A rap on the glass, quick and crisp. I look up; it’s a woman, sharp-nosed, olive-skinned, in a turtleneck and long coat. “Hold on,” says Little. He starts to lower my window, but I cringe, I whine, and he rolls it back up before unpacking himself from the driver’s seat and stepping into the street, shutting the door gently behind him.
He and the woman speak to each other across the roof of the car. My ears sieve their words—stabbing, confused, doctor—as I sink underwater, close my eyes, nestle into the crook of the passenger seat; the air goes calm and still. Shoals flicker past—psychologist, house, family, alone—and I drift away. With one hand I idly stroke the other sleeve; my fingers swim into my robe, pinch a roll of skin bulging from my stomach.
I’m trapped in a police car fondling my fat. This is a new low.
After a minute—or is it an hour?—the voices subside. I crack one eye open, see the woman gazing down at me, glaring down at me. I screw my eye shut again.
The crunch of the driver’s door as Little opens it. Cool air wafts in, licks my legs, wanders around the cabin, makes itself at home.
“Detective Norelli is my partner,” I hear him tell me, a little flint in that dark-soil voice of his. “I’ve told her what’s happening with you. She’s going to bring some people into your house. That okay?”
I dip my chin, lift it.
“Okay.” The car gasps as he settles into his seat. I wonder how much he weighs. I wonder how much I weigh.
“You want to open your eyes?” he suggests. “Or are you good?”
I dip my chin again.
The door clacks shut and he revives the engine, knocks the gearshift into reverse, backs up—back, back, back—the vehicle catching its breath as it rolls over a seam in the pavement, until we brake. I hear Little switch the ignition again.
“Here we are,” he announces as I open my eyes, peek out the window.
Here we are. The house towers above me, the black mouth of the front door, the front steps like a tongue unspooled; the cornices form even brows above the windows. Olivia always speaks of brownstones as though they have faces, and from this angle, I see why.
“Nice place,” Little comments. “Big place. Four stories? Is that a basement?”
I incline my head.
“So five stories.” A pause. A leaf throws itself against my window, skitters away. “And you’re all alone in there?”
“Tenant,” I say.
“Where does he live? Basement or on top?”
“Basement.”
“Is your tenant here?”
I shift my shoulders into a shrug. “Sometimes.”
Silence. Little’s fingers tap-dance on the dash. I turn to him. He catches me looking, grins.
“That’s where they picked you up,” he reminds me, jutting his jaw toward the park.
“I know,” I mumble.
“Nice little park.”
“I guess.”
“Nice street.”
“Yes. All nice.”
He grins again. “Okay,” he says, then looks past me, past my shoulder, into the eyes of the house. “Does this work for the front door, or just the door the EMTs came in last night?” He dangles my house key from one finger, the key ring noosed at his knuckle.
“Both,” I tell him.
“Okay, then.” He whirls the key around his finger. “You need me to carry you?”
39
He doesn’t carry me, but he does hoist me out of the car, usher me through the gate, propel me up the stairs, my arm flung across his football-field back, my feet half dragged behind me, the crook of the umbrella jaunting over one wrist, as if we’re out for a stroll. A drugged-stupid stroll.
The sun nearly caves in my eyelids. At the landing Little slides the key into the lock, pushes; the door sails wide, slamming so hard that the glass shivers.
I wonder if the neighbors are watching. I wonder if Mrs. Wasserman has just seen an economy-size black man drag me into my house. I bet she’s calling the cops right now.
There’s scarcely room for both of us in the hall—I’m squeezed to one side, pinned there, my shoulder pressed into the wall. Little kicks the door shut, and suddenly it’s dusk. I close my eyes, roll my head against his arm. The key scrapes into the second lock.
And then I feel it: the warmth of the living room.
And I smell it: the stale air of my home.
And I hear it: the squeal of the cat.
The cat. I’d completely forgotten about Punch.
I open my eyes. Everything is as it was when I plunged outside: the dishwasher yawning open; the skein of blankets tangled on the sofa; TV glowing, the Dark Passage DVD menu frozen on the screen; and on the coffee table, the two depleted bottles of wine, incandescent in the sunlight, and the four pill canisters, one of them toppled, as though drunk.
Home. My heart nearly detonates in my chest. I could sob with relief.
The umbrella slides from my arm, drops to the floor.
Little steers me to the kitchen table, but I wave my hand left, like a motorist, and we veer off-course toward the sofa, where Punch has wedged himself behind a pillow.
“There you go,” Little breathes, easing me onto the cushions. The cat observes us. When Little steps back, he sidewinds toward me, picking his way among the blankets, before turning his head to hiss at my escort.
“Hello to you, too,” Little greets him.
I ebb into the sofa, feel my heart slow, hear the blood singing softly in my veins. A moment passes; I grip my robe in my hands, regain myself. Home. Safe. Safe. Home.
The panic seeps from me like water.
“Why were people in my house?” I ask Little.
“What’s that?”
“You said that EMTs came into my house.”
His eyebrows lift. “They found you in the park. They saw your kitchen door open. They needed to see what was going on.”
Before I can respond, he turns to the photograph of Livvy on the side table. “Daughter?”
I nod.
“She here?”
I shake my head. “With her father,” I mutter.
His turn to nod.
He turns, stops, sizes up the spread on the coffee table. “Someone having a party?”
I inhale, exhale. “It was the cat,” I say. What’s that from? Goodness me! Why, what was that? Silent be, It was the cat. Shakespeare? I frown. Not Shakespeare. Too cutesy.
Apparently, I’m also too cutesy, because Little isn’t even smirking. “All this yours?” he asks, inspecting the wine bottles. “Nice merlot.”
I shift in my seat. I feel like a naughty child. “Yes,” I admit. “But . . .” It looks worse than it is? It’s actually worse than it looks?
Little fishes in his pocket for the tube of Ativan capsules that the lovely young doctor prescribed. He sets it on the coffee table. I mumble a thank-you.
And then, deep in the riverbed of my brain, something detaches itself, tumbles in the undertow, rises to the surface.
It’s a body.
It’s Jane.
I open my mouth.
For the first time, I notice the gun holstered at Little’s hip. I remember Olivia once gawking at a mounted policeman in Midtown; she ogled him for a solid ten seconds before I realized she was staring at his weapon, not his horse. I smiled then, teased her, but here it is, within arm’s reach, and I’m not smiling.
Little catches me. He tugs his coat over the gun, as though I’d been peeking down his shirt.
“What about my neighbor?” I ask.
He digs his phone from his pocket, brings it close to his eyes. I wonder if he’s nearsighted. Then he swipes it, drops his hand to his side.
“This whole house is just you, huh?” He walks toward the kitchen. “And your tenant,” he adds before I can do so. “That go downstairs?” He jabs a thumb toward the basement door.
“Yes. What about my neighbor?”
He checks his phone again—then stops, stoops. When he stands up, unfolding his hundred-yard body, he’s got the cat’s water bowl in his right hand and, in the left, the landline phone. He looks at one, then the other, as though weighing them. “Guy’s probably thirsty,” he says, stepping over to the sink.
I watch his reflection in the television screen, hear the gush of the faucet. There’s a shallow puddle of merlot left in one of the bottles. I wonder if I could knock it back without him seeing.
The water bowl rings against the floor, and now Little sets the phone in its dock, squints at the readout. “Battery’s dead,” he says.
“I know.”
“Just saying.” He approaches the basement door. “Can I bang on this?” he asks me. I nod.
He plays his knuckles against the wood—shave-and-a-haircut—and waits. “What’s your tenant’s name?”