Part 20 (1/2)
”Okay,” I say to Naomi, sit down in the chair across from her. ”Tell me more.”
She does; she tells me more about the kinds of cases that Peter was working on, most likely, insurable-interest cases, where a policy isn't taken out by a person on another person, but by an organization on a person. A company takes out a policy on its executive director, or its CEO, hedging the risk of financial calamity should that key individual die. I sit down to listen, but then it turns out it's hard to pay attention while sitting down-given the wine, given the late hour, given the redness of Naomi's lips and the pale luminescence of her scalp in the moonlight-so I get up, I'm pacing around the room, from the small television to the door of the kitchen, Naomi with her head craned back, watching me pace with an arch, amused expression.
”Is this how you stay so thin?”
”It helps,” I say. ”I need to see what he was working on.”
”Okay.”
”His office-” I close my eyes, think back. ”There was no inbox, no pile of active files.”
”No,” says Naomi. ”No, since we stopped using the computers, and everything was on paper. Gompers came up with this whole annoying system. Or maybe the regional office did, I don't know. But every day, at the end of the day, what you're working on goes back in the filing cabinets. You pick it up in the morning.”
”Is it filed by worker?”
”What do you mean?”
”Would all of Peter's files be together?”
”Huh. You know-I don't know.”
”Okay,” I say, and I grin, my cheeks flushed, my eyes flas.h.i.+ng. ”I like this. This is good.”
”What a funny person you are,” she says, and I sort of can't believe that she's real, she's sitting in my house, on my c.r.a.ppy old beach chair in her red dress with the black b.u.t.tons.
”I do, I like this. Maybe I'll make a midlife career change,” I say. ”Try my luck in the insurance biz. I've got the rest of my life ahead of me, right?”
Naomi doesn't laugh. She stands up. ”No. No. Not you. You're a policeman through and through, Hank,” she says. She looks at me, right up at my face, and I stoop a little and look right back, I'm suddenly thinking to myself, fiercely, painfully, that this is it. I will never fall in love again. This will be the last time.
”You'll be standing there when the asteroid comes down, with one hand out, yelling, Stop! Police!”
I don't know what to say to that, I really don't.
I stoop a little, and she cranes her neck upward, and we kiss very slowly, as if we have all the time in the world. Halfway through the kiss the dog pads in, nuzzles against my leg, and I sort of gently kick him away. Naomi reaches up and puts a hand around my neck, her fingers drifting down beneath the collar of my s.h.i.+rt.
When we're done with the kiss, we kiss again, harder, an onrush of urgency, and when we pull apart again Naomi suggests that we go into the bedroom, and I apologize because I don't have a real bed, just a mattress on the floor. I haven't gotten around to buying one yet, and she asks how long I've been living here and I say five years.
”You're probably not ever going to get around to it, then,” she murmurs, pulling me to her, and I whisper, ”You're probably right,” pulling her down.
Much later, in the darkness, sleep starting to seep into our eyelids, I whisper to Naomi, ”What kind of poetry?”
”Villanelles,” she whispers in return, and I say I don't know what that means.
”A villanelle is a poem of nineteen lines,” she says, still hushed, murmuring into my neck. ”Five tercets, each composed of three rhymed lines. And the first and last lines of the first tercet return over and over again, over the course of the poem, as the last line of each of the subsequent tercets.”
”Okay,” I say, not really registering all of that, more focused on the soft electric presence of her lips on my neck.
”It ends with a quatrain, which is four rhymed lines, with the second two lines of the quatrain again repeating the first and last lines of the first tercet.”
”Oh,” I say, and then, ”I'm going to need an example.”
”There are a lot of really good ones.”
”Tell me one of the ones you're writing.”
Her laugh is a small warm gust into my collarbone. ”I'm only writing one, and it's not done.”
”You're only writing one?”
”One great one. Before October. That's my plan.”
”Oh.”
We're still and quiet then, for a moment.
”Here,” she says. ”I'll tell you a famous one.”
”I don't want the famous one. I want yours.”
”It's by Dylan Thomas. You've probably heard of it. It's been in the newspaper a lot lately.”
I'm shaking my head. ”I try not to read the papers too much.”
”You're a strange man, Detective Palace.”
”People tell me that.”
At some point late, late at night, I drift awake and there's Naomi standing in the doorframe, in only her underwear, slipping the red dress on over her head. She sees me watching and pauses, smiles, unembarra.s.sed, and finishes dressing. I can see, even in the pale light from the hallway, that the lipstick is scrubbed from her lips. She looks shorn and lovely, like something newborn.
”Naomi?”
”Hey, Henry.” She closes her eyes. ”Something.” Opens her eyes. ”One more thing.”
I make my hand a visor against the moonlight, trying to see her clearly. The bedsheets are scrunched up against my chest, my legs are spilling slightly over the edge of the mattress.
She sits on the bed, down by my feet with her back to me.
”Naomi?”
”Forget it.”
She shakes her head rapidly, stands again, speaks, a rush of words in the near darkness. ”Henry, just know that no matter what else-no matter how this ends-this was all real and good and right.”