Louis grabbed a glass of orange juice and sat down with the black book. The names were in alphabetical order, and Louis flipped to the L’s. There they were. Right under the Kennedys: Tricia and Richard Q. Lyons.
Under the names was an address on the south end of the island, along with addresses for homes in New York and Paris. Under that was the name of what had to be a yacht: SeaDuction.
“Look for people named Richard or Tricia Lyons,” Louis said.
“Hey, check this out,” Mel said, holding out one of the newspapers. “You ever seen anything so obscene?”
“What?”
“The ice sculpture at the Cancer Ball,” Mel said. “It looks like two people screwing.”
Louis took the Shiny Sheet but never saw the picture Mel was talking about. His eyes were locked on a photograph in the lower right-hand corner.
A woman in a blue dress. Milk-white skin and carrot-red hair. On her arm was the same dark-haired ferret guy Louis had seen with her at Ta-boo and the ballet.
Louis read the caption: Mr. Nesbitt Saban and Mrs. Arthur Norris.
“How’d you like to see that thing next to the stone crabs?” Mel said.
Louis looked up quickly. “What?”
“That ice thing,” Mel said, pointing to the newspaper.
Louis nodded and looked back at the photo of Sam. Everything that had happened between them that night was suddenly in his head, bringing a flush of warmth through his chest. But he was also hearing Margery.
Look what happened to Bunny Norris. Her husband, Hap, took up with that Samantha woman and gave Binky the icy mitt. Trash. You can dress it up in Dior, but it’s still trash.
“What’s wrong with you?” Mel asked.
Louis looked at Mel. They had been friends now for almost three years. Shared a couple of homicide cases, a few close calls, and a lot of beers. They talked about the Dolphins, their time in uniform, politics, and Mel’s retinitis pigmentosa. But Louis couldn’t remember one time they had talked at length about women. Hell, they never even discussed the fact that they had both dated Joe Frye, Louis’s recent ex.
But for some reason, now Louis wanted to tell Mel about Sam. And about his phone call with Joe.
“I talked to Joe the other night,” Louis began.
“Yeah? How’s she doing up there?”
“She’s busy.”
“She’s the sheriff. Even in a place like that, she’s going to be busy.” When Louis didn’t say anything, Mel looked up. “You two have a fight or something?”
Louis wondered how Mel had picked up on it. “She told me she thinks we should see other people,” he said.
Mel was quiet for a moment. “What’d you say?”
“I didn’t say much.”
“You never do, Rocky. Maybe that’s part of the problem.”
Louis’s eyes shot up to Mel. But there had been no reproach in Mel’s voice, just a sort of quiet acknowledgment that he understood Louis’s nature. Louis realized in that moment that his friend had been sending small signals for a while now, trying to give him safe ways to open up and talk about what was eating him. But Louis had ignored them. Because, to be honest, he wasn’t sure what was wrong. Joe was only part of it.
“You remember the night we checked into the Inn,” Louis said. “And I didn’t get back to the room until four?”
“Yeah.”
Louis held out the newspaper and pointed to Sam’s photo. “I was with her. In her house.”
Mel stared at him for a moment, then picked up the magnifying glass and studied the newspaper. “Was this the same night you talked to Joe?”
Louis nodded, then realized Mel might miss it. “Yeah. Same night.”
“How’d you hook up?”
“I was sitting at the bar at Ta-boo. She came up, made some small talk, and asked me to meet her outside in ten minutes.” Louis paused, still feeling a rise of heat up the back of his neck. “I went. I left her in her bedroom without ever finding out her last name.”
“You seen her since?”
“I saw her at the ballet, but she…” He cleared his throat. “She turned her back on me.”
Mel tossed the Shiny Sheet to the table and leaned back against the cushions. For a few minutes, neither of them said anything. The only sound was the distant splash of waves on the beach. It made Louis a little homesick.
“So it was a revenge fuck,” Mel said.
“Nice, Mel. That makes me feel a lot better.”
“What? You’re pissed that she didn’t show you off to her friends?”
Louis shrugged. “No, but I figured I’d get a nod of the head or something.”
“You did get something,” Mel said. “You got a pretty piece of ass. You can’t expect her to be your best friend the next morning.”
Louis stared at the Shiny Sheet, hearing Margery Laroche’s voice. You can screw up and sideways but never down.
“They were careless people,” Mel said.
Louis glanced up at him.
“They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
“Gatsby?” Louis asked.
Mel nodded.
Louis leaned back against the sofa. “There’s something else,” he said.
“I thought there might be.”
“Something weird happened.”
“At the ballet? You already said-”
“No,” Louis said sharply. “In bed.”
“And you’re complaining?”
“God damn it, Mel, I’m serious here.”
Mel was quiet.
Louis sat up, elbows on knees. “She passed out, man.”
“You mean afterward, right?”
“Of course, afterward. Right after she came.”
“What did you do?”
“I slapped her, and she came to.”
Mel was smiling.
“I told you, this isn’t funny. It scared the living shit out of me.”
“I know, I know,” Mel said. “I’m not laughing, believe me. It happened to me once. It’s called la petite mort.”
Louis shook his head.
“The little death,” Mel said. “That’s what the French call an orgasm.”
“Mel, she passed out cold,” Louis said.
“Well, sometimes with intense orgasms, there’s a decrease of blood to the brain, to the orbitofrontal cortex, to be exact. That’s the part of the brain that is involved in behavioral control.”
“How do you know this?”
“I told you, it happened to me once. The woman went out like a light, and I thought I had screwed her to death. After I got over myself, I did some research and found out I wasn’t the big stud I thought I was.”
Louis was quiet. He remembered something she had said while he was making love to her. Die with me. At least now it didn’t seem so damn weird.
“Forget about it, Rocky,” Mel said. “Forget about her. And you should call Joe back. A woman like her doesn’t come around very often, and you’d be an ass to let her go. Believe me, I know.”
Louis looked over at him. He had wondered a million times why Mel and Joe had broken up all those years back. Mel had said only that it was because she was a rookie just getting her start, and he was so much older and going blind and didn’t want to be a burden on her. He was sure Joe felt nothing but friendship for Mel now. As for Mel’s feelings, he had heard Mel talk with regret about only one thing in his life: the time his pride over his growing blindness had kept him behind the wheel of the squad car that had hit a kid and left him paralyzed. Mel had never before mentioned any regret about Joe.
Louis stared at the photograph of Sam for another moment, then his eyes went to the phone on the nearby table. But no words were coming, nothing that was an answer to Joe’s words that had stung him most: I want you to want something for yourself.
Louis tossed the newspaper onto the table. He rose abruptly and went to the window, squinting as he stared out at the ocean.