Kiss the Dead (16 page)

“I’ve never heard the term,” Brice said.

I shrugged again. “Like I said, my boyfriend explained it to me.” What I didn’t add out loud was that the new label was one that fitted me now; there was a girl in among all my boys now. Her name was Jade, and we’d rescued her from a sadistic master vampire that had abused her for centuries. She’d been his tiger to call, and now she was mine; my black tiger, my Black Jade, which was what her Chinese name translated to. I honestly tried not to think about the whole thing much. When I was with her, I felt protective, and God knew she was fragile from centuries of being basically an abused wife of the vampire that had been her master, but to say I wasn’t entirely comfortable with having a woman in my bed was an understatement of gigantic proportions.

“Most people think bisexual is just gay-light,” Brice said, “but heteroflexible…” He shook his head, smiling.

“I’m not saying some of the men in my life aren’t bi, but not as many as I thought. Let’s just say that it’s been brought to my attention that my issues of not wanting women in the bed made them not suggest it.”

“So they’d have more women if you’d be okay with it?” he asked.

I said, “Yes…” and then I stopped myself and said, “You know, this is way over your pay grade for my personal life.”

“I’m loving it,” Zerbrowski said, “more than you usually tell me.”

I frowned at him.

He held his hands up, as if to say
Don’t shoot
. “Hey, just saying.”

“Put a girl in the middle, and it’s not gay, right?” Brice said, but he sounded more bitter than some theoretical discussion should be.

“You fall afoul of some couple thing?” I asked.

He glanced back down at his big hands. “You could say that.”

Zerbrowski made a small noise.

I glared at him. “Say it, before you hurt yourself.”

He grinned. “Just picturing you all heteroflexible.”

If he only knew about Jade, the teasing would be merciless, but I shook my head. “You don’t mean it. You haven’t thought about me that way in years, if ever. You’re one of the most happily married men I’ve ever met.”

“Don’t ruin my image, Anita. I’m the office lech.”

Brice laughed. It made us both look at him. “I figured that if you were okay with Anita’s home life, maybe you’d be okay with mine, and I figured Anita wouldn’t give a damn.”

“What’s your home life like?” Zerbrowski said. “You got a harem of cuties waiting at home for you, too?”

Brice hung his head. “I wish.”

“It’s harder to date this many people than you think,” I said.

“Trouble in paradise?” Zerbrowski asked.

I frowned, and then sighed. “Let’s just say that I’m beginning to wonder if there really can be too much of a good thing.”

I waited for Zerbrowski to make another smart remark, but he didn’t. I glanced at him and his face was serious, not like him.

“What?” I asked, and even to me it sounded suspicious.

“I’ve never seen you as happy as you’ve been the last couple of years, Anita. Whatever you’re doing, it works for you. It makes you happy.”

“And?” I asked.

“And I don’t like hearing you poke at it.”

“I’m not poking at it, Zerbrowski, I just had one of the newest boys get all panicked about seeing the bodies on TV. It’s like he didn’t realize how dangerous my job was until now.”

“I hadn’t thought about that; you have to explain the job to every new boyfriend. That makes me tired just thinking about it. It’s hard enough with just Katie.” He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. There were fine lines that I hadn’t noticed with the glasses on.

“Just dreading having the talk again with the new one,” I said.

“Understandable,” Brice said.

We both looked at him, as if we’d sort of forgotten he was still in the car with us. It wasn’t like us. “Why are we getting all warm and fuzzy in front of you, Brice?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but thank you.”

“For what?”

“For letting me in, I guess.”

“What do you want?” Zerbrowski asked, putting his glasses back in place. Push a cop, and you get cynical back, eventually.

Brice smiled. “I’m gay, and I’m not out.”

Zerbrowski made a snorting sound, and then finally laughed. We both looked at him, and they weren’t friendly looks.

“Oh, come on, it’s funny. Arnet has done everything but slip her panties in Brice’s hand, and Millie down in tech services has found a dozen reasons to be anywhere he is; every woman in the place is after him, and he’s gay. Come on, that’s funny.”

“Not every woman,” he said, and he looked at me.

“Nothing personal, Brice, but my dance card is way beyond full.”

He smiled. “If half the news reports are true, you’ve got your own harem, hisem, whatever. But it’s more than that, you aren’t attracted to me.”

I shrugged. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s not bad, it’s good.”

“Wait,” Zerbrowski said, “you wanted to go to dinner with the one woman in the entire department who isn’t attracted to you?”

Brice nodded.

Zerbrowski frowned, and then grinned. “Sorry, Brice, you’re a doll and all, but I don’t think you’re attractive either.”

Brice grinned, then chuckled. “Good to know.”

“Your sexual orientation doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the job,” I said.

“No, it doesn’t, but if it comes out I’m gay, it will.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“I’d just like to come out in my own way, not be outed, that’s all.”

Would I have been less sympathetic if I didn’t have Jade in my life?
Maybe, but I did, and I hadn’t been out in public with her yet; part of that was that I didn’t enjoy shopping, or most of the girl stuff she wanted to do. “That’s your choice,” I said.

“Since you’re not attracted to either of us, doesn’t really matter,” Zerbrowski said.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

“But now what?” I asked. “You didn’t just want to come to dinner to tell us your big secret.”

“I’m looking for some advice on how to handle the women at work without getting them pissed at me. Detective Arnet is being particularly persistent.”

I sighed. “I’ll need food if we’re going to talk about girls.”

Brice smiled. “What does that mean?”

“It means I had some problems with Arnet wanting to date one of my boyfriends, and I need food before we get into it.”

“Fine with me,” Brice said.

Zerbrowski just reached for the door handle.

We all got out and just headed for the lighted windows of the restaurant. Straight, or gay, or being a girl, it didn’t matter; we were all just cops eating food and passing time while we waited. I’d tell Brice a short version of Arnet’s crush on Nathaniel, and then we’d pass time talking about Brice’s personal life. Fine by me, it beat the hell out of talking about mine.

Z
ERBROWSKI SURPRISED ME
by getting a salad with grilled chicken on it. “You’re not getting a burger?” I asked.

“Had my cholesterol checked. No burgers for a while.” He looked glum as he said it.

“So, no more fast-food burgers?” I asked.

He shook his head.

I patted his back. “Dude, I’m sorry.”

Brice said, “Am I missing something? You’re acting like he’s lost a relative.”

“When you ride in Zerbrowski’s car, you’ll understand. He lives on fast-food burgers, and throws the wrappers into the backseat.”

“Will there be room in the backseat for me to sit with all the fast-food wrappers?” Brice asked, laughing.

I looked at Zerbrowski. He shrugged. “I can clean out the back.”

“I was joking,” Brice said, looking from one to the other of us. “Are you serious that the backseat is so full of fast-food debris that no one can sit in it?”

“We’re serious,” I said.

“I’ll clean it out. The smell of the wrappers will just make me hungry.” Zerbrowski picked up his tray with its healthy salad on it; he looked sad.

There were plenty of tables to choose from, because we were late for dinner and hours too early for breakfast. We needed plenty of seating choices, because we were all cops and that meant that none of us wanted our backs to a door, or to the restaurant in general, and especially not a busy area where people would be walking back and forth behind us. We didn’t really like windows where people on the outside could just walk up to where we were sitting, especially not if we had to put our backs to the windows. Yeah, the chances of someone walking up and just starting to shoot at us was small, but small wasn’t the same as not ever happening. Police aren’t paranoid because of some psychological disorder, they’re paranoid because real bad things have happened to them, and in our job paranoia was just another word for staying alive.

So, where to sit?

There was a booth that sat back in a corner with a wall that backed the kitchen so there were no windows, and as many as four could sit comfortably with enough room to get to weapons without crowding each other. We also had a clear line of sight to the door. It was perfect. We slid into the booth, with me in the middle, which would have trapped Brice or Zerbrowski, but I was small enough that if I had to, I could go under the table and be shooting at people’s legs and be shooting them in the chest and face as they dropped to their knees, because that’s what happens to most people if bullets shatter their leg bones. Yes, that is how cops think, that’s how anyone who lives by the gun thinks. We don’t talk about it, but we are totally into preplanning our survival.

We got settled into the booth, portioned out our food, and started eating before we started talking, because we could talk in the car, but we couldn’t eat most of the food we’d gotten in the car while driving. Have you ever tried to eat a salad in a car? Of course, I hadn’t ordered a salad, I had a burger, but you can’t eat Jimmy’s burgers in a car either unless you want to be wearing all that yummy condiment goodness.

“Red meat is bad for you, you know,” Zerbrowski said, sort of forlornly.

“My cholesterol is fine,” I said, stacking the bun higher with all the layers of vegetables on the burger.

“Mine, too,” Brice said, as he took his first bite.

“You should have said something when we were ordering, if you were going to pout, Zerbrowski.”

“Would you have ordered a salad to keep me company?”

“No, but I would have felt guilty about it.” I took the first bite of the burger. It was juicy and cooked to perfection. The veggies were crisp, ripe, and yummy. I tried to keep the look of bliss off my face, but I think I failed, because Zerbrowski looked like something hurt.

Brice and I ate in happy silence for a few minutes, and then I said, “Sorry, Zerbrowski, but I eat salads at home because Nathaniel decides the menu; when I’m not at home, I eat what I want.”

“Nathaniel is your live-in boyfriend?” Brice asked, after he’d swallowed another bite of burger.

“Yep,” I said, and took another bite of burger.

Zerbrowski gave me a pained look.

I ignored him.

“You said he does the menus; what does that mean?”

“He does most of the cooking, as either head chef or sous chef to one of the others.”

“You make it sound like a restaurant,” Brice said.

I shrugged. “The men started it; whoever is the main cook for a meal is designated chef and the others are sous chefs. It’s their system and it works, so I just work with it. I figure if I’m not doing the cooking, I shouldn’t bitch about how they want to do it.”

“Very reasonable,” Brice said.

I shrugged again and took another bite of my burger.

“She usually is,” Zerbrowski said, as he took a small bite of his salad. He chewed the lettuce as if it were the opposite of yummy.

He was only about nine years older than me; would I have to give up burgers someday? Of course, I was as lean as I had been in college, but
more muscular. Zerbrowski had started getting a little thicker around the middle, nothing bad, but he had put on weight. With two kids and a wife, he had more trouble finding time to hit the gym. Kids seemed to make things a lot harder; good thing I’d probably never have to worry about that particular complication.

“Earth to Anita,” Zerbrowski was saying.

I blinked at him. “What?”

“What were you thinking about so hard just now?” he asked, and he looked suspicious.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Liar; women are never thinking nothing.”

“When
you
say you’re thinking nothing, I believe you,” I said.

“I’m a man, I really
am
thinking nothing.”

I gave him an exasperated smile. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means I want to know what you were thinking about so hard just now.”

“And I said, nothing, so I’m not going to answer you.”

He grinned. “See, you were thinking something.”

I frowned at him. “Drop it, okay?”

“No,” he said.

“You enjoying your rabbit food?” I asked.

“That was low, Anita,” he said, and he stirred his salad with his fork, not really eating it. Maybe that was how you lost weight on salads; you just didn’t want to eat them, so you didn’t eat, and voilà, you lost weight.

I ate my first French fry. It was crisp, salty, and yummy, too.

“If your lovers are all shapeshifters, then why do they eat rabbit food?” Brice asked.

“You mean when they should be eating rabbits?” I asked.

“Did I offend you?” he asked.

I thought about it. “Sorry, I’m just grumpy. Most of them are exotic dancers, and eating too much meat will make you bloat sometimes, get a little meat tummy. When you take your clothes off professionally, you want to look your best doing it.”

“Again, very reasonable,” he said.

“You sound surprised,” I said.

“If you’d been listening, Brice was saying that you have a reputation with the other cops for being unreasonable.”

I looked at Brice. “That true?”

He studied my face as he said, “They say you have a bad temper and bust their balls a lot.”

Zerbrowski snorted and almost choked on his soda.

I frowned at him. “I don’t back down, so if that busts their balls, then so be it.”