We were kissing as soon as we got into her apartment.
Before.
On the street, as soon as we got out of the cab, entwined in each other’s arms. Stumbling up the two flights of stairs, laughing and giggling more than saying anything. Unlocking her door and then tripping awkwardly around in the dark, and finally tumbling onto the couch.
“I don’t want to do the wrong thing,” I said, my hands all over her. Noelle’s body was small and tight and I felt the contours of her breasts under her dress and she didn’t stop me. “I don’t know anything about you,” I said.
“You know all you need to know, Charles Mossman,” she said.
Though part of me looked back at her and thought, That isn’t true.
I unzipped the back of her dress. She put up her arms and let it wiggle to the floor.
“You’re not, Charles. You’re not doing the wrong thing at all,” she said in her bra and girdle. Her body was just as inviting as I’d imagined. Diminutive and shapely and tight. She put my hand on her breast and met my eyes, a glimmer of mischief sparkling in them. “You’re not.”
I hadn’t been with a ton of women. Just three before Liz, and two were drunken one-night stands in college. Liz had been my best friend, but she was still a little shy and reserved when it came to sex. As was I, if truth be told.
But Noelle … She opened my belt and took down my drawers. She reached down and put her hand on me. I sprang completely alive. She eased me over to the bed and stood in front of me.
I wanted to know every secret she held; every piece of her she had withheld from me; every part of her past that had brought her here and brought us together.
“Charles Mossman…,” she murmured, looking into my eyes, inviting me on.
“Noelle Brisson.” I looked back at her. I sat, pulled her girdle down, held her by the waist, and eased her onto my lap.
“Wait,” she said, with a cat’s-eyed smile, putting up a finger. She stroked me gently, urging me on, then smiled, nuzzled herself knowingly between my legs, and bent her head down over me.
After, we lay there, in the tousled sheets. I felt her steady breathing next to me as she napped. A pure, silent sleep. I wrapped my arm around her breasts and felt the sheen of sweat on her sleeping body and nuzzled myself against her rump.
I was falling for her, I knew.
Falling—and nothing to catch hold of me as I did.
I had no idea how fate had interceded to bring Noelle into my life. A life that had been barren of love and empty of feeling for so long. In which I felt unworthy to allow myself to feel anything good. How was I so lucky? Le grand vent … I thought back with a smile. A gust of wind, her pages scattering. “My dissertation,” she’d cried out. And I was there.
I looked around at the sparsely decorated room. It was strange, I didn’t see any personal belongings anywhere. Of course, she shared it with a friend, and clearly they rented it as transients just as I rented mine. Month to month. Everything in it came with the lease. She had probably come here with only a small suitcase of clothes and her papers. Still, I was surprised not to see a single photograph, not even of her parents back in France. Who were now in a camp somewhere. All I knew was that she had come into my life and reignited it with joy and now passion.
With possibility.
And I didn’t want to sit in judgment of even a sliver of it. I was just happy, grateful, that it had happened.
I thought back on the evening we’d just spent. That first kiss when she came up to me on the sidewalk. Did she know then where it would lead? Had she wanted this too? I thought, I’d broken my vow with those toasts of champagne, my first drinks of alcohol since that fateful night in the bar. God would forgive me. I smiled. He had to, if He knew it would lead to something this perfect. Snuggling next to her in the cab, barely uttering a word, our bodies tingling with hushed anticipation of what would happen next.
Still, something nagged at me. A tremor pulsing deep inside. Like that devious voice of temptation that had long been silent, reappearing back on my shoulder. Telling me it couldn’t last, what I was feeling. I’d screw it up. Somehow. Like I always did.
No, I won’t, not this time.
Maybe it was no more than just the simple fear of trusting that this was truly real.
Lying there, I let my mind drift, and it left Noelle and her sweet, sleeping body, and seemed to settle like a nagging weight on the question of just how much more deeply I should get involved with Latimer. I’d already told the New York police everything I knew. I held nothing back. I thought maybe I could just merely refer Latimer to them and not get myself any deeper.
They could handle it any way they wanted from there.
I was sure that if Liz could only see I was right about the Bauers I could regain her trust. She’d have to let me back into Emma’s life. The Bauers clearly had already moved the transmitter I’d found. And the book by Darwin. The closet was empty, Charlie. That transmitter was the only tangible piece of evidence I had on them. The rest … The rest could all just be put off to my prior run-ins with Nazis, the overzealous machinations of my own vengeful mind.
I knew it was too late for Liz and me. Here, at long last, I finally felt free of her. Free to pursue happiness again. But I did need to make her see I wasn’t making it all up. That I really wasn’t “the old Charlie” again, the one who had let her down so many times. The one who she had grown to distrust.
Yes, it was indeed too late for us … But it wasn’t too late for me and my daughter.
And I had to do whatever I could do to get that back.
Next to me, Noelle stirred, murmuring. “Are you okay, Charles?” she asked.
“Yes, yes, I’m okay,” I said. “I’m perfect. Go back to sleep.” I wrapped my arms around her tighter and inhaled the fresh scent of her perfume.
Whatever I could do.
But as I allowed myself to drift off, a welcoming sleep to calm my worries, something did snake its way into my mind. Like a hidden electrical line, woven through rooms of a large house, something buried deeply in me that maybe Noelle had awakened, which now came alive. I sat up and opened my eyes. Oddly, it took me all the way back to those strips of paper I’d seen in Trudi’s kitchen. Torn, with the edges burnt.
Numbers on them.
Numbers.
And the ones I had stared at that hadn’t been destroyed. That I now saw again clearly.
128 3 7. 14 12 3. 0300.
I thought back to paging through the Darwin.
December 6. What if it was a date, after all? And a time.
0300.
Three A.M.
What if something was set to happen then? Something big and that only I knew about and could put together.
Why else would they hide the book in the trunk and destroy the message?
What if it was just me who had seen it and knew?
I had two choices, I lay there thinking. I could turn over what I knew to Latimer—and he could pass it on to his people. People who could do something about it. He’s a very important man, Noelle had said.
But in the end, what did I really have? A possible code with nothing tangible to support the charge. The trunk was empty now. The book gone. The burnt strips of paper were long disposed of. I realized that there was no way Latimer could turn this over to anyone, have them review my testimony, in all likelihood have to interview me, then start an investigation into the Bauers—even if they did believe me; even if they did accept my story as told—in time to stop whatever might be happening from taking place.
Today was the 4th. December 6th was in two days.
“You’d be a damn fool,” the voice on my shoulder warned. The voice of reason. Suddenly reappearing. “Look where it’s got you before.”
“Oh, do it,” countered his opposite, my little devil, always urging me on. “It’s the only way to know for sure.”
The Bauers might be up to something. And I was the only one who knew anything might be happening.
Next to me, Noelle nuzzled against me, emerging from sleep again. “Charles, your mind is elsewhere, I think?”
“No, it’s not,” I said, tightening my arms around her. “It’s right here. With you.”
“Good.” She smiled. She wedged her knee between my legs and began to rub it in a slow rhythm against my thigh. In seconds I came alive. She smiled, recognizing it, and eased her hand under the sheet. “In that case,” she said, her eyes twinkling, “perhaps we can consider doing that again.”