“Almost,” she chuckled and glanced over at the print. “I used to love to see Sargent’s paintings at the Fine Arts in Boston when I was going to Northeastern. He did some murals there, too.”
“Were you an art student?” Before she could answer, he raised his glass. “Hey, look at us. Nikki and Jamie, doin’ the social.”
She clinked his glass and took a sip. The air was so warm, the beer was already hitting room temp. “I was an English major, but I really wanted to transfer to Theater.”
“You’re going to have to help me with this. How did you go from that to becoming a police detective?”
“Not such a huge leap,” said Nikki. “Tell me what I do isn’t part acting, part storytelling.”
“True. But that’s the what. I’m curious about the why.”
The murder.
The end of innocence.
The life changer.
She thought it over and said, “It’s personal. Maybe when we know each other better.”
“Personal. Is that code for ‘because of a guy’?”
“Rook, we’ve been riding together for how many weeks? Knowing what you know about me, do you think I would make a choice like that for a guy?”
“The jury will disregard my question.”
“No, this is good, I want to know,” she said, and scooted closer to him. “Would you change what you do for a woman?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“You have to, I’m interrogating your ass. Would you change what you do for a woman?”
“In a vacuum…I can’t see it.”
“All right, then.”
“But,” he said and paused to form his thought, “for the right woman?…I’d like to think I’d do just about anything.” He seemed satisfied with what he’d said, even affirmed it to her with a nod, and when he did, he raised his eyebrows, and at that moment, Jamie Rook didn’t look like a globetrotter on the cover of a glossy magazine at all but like a kid in a Norman Rockwell, truthful and absent of guile.
“I think we need better alcohol,” she said.
“There’s a blackout, I could loot a liquor store. Do you have a stocking I can borrow to pull over my face?”
The exact contents of her liquor cupboard in the kitchen were a quarter bottle of cooking sherry, a bottle of peach Bellini wine cocktail that had no freshness date but years ago had separated and taken on the look and hue of nuclear fissionable material…Aha! And a half bottle of tequila.
Rook held the light and Nikki rose up from the crisper drawer of the refrigerator brandishing a sad little lime as if she’d snagged a Barry Bonds ball complete with hologram. “Too bad I don’t have any triple sec or Cointreau, we could have margaritas.”
“Please,” he said. “You’re in my area now.” They returned to the couch and he set up shop on the coffee table with a paring knife, a salt shaker, the lime, and the tequila. “Today, class, we’re making what we call hand margaritas. Observe.” He sliced a lime wedge, poured a shot of tequila, then licked the web of his hand at the thumb and forefinger and sprinkled salt on it. He licked the salt, tossed back the shot, then bit the lime. “Whoa-?yeah. That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” he said. “I learned how to do this from Desmond Tutu,” he added and she laughed. “Now you.”