Lucas jumped. "Jesus, I thought you were a bush."
"I feel like a fuckin' bush." Then, sotto voce, on a radio: "It's Davenport." As Lucas pushed through the door, he said, "Tell dickweed it's his turn out here."
Two more bored cops were sitting in the studio, watching a portable TV that was set up on the floor, plugged into a DVD. When Lucas walked in, one of the cops paused the picture; they were watchingThe Mummy.
"Whichever one of you is the dickweed, I'm supposed to tell you it's your turn out there."
One of the cops looked at his watch. "Bullshit. I got fifteen minutes yet. You looking for Jael?"
"Yeah."
"She's upstairs, reading."
"Is she decent?"
"Aw, man, don't ask me that. It gives me a hard-on."
"Let me put you down for sensitivity training. We have it every Saturday morning at six."
"I'll be there. Count on it." The cop restartedThe Mummy halfway through a street riot; it resembled the media scrum outside City Hall.
Lucas went halfway up the stairs, called, "Jael?"
She came to the top of the stairs and said, "HeyDavenport. What's going on?"
"What're you doing?" Lucas asked.
"I'm down to reading a book calledNatural Ash Glazes. What'd you have in mind?"
"I don't know. I thought I'd check you out, we could roll around town for a while," he said.
Her face brightened. "That's the best offer I've had in weeks. If I have to sit around here anymore, I'll scream."
Lucas told the other cops that they'd be gone for a while. One of them said, "Hang on," and pulled on a pair of camo coveralls. "I'm going to sneak out through the garage. Give me two minutes. Give us a chance to see if anything moves after you leave."
So they sat watchingThe Mummy for a couple of minutes, and then Lucas said, "Let's go." Outside the door, Jael took his arm, and the bush said, "Wish I could go." Jael jumped. Lucas laughed and said, "Got me coming in."
Down the sidewalk, she asked, "See anybody?"
"No. Don't look around."
"What if the guy follows us?" she asked.
"Thenwe followhim."
"But what if he's watching from further away, and we don't see him, but he follows us anyway."
Lucas loaded her into the Porsche. "Not possible," he said.
They pulled away from the curb, Lucas watching ahead and in the rearview mirror, Jael craning left and right, looking for headlights. "Lots of cars, but I didn't see any headlights come on," she said.
"So he's probably not around."
"But what if"
"Reach behind your seat there, there's like a black plastic bag"
She got the bag, opened it, took out the little bubble light, and looked at it.
"Gimme it," Lucas said. He look the light, licked the suction cup, and stuck it on the dash; the cord plugged into the cigarette lighter. A minute later, they rolled down the ramp on I-35W and Lucas dropped the hammer.
The Porsche took off, running through moderate traffic, and a half-mile down, he flipped the switch on the flasher and Jael laughed and the speed went up and Jael braced herself against the dashboard and said, "Now you're showing off," as they went past the 100 mark. They flew along along the interstate, cars ahead of them scattering like chickens. At an open spot, Lucas killed the flasher and said, "No point in advertising," and backed off the speed a notch, bringing it down to ninety-five.
A minute later, they burned past a highway patrol car that had been hidden behind a Ryder truck.
"Aw, shit," Lucas said.
"Highway patrol," she said.
"Yeah, I know. Stop or go?"
"Go," she said.
He went, and the needle pushed past 100 to 108, and Jael said, "He turned his flashing lights on I think he's coming He's coming, but you're still gaining."
Exit coming up. Diamond Lake Road. One car at the top of the ramp. Lucas pushed it until the last second, then cut right, took the ramp. The car at the top was turning left, so Lucas went right, around the corner, down a long block, and turned left: He accelerated to the end of the block, turned left again, and rolled down the window. They could hear the siren from the Highway Patrol car, but it was north and then west of themgoing the wrong way.
"They usually turn right if they lose a guy," Lucas grunted. "We gotta get south."
They zigzagged south and west, past Oak Hill cemetery, under another limited-access road, Jael teasing Lucas as he lurked through residential neighborhoods, avoiding headlights. "Shut up, shut up," he said, and she laughed and said, "Mr. Speed-o."
They finally made I-694, and Lucas took the car onto the highway, two exits, off, into a bookstore parking lot, part of a shopping complex. "Now what?" Jael asked.
"We go to the bookstore for an hour, then walk over and get something to eat, and maybe go shopping for a while. Gotta stay off the road for a couple of hours. There aren't that many black Porsches around."
"What if they stop us anyway?" she asked.
"Then I he like a motherfucker," Lucas said.
"I thought cops got free passes."
"Not if they're showing off for a girl," Lucas said. "I hope you like books."
She did like books, and disappeared into the Art section. Lucas browsed through Literature, slowed down at Poetry, found a collection of Philip Larkin's stuff, and was reading through it when she snuck up behind him. "Guns 'n' Ammo," she predicted, reaching for the book. He let her have it, and she turned it over in her hands and then looked up at him. "Showing off for a girl, eh?"
He shrugged. "Not really. I don't read much fiction, but I read poetry."
She closed one eye and examined him. "You're lying like a motherfucker."
"Nope."
"One of the other cops told me you once owned a computer company."
"Yeah, but it was really somebody else who did the computer stuff," Lucas said. "I just had some good ideas at the right time."
"That's what it's all about, isn't it? Having the right ideas at the right time." She turned the book over. "You think I'd like him?"
He thought for a minute, then said, "Nope. He's a little tooguy for you."
"Who, then?"
"Emily Dickinson? She's my favoriteprobably the best American poet ever."
"All right, I'll try her," she said. "Otherwise, all I got was this." She held up a book with a pot on the cover that said, Japanese Ash Glazes.
"I got a deep interest in ash myself," Lucas said.
After the bookstore, they went to a bagel place and got healthy bagels. As they were eating, Jael paging through her collection of Dickinson, she suggested that they go back to the bookstore so she could buy some mysteries. "I always go into the bookstores and wind up buying books for work, or something serious, but if I've got to keep sitting in that house, I gotta have something else. I can't stand TV anymore."
"If you want to buy mysteries, there's a place on the way back that we could stop. Nothing but mysteries."
"Sounds good." She licked a drip of sun-dried tomato hummus off her thumb. "We need to kill some more time." But in the car, she said, "At your house, do you have both a bathtub and a shower? Or are you just a shower guy?"
"No, I have both."
"Since we've gotta kill time, why don't we go back to your place and jump in the tub? It's been a while since I had a really great back-washing."
They were sitting at an uphill stop sign, and Lucas had one foot on the clutch and let the car roll back a few feet, then accelerated forward, and rolled back, thinking. "Maybe I need a little more romancing," he said finally. "Besides"
"Another commitment?"
"Not exactly. But I'm sort of between everything," he said.
"I know you're not gay, the way you look at me."
"That's not the problem." But it had been a long time: He remembered standing outside the cabin and looking up at the great smear of the Milky Way stars and feeling not insignificant, but lonely. And alone.
"It's just casual sex, Lucas. Therapy," she said.
"Maybe I'm still too Catholic. Besides, what about the guys at the bookstore? They need the sales. What're their children gonna eat if we don't buy books?"