Distemper

by Beth Saulnier

  “Do you have time?”

  “A man has to eat.”

  “I could cook something at my place.”

  “Nope. I’m taking you out.”

  “Is that smart? What if someone sees us?”

  He laughed again. “We’ll go someplace dark.”

  He gave me the info I needed for the story, and I walked back to the newsroom looking way too happy. It had been a damn long time since I’d actually had what might be described as a date, and I was positively giddy at the prospect. I felt as though I should go get my hair done, or at least try to pull the dog hair off my sweater with some masking tape.

  I filed the story at six and blew out of the newsroom before Bill could assign me anything else. I then spent some time trying to make myself look like a girl. Cody picked me up at seven, right in front of the cop who was guarding my house. “What did you tell him?” I asked as we rounded the corner at the end of my street.

  He reached across the gearshift and put his hand on my knee. I was wearing a short velvet skirt with no stockings. Cody didn’t seem to mind. “You’re interviewing me.”

  He ran his hand up my thigh, and the skirt went with it. I reached under his collar to scratch the back of his neck. “Best interview I’ve had in a while.”

  “Keep that up and I’m not going to make it through dinner.”

  “You started it.”

  We managed to get to the restaurant without cracking up the car, but when we parked he grabbed me instead of the door handle. He kissed me, hard, and if we’d been anywhere near our respective domiciles, dinner would have fallen by the wayside.

  “We’re steaming up the windows,” I said finally.

  He lifted his head from my cleavage long enough to take a look. “I’m not behaving like a gentleman, am I?”

  “Like I’m behaving like a lady?”

  “Yeah, but I think I’m living up to every macho-man stereotype there is.”

  “You mean, like, sleep with the girl, don’t call her for four days, then jump her bones before you’ve even bought her a decent meal?”

  He laughed so hard I thought he was going to choke on my bra strap. Then he unwrapped himself from my person. “Come on, let me buy you a decent meal.”

  “On one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “You have to promise to jump my bones later.”

  “I’d bet my shield on it.”

  We went into the restaurant, and when he got a load of the place I could swear I saw Cody pat his gun. I couldn’t blame him; if the New York mafiosi would only commute five hours to cap each other, Albertini’s would be the perfect place for it. It’s three miles out of town in a lowslung brick building shadowed by enormous trees; you risk turning an ankle just walking from your car to the front door. Inside, as I’d promised Cody, the ambiance is on the dark side of inky. The checkered tables are set far apart from each other, the only light comes from candles in brass holders, and the waiters never seem to look you in the eye. There’s no table-hopping at Albertini’s—it would be considered unseemly—and if it’s your birthday nobody’s going to stick a candle in your tiramisù and sing to you. The food is great, but the restaurant is never full, probably because they only accept cash, which weeds out all the college students eating out on daddy’s Visa.

  Cody and I were ensconced at a corner table, on the dining room’s even-darker margins. It was a good bet that most of our neighbors were stepping out with persons other than the ones they married.

  Cody looked around, leaned across to me, and hummed a few bars from the Godfather theme.

  “Remind you of the North End?” I asked.

  “I was just thinking that.”

  “Do you miss Boston a lot?”

  “Nah,” he said. “Well, actually, yeah.”

  “You thinking about heading back?” I got an icky feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  “Maybe. But not for a while.”

  “Could you get back into the Boston PD?”

  “Yeah. A lot of guys there owe me one.”

  “Because you took a bullet for them?”

  “Because I overlooked the fact that they were banging my wife.”

  “Ah.”

  “Alex, will you do me a favor?”

  “Right here in the restaurant? Don’t you think we might get arrested?” I thought I’d made him blush, but it was too dark to tell for sure. “Okay, sorry. What is it? Come on, I’ll be good.”

  “Will you explain this town to me?”

  “Tall order. Gabriel kind of defies explanation.”

  “But I have a feeling you’ve given some thought to the subject.”

  “Are you asking for business or pleasure?”

  “Both. Pleasure, because I need to figure out whether I’m really going to fit in here in the long run or if I should just stay as long as my mom needs me and go back to Boston. Business, because, well…”

  “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  He grabbed my hand across the table. “That’s just it. I do want to tell you. I mean, we’re not supposed to discuss cases outside of work, but the truth is, everybody goes home and bounces things off their wives or girlfriends or whatever. Half the time, that’s where it falls into place, where it makes sense all of sudden—the real world, not the goddamn squad room. At least that’s how it always was for me.”

  “Do you talk about things with your mom?”

  “Some cases, yeah. Not this one.”

  “And you feel cheated because my job makes it so you can’t talk to me about anything?”

  “I wouldn’t call it cheated. Maybe frustrated.”

  “So maybe you’re messing with the wrong girl.”

  “I’m not messing with you.”

  “You know what I mean. Let’s face it, we’re wreaking havoc on the ethics of our respective professions.”

  “Technically.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you? Come on, Cody, you’re just about the most morally upright person I’ve ever met.”

  “Alex, it’s been a long time since I met a woman I even wanted to cross the street for. You’re an incredible pain in the ass, but I’m… I don’t know, fascinated.”

  “You do talk pretty.”

  “I’m a good guy, Alex. I’m not the kind of guy who’d cross the line professionally. And even though you’re ambitious as hell, I’ve never gotten the idea you’d expect me to. I think you want to win fair and square. You wouldn’t want to get a story by…”

  “By screwing the source?”

  “I wasn’t going to put it like that, but yeah.”

  “So you think we can keep our social and professional lives separate?”

  “We could give it a go.”

  “In the middle of a murder investigation?”

  “Story of my life.”

  “So how do you want to handle this?”

  He took a deep breath and started to eat his salad. The waiter had slipped them onto our table so slyly we’d barely even noticed. “You know, Alex, back in Boston this wouldn’t be all that odd. Lots of reporters get loaded in cop bars, and I knew more than a few who got hooked up romantically. The only thing you had to watch out for was that you weren’t both working on the same case. But Gabriel is such a small town…”

  “That it’s impossible to keep things separate.”

  “Right. And in our case, you aren’t just a reporter covering a story…”

  “I’m not covering it officially, you know.”

  “Yeah, but you’re covering it, and you probably shouldn’t be. What I was going to say was that you’re not just involved as a reporter, you’re also a witness.”

  “And you’re tampering with me.”

  “As often as you’ll let me.”

  “So we’ve both flushed our ethics down the john.”

  “And you thought I was such a solid citizen.”

  “But that still brings us back to what you were saying before—how you can�
�t talk to me about the case. What about that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Listen, Cody, you said it yourself—this is not what you’d call a typical day at the office for me. I want to catch this bastard as much as you do. Right now it’s a hell of a lot more important to me than filing some damn story. So what do you say we decide we’re on the same side for once?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You know this case. I know this town. Maybe we can help each other.”

  “And when you go into the paper every day, you conveniently forget everything you know? That seems like a lot to ask.”

  “I’m a big girl. I can handle it. The question is, do you trust me?”

  “Honestly? I’m not sure. But it looks like I’m willing to gamble my career on it.”

  “Well… thanks. I think.”

  “And what happens when we catch this guy?”

  “When we catch this guy,” I said, “I get an exclusive.”

  16

  I’M WILLING TO BET THAT THE NEXT FIVE GUYS I SLEEP with will be built like a middle-aged Marlon Brando, because I’ve been on something of a hunk streak, and my luck is bound to run out. Let me make it clear that although my mom thinks I’m cute as a june bug, I’m not what you’d call a supermodel. I’m only five-three, I have these stumpy, muscular little legs, and my kind of enormous bosom went out of fashion when Rubens hung up his paintbrush. So it was always a matter of some confusion why a guy like Adam—who, as I’m fond of saying, looked like Michelangelo’s David with a Frisbee instead of a slingshot—ever gave me the time of day. And there I was, a year after he died, in the sack with the most muscle-bound guy I’d ever seen outside a Schwarzenegger movie. It was something of an embarrassment of riches.

  Now, as I’ve mentioned before, Cody was not exactly my type. Actually, he was not at all my type. I usually go for the lanky intellectual sort, guys who wear glasses and carry copies of Siddhartha and know how to use the word “ontological” in a sentence, which I do not. Most (but not all) of these guys have been journalists, and in those cases you can add to the previous description one of the following: (a) alcoholism; (b) a fanatical desire to work at the New York Times; (c) deep-seated fear of monogamy; or (d) all of the above. Usually “d.”

  Cody was different. First off, he was in no way lanky. He was rock-solid, with huge biceps and the kind of stomach muscles you see on those infomercials for The Abdominizer. Just looking at him made me want to skulk off and do sit-ups. He claimed that his physique was the genetic result of coming from “a long line of big Irish lugs” and that he didn’t do much to maintain it. As it turned out, however, he meant “not much” relative to what the SEALs put you through, which involves sitting in cold water all day, eating half a hot dog, and then running a marathon. His version of the soft life included jogging five miles a day, lifting large stacks of free weights, and (this one really got me) swimming laps across the lake, which is a mile wide and rarely gets above sixty-five degrees in the summer.

  I probably would have been annoyed by this regimen, were I not reaping its benefits. Cody’s body was quite a treat to behold and even more fun to play with. He was an extremely good lover—let’s just call him “athletic”—and at six feet tall and two hundred pounds, he made me feel positively dainty. (Girls like that.) Plus, he satisfied the First Manly Rule of Bernier: in the snugly lulls between the hot and heavy stuff, he let Zeke up on the bed with us. I was in danger of falling hard.

  “Weird thing happened to me today,” I said into the crook of his arm, which was draped over my neck in a very sexy half nelson.

  “Oh, yeah?” It was after midnight, but he didn’t sound sleepy. I could feel his breath against my hair as he spoke, and it felt so good I wanted to ask him an essay question.

  “I went out on the Green to interview those psychics who were protesting, about, you know…”

  “… that we’re a lot of pig idiots.”

  “Right. And there was this one woman—she said her name was Guenevere. I was on my way back to the newsroom, and she read my palm…”

  “I’m surprised you go in for that crap.”

  “I don’t. But she kind of, I don’t know, ambushed me—like she wanted to prove a point. And she wanted to read my future, but I wouldn’t let her, and then she said she’d read my past. And you know what she said?”

  “Recently seduced by pig idiot?”

  “No. She just stared at my hand for like five minutes and the next thing I knew she was crying.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No, and I don’t think she was faking it either. She just kept saying ‘so much death, so much death.’ It was really creepy.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “But it gets worse. She said there was death in my future too.”

  “There’s death in everyone’s future.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not what she meant.”

  He rolled me over to face him. “Are you really letting this get to you?”

  “Well, no, but…”

  “She was probably just trying to shake you up.”

  “Why?”

  “Who knows? Why do these head-cases do anything?”

  “But she seemed so sincere. And she was right, you know. I have seen a lot of death—Adam, and C.A., that girl I found in the woods…”

  “And this Guenevere person could have read all about it in the Monitor.”

  “That’s true, I guess…”

  “Come on, Alex. You can’t let yourself get upset over something this silly. I promise, nothing’s going to happen to you.”

  “It’s not myself I’m worried about. Believe me, Cody, I don’t believe in this psychic stuff any more than you do. But it… I don’t know, got me thinking. I mean, I’m only twenty-six, and I’ve already lost way too many people I care about. What if it’s always going to be like this?”

  “You mean you think you’re… cursed or something?”

  “Nothing that dramatic. I just don’t know how much more of it I could take.”

  He looked grim all of a sudden. “And you’re thinking that the last thing you needed was to get involved with a guy who gets shot at for a living.”

  I smiled and leaned across the two-inch gap between us to plant a kiss on his lips. “You know the last time a Gabriel cop died in the line of duty?”

  “I don’t know. Ten years?”

  “Try never.”

  “Never? Really?”

  “Never. It’s not that kind of town. But I could start worrying about you if it’ll make you feel good.”

  “No thanks,” he said. “You make me feel pretty damn good already.”

  That was the end of the talking for a while, and I must say he did an excellent job of taking my mind off my troubles. I could go on and on about how the earth moved and time stood still and we were transported to another universe, but the truth is that we just had some very fine sex. I wondered whether his, well, repetitive ability was a natural talent or merely evidence that he was coming off a dry spell of his own. I had my fingers crossed for the former.

  “You tired?” he said later, when Zeke was back up on the bed.

  “Nah. I should be, but I’m not.”

  “Me neither. It’s odd. I’m usually asleep by eleven.”

  “That’s frighteningly wholesome.”

  “But I’m awake now.”

  “Chalk it up to excessive stimulation.”

  “Then I blame it on you.”

  “If I’m keeping you up, I could go…”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Urn…” Shit. Now I remember why celibacy was such a rip-roaring good time. No messy latex, no weirdo negotiations about who sleeps where…

  “Because, you know,” he was saying, “you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

  I sat up and started to get out of bed. “Oh, yeah, well, maybe I should be getting back…” I started hunting for my clothes, and realized that my bra was twirling
from the ceiling fan.

  “Alex?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Come here.”

  “But I have to find my…”

  “If you don’t get back into this bed willingly, I’m going for my handcuffs.”

  “But you said you…”

  “I was trying to be liberated. I’m not very good at it.” I got back under the covers. “Damn. I don’t know what I’m doing. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I was…”

  “On the market?”

  “Not since college. My social skills are fifteen years behind the times.”

  “You mean you’ve only slept with your wife since college? Even when she was cheating on you like that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Man, you are a Boy Scout.”

  “Yeah, or a total schnook.”

  “I vote for Boy Scout.”

  “Come on, let’s try to get some sleep.” He reached over me and turned out the light.

  “Tell me a bedtime story.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yep. You had your way with me, now pony up a bedtime story.”

  “Alexandra Bernier, you are one strange lady.”

  “Given. Now deliver.”

  “I can’t. You’re the writer, not me.”

  “Then tell me something about you.”

  “That’ll definitely put you to sleep.”

  “Try me.”

  I felt him take a deep breath. I wasn’t going to prod him anymore. He was quiet for a long time. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said slowly. It took me a second to realize he was talking about the case, which was the last thing I’d expected. I just lay there and waited for him to go on. “I’ve seen a lot,” he said after a while. “Things you can’t imagine. I once busted a guy who beat his two kids to death because they tried to change the channel during the Superbowl. Then there was this hooker in the Combat Zone whose pimp killed her when she tried to stiff him, and as a warning to his other girls he cut her face off. I’ll never forget that, being dragged out of bed at two o’clock in the morning and going down there, and the coroner lifting up the plastic so we could see and these snowflakes falling on where her face used to be, mixing with the blood and just disappearing.