“Something like that.”
“It must have killed you going away like that for something you didn’t do. I can’t even imagine.”
“You do the time every day,” he said. “Or the time does you.”
This is a mistake, he thought. I can’t sit here and lie to this woman. One lie tonight turns into another lie the next time. How far could I take that?
What was I thinking? That I could have a normal relationship like a normal man?
“So what’s it really like? You hear things about how it is in prison . . .”
“There are three kinds of people in prison,” he said. “People who want to get out, people who never want to get out, and people who know they are never going to get out. You can’t count the days. You keep quiet, keep to yourself. Don’t go with anybody, don’t owe anybody. You’re all you got in there. The only thing you can count on is yourself.”
Lauren was leaning over the table again. Her entire body language had changed. Mason remembered something Gina had told him once a long time ago. A boy wants a good girl who will be bad just for him, but a girl wants a bad boy who will be good just for her. Mason wasn’t an ex-con—not officially, not on paper—but maybe that made it even better. He was bad, but not too bad.
Little does she know, he thought.
They ordered dinner. They had a few more drinks. When they were done eating, they went back outside into the warm night and walked up Halsted Street.
A few blocks up, he heard a band playing a Springsteen cover in a bar and slowed his pace.
Lauren noticed. “What?”
“I just like that stuff,” Mason said.
“So do I.”
“Yeah? You want to go in?”
“Yeah!”
They drank a little more. They stood close together while the band ran through all of Mason’s old favorite songs. “Born to Run,” “Thunder Road,” then slowing down for “Meeting Across the River.” It was good to feel her body close to his.
When it was after midnight, they walked back to the lot where he had parked his car. He could feel her shoulder brushing against his arm as they walked.
“Take you back to the store?”
She hesitated for a moment. “No, I don’t have my car there. I take the train down most days.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll take you home.”
They got in the car and he asked her where she lived.
“I’m right up by the stadium,” she said.
“Wrigley?”
“Yes. Two blocks away.”
“You’re a Cubs fan.”
“Is that going to be a problem?”
“We were getting along so well,” he said as he put the car in gear.
He drove up through Lakeview to Wrigleyville, shaking his head as he saw the stadium looming above them. Lauren started laughing.
After he parked the car, she took him into an old brick building and up a set of narrow stairs to her apartment. He turned her around and kissed her in the doorway. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back.
“How long has it been?” she whispered into his ear.
“A long time.”
“How long? Tell me.”
“Five years.”
“Say it again. How long?”
“Five years.”
“Show me,” she said. “Show me what five years feels like.”
He lifted her up and took her into her bedroom. They took off each other’s clothes and came together while a fan blew back and forth across the room, cooling his back.
He went slowly, stretching her out on her bed and touching her, remembering what a woman feels like. Her neck. Her breasts. Her stomach. Her long legs. The wide curves of her hips.
He smelled her scent. He tasted her. Then she moaned into his ear as he entered her and the five years of waiting finally started to unwind inside him.
He took her hands and held them together on the pillow, above her head, as the passion worked its way through his body and into hers, and then back again, until it was too much to hold on to anymore. Five years of desire. Of hunger. Ready to be released.
Mason held on to her tight, trying to shut out everything else in the world outside that window.
The man who kills cops in motel rooms, he’s not here. His past is not here, the things he’s done, the things he may have to do tomorrow.
Tonight, you are someone else, Mason told himself. For these few hours, you can live inside a different life. He held on tight and dove into her again, this stranger beneath him.
? ? ?
The next morning, Lauren woke up to an empty space next to her. But then she smelled the fresh coffee and, two seconds later, Nick Mason came into the bedroom with two mugs. He was dressed.
“Cream and sugar,” he said. “I hope that’s how you take it.”
She sat up and pulled the sheet up to cover herself. “Thank you.”
“Listen, I just got a call,” he said. “I have to go.”
The message had been simple. Same place. 8:30.
“Are you married?”
“No,” he said, taking a sip of his black coffee.