“Why?” Simon countered.
“Because it’s irrelevant. I’m not obsessed with her. You’re not obsessed with her. She’s out of our life. Isn’t she?” Joyce was testing him, and they both knew it.
“Then why bring up what you did at lunch today? Why storm off like some spurned lover, embarrassing me in front of all those people?”
“I’d had too much wine and not enough lunch. It didn’t mean anything.” She found herself shrugging her shoulders, even though Simon was still turned away from her.
Joyce moved to put the poker back on its hanger along the side of the hearth, but Simon’s hand jutted out and snatched at her wrist. It had been months since she’d felt his skin on hers, and that was an accident when they’d brushed past each other in the kitchen, grabbing at cups and saucers while entertaining some other couple. Perhaps the Worthers. She couldn’t remember. All she did remember was how her hand had brushed against Simon’s, and the electricity it still struck deep inside her chest.
So much had changed, but Joyce still wanted her husband more than any other man. More than anything, if she were going to be honest with herself. Something which didn’t come as naturally to her anymore.
“Let go,” she told Simon now. Every piece of her wanted to scream the opposite.
“No.” He moved to face her. “I won’t let go. Not until you tell me that you’ll stop this. That you’ll stop letting Trina come between us.”
“I can’t promise that.”
With his free hand, Simon yanked the poker from Joyce’s hand. She couldn’t get a purchase on the smooth metal of the handle, and it slid almost effortlessly from her grip.
He stood in front of her. The fire framed his broad shoulders and cast his face into shadow. Joyce had always loved the fact that her husband was so much larger than her, that he could consume her in his embrace if he wanted to.
Simon pulled Joyce closer to him, and their lips almost met. She felt his hot breath on her skin. He smelled of whiskey and the expensive cologne she’d bought him for their last anniversary, bergamot and sandalwood. She wondered what she smelled like to him.
Desire.
Fear.
Despair.
“Yes, you can.” He kissed her, and at first she didn’t respond to his insistent searching with his tongue. But then she felt the metal of the poker balanced against her thigh as it hung from Simon’s other hand, and she decided she’d pushed him enough for one day.
She kissed her husband back. Hungry, unfamiliar and yet so ingrained in physical memory that their movements felt choreographed by some outside force.
They made love, there by the fire. Half-dressed and spent afterwards, Simon traced Joyce’s chin with his hand. “Tell me you love me.”
“I love you more than anything in this world.”
He nestled into her body, wrapping his arms around her. “I love you, too.”
It wasn’t until the middle of the night, with the fire burned down and the air turned cold, that Joyce awoke to hear her husband crying softly by her side.
CHAPTER NINE TRINA
One of her neighbors used to pound on Trina’s door in the middle of the night. Trina knew he struggled with a psychotic disorder and if he forgot to take his medication while his mother was out working the swing shift at the hospital he’d often grow paranoid and violent. Trina’d talk him down, call his mother—Darlene—and try to get him back into bed without calling the cops. Sometimes Tom would have to carry him. It wasn’t until a few months ago that Darlene asked Trina to give her spare key back. That one had smarted, but Trina understood Darlene’s rationale. It had been raining outside and Trina was already a little drunk, but she was out of liquor somehow through faulty planning, and all she could picture as she slumped against the edge of the couch, propped up by her coffee table, was the gleaming liquor cart Darlene kept for an after-shift tipple. Trina was planning on buying more for them, it was just a borrowing, really, but the fact remained that she’d let herself into their apartment without invitation, stole from them, and managed to vomit on their front rug before making her exit.
Tuesday morning Trina awoke to banging on her apartment door, and although she knew in all likelihood it was the police and not Darlene’s son, she still had a small hope her intuition was wrong.
Trina wrapped Tom’s scruffy robe around her body, cinching it tight at her waist, and peered through the peephole. Two sets of scrutinous eyes peered back. Kirkpatrick sipped at a Styrofoam coffee cup and Bechdel stared back all sleek and rosy-cheeked from the cold.
Dammit.
“Professor Dell, can we come in?” Bechdel asked.
Trina glanced at herself in the hallway mirror. Her hair was wild, all random spikes and matted patches. She hadn’t taken her makeup off last night before she passed out from cheap wine and too little Chinese take-out she’d ordered after leaving the End Zone. Mascara streaked across her face like a one-hit pop star. She wiped her face with the sleeve of her robe and opened the door a crack.
“It’s early. I’m not even dressed yet.” She cracked open the door and gestured to her robe, self-conscious now of the flimsy camisole and bed shorts she had on underneath. Her feet were bare, and a shiver ran up her legs from the damp floor.
“This will only take a moment of your time,” Kirkpatrick said, moving fluidly through the crack in the door and settling himself on the couch. Bechdel followed, not making any effort to conceal her assessment of Trina’s apartment.
Trina tried to see it from their eyes. Empty bottles askew on the coffee table, half-empty take-out containers open in a little sad tableau of her evening the night before. A spotless, unused kitchen, bare walls with patches that showed something important used to hang there. The smell of food left out too long and a bed slept in too many times without washing.
No one had been to her apartment in a long time, not even Monica. Trina pushed down the natural feeling of embarrassment, reminding herself that politeness would get her nothing in the end. How many people had incriminated themselves simply due to their unconscious desire to have people in authority like them?
And despite herself, Trina asked if they’d like some coffee or tea. Kirkpatrick wiggled the cup in his hand, and Bechdel declined with a curt nod.
Trina sat down on the lilac easy chair she’d inherited begrudgingly from her mother. The two detectives had already taken the couch, settling on opposite ends. Kirkpatrick took out his notebook, somehow balancing his coffee on his lap.
Trina thought about suggesting he set it on the table in front of him but caught herself.
She waited.
“We were wondering if you remembered anything further from last Sunday night?” Bechdel asked. The detective sat forward. She clasped her hands in front of her as she leaned her elbows on her knees.
“Anything further?” Trina asked. “I don’t recall sharing much about my Sunday night with you in the first place.”
Kirkpatrick spoke up. “You attended a wedding. You’d been drinking. You recognized the victim, Dermot Carine, although you stated you didn’t know his name.”
“Victim?” Trina asked.
