“Julia,” I said. “Julia.”
The room was dense with shadow, only a few shafts of light stabbing through the gloom. The outline of the body of the dead doctor was a mere suggestion on the carpet. Dull gleams bounced off the welter of wrestling trophies. I smelled the smoke before I spotted her, sitting deep in the corner, on a leather easy chair, the tip of a cigarette glowing. As best as I could tell, she was wearing a man’s shirt, unbuttoned, and nothing else. One bare leg was tucked beneath her, her arms were crossed. A slash of light fell across her eye and cheek.
I had wanted to rush in and sweep her up in a great hug, but a woman sitting like that, in the dark, as defensive as that, even nearly naked, is impossible to sweep anywhere. I stopped suddenly when I saw her, but it wasn’t only her posture that halted my charge. The sight of her, thin and nearly naked, in the darkness, sad and threatened, bare legs, bare throat, an air of hostility floating about her as thick as the cigarette smoke, all of it filled me with a desire that was paralyzing. It was as if the whole of my bizarre phobias and fixations were assembled into a perfect instrument for my enthrallment. The very air crackled with my wanting. If she had blown on me, right then, the mere touch of her breath would have toppled me backward onto the floor.
The glow of her cigarette rose to her face and brightened before she slowly pulled it out of her mouth and let loose a long exhale. I staggered back.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said finally.
“I… I…” Gather yourself, boy. “I had been told to stay away.”
“By whom?”
“The cops. Because I’m a material witness. And also by your lawyer.”
“Clarence told you to stay away? Now I understand. He can be very intimidating. Did he brandish his bow tie at you?”
“I didn’t want to cause you any more trouble. But now I need to see you. I have great news.” I looked around. “What are you doing in this room?”
“Savoring the memories.”
“Is that his shirt?”
“It’s cozy.”
“Julia.”
“And it still smells like him. The cigars I hated and the cologne that made me want to vomit.”
“You shouldn’t be in here. Wearing that. There’s still blood on the carpet. And what are you doing smoking? You don’t smoke.”
“I picked it up in prison.”
“You were there two nights.”
“Two nights more than you,” she said.
She put the cigarette to her lips and inhaled again before tapping her ashes into an empty crystal liquor glass on the table beside her. Beside the empty liquor glass was an empty bottle.
“You didn’t kill your husband, Julia.”
“No?”
“I know it for sure now.”
“You didn’t before?”
“How could I?”
“Because I told you I didn’t.”
“You told me you’d marry me, too.”
She took a moment to fiddle with the cigarette, take another inhale. “So that’s where we are, Victor, in an endless loop.”
“No,” I said. “Not anymore. That’s over, all of it is over. I’m going to help you now.”
“I don’t need your help. I have Clarence.”
“Clarence is out of his league. Clarence is going to help you into a jail term if you let him. But I’m not just talking about the murder investigation, Julia. I found the purse you left in my desk, I followed the clues within it. I know what you were doing at the time of your husband’s murder. You were buying drugs from a dealer named Jamison. And I can prove it.”
“Don’t.”
“I can get you cleared.”
“Keep your nose out of my business.”
“I won’t. You’re an addict. You’re buying heroin regularly from a street dealer in North Philadelphia. You have a problem, and you need help.”
“I do have a problem, Victor, but it’s not what you think.”
“Clarence said you had a cold in jail. I bet it’s gone. I bet as soon as you got out of jail and had a moment alone, you had your little fix and cured it right up.”
“If you’re so clever, sweetheart, then why are you always wrong?”
I went to her, knelt in front of her as if she were a child, placed my hand on her bare leg. Even as I knew her to be half drunk and loaded with hop, I couldn’t stop thinking how beautiful she was. I could smell the soap on her, make out the swell of her breast beneath the shirt. The skin on her leg felt warm and smooth. I patted it gently, then let my hand fall so my palm was flat on her flesh. My head swam as if it were I who had emptied the bottle, not she.
“Julia,” I said, trying to regain control of my senses.
I looked up at her. She stared down coolly.
“Now that I know you didn’t kill your husband, we still might have a future together. If you get help, go into treatment, deal with the drug thing, we’ll be free to start again and this time do it right. Without any encumbrances.”
“That’s all life is, encumbrances.”
“We can be free of them.”
“You never knew me, did you, Victor?”
“I loved you.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“But you have to admit the truth if we have any chance.”
I grabbed her right arm, pushed up the sleeve, turned her wrist so the underside of her arm glowed dully from a dim shaft of light. She didn’t do anything to stop me. The skin was flawless. I grabbed her left arm and tried to do the same but felt a sharp, jabbing pain on the back of my hand.
I snatched my hand away, and sparks flew from the cigarette she had jammed into my flesh.
I jerked myself to standing, backed off, lifted my burned skin to my lips. She sat there calmly, staring at me with dead eyes.
“What the hell was that?” I said.
“Clarence showed me your statement,” she said. “It read like a Harlequin romance. ‘I unbuttoned her shirt. I unhooked her bra.’ If the law doesn’t work out, you can write bodice rippers.”
“I just told them the truth.”
“That’s funny. I thought we agreed not to tell them anything.”
“With all the evidence they had, the only thing that could help you was the truth.”
“It was never about the truth, Victor. It was about keeping what was ours to ourselves. About keeping what was growing again between us private, because that was the only way it had a chance to survive. And we agreed. And the first bit of pressure, you blurted out everything.”
“I was just trying to help you.”
“You were just trying to save yourself.”
“Maybe I was. But now I’m going to save you.”
“You have no idea what you are doing.”
“Where are you shooting it?”
“I’m not.”
“Are you smoking it, snorting it? How are you using it?”
“You’re refusing to believe me again.”
“But you had the kit in your purse. You were buying drugs from Jamison. And you hid it in my desk to keep it from the police.”
“Maybe all that wasn’t for me, Victor.”
I looked at her, stepped back, and thought about it for a moment. Then I turned my head until I was staring at the vaguely outlined body on the carpet.
“Your husband?” I said.
“I won’t talk about it, Victor.”
“You have to.”
“No I don’t. Leave it alone.”
“I can’t.”
“Promise me you’ll leave it alone,” she said.
“Julia.”
“Promise me,” she said coolly as she tossed her cigarette into the empty glass, “or go away.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m asking. Shouldn’t that be enough?”
She unfurled the leg that was curled beneath her body and stood from the chair. Her shirt flared open, exposing the whole of her breasts, the hollow of her belly, the narrow black straps of a lacy lingerie bottom. She stepped toward me until we were an arm’s length apart. Even though we weren’t touching, I could feel her, like a heat all across the front of my body, a magnetic heat pulling me forward.