it, more power to you,” I said, letting her lead the way out.
On the sidewalk the drizzle had stopped but it felt ten degrees colder. Meagan waved at a taxi that was parked across the alley in front of the Walnut Street Theatre. I opened the door for her and again she put her hand on mine.
“I was kidding with that trade comment, Max,” she said.
“I know,” I lied, knowing she had only been half kidding.
“It really was good to see you,” she said and took a strand of her hair and carefully pulled it behind her ear and smiled. “Will you call if you get anything more from O’Shea that will help us, you know, with the girl?”
“You’ll be the first,” I said, and this time the kiss did not surprise me. It felt dry and perfunctory and did not even leave a warm spot on my chilled cheek. The next morning I flew back home to Florida.
CHAPTER 13
He was in her apartment, lying back on her bed, his work boots on the thin chemise bedspread, watching her get ready for work. Her face moved in and out of the mirror on top of her cheap dresser as she crimped her eyelashes and applied shadow and took particular care with liner. She caught him in the reflection and said: “What?”
“I’m just amazed at the work you put into all that when your eyes are already so beautiful.”
“Yeah? How do you think we keep them so beautiful? We cheat,” she said, smiling at him without turning around.
The few weeks they’d been together had been good. Sure he was kind of private, didn’t like to stay and hang out with any of the other regulars at the bar when her shift was done. Didn’t like to talk much with the other patrons and had pointedly asked her not to let anyone else know he was a cop. He said he had to be careful because it was like that situation with that prison asshole who scared the shit out of her that night in the bar when she saw him flash his badge. He said it should be a secret between them because he could get caught up in off-duty stuff like that and then he’d end up being liable and it made sense the way he explained it.
“If I let that other pencil dick get his ass whipped and then his fucking lawyer gets onto it and starts saying: You’re a cop, why didn’t you step in and stop it?
“Then the department attorneys get on me: Why are you getting involved when you’re off duty? Was the guy a physical threat to you or others?”
Better to just scare the guy off, he said. He’d catch that idiot on the street someday and he’d be glad to do some ass-kicking when he was in uniform and it was his turf.
She liked that about him, too. He wasn’t like the wimpy guys back home or the bar clowns who were all mouth. He told her some stories about suspects who fought him on the streets. He was aggressive in bed, too. But she wasn’t complaining. They’d had sex here in her apartment the first time and she was a little frightened by how intense he was, but she’d had an orgasm like nothing she’d ever had in the past. He was strong and bold in the way he took her. It was exciting. After that they’d done it at night on the beach, once in the pool after he’d slipped the lock to the utility room and turned the underwater lights off. They’d even done it in the backseat of his car one night out somewhere in the Everglades where there weren’t any houses or traffic.
She looked at him now, stretched out on her bed. She didn’t like the boots on her spread but she knew better than to say anything. She found her perfume among the mess on the bureau and dabbed some on. She found him in the mirror. He had that way of kind of dominating a space when he was with her. Like the time he was getting beer from her fridge while she was letting the shower water warm and she heard him punch on her message machine and listen to the whole tape. Or the time he walked into the apartment before her and scooped the mail off the floor and went through each letter before putting it on the counter. Yeah, it was all junk,