Trigger City (18 page)

Fate was kind and offered me a parking spot directly in front of the yellow brick courtyard apartment building where Jill lived. Two stone lions sat on pedestals at the courtyard entrance. Sam and Florence. Jill and I had named them in honor of Sam Spade and Florence Nightingale—archetypal figures of our chosen professions. It was the silly kind of thing that couples falling in love do after a romantic dinner and a bottle of wine.

We named them on our third date, and after that we often greeted them by name as we passed.

Sam and Florence. They were us.

I looked at them now, thinking
They're cast in stone and rooted to their respective pedestals, ten feet of empty space between them. Might as well be ten miles. They couldn't close that gap if they wanted to.

Were they us?

Time to find out.

I
pressed the doorbell and the exterior door
buzzed open without my having to identify myself, like Jill was expecting company. I walked down the hallway, my heart pounding against the inside of my rib cage. Knocked on the apartment door. Took a breath. The door opened.

A woman I'd never seen before said, “You're not pizza.”

“No, I'm not pizza. I'm Ray Dudgeon. I'm looking for—”

“Oh,
you're
Ray.” Big smile. “I'm Sandra. Come on in, Jill's just in the bathroom.”

Sandra seemed a bit tipsy. An empty wine bottle stood next to a full ashtray on the coffee table. Two wineglasses, mostly empty. A suitcase on the floor and a blanket on the couch.

The television was off.

“Jill's been letting me crash here while I look for a place, and helping me drown my sorrows.” She touched my arm, leaned forward, and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. “And I've been helping her drown hers. Just so you know, I'm on
your
side. No use both of us making the same mistake.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Don't mention it, I'm always on the side of true love.” She suppressed a giggle as the bathroom door opened and Jill stepped into the room.

No engagement ring on her finger.

“He's not the pizza,” said Sandra.

Jill stared at me with her mouth open for a few seconds. “No, he's not.”

“You just gonna stand there?” said Sandra.

Jill walked forward like there might be land mines hidden in the floorboards, stopped a few feet from me. Just out of reach.

I said, “I didn't know you had a houseguest. I just, I know that you called earlier and I need to talk to you…” Awkward as hell, with Sandra staring at us. Would've been awkward anyway, but this was ridiculous.

“I see. Um, perhaps you can ring me tomorrow…”

Sure, that'll be great. I'll just give you a call after you've watched me kill someone on television…

I said, “No. I really need to speak with you right now.” I stepped forward and took her hand in mine. “Just come with me. Don't ask why.” I held eye contact and waited for an answer.

Sandra broke in with, “Oh, for God's sake, just go with him! This is the most romantic thing I've ever seen.”

“Will you shut up?” Jill shot a glare at her friend.

I took a chance and walked toward the door and didn't let go of Jill's hand, silently praying that she would walk with me.

She did, and we left without another word to Sandra or each other.

 

We were in the car, a few blocks south on Halsted when Jill broke the silence.

“I've had half a bottle of wine on an empty stomach. Otherwise I might've said no. Your timing was perfect.”

She didn't know the half of it.

I said, “Sandra seems nice.”

“She is. Going through a rough time, though.”

“Just left her husband.”

“Yes.”

“Decent enough guy, but it wasn't true love,” I said.

“She told you all that in two minutes?”

I nodded, “Not in so many words but, yeah, she told me that. Sounds like a cautionary tale, if you ask me.”

Jill reached over and touched my face. “Not now. We can talk later. Right now I really just want to pretend for a little while.” She reached forward and turned the music up a bit. Then reclined her seat slightly, pulled her knees up, and put her feet on the dash.

“Okay,” I said. “What are we pretending?”

She closed her eyes. “I want to pretend that everything is fine between us. I want to pretend that I'm not involved with another man. That nobody tried to kill you yesterday…that you aren't followed by the shadow of death everywhere you go…that you're going to live to be an old man. I just want to pretend that we have a future.”

It felt like a punch in the gut. I pulled the car over to the curb, stopped, turned in my seat to face her.

“Spend the night with me and I'll pretend whatever you want.”

And then we were on each other, grasping and stroking and kissing, her tongue like fire on mine, her hand pulling the back of my head, pulling me into her.

When we came up for air, Jill fixed me with a wild look and said, “You better get me to a bed before I come to my senses.”

I put the car in gear and hit the gas. My apartment was a good twenty minutes away through traffic.

Joan Richmond's place was only ten blocks.

 

I dug the HM Nichols keychain from my pocket and got the door open and we practically tumbled into the place, tearing at each other's clothes like a couple of teenagers. I kicked the door shut, reached out
an arm, felt for the dead bolt and locked it as Jill kissed me again. We knocked a few things over on the way to the bedroom and left a trail of clothes in our wake.

What happened next was beyond intense. It rose from yearning to reckless to frenzied, infused with a manic passion that bordered on frightening.

As we approached the apex, Jill said it. Said it twice. Then again, and again until it became like a rhythmic pleading mantra:

I love you. I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you…

Jill cried for a minute after she climaxed, the way some women do, triggered by the sudden release of built-up tension. I held her as she cried, stroked her hair and told her she was beautiful.

Then we lay together without speaking, me on my back, Jill nestled in beside me, the full length of her body against mine. I'd spent some time propped up on my elbows and now my shoulder was killing me but I didn't want to get up for drugs so I tried to tune out the pain and focus my attention on other senses. The pungent smell of our lovemaking mingling with her perfume, the sweet and sour taste of her still on my lips, the soft texture of her hair between my fingers.

A perfect moment. I wanted to live in it forever.

Jill snuggled in a little tighter. Her index finger traced meaningless patterns across my chest. But something subtle changed in the room. We lay the same way, breathed at the same pace, but the mood was different. Jill was no longer in the moment. She was
thinking about things.

“Think a little louder,” I said. “I can almost hear you.”

She tugged gently on my chest hair. “It's gone a lot more gray this year.”

“Time marches on.”

“I think it may be marching a little faster for you than most,” she said. “How long has it been?”

I thought back to the last time Jill had seen me without a shirt. The night I'd shown up at her door bruised and bleeding. Not the most romantic of evenings, but that was the last time.

“Nine months, two weeks,” I said.

“It was almost all brown, now it's mostly gray. That's pretty fast.”

I looked down at my chest. The hair on my head had gone a little more gray this year, but not enough that you'd call it salt-and-pepper. Not yet. But my chest hair was now decidedly more salt than pepper.

She was right—it had happened fast. And I hadn't even noticed it.

“Lack of sex,” I said. “Stick with me, kid, we may even be able to reverse the process.”

Jill smiled sweetly, kissed me on the lips. She propped up on one elbow, ran her finger along the line of stitches on my left arm, her face now serious. “Six inches higher, he'd have filleted your fish.” Her finger ran up my arm to the old tattoo of a mean-looking fish that had been a present to myself on my eighteenth birthday, then back down to the stitches. “Does it hurt?”

“Not much.”

She looked at me like she was trying to decide something, but her piercing blue eyes offered no clue what it was, just that it was major.

“I almost hung up before the beep when I called,” she said. “But I couldn't. Part of me wanted you to hear the hang-up on your machine, wanted you to know that I'd called.” She sat back against the headboard, pulled the sheet up, covering her breasts. “God, I'm so confused…”

I didn't know what to say and didn't want to say the wrong thing. I sat up, took her face in my hands, and kissed her softly. “What we just did…that wasn't pretend. That was real. And that could be our life together.”

“Sure, until some guy cuts your throat instead of your arm.”

Shit, here we go again…

“Yes, Jill, until then. And that could happen a week from now or a year, or ten years, or never. In the meantime, you'll be spending your life with the man you love, instead of hiding in something safe. Right?” I could hear my voice rising and anger seeping into my tone. “And excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but if the safe choice
were making you so fucking happy, you wouldn't be naked in a bed with me right now.”

“Please don't get that way. I can't handle it.”

Easy, Dudgeon…don't do the same old thing again…don't blow it now…

“Sorry, I'm just frustrated by the argument.” I took a breath and tried a new tack. “Look, you once told me that you might be able to accept it if you understood why I do what I do. And I brushed you off. That was wrong. I don't want to do that again. So give me a chance to tell you.”

Jill sighed, “Do me a favor, get my cigarettes? They're in my purse.”

I left the room, searched the wreckage in the living room, found her purse on the floor, next to an overturned lamp. I picked up the purse, pulled out a thin paperback—the same book of poetry she'd bought when I saw her last—grabbed her cigarettes and lighter, returned the book to the purse and the purse to the floor.

I hadn't smoked in Joan's apartment before. It didn't smell like a smoker's place and I hadn't seen any ashtrays and, even though Joan was dead I hadn't wanted to smoke there. I got a bread plate from the kitchen to use as an ashtray and filled a glass with wine.

Make it a conversation, not an argument,
I reminded myself on the way back to the bedroom.

“I don't mean to change the subject,” said Jill, “but I can't concentrate until I know where I am. It's been bugging me.” She gestured at the floral-print sheets and smiled. “I'm guessing a woman lives here, unless you've really gotten in touch with your feminine side.”

“I'm looking after it for a client.”

“A PI house sitter?” She held up a hand in apology. “Wait, it's none of my business. I'm certainly in no position to be getting jealous.”

“I've never met the woman who lives here,” I said. “Really. She's away, and her father's a client. I'm doing a gig for him and the place is just kind of a fringe benefit, a free place to stay. My apartment's in boxes, I'm moving next month.”

“Where to?”

“Don't know yet. Maybe Uptown.” With a light tone I added, “In a perfect world, I'd be moving into your place.” It fell flat and Jill just looked away and dragged on her cigarette. “Right, one step at a time,” I said.

“Tell me why I should be okay with you working in a job where people try to kill you, Ray.”

“First, people don't usually try to kill me, so—”

“I've barely known you a year and it's happened on two separate cases.”

“Fair enough. Bad year. But if nothing else, it proves that I'm pretty good at staying alive.” Another smile went unreciprocated.

Not the time for banter, you idiot…

“All right. I'm not going to lie to you and say it'll never happen again. I can't make that promise.” I lit a cigarette for myself. “I've done a lot of thinking, and I've come to accept that this is part of who I am. I can't change that. But I can change in other ways. I can get better at the whole communication thing.” I dragged on my cigarette, held out my hand for the wineglass and drank some, handed it back. “Truth is, I'm still trying to figure out why the job has become so central…part of it is…for instance, I'm on a case right now—”

“The one where a guy just tried to kill you.”

“Yes. And there's a woman who's in a lot of trouble—”

“The woman who lives here,” said Jill.

“Different woman. And this woman has a little girl. Both innocent people, caught between some very bad people. Truth is, without my help she won't survive the mess she's in.”

“And for some reason you need to save innocent people from bad people?”

“Well, not exactly. Sort of. It's an extreme example. But sometimes this job gives me a chance to stand up for a few underdogs.”
And stand up to a few bullies.
But I didn't say that out loud. “And that's something I need to do.”

“There are other ways to stand up for underdogs.”

“Yeah, but I work better on the edges of the system. I pretty much have to be on my own, I don't really fit in…I'm not good with the politics and compromises and corruption. A lot of people can dismiss that stuff but it eats at me. Killed my career as a reporter. I'd make a lousy lawyer, and you wouldn't feel any better if I were a cop, which I'd also be lousy at…You could say I have a problem with authority…”

The explanation had started lame and was falling apart, going in circles.
Just tell her the truth…
“And there's more to it than that,” I said.

“What?”

I stubbed out my cigarette.

She put her hand on my knee. “I need to know.”

You've got nothing to lose…
“I have a lot of anger inside.”

“News flash,” said Jill with a wry smile.

“Okay, obviously. Right. But the job purges it, I don't know why. It eases the pressure. And I need that, too.”

“And if you couldn't ease the pressure, what would happen?”

“I don't know. Look, I'm still trying to figure it out. I'm telling you what I know so far.”
But not everything…
“And I'll get better at it, I promise, but you can't expect it all at once. Okay?”