She looked, after eight years, impossibly the same. Now thirty-four, she could have passed for twenty-five. Her face was still as unlined, unmarked by the passage of years, as a baby’s. That made sense, Hardy thought. It’s what lack of a sense of guilt could do for you.
She was still unaware of him, and he couldn’t help taking her in. Tall, slim, radiant dark hair casting highlights even in the dim room. Looking down slightly as she walked-graceful, serene. The face again, he kept coming back to the face, with its slightly Oriental cast, though no one knew where that had come from. It was really only a heaviness in the eyelids, but with the wide cheekbones, the rosebud lips, there was a geisha air. She was elegantly dressed, as always. Gold earrings. A blouse in pink silk, pleated dark blue skirt, low heels.
Now ten feet away, she finally looked up, and there it was, that million-dollar slow smile that had completely changed his life.
She stopped, looked, let the smile build just slowly enough to work on him. And it did. He found himself smiling back.
“Small world,” he said, his first words to her since he’d left their house.
Of course she would kiss him, hug him. But not gushing. Slow and savoring. An old, old and very dear friend. “You look wonderful,” she said. “How have you been? How are you? What are you doing now?”
He had to laugh. “I’m good, Jane. I’ve been fine.”
She touched his arm, smiled into his eyes. “I can’t believe I’m seeing you.”
She stopped, impulsively hugged him again.
Some sense-memory made him remember why it had been so hard to consider someone, anyone else. His whole being just responded to her. It wasn’t a social thing. He just looked at her and smiled, his life full and complete, like a moonstruck teenager.
But a half-dozen-plus years don’t, after all, go away without a trace. Whole new synapses had been created, and the warning janglings that he felt had become a part of his makeup were sounding like crazy.
“Who are you here with?”
She still held his arms, just above his elbows. “Just Daddy and some friends.”
Daddy. Judge Andy Fowler. The doyen of the San Francisco bench-who’d gotten Dismas his first interview for D.A., who’d been, during the troubles, a surprising confidant.
Then that sly look. “Why do you want to know?”
He told himself to stop smiling, dammit, but standing here so close to her, looking into her amused eyes, even now catching a whiff of the perfume…
“I thought maybe a drink would be nice.”
She nodded. “I’d like that.” Then, “If you want.”
He laughed, shrugged. “I don’t know if I want, to tell you the truth.”
She kissed him again, quickly. “Let me go pee and dump Daddy.”
“No one?” she asked. “Didn’t you wish you could love anybody?”
She drank Absolut now, rocks. She had given up smoking. He told himself she couldn’t possibly care about his nonexistent love life.
“I don’t know anymore if love’s a feeling or an attitude.”
She laughed, throat extended, looking up. “Dismas,” she said when the laugh was all finished. She sipped her drink. “That is such a Dismas thing to say.”
Why didn’t that annoy him?
“Well, the point is, I never felt enough, you know, to make any decisions.”
“Decisions?”
“Not decisions, really. I guess commitments.” He swallowed the rest of his scotch and signaled the bartender for another round.
Jane covered his hand with her own. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t laughing at you.”
“I know.”
She squeezed the hand gently, not coming on. Not consciously coming on.
“Anyway”-leaving his hand on the bar covered with hers- “there hasn’t been anyone. Where there was anything going on, I mean.” He didn’t like the way that made it sound-as though he’d been pining away for Jane. “But it’s been no big deal,” he said, “one way or the other.” There, that put it in perspective. “How about you?” he asked.
To his surprise, she’d been married and divorced again.
“It wasn’t very serious,” she said. “It was more a rebound thing.”
“Being married wasn’t serious?”
She sighed. “It seemed serious for a while. I guess I was just lonely, confused, you know. It wasn’t long after”-she hesitated, perhaps wondering what it would sound like-“us.”
The new round came, and she moved her hand. Hardy watched it tap the bar once, then settle into her lap. He reached over and held it.
Holding her hand in her lap.
“I don’t care,” he said, not sure what he was referring to.
“Dismas,” she began, squeezing his hand.
He interrupted her. “Let’s go outside.”
The night was still warm. The building felt almost hot as he pressed her up against it.
No nonsense. None at all. Out the side door to the alley and around the back, near the employee entrance, between some parked cars, empty cardboard boxes scattered here and there. A building or two down there was a light, up high.
Holding hands all the way out, then stopping when they had turned the corner. The kiss openmouthed, hungry. Backing away a step, pulling up the skirt, stepping out of the shoes. A quick look around, then the hose down and off and thrown somewhere, maybe into one of the boxes.
And then the warm building, Hardy’s pants not even down, pressing it to her, into her, wet and ready, legs hitched up high on his hips, the kissing wonderful wordless pumping of it.
“Oh, God, Daddy’s still here.”
Hardy had her arm. They, neither of them, were about to invite the other back to their respective houses, and so they decided on a nightcap back inside.
“What if he’d come out…”
“Knowing Andy, he would’ve come back in here and had a drink and he’d never let on he saw us.”
“What if he notices my stockings?”
Hardy squeezed the arm. “You’re not wearing any.”
A look that said “That’s what I mean,” when suddenly there was no avoiding him, getting up from his table as they came in.
Hardy was still weak in the knees, wanting to talk to Jane about what it might mean, but knowing he’d have to put that off. Andy saw him, flashed a look at his daughter, then closed the space between them.
“You said an old friend,” to Jane, with some hint of reproof, “not old family.”
The eyes took Hardy in. “You look fine, son. Life treating you okay?”
They got through the small talk, meeting his dinner companions, who were going home anyway, getting to the bar. If Hardy looked fine, Andy looked incredible. Still skinny as a stick, face unlined, hair thick and the color of stout. Dressed now in a camel’s-hair sport coat and tie.
Andy wasn’t famed for a beat-around-the-bush approach. “So what’s with you two together?” was the first thing he asked at the bar.
“Pure accident,” Jane answered.
“Anybody believes in pure accidents in this life isn’t paying close enough attention.” He sipped a cognac. “Maybe meeting here was an accident, but sitting here with me two hours later has the ring of volition.”
Hardy laughed. Andy had the same style from the bench. He took it right to Hardy. “So what are you doing with yourself? I keep expecting to see you in court one of these days. Get back to the trade.”
Jane sat between them, included by position. Hardy talked a little, occasionally touching Jane’s back with the flat of his hand. She leaned back or over-into it.
Hardy, ex-assistant D.A., shook his head. “I’m just not that cerebral. I think if I did anything I’d go back to being a cop.”
Andy raised his eyebrows. “Doesn’t rule out cerebral.”
“Maybe we don’t know the same cops.”
“If we’re talking cerebral, maybe we don’t know the same attorneys.”