He stood at Dierdre Matera’s outside entrance, surprised by how much he was looking forward to seeing her, at how his anticipation had grown ever since he had gone off duty. She opened the door as he reached for the buzzer.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said, stepping back. “I was just on my way out. What is it?”
She wore a well-tailored, light gray business suit with a white open collar blouse, blazer, and long skirt, and she gazed at him, at nearly his own eye level, through large, slightly tinted glasses.
“Another time,” he said, disappointed as he turned away.
“No, come in, I’m in no rush,” she said suddenly.
He turned back and looked at her. “But you were going out.” Her expression was unchanged, unreadable as she pushed back gracefully through the door. He hesitated, then went in after her. The door clicked shut behind him, and he followed her down the hall, wondering what he would say to her as she opened the apartment door and led him into her living room.
She sat down in the center of her sofa and asked, “Have you learned something more?”
He sat down in the facing chair, feeling that she was much more curious than she seemed.
“No, but I thought you might remember some more details of what happened in the church.”
“Oh,” she said with surprise, then smiled. “I don’t think so.” She slipped off her shoes and tucked her legs up on the cushions. “Excuse me.” She sat back and gazed at him. “You must have some idea of what happened.”
He smiled and shook his head. “It makes no sense.” He sat back stiffly as she leaned forward. There was no official reason for his being here. As she looked at him, he realized that she had guessed as much from his obvious discomfort.
“Oh, I see,” she said, and seemed about to smile. “Lieutenant...” she started to say.
“Not Lieutenant, Detective, third class,” he said, and realized that he was glad to be here.
“You don’t strike me as a shy man, Detective,” she said, staring at him as if she had discovered everything about him, but it was too late to get up and leave.
“Some coffee or tea?” she asked with a smile. “You’re much too nervous to be romantic.”
“No, thanks. So you haven’t remembered anything else?”
She smiled again, frowned, then said, “Not a thing.”
He said, “People often don’t know they have information to give until they try to remember.”
“Do you really think I know something? No, of course you don’t. Care to have dinner with me?”
He hesitated, and she added quickly, “That is, if you’re free tonight. Who knows, maybe I will remember something, if that helps you any.”
They ate at the Red Dragon on the West Side. He tried to be good company, but felt suddenly awkward before her seemingly confident expectation that he would like her, even though it was true.
He chose egg roll and pepper steak with onions and tomatoes, and she smiled and said, “I can be more adventurous than that,” and ordered dim sum, hot and sour soup, an exotic shrimp dish, and a white wine, and started immediately on the noodles and mustard sauce. The waiter asked them if they’d like a drink before dinner, but she waved him away, saying, “The wine will be enough,” and Benek nodded his agreement. Looking at her and imagining how they must look from a distance, he wondered if she was the business executive and he a less well-dressed subordinate.
“So where are you from?” she asked, smiling.
He hesitated and she said, “Lie, if you like. Might be more interesting to guess.”
“New Jersey,” he said. “And you?”
“Right here. I grew up in the house on Tenth Street.”
“Is it your sole support?” he asked, and regretted the question. “I don’t mean to pry—just curious.”
“Mostly,” she replied. “You’re not planning to marry me for my money, are you?”
He answered with a half smile and a silent no.
She scowled. Let’s play buried land mines, her eyes seemed to be saying: see if you can say something that won’t set me off in your face. Get through my minefield and maybe I’ll think something of you.
“Did you really want to be a cop?” she asked.
“It’s what I can do,” he replied. “Did you want to be a landlady?”
“It fell into my lap. The income gives me a lot of free time to read and play.”
“And that’s what you want out of life?”
She sighed. “Nothing much else seems to call to me. Got any ideas?”
“Husband and kids?”
“Are you offering?” she asked with a mock smile.
His egg roll and her soup and dim sum arrived. He cut the egg roll in half, and ate the one end. She started on the soup slowly, then began to spoon it up quickly, glancing up at him with what seemed to be a genuine shyness at odds with her brittle remarks.
He didn’t know what to make of her. Carla’s friendly face flashed through his mind, telling him that he might have preferred asking her out instead. They were both, in their different ways, detectives; he could have told Carla about the priest’s mysterious death and she could have filled him in on the medical scams she didn’t like investigating. She might even have liked meeting Frank Gibney eventually; he imagined the three of them sitting here at dinner, talking about frauds and homicides and autopsies, comparing notes. But there had been no fantasies about Carla surrendering to him in the night. There was no lusting after an ambivalent angel.
Dierdre reached the bottom of her soup and asked, “Okay, Detective, why are we here?”
“Just an impulse, I guess.”
“Just kinda like me?” she asked.
“You’ve found me out,” he said grimly. “I’m out of control.”
“And you just don’t have time to meet anyone outside your usual routines—”
Their dinners arrived. She looked at hers with greedy eyes, adjusted her bright red napkin on her lap, positioned her chopsticks in her fingers, grabbed a fat shrimp, and caressed it between her lips before biting off half. He used a fork, hoping that the tomatoes and onions would be crisp. He murmured a few favorable comments about the food as they ate, to break the prolonged silences.
“Chinese was an acquired taste for me,” she said, “even with all the variety. Did you like it as a boy?”
He nodded. “I used to pick up some for my father, but he would never finish it, so I’d eat the leftovers.”
“How sad,” she said. “I hate the word leftovers. Sounds like dead things.”
“I didn’t worry about it. That’s just the way he was. How was it for you as a girl?”
A grim look flashed across her face. “I was probably as happy to go away to school as you were to leave home. You did leave home, didn’t you? Or are you still living with your parents? Maybe with your mother?”
They weren’t telling each other much, he realized. “Nothing like that,” he said, annoyed. “It’s all past.”
“Do you dislike your parents?” she asked abruptly.
“We weren’t close while they were alive,” he said, and watched her lick her lips. “Now that they’re both gone, it doesn’t matter what I felt toward them.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And you have no one else now? No brother or sister? No ex-wife with kids? No girlfriend?”
“Just me.”
The waiter poured the wine. Benek tasted it. “Good enough,” he said, putting down the glass. Most white wines, even the Chinese ones, still tasted like soapy water to him, but he was getting over it. The waiter filled both glasses and departed.
“Are you going to be a cop all your life?” she asked.
“I’ll retire after twenty years or so.”
“And you won’t be that old. You’ll have another lifetime in which to do everything you want.”
He didn’t answer.
She picked up her napkin from her lap, wiped her lips and said, “You know, Detective Benek, you’re not much fun at all,�
� then dropped the napkin on the table, got up and started toward the exit.
Startled, he stared after her for a moment, then rose and caught up with her at the door and took her arm. “I’ll try to be better company,” he said. “It’s just that—” His heart was beating faster.
She nodded. He led her back to their table, ignoring the curious glances of the other diners. He looked foolish, but felt that was what she had wanted.
Back in the dark hallway of her house, she turned suddenly and touched his hand.
“Do please come in,” she said, opening the door. He followed her inside, wanting her to think better of him.
In the living room, she kicked off her heels and turned to look up at him. “You do like me just a little, don’t you?” she asked without a trace of her previous disdain.
“I like you just fine,” he answered, feeling even more foolish.
“You might show it,” she said, putting her arms around his neck.
“We’ve hardly met,” he said.
She grimaced. “What of it? A man can love any woman, so liking should be simple.”
Her cleverness made him uneasy. She embraced him and waited to be kissed, eyes closed. He looked down at her, puzzled, as if seeing her through a barrier within himself.
She opened her eyes, and for an instant he imagined that he saw rage in them, but she smiled and said, “Don’t you want me?”
He took a deep breath and stepped back.
“So you are shy—is that it? Or are you gay?”
“No, I’m not either,” he said, telling the truth but feeling like a liar.
She smiled and stepped toward him. He took her by the shoulders. “My, you’re strong, Mr. Policeman,” she said. He kissed her, pressing softly, inhaling her perfume and body odors, needing to gather her to himself and hold her body helpless, to destroy her arrogance and regain his pride and self-control.
“What are you doing?” she asked when they were naked in the bedroom.
He had always kept one or two condoms in his wallet, a habit from his high school days, so that he would never be unprepared if he got lucky. This condom had been in his wallet a long time, he realized. Suddenly he didn’t know which he feared more, fatherhood or disease.
She laughed. “But I’m a virgin.”
He stopped and looked at her, hoping that she would not see the doubt in his face; or that she would, and turn it all into a joke. But her eyes were wide open in the dim light, loyal to her claim.
“Don’t you want to feel safe from me?” he asked, having visions of being tested every three months. There was no way to be sure, and the inconvenience of testing for HIV or any other STD would be very annoying for both of them. Unrelieved doubt was the worst state to live in. “It’s only considerate,” he said.
“When were you with a woman last?” she asked.
“A while ago, and I wore one of these.” It had been three years or more, he realized.
“Then I trust you.”
He was about to tear open the packet, but her hand seized his. “No,” she said. “I’d rather not if you have to use that, even if you don’t believe me.”
“It’ll save you worrying,” he said. “It works both ways.”
She smiled. “I don’t have to worry about you.”
“I might be lying.”
“You’re not, but I see you’ll have to have it your own way.” She got out of bed and hurried away to the kitchen.
He lay back and waited, annoyed, until her naked figure slipped back into the bedroom, carrying two glasses of wine. He took one glass from her with his free hand.
“Very dry,” she said, sipping as she sat down on the bed.
He downed half his small glass, and felt slightly dizzy, still holding the condom, remembering the time he had dropped one on the floor and spent too much time looking for it, while the woman had lost interest. The absurd image of his crawling around on the floor looking for the condom had never left him.
“Like it?”
“It’s fine.”
She set her glass down on the night table and lay back across his legs, turned her head and gazed at him, then reached over, saying, “Here, give me that thing.” She took the condom packet from his hand and threw it across the room. “We’ve nothing to fear from each other.” He noticed the pleasing muscularity of her legs. Her breasts were fleshy but firm, her stomach flat and supple, her hips surprisingly curvy, her skin pale and perfect. He finished his wine and dropped the glass as he tried to put it down on the floor. His eyes grew heavy. She was touching him, but he didn’t much care, and a distant part of him was appalled by his uncaring. It would be all right, he told himself, when he got up and found the condom. There would be nothing to worry about after that.
8
His head was rolling on the deck of a ship in storm, and would go over the side at any moment. He had lost his body, but that didn’t matter; his head was more important, even though it was blind. Suddenly he felt cold, and was sure that he was in the icy water. It was odd to feel as if he had a body, to breathe without lungs as his head sank.
He opened his eyes and saw a small room. A bare bulb hung by a black cord from a wooden ceiling. He turned his head right and then left and saw a red brick wall. He was naked on a big brass bed, arms and legs shackled to the four posts. He shivered from the cold, then cried out, “Hey, what’s going on!” through chattering teeth.
He listened to the clear silence of the chamber, until his own body-noises joined a clanging sound, as if someone were dragging a large metal can. He raised his head and saw a wooden door open between his feet.
Dierdre, now wearing blue jeans and an old flannel shirt, came in carrying a dish-shaped copper space heater of a kind he hadn’t seen since childhood, when his mother had warmed him as he dressed for school during cold winter mornings.
Dierdre plugged the heavy cord into an outlet box low on the far wall of the room and placed the dish down halfway toward the bed. The heating element began to glow, lighting up the polished copper reflector to a fierce orange brilliance.
“What are you doing?” he asked. She avoided his gaze.
“It’s chillier down here than I realized,” she said.
He felt the heat across his bare belly and laughed. “Good joke. Did I pass out or get violent or something to need this?” That he had somehow lost control of himself horrified him.
He was about to apologize when she stepped back and looked down at him. “No—I drugged you,” she said.
Fully awake now, his mind raced after explanations.
“The drug makes you suggestible. You walked in and lay down all by your naked lonesome.”
“Where are my clothes?”
“You won’t need them.”
He laughed.
“Feel warmer?” she asked.
“Yes, thank you. Now let me up.”
Again she ignored him, and moved the heater back a foot. “This can get too hot. I’ll timer it.” She turned and went out through the wooden door, closing it behind her.
“Hey!” he shouted.
He listened to her climbing the stairs back into the house and began to sweat.
He waited, startled by his situation, then heard her coming back down the stairs. The wooden door opened, and she came in carrying a folded blanket and pillow. She was dressed now in a long silk robe. Dropping the blanket next to him, she came up behind him and put the pillow under his head.
“Thanks,” he said, ready to be a good sport.
She came around again into his sight and moved the heater back against the wall. Then she let her robe drop to the floor, and the yellow-orange glow of the light bulb flattered her naked body. Her pale skin took on some color, and her large pubic region seemed to be a thick black mound of silky growth.
“Come on, now,” he objected, feeling foolish.
She touched his belly with her right toe, then sat down on the bed and began to kiss his torso, moving slowly lower, and he realized that it
would be impossible to resist.
He tried to picture old crones, buckets of dirty water, and mating crabs, but nothing stopped his arousal as she worked. The word stop seemed too ridiculous to utter. If she had AIDS, then he would die, he told himself, but still his erection was inevitable, reliable.
When finally she straddled him and brought her hips down, he became a careless god flowing into her, all pride lost. She leaned down at the end of her exertions and kissed him. Her hips held him firmly as her mouth brushed his face and her teeth found his lower lip. She seized it as if it were one of the shrimp she had bitten in half at dinner, and he rose again within the prison of her pelvis.
He awoke in darkness under a blanket, still manacled to the bed, and listened again to the silence, wondering how much longer she would play her game. He heard a familiar click at his right and turned his head. The heater, now plugged into a timer, had come on, and the copper dish was beginning to glow orange, warming his face.
The door opened. The overhead light came on. She was on the other side of the bed, holding a tray, when he turned his head. She set it down next to him and reached for his right manacle, unlocking it with a key.
“Eat your food and use the urinal,” she said.
“Now wait a minute,” he said. “I’ve had enough of this.”
She stood up and left the room. Puzzled, he took a deep breath, loosened the manacle, and saw that he could eat, just barely. There was a bowl of soup and a sandwich on the tray, and a hospital urinal. He grasped the bowl and drank down the warm soup, then took one of the sandwiches and started to tear at it, suddenly hungry. If she still meant to play her game, then she had made a mistake, because she would be unable to get his arm back in the shackle when she came back; maybe she wanted him to escape. He smiled and finished his sandwich, then relieved himself into the urinal and lay back, waiting for his chance.
Sleep came too swiftly, giving him only moments to realize that his arm would be shackled when he woke up.
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