She had been well into a bottle of Shingle Peak New Zealand Riesling when Resnick had phoned and there was just a glass left to offer him when the door bell rang. If it came to it, Dana thought, not that she could see why it should, she could always open another.
Resnick shook off his coat, exchanged a few pleasantries, and took the offered seat. Dana’s face was fuller than he had pictured it, swollen around the eyes, from drinking or crying he couldn’t tell.
She held the bottle out towards him and he shook his head, so she emptied the contents into her own glass.
“There’s no news,” she said, scarcely a question.
Resnick shook his head.
Dana poked at the hem of an orange top that was either half inside her belt or half out. “I didn’t think so or you would have said. On the phone.” She tilted the glass back and drank. “Unless the news was bad.”
He looked up at her steadily.
“Oh, God,” Dana said, “she’s dead, isn’t she? She’s got to be.”
Resnick reacted in time to catch the glass as it fell from her fingers, what was left of the wine splashing across his sleeve. With his other arm he steadied her, fingers spread high behind her waist so that she fell heavily against him. Eyes closed, her face was close to his; he could feel her breath on his skin.
“That’s not what I came here to say.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No. No, it’s not.”
Through the soft material of her clothing he could feel her breast against his chest, hip hard against his thigh.
“It’s all right.”
She opened her eyes. “Is it?”
He was more aware of her body than he wanted to be. “Yes,” he said.
Just a simple movement, the way she raised her mouth towards his. A moment when something tried to warn him this was wrong. Her breath was warm and she tasted of wine. Their teeth clashed and then they didn’t. He could scarcely believe the inside of her mouth was so soft. Gently, she took his bottom lip between her teeth.
Without Resnick knowing exactly how, they were on the floor beside the settee. The sleeve of his jacket, the cuff of his shirt were dark from the wine.
“I’ve ruined your clothes,” Dana said.
They managed to get his jacket half off; one at a time, she licked his fingers clean.
“I don’t know your name,” she said. “Your first name.”
He touched her breast and the nipple was so hard against the soft flesh of his finger that he gasped. Dana moved beneath him so that one of his legs was between her own. She took his face in her hands; she didn’t think he could have kissed anyone in a long while.
“Charlie,” he said.
“What?” Her voice soft and loud, tip of her tongue flicking the lobe of his ear.
“My name. Charlie.”
Face pressed into the softness of his shoulder, she began to laugh.
“What?”
“I can’t believe …”
“What?”
“I’m about to make love to a policeman called Charlie.”
He moved his leg and rolled away but she rolled with him and as she leaned over him her hair fell loose about her face and the laugh was now a smile.
“Charlie,” she said.
The look of shock was still there in his eyes.
Taking his hands again, she brought them to her breasts. “Careful,” she said. “Careful, Charlie. Take your time.”
“Charlie, are you all right?”
They were in Dana’s big bed beneath a duvet cover awash with purple and orange flowers. The room smelled of potpourri and sweat and sex and, faintly, Chanel № 5. Dana had opened another bottle of wine and before bringing it back she had put music on the stereo; through the partly open door, Rod Stewart was singing “I Don’t Want to Talk About It”; inside Resnick’s head Ben Webster was playing “Someone to Watch Over Me,” “Our Love is Here to Stay.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Just fine.” Aside from the obvious, he had no idea what was happening and for now he was happy to keep it that way.
“Quiet, though,” Dana said. He looked to see if she was smiling; she was.
“Hungry?” she asked.
“Probably.”
Kissing him on the side of the mouth, she pushed herself off the bed and took her time about leaving the room. It amazed him that she was so unselfconscious about her body; when he had needed to go to the bathroom, he had fished his boxer shorts from the bottom of the bed with his toes and pulled them back on.
Dana had taken off Resnick’s watch because it was scratching her skin and now he lifted it from the bedside table: eleven-seventeen. Cupping both hands behind his head he closed his eyes.
Without meaning to, he dozed.
When he came to, Dana was walking back into the room with a tray containing two cold turkey wings, one leg, several slices of white breast meat, a chunk of Blue Stilton, plastic pots of hummous and taramasalata two-thirds empty, a small bunch of grapes browning against their stems, one mug of coffee, and another of orange and hibiscus tea.
“Budge up,” she grinned, settling the tray in the center of the bed and then sliding in behind it. “We haven’t,” she said, “a slice of bread or a biscuit in the place.”
Slowly, she slid her forefinger down into the pink taramasalata and brought it, laden, to his mouth.
“When you rang, asked to come round,” she said, “is this what you had in mind?”
Resnick shook his head.
“Honestly?”
“Of course not.”
Dana sipped her tea. “Why, of course?”
Resnick didn’t know how he was supposed to respond, what to say. “I just didn’t … I mean, I wouldn’t …”
“Wouldn’t?”
“No.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Clean in thought, word and deed, the policeman’s code.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
“What you mean is, you didn’t find me attractive.”
“No.”
“No, you didn’t, or no, you did?”
“No, that isn’t what I mean.”
“What is then?”
To give himself time, he tried the coffee; it was almost certainly instant, certainly too weak. “I meant I knew you were an attractive woman, but I hadn’t thought about you in this … like this, I mean, sexually, and if I had I probably wouldn’t have called up like that and invited myself round so as to …”
“Why not?”
He put the mug back down. “I don’t know.”
“You’re involved with somebody else?”
“No.”
“Then why not?”
Not knowing why this was so embarrassing, nonetheless he looked away. “It wouldn’t have seemed right.”
“Oh.”
“And besides …”
“Yes?”
“I’d never have thought you’d be interested.”
“In sex?”
“In me.”
“Oh, Charlie,” touching the side of his face with her hand.
“What?”
“Don’t you know you’re an attractive man?”
“No,” he said. “No, I don’t.”
Smiling she let her hand slide around to the back of his neck as she leaned towards him for a kiss. “Of course,” she said, “that’s one of the most attractive things about you.” And then, “But you are pleased to be here?”
He didn’t have to answer; she could see that he was.
“Before it’s too late,” she said, “why don’t we just move this tray?”
She was stretching to set it on the floor when Resnick ran his hands down her back on to her buttocks, then, more slowly, out along her thighs. He heard her breathing change.
“Dana,” he said.
“Mmm?”
“Nothing.” He had just wanted to hear how it sounded when he spoke her name.
It was after one. The second mug of coffee had been stronger and black. The same Rod Stewart selection was playing, more quietly, in the next room. Resnick lay on his stomach, Dana with one leg and arm carelessly across him. This time she had been the one to fall asleep, but now she was sleepily awake.
“You know, I saw him once,” Resnick said.
“Who?”
“Rod Stewart. That’s who it is, isn’t it?”