Claudette looks lovely.
White on black.
A tight sheath of a white dress shows off her figure and her dark skin. Gold hoop earrings, red lipstick, her hair up in a 1940s retro do with her white flower.
Stunning.
Heart-cracking, blood-heating, eye-popping beautiful.
Malone falls in love with her anew.
They’re having a real date.
She was right, he decided. For whatever fucked-up reason, he’d been hiding her. Leaving her alone with her doubt and her addiction.
Fuck everyone.
If the rednecks on the Job don’t like it, fuck them. And if the brothuhs think it means he’s going to cut them some slack, they’ll learn quickly enough they’re wrong.
And there’s something else.
He needs her.
After setting up a brother cop, even an asshole like Torres, he needs her.
So he picked up the phone and called. Was a little surprised she didn’t just hang up on him when he said, “This is Sergeant Malone of Manhattan North.”
There was a little pause before she said, “What can I do for you, Detective?”
He could tell from her voice she was clean.
“I know this is last minute,” he said, “but I have reservations tonight at Jean-Georges and no one merciful enough to have dinner with an insensitive, neglectful jerk like myself, and while I’m pretty sure a woman such as yourself already has plans, I thought I’d take a chance and ask if there’s any possibility you would have dinner with me.”
He endured a long silence before she said, “A table at Jean-Georges is hard to get.”
Fuckin’ A, he thought. He’d had to remind the maître d’ of a certain incident he’d quieted down before it made Page Six. “I just told them there was a chance—just a chance—that the most beautiful and charming lady in New York might grace their establishment, and they fell all over themselves.”
“You’re laying it on thick.”
“Subtlety is not my strong suit,” Malone said. “How about it?”
Another long silence before she said, “I’d be delighted.”
He takes her to Jean-Georges because she likes French things.
Zagat rated, three Michelin stars, expensive, impossible to get a reservation unless you’re a celebrity detective. But it’s Malone, even though he’s dressed in a nice suit, who’s a little nervous in the fancy place, not Claudette.
She looks like she was born there.
The waiter thinks so, too, addresses most of his questions and comments to her, and she handles it like she’s been doing it her whole life. She quietly suggests wines and dishes and Malone goes with them.
“How do you know all this?” he asks her, picking his way through the toasted egg yolk with caviar and herbs, which is actually a lot better than he’d thought it would be.
“Believe it or not,” she says, “you’re not the first man I ever dated. I’ve been south of 110th, gosh, five or six times, maybe even seven.”
He feels like a fucking idiot. “Go ahead, squeeze my shoes. I deserve it.”
“Yes, you do,” she says. “But I’m having a wonderful time, baby. Thank you for bringing me here. It’s beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful.”
“See, you’re doing better already.”
Malone picks the Maine lobster, Claudette the smoked squab.
“Isn’t that a pigeon?” Malone asks.
“It is a pigeon,” she says. “Didn’t you ever want revenge?”
They don’t talk about the smack, her “slip,” her jonesing. She’s feeling better now, looking better. He thinks maybe she’s over it. For dessert they take a sampling of chocolate “tastings,” during which Claudette says, “So this is our first real date in a long time.”
“The key word there is ‘first.’”
“With our schedules,” Claudette says, “it’s hard to find time.”
“I might start working a little less,” Malone says. “Take a little more time off.”
“I’d like that.”
“Yeah?”
“Very much,” she says. “But we don’t have to always do, you know, this.”
“It’s nice, doing this.”
“I just want time with you, baby,” Claudette says.
Malone gets up to use the men’s, but instead he goes to the woman at the hostess stand and tells her he wants a real bill, bust-out retail because there are some things you get comped for, other things you pay for.
You take your girl out, you pay for it.
The hostess says, “The manager said—”
“I know,” Malone says, “and I appreciate it, but I’d like a real bill.”
The real bill arrives. He pays it, leaves a nice tip and pulls the chair out for Claudette. “I thought you might like to go to Smoke. Lea DeLaria is there tonight.”
Malone doesn’t know who that is, just that she’s a singer. He went to the website and looked it up.
“I’d love that,” Claudette says. “I love her. But you don’t like jazz.”
“This is your night.”
The Smoke Jazz and Supper Club is up on 106th and Broadway, back on Malone’s turf. It’s small, only about fifty seats, but Malone already called to reserve a spot in case she wanted to go.
They get a table for two.
DeLaria sings standards in front of a bass, drums, piano and saxophone quartet. Claudette feigns astonishment. “A white woman who can sing. My, my.”
“Racist.”
“Just keeping it real, baby.”
Between songs, DeLaria looks down at Claudette and asks, “Is he nice to you, darlin’?”
Claudette nods. “Very nice.”
DeLaria looks at Malone. “You’d better be. She’s so beautiful. I might just take her away from you.”
Then she launches into “Come Rain or Come Shine.”
I’m gonna love you, like nobody’s loved you,
Come rain or come shine
Happy together, unhappy together
Come rain or come shine . . .
There’s a little stir in the crowd as Tre comes in with a posse. DeLaria gives him a nod of acknowledgment as Tre goes to his table, then the hip-hop mogul spots Malone and then Claudette and gives Malone a nod of respect.
Malone nods back.
“Do you know him?” Claudette asks.
“I do some work for him from time to time,” Malone says. And now the word will be out everywhere that badass Denny Malone is dating a sister.
“Do you want to meet him?” Malone asks.
“Not really,” Claudette says. “I’m not so much into hip-hop.”
Malone knows what’s going to happen next and it does. A bottle of Cristal arrives at the table courtesy of Tre.
“What kind of work do you do for him?” Claudette asks.
“Security.”
DeLaria changes over to “You Don’t Know What Love Is.”
“Billie Holiday,” Claudette says.
She gets lost in it.
Malone looks over at Tre, who’s looking back at him, reevaluating him, trying to figure out who the guy is that he’s seeing now.
I get it, Malone thinks. I’m trying to do the same thing.
The white dress slides off her like rain flowing down obsidian.
Her lips are full and warm, her neck musky.
After they make love and she falls asleep, he lies awake and looks out her window and remembers the words of the song—
Until you’ve faced each dawn with sleepless eyes,
You don’t know what love is . . .