BULLETS (21 page)

“There is that, yeah. And the other nice thing about being our age is that we generally have acquired, by now, the mileage and experience to also do it well.”

“Very well.”

“Extremely well.”

“Hold that thought.” She turned to her laptop, brought up her email and tapped out a quick message. “I need to send a quick email to my boss. I’m taking the day off after all. We can look at the rest of the park footage later, after we’ve both had some rest.”

She hit send and then turned back to him.

“Sorry, but I had to do that now rather than later. Because if I waited until after I kissed you, I probably would have forgotten and never remembered to do it at all.”

Slick didn’t speak or comment. He couldn’t.

She unwrapped the towel from her head, letting her wet hair fall to her shoulders. “Because once I start kissing you, I’m fairly certain I’m not going to want to stop for a long, long time.”

She rose from her chair, went to him and kissed him. It was one of those epic kisses that started slow and built up momentum as it went on, seemingly never ending. She slid into his lap and put her hands around his head as they kissed and Slick lost himself in it. He put his left arm around her and pulled her tight.

He still had the cup of tea in his right hand and tried to set it on the desk. She took the cup from him and threw it out of the office. It shattered against the wall in the hallway but neither of them noticed.

He took her in both his arms and stood, cradling her as she kissed him on the way to the bedroom, tearing at his shirt hard enough that the buttons popped.

She opened her bathrobe as they reached her canopied bed and Slick lost himself completely in her body, in her lips and in her deep brown eyes.

S
lick woke up
in the bed hours later. He wasn’t sure of the time, but it had to be late afternoon or early evening. Camilla lay in his arms, naked. They’d explored each other hungrily again and again until neither could stay awake a moment longer. He ran a finger up her hip, enjoying the curve of her body until she shivered and smiled.

“You were right,” she said without opening her eyes. “The mileage and the experience, it matters a great deal when it comes to doing something properly.”

She ran her hands up his body, opened her eyes and kissed him. “I don’t know what it is, physical chemistry or what, but I’ve wanted to do that since the first moment I laid eyes on you. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Or you.”

“Even when you were mad at me?”

“Especially then. I’m a Latina, what do you think? That’s like foreplay for my people!”

“I wanted you, too. From the instant that you walked into the interrogation room, all business and lawyer-y.”

“Yeah, but all men want every woman they see, don’t they?”

“Not every woman.”

“Just most of them.”

“Well, maybe half. The hot ones, anyway.”

“I knew it!”

“But most of the time, when a man sees an attractive woman, that initial attraction-slash-impulse passes soon after they leave your sight. That didn’t happen with you. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, even when you weren’t around.”

She kissed him again, with even more fire this time. He came up for air.

“This isn’t fair, you got to shower and clean up beforehand. I’m grubby and probably stink. Let me get cleaned up.”

She swung her feet to the floor, got out of bed and beckoned him with a finger.

“We can shower and clean up together.”

Which they did, again and again, until the hot water ran out.

“This really isn’t
like me,” she said as she dried off.

“Showering? This is like your second shower in less than eight hours.”

“Not the shower, jackass. This, me and you, you and me, what we did before and during said shower. Moving … well, moving this fast to that point. With a man, any man. It’s out of character for me. It takes me forever just to agree to a lunch date, not to mention invite a man home into my condo for even the most innocent of reasons.”

She wrapped the towel around herself and handed him one. He chuckled.

“You mean to say that that you had an actual innocent reason behind inviting me here?”

“Well, initially to check the park video. I couldn’t bring you to the office, but … I must confess, there was probably an ulterior motive behind bringing you here, too, and once I got you inside my home, I kind of knew where it was going.”

“I’m glad one of us did. I had no real idea.”

“Oh come on, YOU? With the x-ray vision? Please! I took a shower, what did you think was going to happen?”

“Hell, I was trying NOT to think about it. It was killing me.”

“Yeah, right. You knew, Mister Poker Eyes.”

“I hoped, but I didn’t know for sure. I’m not omniscient. No one is infallible, least of all me.”

“So it excited you when I jumped in the shower?”

“You have no idea. And being in your home, by myself, with the smell and feel of you all around, it was killing me, killing me. I was running images of dead puppies in my head to distract myself, doing anything and everything I could so as not to think about you naked in the shower. Didn’t work.”

“Ah, poor baby, all wound up and nowhere to go.”

“If I’d had more time, maybe I could’ve rubbed one out, but that might have been a bit embarrassing if you came out of the shower too early. I mean, oops, sorry!”

She laughed, hard. “And it might have affected your performance later.”

“I don’t think so, not with you. We’re five for five already and if you don’t put some clothes on real quick, we might have to do another round.”

She opened her towel and flashed him.

“That’s it, batter up.”

“Sorry, we have work to do, first. Park video to scroll. Work first, play later.”

“You’re so mean.”

She giggled. “Have you ever been in love?”

“Sure.” He dried off his legs. “You?”

“Yes. Well, maybe not, yes. Probably, no, now that I think about it. I thought it was love, at the time, but in hindsight, it wasn’t quite … love. It was more that I was infatuated with the person I was involved with and the idea of love and after a while it … became clear that it wasn’t about that person. Does that make sense?”

“Absolutely. The IDEA of being with someone is sometimes more attractive than the person you’re actually with, sometimes. I think that happens often, with some people. Not with us.”

“No, definitely not with us. This is clearly a case of pure animal lust.”

“Clearly. We couldn’t help ourselves.”

She sat on the toilet seat and watched him finish drying off, drinking in the sight of him in her bathroom. She liked watching him. He liked when she watched him.

“What was it like, being in love, for you?” she asked.

“Well…” He stood. “The first time, I was very young and … you know how it is when you’re young. Everything is important, every little thing, every little gesture.”

“Everything matters.”

“Fucking everything about you and her matters, every small thing means something and it’s almost life or death important, too. You hang on to every little thing and it’s weighted with meaning specialized only for the two of you.”

“Like how?”

“The first girl that I was in love with, the very first one, she gave me a shirt, nothing unique or special, just a regular shirt that she thought I might look good in. She bought me a shirt, this was early in the relationship, of course, and I was, at the time, wow. A shirt. She BOUGHT me a shirt.

“I was blown away by that, no girl had ever done that for me, at least then, and to me it was everything. I wore that fucking shirt all the time like a goddamn badge of honor. The shirt, man, the shirt, it became something more than just fabric that you pulled over your head. It was everything about us. It was everything.

“And after she broke up with me, I hung on to that shirt for years afterward, even after it didn’t fit me anymore. Couldn’t let it go. I’d carry it with me like a talisman, sleep with it, it was representative of everything good about her, or at least everything good about her that was in my head. I tore it once and was just about in tears, it wrecked me. I hadn’t seen the woman in two years by that time and the fact that I accidentally ripped the shirt still fucked me up, you know?”

“Did she love you?”

“I think she did.”

“Why’d she break up with you?”

“She couldn’t handle me. I was young, angry and stupid, like a lot of guys are at that age. Me, maybe more than most. Definitely more than most. I didn’t appreciate until much later how hard it must have been on her, the breakup. It had to have hurt her as much if not more than it did me. I didn’t get that then, of course, because I was young and stupid. I made the breakup a lot uglier than it needed to be, too, when it ended. Too often at that age and in love, it’s all about ME, ME, ME, you know? At least for guys, anyway. And that’s how I looked at it for a long time—she left ME, she did this to ME, how could she fuck ME over like that, etc.”

“Now how do you look at it?”

“Now, hell, I got the mileage and experience now, so today the way I look at it is that was something that
I
fucked up, that was a mistake that
I
made,
I
drove her away, a woman who loved me and who I loved left because
I
was an immature goof and an asshole. I realized, far, far too late, that it didn’t work because of ME, not her.”

Camilla looked at Slick, more serious than before, and nodded.

“I’m sorry for that. But I’m glad I got the grown up version of you.”

“Me, too.”

“What happened to the shirt?”

“I leaned into the pain and let it go, finally. Gave it to Goodwill. And it was the best thing I could have done. It was an anchor that held me to the past.”

She stared off into space, in thought.

“I remember the first boy I ever kissed, first real kiss, not the little girl stuff, but a real kiss with my first crush, and the song that played on the radio at the time. I’m not even telling you what song it was, because it’s embarrassing, but it became everything about the two of us, just like you said. But when it was over, the relationship, and he hurt me when he ended it, every time I heard that song on the radio, every single time, I’d cry my eyes out.”

“Was it
Desperado
?”

“Do I LOOK like an old white man?”

“Has to be a Spice Girls song then.”

“Now that’s just insulting. Stop.”

“
She-bangs
?”

“Keep it up and I will hurt you.”

Slick smiled as he wrapped the towel around his waist and looked at her, deep in thought. Camilla recognized the look in his eye and brought a finger up to stop him.

“Don’t even think about—”

“
She Talks To Angels
.”

“You … you … you are so BAD,” she stuttered. “You are a bad man. I can’t believe you figured that out. Unbelievable! I am never playing cards with you, never.”

“There goes strip poker.”

“Exactly right. And you only have yourself to blame. If I can’t hide anything from you, how will this even work out? We’re going to have to stop seeing each other, I guess,” she smiled. “That’s the only solution.”

“That sucks,” Slick said. “And I didn’t even get a shirt out of this one.”

“And without a shirt, how will you ever remember me?”

“I’ll think of you every time I find myself handcuffed in a shiny new police interrogation room, which was where we first—” Slick stopped suddenly, staring at her. It hit him and hit him hard. “Oh shit.”

“What is it? I was joking, I don’t really mean—”

“I know you were joking, that’s not it, I just got an… Come on!” Slick hurried out of the bathroom and into her home office. Camilla joined him.

“What is it?”

“The cameras, the park cameras, bring them back up.”

She sat down at her desk, feeling his urgency, and woke up her laptop. She didn’t even wait for him to turn away when she logged in. “Okay, what is it?”

“Go to the day of Roger Carlson’s murder. That night.”

She typed it in and the image of the park at night came up.

“Forward it to… He was at Friday mass, right? And that gets over around ten or so, something like that?”

“Something like that, yes. You think—”

“You said it yourself, the park bridges the two neighborhoods. His and hers. And if they first met at the park during that community event—”

“That place would be special for them. Oh my God. Is that him? It’s too dark to really see—”

“It’s him. It’s definitely him.”

Pedro walked happily out of the park shadows and headed toward the statue. He sat down at the foot of it, kicking his feet, obviously waiting for someone.

“That’s our boy Pedro. What time is that?” Slick said.

“Just before eleven. He could still, theoretically, make it out to Roger Carlson’s ranch in time to—”

“He didn’t. He met her there, at that spot. They first met there, at that corner, and I bet they both consider it THEIR spot. She’ll show up.”

They both waited and watched. Onscreen, Pedro sat patiently. Checked his phone for messages. Sent a text. Finally he got up and paced around the statue, agitated.

“She’s late.”

“Most women are late.”

“I think this is different. Most guys who are used to their ladies being late handle it better than this, not Pedro. I think this is unusual. He’s worried about something.”

Camilla fast-forwarded the video and images of Pedro pacing and waiting flew by. “She’s really late. He’s been there thirty-five minutes so far. He’s going to leave.”

“No, he won’t leave. She’ll show up. I can feel it.”

They watched him pace more. Then he stopped and stared. Camilla exhaled.

“There she is,” she said. “Our mystery girl.”

A young woman in a dark hoodie, her arms folded tight around herself, emerged from the shadows of the street opposite the statue, walking in a direct line to Pedro. He ran to her, smiling at first. He dropped the smile when he got a look at her face.

“Something is wrong,” Slick said. “This wasn’t how the night was supposed to go. She’s upset about something.”