that I’m back inside.”
“How will he take that?”
“Not well. He’ll want to follow anyway. The story’s moving like a locomotive now. The national media’s on it and you’ve got to keep throwing stories into the fire to make the big train move. But what the hell. He’s got other reporters. He can put one of them on it and see what they get. Which won’t be much. Then Michael Warren will probably crack another exclusive in the L.A. Times and I’ll really be in the doghouse.”
“You are a cynical man.”
“I’m a realist.”
“Don’t worry about Warren. Gor—whoever leaked to him before isn’t going to do it again. It would be risking too much with Bob.”
“Freudian slip there, right? Anyway, we’ll see.”
“How did you get so cynical, Jack? I thought only those rundown middle-aged cops were like that.”
“I was born with it, I guess.”
“I bet.”
It seemed even colder on the walk back. I wanted to put my arm around her but I knew she wouldn’t allow it. There were eyes on the street and I didn’t try. As we got close to the hotel I remembered a story and told her.
“You know how when you’re in high school and there’s always this grapevine that passes information on about who likes whom and who’s got a crush on whom? Remember?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, there was this girl and I had a thing, a crush on her. And I was . . . I can’t remember how but the word went out on the grapevine, you know? And when that happened what you usually did was wait and see how the person responded. It was one of those things where I knew that she knew that I had this desire for her and she knew I knew she knew. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“But the thing was I had no confidence and I was . . . I don’t know. One day I was in the gym, sitting in the bleachers. I think I was in there early for a basketball game or something and it was filling up with people. Then she comes in, she’s with a friend, and they’re walking along the bleachers looking for a place to sit. It was one of those do-or-die moments and she looks right at me and waves . . . And I froze. And . . . then . . . I turned and looked behind me to see if she was waving to somebody else.”
“Jack, you fool!” Rachel said, smiling and not taking the story to heart as I had done for so long. “What did she do?”
“When I turned back around she had looked away, embarrassed. See, I had embarrassed her by setting the whole thing into motion and then turning away . . . snubbing her . . . she started going out with somebody else after that. Ended up marrying him. It took me a long time to get over her.”
We took the last steps to the hotel door silently. I opened the door for Rachel and looked at her with a pained, embarrassed smile. The story could still do that to me all these years later.
“So that’s the story,” I said. “It proves I’ve been a cynical fool all along.”
“Everybody has stories from growing up like that,” she said in a voice that seemed to dismiss the whole thing.
We crossed the lobby and the night man looked up and nodded. It seemed as if his whiskers had grown even longer in the few hours since I had first seen him. At the stairs Rachel stopped and in a whispered voice designed to leave the night man out of earshot told me not to come up.
“I think we should go to our own rooms.”
“I can still walk you up.”
“No, that’s okay.”
She looked back at the front desk. The night man had his head down and was reading a gossip tabloid. Rachel turned back to me, gave me a silent kiss on the cheek and whispered good night. I watched her go up the stairs.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Too many thoughts. I had made love to a beautiful woman and spent the evening falling in love with her. I wasn’t sure what love was but I knew acceptance was part of it. That’s what I sensed from Rachel. It was a quality that had been a rarity in my life and I found its nearness thrilling and disquieting in the same instant.
As I stepped out to the front of the hotel to smoke