lobby, they showed
their warrant cards to a manager, who phoned up Jules’s suite. He
stared at Kate and Bhar as he waited for Jules to answer, a
skeptical, not-with-my-guest-you-don’t expression on his face.
“I’ll be back,” Kate told Bhar, and went off
in search of the ladies’.
Inside the stall, Kate couldn’t resist
scrutinizing her thong’s cotton crotch, still hoping for a sign
that her period had straggled in to save the day. Nothing.
Sighing, she did her business and then
continued to straddle the toilet, counting backward to the last
time she and Dylan had sex. It had been their only unprotected
coupling in two years – make-up sex, hot at first, but then cooler,
and finally embarrassingly out of sync. After what seemed like an
interminable effort, Dylan managed to complete the act, triumphing
over what Kate’s plainspoken grandmother called distiller’s droop.
Kate had been relieved to roll over and feign sleep. Hard to
believe their once intensely physical, almost entirely sexual
connection had vanished not with a bang, but a whimper.
Harder to believe, Kate thought with a stab
of real fear, that such a lousy final attempt at intimacy might
have left her pregnant.
Kate made her way to the row of porcelain
sinks, studying herself in the gilt-framed mirror. There was no
need to allow this silence to stretch out between the two of them.
She could call Dylan. She could call him right now, and just touch
base.
Kate didn’t go for the phone tucked in her
handbag. Instead, she washed her hands slowly, wondering why she’d
kept Dylan Corrigan in her life for two years. Maybe because he was
everything she liked: dark hair, blue eyes, sarcastic wit, and a
broody set to his mouth and eyes. He always looked as if he were
pondering the ways the world had failed him, and formulating
terrible cutting remarks to make himself feel better. Dylan’s body
was nothing special, skinny and pale, but she’d adored the smell of
him, the feel of him, the way they entwined together. That was what
kept her from chucking him out long ago – their wordless
skin-to-skin connection, superior to any interaction that required
conversation, teamwork, or even minor sacrifice.
Dylan, a sometime-clerk in a New Age store,
was also a musician – a guitarist between bands, when Kate met him.
He read highbrow up-to-the-minute literature Kate found difficult
to understand, and impossible to enjoy. He listened to experimental
music exclusively from up-and-comers who never lived up to his
predictions of success. An insomniac night owl, Dylan got on well
with both Ritchie and Henry, content to keep the boys company
whenever Kate was working a case. But he had little respect for
Kate’s career at Scotland Yard. To his mind, she was only a cog in
the government machine, agent of a socially corrupt system. Dylan
was an anarchist at heart, or so he said, but not enough of an
anarchist to refuse his dole money. Most of his criticism of the
“establishment,” she’d finally realized, came down to criticisms
about her, and how she chose to live.
If he’d only been willing to try and
contribute, Kate thought. It never mattered to her that he didn’t
earn much, either as a store clerk or a musician. The amount he
brought in wasn’t the point. She only wanted him to acknowledge
what it cost to run a household – what he spent on Guinness and pub
chow and trade paperback novels – and give something back, as well
as take. Dylan had accused her of trying to bully him into the
middle class respectability that someone like her, climbing out of
an impoverished childhood, craved. When they fought, he insisted
she wanted him to become a drone bee, just like her, so she
wouldn’t regret her own conventional path. As their fights
worsened, he’d spent more time out of her company, drinking
heavily, hooking up with single friends, and – she suspected –
auditioning new and less demanding females.
The shit I took off him, just to come home
their warrant cards to a manager, who phoned up Jules’s suite. He
stared at Kate and Bhar as he waited for Jules to answer, a
skeptical, not-with-my-guest-you-don’t expression on his face.
“I’ll be back,” Kate told Bhar, and went off
in search of the ladies’.
Inside the stall, Kate couldn’t resist
scrutinizing her thong’s cotton crotch, still hoping for a sign
that her period had straggled in to save the day. Nothing.
Sighing, she did her business and then
continued to straddle the toilet, counting backward to the last
time she and Dylan had sex. It had been their only unprotected
coupling in two years – make-up sex, hot at first, but then cooler,
and finally embarrassingly out of sync. After what seemed like an
interminable effort, Dylan managed to complete the act, triumphing
over what Kate’s plainspoken grandmother called distiller’s droop.
Kate had been relieved to roll over and feign sleep. Hard to
believe their once intensely physical, almost entirely sexual
connection had vanished not with a bang, but a whimper.
Harder to believe, Kate thought with a stab
of real fear, that such a lousy final attempt at intimacy might
have left her pregnant.
Kate made her way to the row of porcelain
sinks, studying herself in the gilt-framed mirror. There was no
need to allow this silence to stretch out between the two of them.
She could call Dylan. She could call him right now, and just touch
base.
Kate didn’t go for the phone tucked in her
handbag. Instead, she washed her hands slowly, wondering why she’d
kept Dylan Corrigan in her life for two years. Maybe because he was
everything she liked: dark hair, blue eyes, sarcastic wit, and a
broody set to his mouth and eyes. He always looked as if he were
pondering the ways the world had failed him, and formulating
terrible cutting remarks to make himself feel better. Dylan’s body
was nothing special, skinny and pale, but she’d adored the smell of
him, the feel of him, the way they entwined together. That was what
kept her from chucking him out long ago – their wordless
skin-to-skin connection, superior to any interaction that required
conversation, teamwork, or even minor sacrifice.
Dylan, a sometime-clerk in a New Age store,
was also a musician – a guitarist between bands, when Kate met him.
He read highbrow up-to-the-minute literature Kate found difficult
to understand, and impossible to enjoy. He listened to experimental
music exclusively from up-and-comers who never lived up to his
predictions of success. An insomniac night owl, Dylan got on well
with both Ritchie and Henry, content to keep the boys company
whenever Kate was working a case. But he had little respect for
Kate’s career at Scotland Yard. To his mind, she was only a cog in
the government machine, agent of a socially corrupt system. Dylan
was an anarchist at heart, or so he said, but not enough of an
anarchist to refuse his dole money. Most of his criticism of the
“establishment,” she’d finally realized, came down to criticisms
about her, and how she chose to live.
If he’d only been willing to try and
contribute, Kate thought. It never mattered to her that he didn’t
earn much, either as a store clerk or a musician. The amount he
brought in wasn’t the point. She only wanted him to acknowledge
what it cost to run a household – what he spent on Guinness and pub
chow and trade paperback novels – and give something back, as well
as take. Dylan had accused her of trying to bully him into the
middle class respectability that someone like her, climbing out of
an impoverished childhood, craved. When they fought, he insisted
she wanted him to become a drone bee, just like her, so she
wouldn’t regret her own conventional path. As their fights
worsened, he’d spent more time out of her company, drinking
heavily, hooking up with single friends, and – she suspected –
auditioning new and less demanding females.
The shit I took off him, just to come home
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