* * *
At six o’clock I retrieved my car and drove the three blocks to the Mills House. Erin came down looking lovely and I told her so. I was on my best behavior, somewhere between smarmy and suave, decked out in my dark coat and tie. I held the door for her and took her hand as she sank into the car, and for the moment there were no wisecracks between us. I had found a seafood place on Shem Creek in Mount Pleasant. We were early enough to get a spectacular table near a window facing a sweeping marsh. The food was good, fishing boats passed beneath us, and the setting sun turned the creek into a ribbon of fire.
It was the pleasantest evening I’d had in a long time and there were long, casual moments when the specter of Dante and his thugs seemed very far away. Outside, she said, “You know what I’d like to do? Take off my shoes and walk on a beach somewhere, without much risk of running into Archer.” I consulted my map and a few minutes later we were heading back through the city, over the Ashley River and out to the coast. It was a good drive across miles of marshlands dotted with small wooded islands, and I could imagine what it had been like before growth, the scourge of our time, had turned too much of it into a long, continuous suburb.
Folly Beach is a little town with a few flashing neon blocks, a shooting gallery, a game room, pavilion, and rides. The carnival atmosphere disappeared at once as I turned south into the night. I found a place to park and we kicked off our shoes and went barefoot in the moonlight along the edge of the surf. The wind was strong and a little cold for the season; Erin curled her hand into mine and drew herself close. I draped my coat around us like a cocoon, she snuggled against me, we stood wrapped together like that, and at some point I lifted her chin and kissed her. She pulled us tighter and I buried my face in her hair. My old heart was going a mile a minute.
“Now look what you’ve done,” she said. “We can never be friendly antagonists again.”
“I thought that was pretty friendly, actually.”
“Yes, but now what are we going to do about it?”
“That’s a tough one. The answers can range all the way from nothing…”
“…to everything.”
“The prospects boggle the mind.”
“But how to decide? Do we take a vote?”
“That would be pointless without some way of breaking a tie.”
“I’ve never been much for casual sex,” she volunteered airily.
“At the same time, I’m not getting any younger.”
“Are you having trouble with your, uh…”
“No, I’m fine as of today. But the male body was not made for endless periods of celibacy. Deep, unexpected flabbiness can occur.”
“Maybe I’d better talk faster.”
I had to laugh at that.
She said, “If we eliminate casual sex, where are we?”
“Sounds almost like we’d have to get serious.”
“If that turned out to be the case, what would you say?”
“What do you want me to say, I love you?”
“Not unless it’s true.”
“That’s my point. If I did say that…”
“Yes?”
“How would you know it’s not just some scuzzy male ploy to get my way with you?”
“I’ve got pretty good vibes.”
“Experience will give you that.”
“I beg your pardon! I don’t just fall down for every dude I meet.”
“Still, you must have some way of—”
“Forty days and forty nights.”
I took that under advisement, then said, “I’ll bet there’s a clue there somewhere.”
“Once we reach a certain point, we take forty days and forty nights to get to know each other. But back to the original question: If you did say ‘I love you,’ how would you know? Have you ever been in love?”
“Sure. Once.”
“What was she like?”
“A lot like you, actually. Not as crazy but very quick. Smart as a whip.”
“What happened?”
“My performance left something to be desired.”
“Well, since we’ve already established that you’re not physically challenged, I take it you were being your usual boorish and dictatorial self.”
“Okay.”
“That’s not something you can answer okay to, Janeway. Either you were or you weren’t.”
“I didn’t trust her.”
“That’s a biggie. Oh, that’s very big. You don’t ever want to let that happen again.”
“I’ll try,” I said, but I couldn’t help thinking how often history repeats itself.
She burrowed closer than I thought possible. I felt her fingernails through my shirt.
“You’ve got to give up your need to run things,” she said. “I don’t do well with that.”
“Maybe I could work on it.”
“Would you really?”
“Anything’s possible.”
“We’ll see. I’m about to tell you something that will test you severely. Are you ready?”
I wasn’t but she told me anyway. “I canceled my plane reservation this afternoon. I’m not going back to Denver, I’m staying with you. God help Mr. Dante if he bothers us.”
She unwound herself, spun away, and stood shivering in the wind. “So what do you say, Janeway? You lost once because of your attitude—are you going to blow it again?”
She squinted at her watch. “Hey, I think our forty days and forty nights just began.”
CHAPTER 29
I remembered half a dozen moments in my life, crossroads where everything would be different if I had gone the other way. I could tick them off in no particular order. When I became a cop. When I stopped being a cop. When I discovered Hemingway and Fowles and those three lovely books by Maugham, all in the same month. When I became a bookseller. When I found, won, and lost an unforgettable woman. Now this. Suddenly my world was shaken. Everything in it was different.
We met again at dawn. My telephone rang in the darkness and when I lifted it she said, “You sound awake, I hope.” I said, “I am awake.” She said, “Have you had any sleep?” Not much, I admitted: not enough to matter. She asked for the time; I looked at the clock and told her it was four twenty-seven. That’s what hers said too, as if clocks were suddenly untrustworthy. “Meet me on the Battery,” she said. I told her I’d pick her up, I had to come past her hotel anyway, but she wanted to be met at dawn at the top of the steps where the rivers join and the wall gets higher. “It’ll be so much more dramatic that way.”
The wind of last night had blown dark clouds over the city and the day promised rain. I walked over, arriving at first light after a fifteen-minute hike. She stood looking out to sea like the French lieutenant’s woman. She heard me coming: didn’t turn but wiggled her ringers in an endearing “hi, there” gesture. I climbed the steps to the high wall and wrapped my arms around her. She sank against me and I kissed her neck. “How are we doing?” I said.
“So far, so good. Thank you for not pitching a fit last night.”
I thought the jury was still out on that. Then she said, “Our lives are changing, old man,” and I heard the jury coming back early.
“It looks like there are two of us now,” she said. “That takes some getting used to.”
“Yes, it does.”
“I’ve been on my own forever.”
“Never a guy to answer to. Never somebody to lay down the law.”
“I’ve been way too career-minded. Maybe now I’ve got to be more…what’s the word?”
“The word is reasonable,” I said dryly. I spelled it for her, enunciating each letter clearly.
“You’re a regular walking dictionary. What can this mean?”