C H A P T E R • 38
The phone was ringing when I got home, but it stopped by the time I unlocked and got in. I deposited my keys on the table by the door, turned on the small light and kicked off my heels. I walked across the parlor floor and picked up a beaded bird from South Africa, my gift to Daddy, appreciating the sweetness of the familiar.
I started to fix a drink and thought better of it and walked over to the dining room table where I sat for a minute before the phone rang again.
I let it.
Four generations of my people used to sit down to holiday dinner at this table when it was let out with the extra leaf. The earliest ancestors of the clan were staring down from frames on the walls. They were the subject of familiar tales I had heard for 40 years and I had expected one day to pass on to my own children.
The next time the phone rang, I picked it up.
Obsidian said, “I’m out of the hospital and I don’t have any food in the house and I’m guessing you don’t either. I thought I’d order us up some dinner.”
“Thank you. But I’m not feeling like coming back out. It feels so good to be home.”
“I caught you. You said home.”
I laughed and relaxed a little. “I ate something at the repast.”
“Then you can keep me company. Stay put. Give me an hour. Then we can finish our conversation.”
“You should not be running around.”
“I didn’t say I was running over.”
He lied. It was more like 30 minutes. And I barely got out of the bathtub in time. I arrived at the door completely covered in a jumpsuit.
His bomber jacket was draped over a sling and he placed his bag of Chinese food on the little table in the foyer. “Come here.”
I fought against the thing in his eyes and lost. One arm was enough, as it turned out, for him to pull me close enough to kiss. Maybe not as much to pull, as to guide me, since I was already moving toward him until my mouth met his mouth and without a thought in my head, achieving my goal, as I felt him against me for a moment before I had to turn away.
“Does it hurt your face?” he asked.
“A little, and we have to talk.”
“Yes, we can talk, first.” He sounded as breathless as I was.
“It’s not that funny.”
It wasn’t, but laughing is what all that feeling turned into.
“Are you going to be all right?” I asked him.
“Are you?” He touched the bandage on my face.
“I am. I always am,” I said, feeling a little sorry for myself. “Sit down. I’ll get us some real plates and utensils.”
“Can we have a fire?”
“Sure.” I started over to the fireplace.
“No. Let me.”
“Can you build it with the sling?”
“Ha. You will be surprised at what I can do with this sling.”
My refrigerator was barren now that neighbors had stopped dropping off the after-funeral covered dishes.
I piled plates and silverware and napkins on a silver tray and added two beers. I put the tray on the carved Haitian table, put Miles on the box, and arranged myself on the couch. And from there I watched him. A sight he was too.
It turned out he could make a fire with one good arm. Then he scooted me over to sit with the good arm next to me, and while I fixed our plates, his fire caught and blazed up.
“I see you’re still a vegetarian.”
“Yes.”
“It must be hard to reconcile believing it’s wrong to kill animals, and yet, you’re a cop.”
He put his chopsticks down. “I’m against killing people too.”
“But, once you sign on, you’re one of them. How can you stand it?”
“Can you do this tomorrow?” he asked. “I’m not bringing you in to meditate with my people as an outsider who is judging them.”
“I’m not going to talk about the politics of the thing. I’m going to show them a practice.”
“The shift changes at 4. You can start at 3:30.”
“Which reminds me,” I said. “We need Al to put out the special edition of the paper tomorrow. Can you get him out?”
“We’ve picked him up twice in the past two days.”
“He didn’t really do anything, except he was at the wrong place when the bootleg gang was busted and he took Heavy in when he needed to hide and the fool brought the drugs in.”
“Heavy needed to hide because he killed someone.”
“How come you arrested Heavy at the collapsed building and couldn’t figure out he was the one driving the hit-and-run car? Don’t you guys take fingerprints?”
“There was no reason to compare those prints. And processing fingerprints is labor intensive. Takes weeks. Only way we get it done quicker is if it’s a big case. They’ve started a process to put them on a computer so we can compare prints. But the crime lab still has to hand-compare inked print cards. And they were partials, which makes it harder.”
“I’m surprised,” I said. “It’s faster in the movies.”
“You all make that shit up. You need to get back your results and bust the bad guy before the credits roll.”
“I need to get my notebook,” I said. “This is important. I don’t want to get this wrong.”
“You are not going to quote me.”
“No. I wouldn’t. It’s background.”
“I want to stop talking about it for a minute.”