issues. He seemed fine. The last time I talked to him, I could swear…”

  I got up an
d went to him. “Miles, I’m so sorry.”

  There were tears leaking out of his eyes. “He was my little brother. I remember when he was born, when my mother came home from the hospital with him, and he was all wriggly and red with these enormous blue eyes, and I held him, and I thought that I wanted to do whatever I could to protect that little guy. My brother. My baby brother.” He let out a strangled sob.

  I reached for him.

  And then stopped. He didn’t like to be touched.

  He wiped at his eyes with the heel of his hand.

  We were quiet.

  I didn’t know what else to say. I’d said it before, but it was the only thing I could say. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “I was younger then,” he said quietly, “and when I held him, I didn’t worry about being contaminated by the other person. I didn’t worry about germs and dirt and sweat. I want that again. Only it seems like the older I get the worse it gets. The harder it is to face it.”

  “I didn’t know,” I murmured. I truly hadn’t understood the depths of this thing before. I thought it was about sex. Now I realized that the sex part was only a symptom, not the disease.

  “I want…” He took a shaky a breath. “I want to hold you, like I held my baby brother all those years ago. I want you to hold me. Just be in each other’s arms, nothing else. Can you… can we do that?”

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  * * *

  We slept entwined on the couch, because that was where we fell asleep. Miles’s arms tight around me, engulfing me in his scent. His strong, taut body pressed close to me. It was sweet torture, honestly. I wanted him so badly. But I didn’t even attempt to try to seduce him. It wasn’t the time. It wasn’t appropriate. And—for once in my life—I was able to do the appropriate thing.

  When I woke, the spring sun was beaming in through the windows, and Miles was trying his damndest to get free from me.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, pulling my limbs away from his.

  “I just need the bathroom,” he said, stumbling off the couch and disappearing down the hall.

  I sat up straight. My head was pounding. Ugh. Wine hangover. And I hadn’t even had that much wine the night before. Maybe two glasses. I guessed it was because of the combination of all the alcohol that I was feeling the effects. I hugged a pillow and gazed down the hall. Wine hangover notwithstanding, this was kind of awesome. I’d never woken up with Miles before. I’d never seen him in the morning.

  He came out of the bathroom. “Do you ever clean in there?”

  “Um, sure,” I said. “If I’m going to have company. Next time, give me some fair warning.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “I need to go. I’m going to be late for work.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “I know they aren’t going to want you to come in today. You’ll be no good to anyone while you’re grieving.”

  He made a face. “Right. Of course they wouldn’t let me work.”

  “Come to breakfast with me,” I said. “There’s a nice place in town where I always eat. After all that drinking, you could use some real food in your stomach.”

  “Breakfast? Like this?” He looked down at his crumpled clothes. “I feel disgusting. I need a shower.”

  “I have a shower,” I said. “I’ll even spray it down and run a sponge over it if that will make you feel better. And I think I have a t-shirt and sweats that would fit you if you want different clothes.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t… Look, last night I was drunk, and I might have said things I shouldn’t.”

  My face fell.

  “Don’t be like that,” he said, his voice softening. “I didn’t mean…”

  Silence.

  “What did you mean?” I said. “Because it sounded like you were trying to let me down easy. And if that’s the case, don’t bother. I’m a big girl. If you’re not interested in me, I can take it. Don’t try and sugar coat it.”

  “That’s not—” He let out an exasperated breath and shut his eyes. He squared his shoulders and tried to speak again.

  But before he could get anything out, there was a knock on the door.

  I furrowed my brow. Who the hell could that be? No one ever knocked on my door. I held up a finger at Miles. “One minute. It’s probably a Jehovah’s Witness or something. I’ll get rid of them.” I hurried out to open the door.

  A man in a suit stood there. He was probably in his sixties, with salt-and-pepper hair. He flared his nostrils as he looked me up and down, as if he was smelling something bad.

  “Can I help you?” I said.

  “Where’s Miles?” he said.

  “You’re looking for Miles?” I said. “Who the hell are you?”

  He raised his voice. “Miles! Get out here now. You’re through disgracing this family. We’ve had enough of that just recently, thank you very much.”

  Family? Wait, was this Miles’s—

  “Dad?” Miles appeared behind me. “What are you doing here?”

  “Collecting you,” said Miles’s father. “You were nowhere to be found yesterday, when you should have been with your family. You have no idea how much trouble I’ve gone through trying to track you down. I didn’t want to believe you were here with her, but I was saddened to discover it was true.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “You know who I am? Because Miles never talks about you, so I don’t—”

  “Your fame precedes you, yes. You’re the woman who was fired from the police department. My son’s former partner. The sex addict.”

  I flinched.

  Miles stepped between me and his father. “Leave Ivy alone.” He sounded both disgusted and embarrassed, and from the way he was looking at his dad, I could see he was directing both of those emotions at that man, not at me. Which was a relief, really, because it wasn’t as if I hadn’t made him feel those things before.

  “Gladly,” said Miles’s father. “Just as soon as you come with me. I promised your mother that I would find you and bring you home. You’re not going to make me a liar, are you?”

  Miles folded his arms over his chest. “Ivy and I were going to go to breakfast, actually.”

  As happy as it made me to hear him say that, I was fairly sure that he wasn’t interested in going to breakfast with me two minutes ago. He was just using that as an excuse to piss off his dad.

  “Hey,” I said. “It’s okay. You should be with your family at a time like this.”

  Miles gave me an incredulous look.

  I raised my hands, palms up. “I’m just saying that, generally, after a death in the family, you would visit with your relatives. When my parents died, every distant cousin I’d ever had surfaced and brought platters of cold cuts.”

  Miles glared at me for a minute. Then he sighed, and as he did, he seemed to deflate. He turned back to his father. “All right, fine. I’ll go with you. For Mother.”

  “Good,” said his father.

  Miles turned back to me. “I’ll be in touch, Ivy. I promise.”

  * * *

  The dog was barking.

  Above my head, in the apartment over my office, the dog was barking.

  Again.

  I sat there, grimacing at the ceiling. I wanted to kill Kitty Richards.

  Mangle her. Mutilate her. Stuff her body in a storm drain.

  Okay, maybe that was putting it a little harshly. Kitty Richards was a perfectly horrible person, but she didn’t deserve death. And besides, I wasn’t a killing kind of person. I caught murderers. I didn’t commit murder myself. So, I wasn’t actually going to hurt her.

  But, boy, right then, I wanted to.

  The dog belonged to Kitty. Her name was Fluffy, but I never called her that, because it seemed like a very undignified sort of thing to call a dog. Dogs were noble sorts of creatures, protectors and friends to mankind for eons upon eons. (I’d seen this special on television once about monkeys that domesticated dogs, so it could be that our relationship with dogs reached very, very
far back into the past. It would explain why we were such perfect companions for each other if we really had evolved together.) Anyway, I didn’t think dogs should be called things like Fluffy. Furthermore, I didn’t think dogs should be kept locked up in tiny bathrooms over top of my office.

  Because the walls were thin in this building. Very, very thin. And I could hear that damned dog barking. She’d bark all day. I knew she would, because it had happened before. And I didn’t like it.

  I’d been given a bit of respite from the dog lately. My last case—the Clayton Society—had taken me out of the office most of the time, and I hadn’t had to tangle with Kitty or the dog.

  But now, here I was, back again, listening to the dog bark and whine above me. It was driving me absolutely batty. And that was what my anger was all about, after all. I was frustrated because I couldn’t think with a dog barking away. It was about me and my sanity. The fact that the poor dog was locked up in a room the size of a closet with no way out, when dogs should be able to run around in the bright sun and breathe fresh air… That was just a side note.

  I wasn’t a bleeding heart for animals or anything. I just thought that animals should be, you know, respected. Well cared for.

  Anyway, in the past, I had gone up to Kitty’s apartment, broken in, and freed the dog to the porch, so that she didn’t have to be locked up in the bathroom. I’d used the spare key, finding it in all the places that Kitty moved it to, and when she got rid of the spare key, I used my lock picks to get into the apartment.

  But as of late, Kitty had installed three different deadbolts on the door in addition to a security system, which meant that if I tried to break into her apartment, an alarm sounded and the authorities were called. I’d barely talked myself out of getting arrested last time, so I wasn’t going to be able to get up there and free the dog this time.

  Last week, the dog had been put in the bathroom all afternoon, and I’d eventually just left and gone home early.

  Today, I was starting to lose my mind. The dog had already been barking for an hour, and I didn’t know what I was going to do.

  Brigit thought all of this was very funny. When I broke in last time and the alarm went off, she fairly gloated. She had warned me that I shouldn’t break into people’s homes, hadn’t she? In Brigit’s mind, I was learning my lesson.