“Tell him thanks, would you?”
“I will. But I need you to prove it.”
There was something going on between them. He was sure of it. Odis leaned back in his chair and tucked in his shirt, pulling it tight across his chest. Then he looked her up and down. She liked that-he could tell.
Okay, then. He reached into his pocket. “Look,” he said, “I don’t got no I.D. right now.” He took out his roll of bills. “But I got a lot of this, and my cousin, he got more.”
She nodded and smiled, getting it, looking right into his eyes. “Okay,” she said, walking back to the bar.
Damn, this is easy!
And here comes Alphonse, sitting down, smiling. “The plane’s on time,” he said. “ ’Bout an hour and a half.”
Odis looked back over at the bar, the girl now just waiting while the bartender was busy for a minute talking on the phone. She looked over to him and smiled, so everything was cool. Odis smiled back.
Alphonse noticed. “What you doin’?”
“Nothin’ yet. But you got me thinking about it.”
“What’s that?”
Odis jerked his head toward the bar. “What she got.”
“Well, you think when we get over there. We got no time for that here. I tole you it ain’t no different.”
Alphonse picked up his umbrella drink and sucked at the straw. He stared into the empty glass. “I could get used to these, you know? Maybe that’s all I’ll do over there is suck up piña coladas.”
“Piña coladas?”
Alphonse shook his head, patient. “That’s what we’re drinking here, Odis. Piña coladas.”
Odis was just about to tell him that he’d ordered some mai tais for the second round when this guy looked like the Refrigerator came up and hovered over their table.
“Excuse me,” he said, all business, a giant standing light on his feet, hands folded in front of him. “Can I ask you gentlemen to show some identification?”
That’s when Alphonse bolted.
Expecting him was one thing. Actually seeing him at the door was another.
It had been her door for so long she’d forgotten that it had once been both of theirs. Dismas coming home from work every day those-how many?-years. Up the stoop, then hearing the key in the deadbolt. In those days, even before the baby, Jane getting home before him, making some hors d’oeuvres or blender drinks before he got home, sometimes bringing her friends with her, sometimes Dismas getting home with his. Once in a while twenty people descending on the Hardy fun house.
But most nights, just Dismas, home from work, loving her.
And now here he was, again, on the stoop, with no keys of his own, ringing the doorbell. The door’s top half was a frosted window, and through it the silhouette was Dismas, her Dismas, who’d once wanted it all and then none of it.
She opened the door.
“Hi.” She was, for some reason, embarrassed, unable to say more. She wore dolphin shorts and a tank top and was barefoot, this buyer for Magnin’s. She backed up a step.
He walked in all right, then the weight of the place slowed him down. Through the living room he seemed to feel it more. Without talking, she headed for the bedroom. She was forgetting what he’d have to pass.
He got to the door that entered the hallway. By that time she’d come to the entrance to the bedroom. Dismas stopped in front of her little used sewing room. He stood there a long time. The door to it was closed.
“Remember how we wouldn’t close the door the first few weeks?” he said.
“How we wanted to hear every sound?”
He leaned back against the wall. She walked a few steps toward him. She heard the long breath.
“Maybe I should have come over to your place,” she said.
“You think I was wrong?” he asked, letting himself down to the floor. “Now, here, it seems so… immediate.”
She came a little closer. The only light in the hallway came from the kitchen, around an L-turn to the left by her bedroom. “I guess I got used to it,” she said. “The house, I mean. The room.” It didn’t sound right, but she had to say something. “I had to go on.”
“I couldn’t.”
“I know.”
Jane came and knelt next to him. She touched his hair. “If it’s any help, I understood. Even then.”
“Things just stopped mattering.”
“I know they did.”
“I mean, why do anything anyway? I thought everything made a difference. I’d make a better world.”
She pulled his face into her breast. “Shhh,” she whispered.
“I was just like Ed Cochran. And see where that gets us.”
She stroked him-his face, his hair-letting him get it out. At least he was with her, not running, his arms around her.
“I didn’t-” He stopped, pulling back slightly. “Leaving you,” he said, “that was wrong.”
“It wasn’t a lot of fun,” she agreed, “but I lived.”
“I never explained it, did I? Just upped and left.”
“You think I’m dumb, Dismas? I got it.”
“I just couldn’t handle caring anymore. That much.”
“I said I got it. I had to.”
He motioned with his head. “What’s in there now?”
“It’s my sewing room.”
“You mind if I look at it?”
They got up. She opened the door and flicked on the light, watching Dismas trying to imagine it as it had been. Now it was a different place-the alphabet wallpaper gone, no trinkets or kid stuff or upholstered edges. It was a working room, pleasant and dull.
Dismas, hands in pockets, just stood in the doorway, nodding. “I should’ve seen this about five years ago,” he said. “I kept seeing it like it was.”
“You thought nothing would change?”
“The old interior landscape,” he said, “it never did.”
She turned off the light, taking his hand. “So what happened?” she asked. “Now, I mean.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t know.”
“You’re the same, but you’re so different,” Jane said.
“Who isn’t?”
“I don’t think I am.”
“Which one, the same or different?”
“Different,” she decided.
Dismas was sitting crosslegged on the bed. He drank some of his wine. “You must be different, too,” he said, “or I don’t think I could be here with you.”
She reached over and touched his leg at the knee, where the jeans were worn nearly white. He was barefoot. His print shirt had a collar and needed ironing and the top two buttons were undone.
“Well, either way, I’m glad you are.” She leaned over and kissed him.
“How am I different?” he asked. Then, as though to himself, “How am I the same, come to think of it?”
“Well, you’re still intense.”
“I am intense,” he agreed.
“But it’s like it’s more controlled now. Like you think about things more before you do them.”
He kept his eyes on her, gray sleepy eyes that didn’t seem tired. She chuckled deep in her throat. “See, you’re doing it now. Just looking, thinking about things.”
“I do think about things,” he said. “No, it’s not that so much.”
“It’s not?”
“It’s more the way I think. I guess I just don’t jump into things anymore.”
“But isn’t this investigation…? Didn’t you just jump into that?”
“I make exceptions.”
She touched his chest at the V of his shirt. “And Pico and his shark. And you definitely jumped all over me at Shroeder’s.”
“I did? I thought that was you.”
“No, that was you.” She kissed him again. “Mostly. Which makes three jumps in a week. There could be a pattern emerging there.”
Dismas lay back on the bed, against the pillow, a hand back under his head. He held out his wineglass and Jane reached for the bottle on the floor and filled it.
“You know, it’s funny,” he said. “Running into those things again, that I jumped into. It’s not like I see them and decide. It’s almost automatic. Back then everything was passion. Being a cop, the law, you. I guess old Diz just lost himself with all that.”