With her, my unsure self kept popping up like a stain. “Billy Zero,” I introduced myself to her new friends, and she knew that truth glimmered in the joke, as well as an inappropriate self-pity. I was nothing without her; at least, I was having to search for what I could be. “Face it, man,” Ted had told me, in his cups again but for once on the money. “Without her, you’re fucked.”
She was where I turned when I was losing my bearings and didn’t even know it.
I said, “Where’s that cup of coffee?”
She came to me, wheeling her chair from the kitchen with one hand and balancing my coffee in the other. She wore black leggings beneath a loose-fitting smock of purple and gold; her feet were bare, because she couldn’t feel the cold, though the toenails were carefully polished. She stopped the chair, cleared a space between a pile of books and a flower vase on the dining room table, set down the cup, and offered her soft mouth for me to kiss. She was quick, observant, energetic. She was beautiful still, though gray had mingled with the younger chestnut. Shit, I thought, I have nothing to offer this woman.
I surprised myself, saying, “I’ll quit the job. Move with you guys to Seattle.”
She seemed not to hear, or else she was weighing this, trying to take it in. She said, “I heard about the verdict. I’m sorry. You must be furious.”
“It was predictable.”
“Which doesn’t make it any better.”
“No, I guess not. I half hoped there’d be a riot — you know, a spontaneous outburst, anger, something. The guy would know what an asshole the world thinks he is. But people seemed pleased.”
“Corcoran’s got charm as well as money. He’s brilliant, capable, funny. In their book Denise got lucky, made an ambitious marriage, and getting smacked was all a part of it.”
“You’re angry.”
“I guess I am. How does it make you feel?”
“Right now? Exhausted, ready to quit.” In recent months, as it became certain that we’d lose the case, I’d reminded myself that people in shock sometimes confessed to murders they hadn’t committed, as if they needed to release a different guilt they felt, maybe about having let the victim down, not having done enough. “Maybe he didn’t do it, after all.”
“You were there, Billy. You were the one. Tell me whether he did it or not.”
From outside came the brief rumble of rap as a homeboy’s car cruised by, and I thought of something else I loved about this house. It was beautiful, but close to the boundary. You couldn’t hide here and forget what the city was like. You saw the dangerous edge of things. Most cops I knew didn’t live in the city anymore. They bought tract houses in Simi Valley or drove an hour or more at the end of their shift to retreat behind the walls of security estates in the Inland Empire. I suppose I resented that. Venice was difficult, dangerous, and certainly a mixed place to raise a child, but still a great place to live. I shook my head. “I can’t believe you’re leaving.”
She turned in the direction of the CD player and put on something big and romantic. “How do you like this music? Lucy’s gift for my birthday last week, which by the way you forgot.”
I’d forgotten? How could I have done that? “Last Wednesday. Jesus. I was helping a homicide guy from West Covina.”
“It’s OK; it’s OK. I’ve heard the story often enough.”
“Shit. Oh, Ellen, I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want your sorrow, Billy. I’m your ex-wife. Not your crippled ex-wife.” Her slim strong hands were shaking a little. “I don’t understand what you want from me anymore.”
There was a pause, her eyes not leaving mine, and then she glanced away, toward the fireplace.
“Hey, a sandwich would be good,” I said, and she looked at me again, her eyes crinkled and lit up with a smile.
“You’re such an idiot.”
“Don’t rub it in. Come on. Let’s have a hot date in the kitchen.”
Once upon a time, back in the fairy tale days, we’d sat together in these rooms, listened to music, and planned the future. Ellen had written questions on index cards and quizzed me about the next promotion exam. I always thought I was the driven one, the homicide star, the half-English guy who was nonetheless on top of the need to get to the point quickly, comfortable on the streets, soothing the victims, and easing the ride for the management jockeys. Early on, even before the Pakistani who killed his son, I’d had a couple of good cases, easy cases, really, not much detective work involved, but high profile: I busted a terrorist who slit the throat of a secretary in the Federal Building on Wilshire a couple of months prior to the ’84 Olympics, and then I talked down the serial killer who started taking potshots from the roof of a motel. I remembered being up there, baking in the heat, hot Santa Ana winds scorching my scalp and making my dazzled eyes water. That was in San Pedro, too. I didn’t care much for San Pedro.
There seemed to be good reasons for the presumption that my career was the more important, and those reasons had been part of the implied bargain between us, a flaw in the marriage. “We were apart when I was hurt,” she’d once said. “Doesn’t that tell you something?”
In the kitchen after Ellen’s accident we’d torn out all the previous fittings and replaced them with counters at waist height and cupboards below so that everything was in reach of her wheelchair. Guys I’d never even met before had collected money from all of the city’s eighteen divisions and come around to help. They’d hired an architect, a studious-looking young German, who’d said where to put in the ramps and had rethought the place and redesigned the bathroom. They’d put in a security system and an intercom that connected with the neighbors. I’d always been a loner within the Department, but, looking at Ellen and seeing the work they did and the help they gave, I had the same dangerous and sentimental feeling that so many of them shared, namely, that because being a cop was the greatest and the shittiest and most thankless job in the world, no one else could understand us. I started feeling guilty and anxious, and soon I was never not feeling that way, even when the immediate cause was something else.
“You want mustard or mayonnaise?”
“Both. Plenty of each.”
“How bad was the rain when you came in?”
“Still pretty bad.”
“I’ve got to try to get to the store later.”
“I can pick up some stuff if you like.”
“No, really, it’s OK.” She smiled. “Thanks, though.”
Through the kitchen window I watched steam rise from the asphalt tiles on the garage, against which Lucy’s bike leaned, covered with a tarp; on the washing line an old denim shirt hung limp and heavy. From here at night I used to watch the moon rising among and then above the palms.
We kept going over the same