The Crime Writer

I asked, "Would you mind handing me that equally affected trivet?"

"Do I have to do everything?" Smiling, she set down her glass and brought the trivet over to me.

"Why don't you sit on the mauled couch in the family room? I'll join you in a minute."

"Junior's dog?" She waited for my reluctant nod. "Where is she?"

"I put her in a decompression chamber upstairs."

She started for the other room, and I said, "Hang on."

She turned back. The pashmina she'd draped over her chair, and her black shirt had loosed another button, revealing a dagger of smooth flesh. Delicate clavicles, lovely, slender neck. The notched-down lighting demoted her scars to impressions pronounced, to be sure, but there was a kind of beauty to them as well. They accented the composition of her features like war paint, bringing to them a hyperdefinition, added force, added grace.

"You look spectacular."

She tried to repress her smile, a shyness I hadn't thought she possessed. "This from a tumor-addled alcoholic suffering from temporary insanity."

"Nothing wrong with my eyes."

As she turned away, I caught a smile in her profile. When I finished, I found her in the family room, facing the bookshelf filled with my titles.

She turned at my approach. "Where's Chain Gang?"

"Propping up the kitchen table."

"Are you working on a new book?"

Hurwitz, Gregg

The Crime Writer (aka I See You) (2007)

237"You're living an investigation?"

"A story. We all are, but this segment of my life has a pleasing structure to it."

"Maybe that's why it happened to you."

"I don't believe in intelligent design."

"Sure you do." She waved a hand at the book spines in all their eye-catching glory.

It took a moment for me to catch her meaning. "I believe in narrative. But I don't believe there's a reason for everything and that matters work themselves out for the better."

Tell it to Lloyd and the wedding picture hanging in that dark hall.

Tell it to the Broaches, sorting through Kasey's half-used toiletries and frozen dinners and white barrettes.

Tell it to me, waking up in that goddamned hospital bed with Genevieve's blood dried under my nails.

Caroline was looking at me, studying my face, so I continued. "I don't deny design, no, but I believe you have to craft your own and it's hard work and there are no guardrails."

"So what happens when you veer off course?"

"You wind up with wasted years or a shitty first draft. Neither of which is particularly consequential."

"It's not the randomness of life that holds meaning, Drew. It's our response to it. Say your wife gets hit by a bus. You could spend the rest of your life bewailing an unfair world, or you could decide to start an orphanage."

"Or a home for people paralyzed by incompetent bus drivers."

"If you choose to start your merry home for impaired and guilt-crippled bus drivers, then you've given a senseless event meaning. You've given it its place in a story. No merry home, no story. No story, no meaning."

"No meaning, no growth."

"People don't change much, not as adults, but this thing, maybe it gave you a shot." She licked her lips. "I was forced to change."

"For the better?"

"I don't know. I'm smarter, I think, but also maybe worse off."

"According to you, it depends on where you go from here."

"Exactly. But am I up to it?"

"Inquiring minds want to know."

"I don't know. I don't know if I'm up to it." She was trembling, arms crossed, fingers nervously working a thread that had come loose in the stitching of her shirt. For a moment I thought she might be cold, but then she said, "You drew back the first time you saw me. On the playground at Hope House. I disgusted you. It's the only pure response you'll have. You don't get another true reaction to my face."

"I wasn't disgusted. I was surprised."

"Great. Romantic."

I reached gently for her shoulders, and she let me take them, and then I pulled her to me. The indented scar split her lips at the edge, the flesh soft and warm. I drew back, and for an instant she kept her eyes closed, her head tilted, mouth slightly ajar.

She opened her eyes, pale green flecked with rust.

"Surprised?" I asked.

"Surprised."

"Disgusted?"

She shook her head. A few lines raised on her forehead. "I can't stay with you. I'd like to, but I can't."

"Can I walk you to your car?"

As we crossed the front step, she took my hand in a bird bite of a grip. A tentative hold, didn't last three strides. The air was wet, sweet with night-blooming jasmine. We were awkward at her car which side the head goes on for the embrace, me holding the door for her, not sure if I should lean in to kiss her again. I tried, but she pulled the door closed and I stepped back quickly. Her face had darkened with concern, and she fiddled with the stick shift, then said, "That was the nicest time I've had in a while," as if that were something extremely troubling.

"Me, too."

"See you around, Drew."

She pulled out. On cue, the neighbor kid started his brass serenade.

Out OF the TREE of LIFE, I just picked me a PLUM.