“You, ah, you like, like ... poetry?”
When she spoke, her voice was flat as if dealing with a suspect in the night. “Po-et-tree.”
“Ah, yeah. You know. Moon, June, spoon.”
“I’m into rap. You into rap, Traffic man?”
“Not so much. Yet?”
“We’ll see. You married?”
“No. Not anymore. Just to my poetry.”
Marty Frost turned to Djuna Brown and shook her head. “Hustlers, the both of them. White boys looking to score off us dark sisters.”
“Really?” Djuna Brown made a sad smile of perfect little white picket teeth. “I heard of guys like that. But I never actually, you know, met one before.” She looked up from under at Marty Frost. “We don’t have that kind of stuff up in Indian country.”
While Marty Frost made a show of looking Comartin up and down, Ray Tate read her. In angry battle she’d looked heavier and had thickened fixtures infused with anger, her grey-tipped cornrows held flat by tiny intricate African-looking barrettes. But now, outside the task force briefing, deflated back to normal size and calm in the sunshine with the violence out of her system, she was pretty and relaxed. Ray Tate figured she was into her late forties, maybe fifty, and he computed where she was on the job twenty-five years earlier. Tough days, he thought, tough nights. Any female cop who came out of those days in one piece and stuck it out was a little tougher than he could handle. He felt bad for Brian Comartin. He was in for an interesting time. He was going to miss his traffic surveys.
“Okay, Traffic man.” Marty Frost nodded. She knew she had him cold. “First date, we double date, okay? Nothing on the first date unless I say so. Don’t make me give you a beat down.”
Brian Comartin looked insanely happy, as though a thorough beat down was all he’d ever wanted out of life. “I can get behind that.”
“Yeah, we’ll see.” She turned to Djuna Brown and smirked triumphantly. “Two weeks, I bet, two weeks and I got him wearing gold chains and puffy Converses.” She handed around her business cards and said to call her for dinner. “We’ll go out and eat some food and we’ll figure out how to get some justice for those poor ladies.” She nodded at the geometric Jank Center behind them. “Those pinheads couldn’t catch their ass.”
“Oh, let’s do dinner at my place.” Djuna Brown made a bright smile. “I’m at the Whistler. Great dining room. All in on the tab. Dinner’s on the state. Ah, ask for Inspector Brown, okay? They got confused when I checked in. Seven o’clock? In the dining room?” She nodded to herself. “Marty, if you want, come by at six before dinner for a spa session. I’ll book it. The state owes you a spa day. No charge, because your state government appreciates the contribution of municipal law enforcement in the maintenance of a safe and civil society.”
Martinique Frost nodded. “It’s about fucking time.”
Djuna Brown knew there’d been no harlot with big boobs and no goggled Harley harpy in Ray Tate’s immediate past. His need was unfulfilled. He had no new tricks, no new moves. He was a ga-ga schoolboy. In the Taurus racing to the Whistler he nearly cracked up a couple of times, glancing at her as if she might not still be there. In the elevator, the moment the doors swished shut, he had his hands on her; in the hallway he urged her along. The moment they walked into the bordello of the suite he was all over her. His breathing was heavy. The rough chintz of the loveseat rubbed on her but she hadn’t actually removed any clothing and it was a just matter of friction and noise. Her little bra ended up over a French lampshade, her Chicago panties around one ankle. She felt he wanted to devour her, and afterwards, as she lay on top of him, finally naked, she asked him about his habits.
“Well,” he said languidly, “it’s been a while.... A couple of days, anyway. A chick in Records. Just physical. Nothing serious. You?”
“A guy from the new sawmill. He couldn’t keep his hands to himself. I had to cuff him up, get the thing done.”
“Fucking civilians.”
“Fucking civilians. But, hey, when you got the need, you got it, right?” She looked down at him to make sure he knew she was kidding, that he was kidding. “Really? You have someone?”
“You have a logger?” His hands were on her face, as if to confirm the brown little face was actually under the spiky hair and that she was this close to him.
“No. No logger.”
“Then, no, no chick in Records.”
“Okay, okay, then.” She stretched luxuriously. “I could get used to this. Paris must be like this. You ever think about it, Paris, anymore? Running away?” She trailed her thumb over the bullet scar near his hip. “With me, I mean?”
“Yeah, yeah, I do. At night, mostly, when I’m painting. But then, in the daytime …”
“I want to see your new stuff, what you’ve been painting. After dinner tonight, let’s go to your place. You still in the apartment where she … Where you got shot?”
“Yep. Gin in the fridge, water in the pipes.”
“Gin and taps. I haven’t had one since the last time I had one with you. Well, except a triple-o when I checked in.” It had been a joke, a kind of inside joke between them back when they began seeing each other. One or both of them would have gin but neither ever had any mix, and if they did, they lied. A lime was heresy. They spent drunken soft nights sipping gin and tap water like fools and parsing their pensions for a lifetime in Paris. Djuna Brown thought of it as their beatnik dream.
She put her head into his neck and muttered, “Beatnik,” and rolled over onto him.
She mixed their drinks and they carried their guns and robes into the bathroom. While the tub filled she called the front desk and made an appointment for Martinique Frost, a guest of the state government, in the spa at six, and a reservation for four at seven o’clock in the dining room.
Watching her standing naked, looking tiny and brown in front of his eyes, Ray Tate lay in the tub of bubbles and mentally engraved the moment for later at his easel, where he could conjure her presence, even in her absence. He had a mental catalogue of those gravure moments and they’d keep him painting and sketching for a lifetime in imaginary Paris. He was already becoming overwhelmed by the possibility of changing his life, of not being a cop but instead being something more internal.
When the phone rang at seven o’clock, they were still in the tub enjoying long conversations about nothing amongst long periods of contented silence. There was nothing left they could do. It was as though the year apart had been a long blink. The bathroom was dim and the water, emptied and refilled hot a half-dozen times, was again tepid.
She caught the phone on the fourth ring, standing at the wall phone, listening. The receptionist announced their guests were seated in the dining room. Djuna Brown, a dark shadow of form in a dark flat shadow, thanked the woman softly, although she wanted to scream abuse at her for bringing the real world of broken dead ladies into their Paris.
Chapter 9
Under the wide crystal chandelier in the dining room, Brian Comartin and Martinique Frost debated whether to order drinks or wait for Ray Tate and Djuna Brown. Comartin said if the state was picking up the tab, he was up for a bottle of Cliquot. He’d been researching wines, he told Marty Frost, in anticipation of moving to Europe, particularly Spain, living on his half of his pension and working on his poetry.
“Get the champagne, poetry man,” Marty Frost told him. “They’re upstairs banging. I know it. They’re gonna be late or we might not see them at all, you ask me. You see how they looked at each other at the Jank? They’ve got history, those two. I bet they didn’t even get the car parked before they were all over each other.” Even though Ray Tate and Djuna Brown were only