I was uneasy about Melanie coming to my apartment. My picture of her was framed by The End; other images were hard to imagine. Also, I wasn’t really used to women in my home. Hell, even Boots and I rarely spent nights together here.

It annoyed me that I couldn’t keep the two women separate. While I picked up around the house I tried to convince myself that it was Boots’ fault. That her questions and requested downtime forced me to link the two. I almost had it believed by the time I sat rolling a couple of joints at the kitchen table. Almost.

I pushed my doubts aside at the rap from the office’s alley entrance. I shut the door as Melanie stepped inside, glanced around, and rested her eyes on my face. She unbuttoned her coat and handed it to me; I felt the intensity of her stare as I placed the coat on the couch. When I turned she was still staring at me, her mouth slightly open. She wore a short black dress that showed a lot of neck and sheer gray stockinged legs. The shaped darkness of her clothes next to her soft ivory skin shattered the last of my reluctance to imagine her outside The End.

“I hadn’t realized we were going out,” I said. I felt my sexual anxiety recede as disappointment took its place.

She looked at me questioningly, then saw my eyes run quickly up and down her body. Melanie smoothed her hands along her hips. “You mean the clothes. I didn’t plan on going anywhere. I just don’t get out of The End very much.” She stepped deeper into the room. “Especially for this.”

Her look left little doubt what “this” meant. My disappointment faded and I invited her deeper into the apartment.

The more contact I had with Melanie, the less I felt catapulted into the past. I’d worked my way past Megan; and tonight Chana seemed safely tucked away. If there was “unfinished business,” it was with Melanie, and it concerned right now. Perhaps tomorrow The End might lose its nostalgic status and become just another savaged territory in a pockmarked landscape.

But while the night might not belong to the past, I was still me. And I wasn’t ready for bed.

I led us into the living room where Mel sat on the couch while I picked a tape. Hartman and Coltrane seemed too romantic, so I eliminated Hartman and chose Coltrane’s “Gentle Side.” “Do you want some grass or a drink?”

“Whatever you’re having will be fine. I brought cocaine, but it’s in my coat pocket.”

I hid a surprised smile. On my trot back to her coat, I questioned my surprise. The other night’s passion had given more than a promise of tonight’s sophistication. I shook my head as I picked a small bottle with an attached spoon from her coat pocket.

I stopped for the joints on my return to the living room. Melanie had her shoes off, legs curled under. I sat down next to her gray thighs, handed her the coke, and lit a cigarette. I wanted her, wanted her very much. But, in a flash of understanding, I knew my wanting was different from what Boots imagined. This was simpler; this was flat-out desire.

Boots’ shadow faded under my doper’s anticipation of the cocaine. Melanie snorted from the little spoon and, after relinquishing my stranglehold on the cigarette, I did likewise. She nodded for me to repeat. While I hunched over my knees, Mel leaned forward and took the cigarette.

“It feels like stolen time, being here with you,” she said. “Out of The End,” I suggested.

“No…” She wore a twisted half-smile, then leaned to me and kissed me on my mouth; taking my lower lip between her teeth she gently bit. My mouth went electric. She let go, sat back, and took a long drag on the cigarette. “More like a forbidden dessert.”

I reopened the bottle, snorted, and handed it back. I wondered what had happened to the brittle, angry lady in the storefront. But my desire wasn’t interested in what had happened on previous afternoons. Or in any tomorrows. Tonight there would be no talk.

I stood up, watched her use the coke, then held out my arm. Coltrane was crying as we walked to the bedroom.

I could finally answer Boots’ questions, though the answers did nothing to ease my situation. What drove me toward Melanie was my wish to drown in flesh. To lose myself in heat. To disappear.

We collided, naked, on my bed. Reaching across two separate lifetimes, demanding from each other a path to ourselves. Twisting into moments of combination, only to fall, come apart, then demand again. It was as if some compulsive lunatic repeatedly put a jigsaw puzzle together, then time and again ripped it apart, always forcing the shapes to fit in different places. This wasn’t the surrender of love, it was the attack of fragmented psyches looking for missing pieces.

Sometime during the night I awoke and stared at Melanie’s full body. She breathed deeply, contented in her sleep. I wondered if this was everything I needed, or the best I could do. Before I grew too frightened, I blocked out the thought and fell back asleep.

 

I didn’t need to open the shades to know it was morning. I reached onto the night table and lit a cigarette. Melanie immediately sat upright, as if she had been waiting for me to stir. “Are you cold?” I asked.

She shook her head and reached out her hand. I passed her the smoke and lit another. “Is something wrong?”

The pupils of her eyes dilated. She shook her head again. “No, nothing is wrong.”

I pulled her down and kissed her. She twisted away with a crooked smile. “We’re shadow people, Matt. We can’t be together in the day.”

Her harshness chilled me. Soul-stripping in daylight was something I, too, only did alone. But her voice recalled my middle of the night fears.

I rolled out of bed and ran right into body hurt. As I stretched my back into working order, I watched her dress. She didn’t bother with the gray hose.

“Would you like coffee, or something to eat?”

“Coffee would be fine,” she said. “Also another cigarette.”

I flipped the pack and lighter, then pulled on some clothes. Eventually we sat in the kitchen smoking quietly, waiting for the coffee. I looked at the clock, surprised to see it was still very early. Melanie followed my glance. “I work today,” she said, smiling in a distant way. “I want to keep to my schedule.”

The mention of schedule reminded me that Prezoil hadn’t suggested a meeting time. I began to rise, but unless I wanted to see him at his house and engage in another round of dope-dealer domesticity, I had plenty of time to be anywhere. Besides, the coffee wasn’t done.

Melanie watched me sit back down. “You look like you remembered something,” she said. “Yeah. My appointment.”

“The grand conclusion of your case?”

“Yeah,” I grinned. “Turns out the guy I want to talk to is a banker named Prezoil. But it’s too early for anything but the money machines to be awake.”

A small smile played at her lips. “I knew you weren’t finished with us.” “With us?”

She hesitated before answering in a calm voice. “I mean with Peter.”

“What does Lonny Prezoil have to do with Peter?” I asked. “Who the hell is he?”

She looked sharply into my face. “You don’t remember? Lonny was a fundraiser for Hope House when you lived in The End. Everyone called him ‘Pretzel.’? She paused, then added with contempt, “He was a real slick phony.”

I thumped my forehead with my palm. “I thought he looked familiar but I couldn’t place him.” I kept knocking at my head. “We’re all getting old. It’s hard to recognize people once they pack a life.”

Melanie sat quietly until the coffee perked. I played host and was back in my chair before I asked, “What did Lonny Prezoil have to do with Peter?”

Mel lit another cigarette, drank from her cup, then spoke deliberately. “There had been a party the night of Peter’s death. At Lonny’s place.” She looked at me with raised eyebrows.

I leaned forward to ask for more, but she shook me off. “No, Matt. I’m not going to talk about this.”

I nodded my okay, but she hadn’t finished. “When you and I are together I feel very close to Peter. I won’t have that disappear under a barrage of questions.”

“There’s no need to talk, Mel. By tonight I’ll be finished with all of it,” I reassured her. “I already am.”

I stood up and walked around to her side of the table. I leaned down, lifted her chin, and kissed her. She put her hands around the back of my head and pulled me tight. Her mouth felt alive, hungry.

I stepped back out of her grasp. “Shadow people or no, if we keep that up neither of us will get to work.”

She stared at me for a long moment, then got up. “Where’s my coat?” She sounded sad.

We finished our morning holding each other in the alley. Melanie buried her face in my neck. “I want you to remember last night. No further back than that.” She pulled away from me, her eyes now bright and hard. “I’m finished with ancient history.”

I nodded. “Be here now.” Babba Ram Mel. I watched as she drove away.

I went back to the bedroom, picked the joint off the night table, and lay down. I could smell Melanie’s body and last night’s passion as I lit the dope and closed my eyes. Maybe I could sleep. I thought of Boots, and knew that while I too might be finished with the past, the present was unfinished and obscure.