Steve’s eyes fixed on the AC. “By the way, what was the temperature last night?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just wondering.”
“It was cool and rainy. Why?” She stared at him for a long moment. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t respond for a moment. “I had another spell yesterday.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. The last I remember was dropping off my grades at the Criminal Justice office. Then I think I grabbed a bite to eat near campus. It’s all blank after that.”
“You don’t remember going home?”
“No. Just waking up this morning when Reardon called.”
She gave him a long penetrating look. “Were you drinking?”
He saw that coming. “Maybe a beer.”
“Or two or three…on top of Ativan. You know the doc said that can screw you up.”
He made a dismissive gesture. “I don’t know what I drank. And I take the Ativan as needed.”
“Did you?”
He looked at her and shook his head. “I don’t remember.”
“So, where were you?”
“A restaurant across from the quadrangle.”
“And you don’t remember driving home? Taking a shower? Going to bed?”
“No.”
“You must have had your PDA turned off, too, because I tried calling a couple of times.”
“I guess.” He had to charge his PDA that morning while he showered and got ready to leave for the crime scene. He always did that at night. But he hadn’t.
She shook her head and was about to reprimand him when she stiffened. “Something’s burning.”
“The lamejunes.”
Steve had brought over some Armenian pizzas and other delicacies. Even when they were living with each other, he prepared many of the meals because Dana got no pleasure from cooking nor was she particularly creative. In fact, she overcooked everything. He, on the other hand, got lost in the creative process—a relief from the constant stress of his job.
He bolted down the stairs to find smoke billowing out of the oven. He had forgotten to set the timer. He pulled out the tray. The lamejunes were smoking disks of char. “They’re a tad well-done, but you might like them.”
“Very funny.”
He washed the remains into the garbage disposal while Dana snapped on the vent. On the kitchen island were platters of rolled grape leaves, pickled vegetables, and cheese and spinach turnovers plus a bowl of hummus with triangles of pita and Calamata olives. He started to pull more lamejunes out of the box, but Dana said she wasn’t hungry.
“The grape leaves are homemade. I rolled them with my feet the way you like them.”
She gave him a thin smile but shook her head and leaned against the sink.
Steve poured her a glass of Gewürztraminer and himself a club soda. She was quiet and stared into her glass. “Can I stay over?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“I promise I won’t let you touch me.”
“No.”
“I miss you.” He missed coming home to her. He missed their conversations, her supple mind, her humor. He missed their marriage. He missed looking at her. Living his life without Dana was like trying to breathe on one lung.
The good news was that she was still wearing her wedding band. It was the first thing he checked when they got together. It made him feel safe still, but the expression on her face did not.
She took a sip of the wine and laid the glass down with a plink. “Then you should have thought of that before you decided to jump all over Sylvia Nevins’s bones, to use your eloquent turn of phrase.”
He sighed. There it was again—the old transgression that she kept rubbing his nose in.
Last year he had gotten high at a party and made a move on a foxy assistant medical examiner. One thing led to the next and he ended up in her bed. Then again the following week when Dana was away on a field trip. Unfortunately, Sylvia had picked up rumors that Steve and Dana were having marital problems and wanted more than a couple of one-nighters. But when he declared that their brief affair was over, that he was still working things out with his wife, she became ballistic. To get back she left Dana a telltale phone message. That was the turning point: Dana announced that she wanted a separation.
It was a turning point for him, too. When he learned that she had told Dana everything, Steve drove to Sylvia’s place. He had been drinking, and in a moment of rage he slapped her across the face, accusing her of trying to destroy his marriage. She shot back that he had made the move on her, and he counteraccused her of leading him on for months. None of that was important. But what pecked at his conscience was the knowledge that he had crossed a barrier—that in a weird half-conscious angry-drunk moment he had struck a woman. For weeks following that he had had disturbing dreams of violence—sometimes against Sylvia, sometimes against Dana. Dreams that mixed up nightmare details, leaching in from his casework. Dreams that had sent him to his doctor for stronger meds.
He had apologized to Sylvia.
He had apologized to Dana: “I feel rotten about it.”
“You mean you can’t live with the guilt.”
“Yeah, and I’m very sorry. It was stupid and wrong.”
“And vengeful.”
“Vengeful? What are you talking about?”
“Don’t go brain-dead on me. Vengeful because I want kids, and you can’t commit. So to get back for my pushing, you hop into bed with the first available bimbo.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit. You couldn’t commit to getting engaged. Then you couldn’t commit to getting married. And when you finally gave in, you declared you wanted to hold off on kids. Well, I’ve been holding off long enough. I told you it’s now or never. So, instead, you shack up with Sylvia Nevins because you don’t like ultimatums.”
“Stop throwing that up to my face.”
“And stop telling me you’re working on it. It’s been twelve goddamn years. Just how much longer do I have to wait?”
“You know the reasons.”
“Yeah, I know the reasons. Your parents had a rotten marriage and divorce was rampant in your family, blah, blah, blah. Well, I can’t change that, Stephen, nor the fact that I’m thirty-eight years old and want a family.”
“I’m sorry.” He had wanted to say more. He knew he should say more, but he couldn’t. And he heard the protest die in his throat because she was right—about all of it.
“I wish she had never told me,” she had said.
Yeah, me, too, he had thought. As he looked back, he was still amazed that he had the restraint to stop at a slap.
“Christ!” Dana had flared. “She’s nearly half your age.”
“Dana, she means nothing to me. She’s out of my life and moved to Florida.”
That was their exchange months ago, and since then Sylvia Nevins had taken a job in Pensacola and the last he had heard she was engaged to be married. But that was irrelevant. Dana could not forgive him despite his apologies and the fact that it was the first time in their twelve years of marriage that he had cheated on her.
Over the months he looked back on that night a thousand times and hated what he had done. Because friends and colleagues were at the party, he had been discreet for most of the evening, making beer talk with Sylvia. But when no one was looking, he arranged to meet later at her place, where he spent the night in boozy sex. Deep down he knew that their tryst had not arisen out of a bottle or Sylvia’s seductive wiles. Steve had let it happen on his own volition, driven by despair and mortal sadness that his life with Dana was at the edge because he could not bring himself to fulfill her ultimatum. About his love for her he was not uncertain. It was about his capacity to be a father that had created a blockage. She was right: out of desperation, he had acted upon a stupid, spiteful impulse to get back at Dana for his own failings. The old blame-the-victim shtick he heard all the time in interrogations.