The last word broke, her voice cracking, and someone shook her shoulder. “Margrit. Wake up, Grit. You fell asleep on the couch. Again!” The voice was fondly impatient. “Wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”
She sat up with a gasp, then fell back on the couch, groaning. Papers crinkled under her shoulder. She put the heel of her hand to her eye, rubbing to waken herself, and swung her head to stare blearily at Cole, who crouched beside the couch.
He reached out and pulled the DVD player’s remote control device from under her hair. “You’ve got a bright red impression of this on your face,” he said. “I thought you said you were going to bed.”
“Whutimeissih?” Margrit groaned again and sat up, running her fingers over her cheek. Small indentations marred it, her jaw marked with the recognizable curve of the remote’s oversize play button. She pushed at it without focus, half expecting the TV to come on and a DVD to start running.
“It’s six-thirty.” Cole hung his arms over his knees like a gorilla. “What time did you fall asleep?”
Margrit grunted. “Two? Sunfin like that. Dyhaffa-lookso awake?” She glared at Cole.
“Yeah, I do have to look so awake.” He gave her a fond, if exasperated, smile. “I got up half an hour ago and I’ve showered. Cam’s already gone. I thought you were going to go to bed, Grit.”
“I was.” Memory cleared her mind and she scrunched her eyes shut. “I was, but I turned on the TV—” Cole growled disapprovingly and she raised her voice, ignoring him “—and the guy I told you about seeing last night probably butchered a girl in the park after I came in. I didn’t feel like sleeping after that.” She suddenly recalled her dream, remembering the pale man’s gentle movements and the strength evident in his hands. Neighbors would say he seemed like such a nice man. She shivered, bringing her attention back to Cole’s dismayed question: “Did you call Tony?”
Margrit shifted her gaze away. “No. I didn’t even think of it. It was the middle of the night.”
She could almost hear her housemate grind his teeth. “You’re on the outs again, aren’t you? It can’t be that bad. Come on, Margrit. You met a murderer and didn’t think to call your own personal homicide detective?”
She hunched her shoulders. “He’s not my own personal anything, Cole. You know how things are.”
“Call him, Grit. And promise me you’re not going into the park again after dark. Margrit, promise me.” He forced a little humor into his voice. “How’re we going to pay rent on this place if you get yourself killed? We need you.”
Margrit turned her head to the side, birdlike, to eye him. “Cam’d beat the landlord up if he threatened to throw you out. What’s the point in having a fiancée who’s a physical trainer if you can’t sic her on the bad guys?”
“She can bench-press a Mini, not defeat Chuck Norris in hand-to-hand combat,” Cole said. “So you need to not get killed, okay?”
Margrit leaned to the left, looking over Cole’s shoulder at the VCR clock. “I won’t get killed, and you’d better get going. You’re gonna be late.”
He put his palms on his thighs and levered himself up with a sigh. “Just be careful, Grit, okay?”
“I’m always careful. Go, you’re gonna be late.”
“Yeah.” Cole gave her a brief smile and left. Margrit nearly sank back down into the couch, then growled at herself and shuffled through the apartment and into the bathroom. Cole had left the medicine cabinet door open, and her reflection caught her unawares as she switched the light on.
Dark brown corkscrew curls stood out from her face, deliberate highlights of red and gold catching the light. Her hair had too much body to be ruined by a night’s sleep, but café latte skin was a mishmash of red marks from cheekbone to jaw on the right side. Margrit groaned and ran her palm over them again, serving to redden her face more without having a noticeable effect on the imprint.
“They’ll run you out on a rail, girl.” She skimmed her shirt and bra off, making a pile on the floor. Her legs had narrow lines down the sides from the seams on the running tights, and there were wrinkles on her torso from her shirt crumpling against it. Her toenails glittered gold as she climbed into the shower and stood in the water collecting in the bottom of the tub. Every three weeks she poured a bottle of clog remover down the drain, starting anew the battle against shedding hair. It was almost time to do it again.
Sunday, she promised. Sunday, she would clean the bathroom.
Twenty minutes later, wrapped in a towel and scowling at the uninspiring contents of her closet, she amended Sunday’s plans to include laundry.
“What are you doing here?”
Margrit ducked her head at the greeting, looking up again with a hint of humor dancing in her eyes. “Hi, Tony.” She’d lingered at the Homicide doorway, waiting to be noticed before entering; more than one semi-familiar face had given her a quick smile of greeting while she watched the detective who was, as Cole had surmised, her off-again lover. After weeks apart, as usual, Margrit found his warm Italian coloring and strong features surprising. Rather than making the heart grow fonder, distance made it forgetful, blurring the edges of good looks into something more white bread and bland.
Humor infused the thought. If anything, the man she’d met in the park the night before should be the white bread one, with his pale skin and paler hair, his bone structure so well shaped it might have been carved by a sculptor. Tony, by comparison, was vivacious and alive, especially now, with anger drawing his eyebrows down and bringing more color to his cheeks.
“No.” The detective got to his feet and leaned his weight on his desk, making it less a barrier and more a tool of aggravation. “You don’t get to walk in with a cheerful ‘Hi, Tony’ when you haven’t called for three weeks and I don’t even know what I’ve done wrong this time.” His hair was shorter than the last time Margrit’d seen him, clipped just the wrong length and making his ears look too big for his head. Margrit threaded through gray desks and patches of winter sunlight as he spoke. She reached him and leaned across his desk until their heads were only inches apart, answering quietly.
“You didn’t call, either, Tony. All right? Are we even?”
“No, we’re not.” His knuckles turned white from pressure before he dropped his chin to his chest and muttered, “This isn’t the place to talk about it.” A Brooklyn accent came through strong in the last words, spoken so fast Margrit leaned in another few centimeters to make sure she caught every word. “What are you doing here, Margrit?”
“Official business, actually. I wasn’t just dropping by.” Too late she realized the impact of her phrasing, but the words were spoken. He looked up, only a hint of injury visible in his brown eyes. “Tony—”
“Forget about it. What is it now, another hardened criminal to get off?”
Margrit felt her own knuckles turning white as she leaned too hard against the desk, afraid to allow herself to speak for several long seconds. “This is why it never works, Tony,” she said, all but under her breath. The argument was as old as their relationship, two people separated by the same justice system. “Can we not do this right now? It’s not going to change anything. I’m still going to go down to my job at the Legal Aid offices when we’re done talking, just like I do every day. But right now I need to talk to you.”
“You know, if you want a low-paying lawyer job, you could go work for the D.A.’s office prosecuting these bastards instead of getting them off.”
“Tony!” Margrit brought his gaze up with the sharpness of her tone, then held her breath until she trusted her voice again. “I talked with the guy you want to bring in for the Central Park murder last night.”
Personal insult and injury bled out of Tony’s face, replaced