Legends

They were nursing mugs of lukewarm coffee in a booth at the back of the twenty-four-hour diner on Kingston Avenue, two stores down from Throckmorton’s Minimarket. Stella kept looking up at Martin; phrases formed in her mind only to become stuck on the tip of her tongue. When she had turned up at the phone booth on the corner of Lincoln and Schenectady, they had hugged awkwardly for a moment. The faint aroma of rose petals seeped from under the collar on the back of her neck. Stella had said something about how they really ought to kiss, and they did, but the kiss was self-conscious and quick, and a disappointment to both of them. At a loss for words, he’d remarked that he’d never seen her in anything but pants. She said she’d worn the tight knee-length black skirt to disguise herself as a woman. He’d actually managed a smile and said that the deception could have fooled him. He asked her if she had taken precautions to make sure she wasn’t being followed. She explained how she had strolled over to an ice cream parlor on Rogers Avenue crammed with teenagers playing electronic pinball machines, then ducked out a back door into an alleyway and made her way through empty side streets to Schenectady and the phone booth. Nodding, he had taken her by the arm and steered her wordlessly in the direction of the all-night diner on Kingston. Sitting across from her now, he noticed the new front tooth; it was whiter than the rest of her teeth and hard to miss. Her hair was pulled back and twined into a braid that plunged out of sight behind her shoulder blades. He recognized the small wrinkles fanning out from the corners of her eyes, which were fixed in a faint squint, as if she were trying to peer into him. The three top buttons of her man’s shirt were open, the triangle of pale skin shimmering on her chest.

Martin cleared his throat. “You threatened to show me the tattoo the next time we met.”

“Here? Now?”

“Why not?”

Stella looked around. There were four Chinese women in a booth across the diner playing mahjongg, and a young man and a girl two booths away staring so intently into each other’s eyes Stella doubted they would be distracted by anything less than an earthquake. She took a deep breath to work up her nerve and undid three more buttons on her shirt and pulled the fabric away from her right breast. Visions invaded Martin’s brain: a neon light sizzling over a bar on the Beirut waterfront, a room upstairs with the torn painting depicting Napoleon’s defeat at Acre, the night moth tattooed under the right breast of the Alawite prostitute who went by the name of Djamillah. “You want the God honest truth?” he whispered. “Your Siberian night moth takes my breath away.”

The ghost of a smile materialized on Stella’s lips. “That’s what it’s supposed to do. The Jamaican tattoo artist on Empire Boulevard said I could have my money back if it didn’t bowl you over. Maybe now one thing will lead to another.”

He reached for her hand and she folded her other hand on top of his, and they both leaned across the table and kissed.

Settling back, Martin said, “Business first.”

“I like your formula,” Stella said, rebuttoning her shirt.

He looked surprised. “Why?”

“Reading between the lines, it puts pleasure on the agenda.”

A smile touched his eyes. “Did you bring the autopsy report?”

She pulled the report and the letter that had come with it from her leather satchel and unfolded them on the table. Martin skimmed the autopsy report first: … myocardial infarction … clot superimposed on plaque in coronary artery already constricted by cholesterol buildup … abrupt and severe drop in blood flow … irreparable trauma to a portion of the heart muscle … death would have been almost instantaneous.

“Uh-huh.”

“Uh-huh what?”

“The CIA doctor seems to be saying your father died a natural death.”

“As opposed to an unnatural death? As opposed to murder?”