Then Rafik appeared with his halo of danger and possessed me at once. Every second with him sent some piece of my former life into the archives of memory or else to oblivion. And whatever I lost made room for something new—some new emotion, sensation, elation, or doubt. But the anticipation of these thrilling new experiences also had the odd effect of diminishing that old independence, that self-reliance that had become my strength. Occasionally I even found myself hoping that Rafik would confidently chart the course for our life together in the same magical way he had solved the pain of my body’s needs. I knew there were plenty of terms that described this submissive condition—transference, codependence, dysfunction, sadomasochism, love—but in my heart I also knew that the subjugation of one’s self to another person has been around a lot longer than either classical or New Age psychologies and their attendant labels. Just take a look at grand opera if you don’t believe me. So for whatever reason, whether conscious choice or inescapable destiny, Rafik’s life and mine had become intertwined, and there was no turning back.
The door buzzer startled me out of my grim reverie. I took stock of what I’d been doing. All was perfect except for the onion. I’d intended to slice paper-thin rings to lay on top of the salad, but instead I’d reduced it all to mushy particles smaller than rice grains. No wonder the tears were running down my cheeks.
Stay alert, I told myself, or he will charm you into agreeing that he slept with Toni di Natale as a favor to you, and then he’ll expect the favor to be returned. Become Strong Stanley. But my attempts at self-bolstering withered when I opened the door and saw him standing there. As if the vision of him in the flesh weren’t enough—tired from work, posture a bit slack, smile wan, yet those eyes ever eager—as if all that weren’t enough to undo me, the bastard had even brought me flowers, and my favorites no less—an armful of Rubrum lilies. What chance did I have? How could I be angry when he’d entered like that?
He stepped inside and we held each other. I sensed that he needed tenderness from me, the very thing I had neglected to give him earlier that day. I’d been through police stress like that myself, and if I’d had a lover at the time, I would have wanted him to comfort me, to help me forget it all. I certainly hadn’t done that for Rafik. I told myself to forgive and forget any mistakes either of us had committed recently. Then I realized I was thinking like a Sunday school teacher.
I spoke into his ear. “You smell good.”
Rafik said, “I showered at the studio.” He sniffed at the air. “Something is baking.”
So he did want a wife after all! Well, what else was I going to do with my life?
“I left the shop too late to make a real dinner,” I said, “but I’ve got some stuff in the oven.” I was careful not to apologize, not to yield, but I did feel a twinge of guilt for not preparing him a full meal with my own hands.
Sugar Baby greeted him enthusiastically, as she usually did, by wrapping both her forepaws around one of his legs and nuzzling him with her cheeks. Rafik released me and knelt down to face her at her level. He held his hand out palm down in front of her, about half a foot off the floor, and she promptly leaped over it. He raised his hand an inch, and she jumped again. This continued until his hand was too high for Sugar to negotiate the jump, at which point she simply flopped herself down and squirmed about on the carpet while he tickled her silky underside. Rafik had taught her the trick just after we had met, and Sugar Baby still did it only for him.
We had cocktails in the living room, so I guess it was a special occasion after all, though I didn’t realize yet to what extent. I served the hot appetizers, small turnovers filled variously with minced mushrooms, chopped spinach, and herbed cheese. In Armenian they are called beoreg—pronounced, approximately, “burr-reg,” with lots of roll on the “r”s. Rafik bit into one happily, and golden buttery flakes of phyllo pastry fluttered from his lips onto his plate.
“It is good,” he said. “But yours are better.”
“You taught me how,” I replied with a modest shrug.
Step by step, domestic harmony was being reinstated. So, like the devoted wife who is ever watchful over her husband’s career, I brought up something I’d neglected to tell Rafik so far.
“Last night at Max Harkey’s I overheard an argument I think you ought to know about.”
“Between which people?” he said, and took another beoreg.
“Max Harkey and Marshall Zander.”
“Hmmmm …”
“It was about your new work.”
“Oh? Tell me then.”
“Max sounded adamant about taking it off the program.”
“What you mean, ‘adamant’?”
“Determined. Unyielding.”
“Adamant,” he said with a French accent. Then he shrugged and sighed. “What does it matter now? It will not happen.”
“Not so, dearly beloved. Marshall Zander sounded just as adamant about keeping your new work on the program.”
“Hah!” said Rafik. “Then why did he tell the police those things about me? He tells them I killed Max Harkey because my new work will not be shown. So the police ask me if that is true.”
“So you knew about it?”
“From the police, yes. But why does Marshall lie to them about me? Why does he hate me?”
Possibly not hate, thought I, but its polar opposite.
“Fortunately, Rafik, the police didn’t believe him. They did book Toni, not you.” But I also recalled Branco using the word “accessory” that afternoon at the shop.
Rafik said, “The police know that Max left her for somebody else. So they think she kills him for that.” He shook his head in dismay.
“Marshall Zander told me that you and Toni were in the bedroom together when the police arrived.”
Rafik looked at me sadly. “We did not know what to do about Max. We arrive there, we find him like that. We were scared.”
I got up to check on the calzone in the oven. As I was leaving the living room I said, “I sure hope you’re not involved in this thing.”
Rafik joined me in the kitchen. “Something makes you not trust me, Stani.”
I was kneeling at the open oven. “It’s nothing,” I said.
“What happened?”
“Nothing, I told you. I didn’t mean to mention it.”
“Did someone say something?”
I closed the oven door and stood up to face him. “It was the police.”
“What did they say?”
“It was about you and Toni.”
“What?” he said with a beguiling and boyish smile, and with his hands open toward me, raised in supplication. Perhaps if he hadn’t affected humility and innocence, I could have let the matter go. But Rafik’s sudden theatricality raised a red flag to me, and I sensed that he was hiding something.
“Okay then, love. Tell me what you did last night after the party.”
“I went home, of course.”
“Of course you did. Were you alone?”
Rafik paused. “Why do you ask this?”
“Just answer me, light of my soul. Did you sleep alone last night?”
“Yes, I did,” he said flatly.
I got the plates from the cupboard, and made sure to slam the door closed. Then I set the dishes down on the counter with a heavy clunk. But selecting the flatware was the high point. Do you know how much noise you can make getting knives and forks out of a cutlery tray? I figured, if I was about to face the showdown I’d been avoiding, I wanted the whole kitchen vibrating with the energy of my anger.
“Rafik, the police told me that you and Toni spent the night together, that you are her alibi.”
“So?” he said coolly. “Have you never spent a night with a woman?”
Sly bastard. “Not when I already had a lover. And you just said you slept alone.”
“I did. It is not what you think. We did not sleep together.”
“Rafik, I know your room. There’s a bed and a chair and a table.”
Be alert! Clear your mind! Pay no heed to the sexy man in your kitchen saying things to confuse you. But then I thought of Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, and of the hanging blanket that had maintained chastity in a tiny motel room, and I wondered if Rafik was telling the truth after all.
Rafik continued, “I see from your eyes that you want to believe me.”
“Let’s just say I don’t want to disbelieve you.”
I turned off the oven and we returned to the living room to finish our cocktails. Sugar Baby leaped onto Rafik’s lap and nudged his hand for affection. My own pet’s allegiance had been swayed. I watched her shamelessly beg him for love. She was enraptured by Rafik. Perhaps there was a simple lesson there.
Rafik said, “Maybe you should go with other men so you will be at peace with me.”
Suddenly my heart was racing and my belly was a knot.
“I don’t want other men.”
“Maybe you are lying to yourself.”
“I may be confused about a lot of things, Rafik, but on that point I’m sure. I don’t want other men.” Yet as soon as I’d said it I recalled the thrill I’d had earlier that day in my small office with Lieutenant Branco, how his touch and his scent had caused an unexpected response in me.
“Stani, I will talk serious to you now.”
I felt myself begin to tremble. “No, Rafik. It’s not necessary.”
But he held up his hand to silence me. “It is time to talk. I am thinking about this a lot. I know that my work often makes a problem between us. So I am thinking that perhaps you should go from me.”
“No!”
“I do not want it, but you are so unhappy.”
“I’m not unhappy. This is the way I am.”
It was shocking to hear Rafik talk about our connection, our love, as though it was something that could be turned on and off at will. So what was I supposed to do now? Did he want me out of his life? These kinds of hurdles in the realm of love seemed too complex for me, too fabricated. But then, I’m only a hairdresser. Rafik was a murder suspect when we met.
“Rafik, this is absurd. I don’t want to leave you.”
“Then we should live together,” he said with a satisfied grin.
“I told you I can’t live with you until there is no reason not to.”
“We should be together.”
“I don’t know you well enough.”
“How can you say that? It is more than one year.”
“Okay then. Say we move in together, and then you get this uncontrollable urge to stay out with someone else while I’m waiting for you at home. Or even worse, what if you brought him home to our bed while I was out, and then I smelled him on the sheets. That’s why I can’t live with you.”
For a few moments after my harangue the only sound in the living room was Sugar Baby’s loud rhythmic purring from Rafik’s lap. She always did respond to high energy.
Rafik said quietly, “I do not want sex from anyone else.”
“How long will that notion last? It’s bound to wear off. You’ll tire of me and go roving. And then what happens?”
“What do you mean ‘roving’?”
“Having sex with other men.”
He kicked the edge of the coffee table sharply and jostled everything on it. The noise startled Sugar Baby and she jumped off his lap and scampered out of the living room.
“I tell you, Stani, I will not do that!”
“You did with Danny.”
“That was different.”
“It was the same thing you want now—two men living together who claim to love each other.”
“Danny did not love me. I was a decoration for him to show to everyone else.”
Was that how I perceived Rafik? Was my idolatry just another version of decoration? I knew that wasn’t true.
“Rafik, I want us to live together. It’s a beautiful dream I have every day. I just couldn’t face the pain if it didn’t work out.” I felt my eyes fill with tears, but there was no way I was going to cry out loud, not with Rafik present.
“It will work, Stani. I will always be here for you.”
“The last man who said that to me went off with someone else two days after our first disagreement.”
“Then he was a weak man.”
“He blamed me for everything.”
“I will never blame you for anything.”
“He lied to me, beautiful lies that I believed.”
“I will never lie to you.”
“He said that, too.”
“Stani, you must believe me.”
“I want to, Rafik.”
“How can I prove it to you?”
I shrugged hopelessly. “I don’t know. What I do know is that I want you in my life for as long as any cell of mine is conscious. But I have to believe you want the same thing. It’s easy to say ‘I love you, I love you, I love you’ and it’s just as easy to forget someone’s name.”
“I will make you believe me.”
The kitchen timer went off. I looked at Rafik. His eyes were gazing warmly at me, and his face was calm and smiling. Why did his emotions always come off so assured, so comfortable, so masculine, while mine loomed volcanic and larger than life. Yet for all my passionate noise, I felt the lesser person.
“Let’s eat,” I said.
In the small dining room we ate the calzone and the salad. For a long time we didn’t speak, as though we were both afraid to talk any more about Max Harkey’s murder and Toni di Natale. But then what else was disrupting our lives right now? Certainly not Bloomingdale’s kitchen sale.
Rafik spoke first. “Toni could not do such a thing as the police say.”
“Why not?”
“She is a fine artist. She could not kill anyone.”
“If I recall, Floria Tosca lived for art and love, and she did a pretty good job carving up Scarpia.”
“That is opera,” he said.
Was it my place to remind Rafik that so was his life?
“What more can be done?” I said. “Toni has a good lawyer.”
Rafik put his hand over mine and focused his sweet caramel-brown eyes on me. “Maybe you can help her?”
“What?”
“You remember how you help me before?”
“I don’t want to get involved again.”
“What if you did not help me then? I might be in jail ”
“Rafik, I can’t do anything for her.”
“If you love me, Stani, you will help her.”
Nice ultimatum. Then I recalled Nicole’s words from that morning: Stand by your man. So what do you do when the two closest people in your life tell you how to live it? A whirlwind started in my head, and the big question was, Why does Rafik care so much about that woman? Was this the kind of stimulation I need to feel alive, to be strong, to be my best self again? I thought romance and security were the driving forces in my life, but apparently, it was bloodlust that spurred me on. Maybe I was more macho than I’d suspected.
Once I’d faced the demon head on, the answer came quickly and easily: I would help. But it would not be as a favor to Rafik. I wasn’t so selfless. I had my own motivation. I would do it all for my own peace of mind, for with Toni di Natale free of guilt, and Rafik free to choose, I would finally know whether his love for me was true or transient, and what he really wanted—a man or a woman.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do whatever I can.”
“Oh, Stani, merci, merci!”
“Don’t kiss my hands, just tell me something.”
“Anything. Whatever you want.”
“Are you willing to lose me?”
Even in the candlelight I could see his face go pale.
“It will not happen! I will protect you.”
“Rafik, I appreciate your chivalry, but I’m not talking about physical
danger.” Yet as I said the words I realized with a small shudder that the whole ridiculous mission could become fatal at any juncture. After all, the killer was still free.
“I mean,” I said with a dry gulp, “if Toni is set free, your relationship with her may grow to preclude me.”
Rafik looked confused. “I do not understand.”
“You might leave me, Rafik.”
He said the next word like a sacred oath.
“Never.”
My heart pounded, my ears rang slightly, I felt pressure in my neck and head, and I saw spots in the warm light.
“Until death,” he added.
Perhaps Rafik had meant to galvanize my trust, but somehow, with the sharp angles of his face in the flickering light and the solemnity of his words, he’d caused instead an unexpected tremor of fright.
“Do you want some dessert?” I asked. Food, food, food. It was always food to the rescue at a bad moment. Just like the Brits and their damn tea.
Rafik shook his head no. “Let’s go to bed.”
When we entered the bedroom, Sugar Baby had already enthroned herself among the pillows at the head of the bed. Rafik pushed me down onto the fluffy duvet.
“Now I will show you how much I love you,” he said.
“Let’s get our clothes off.”
“No,” he said. “You will lie quietly, and I will love you.”
“But—?”
“Shhhhh …”
And so he began.
He unbuttoned my shirt and put his face inside, licked my skin with his tongue, nestled his way into an armpit, pulled at the hair with his lips. (That’s why you must find alternatives to toxic deodorants.) All the while his clever hands were undoing other buttons and buckles. My shirt still on, he nuzzled his way back across my chest, pausing to chew awhile on a nipple, then strayed lower, where the pleasant pastures lie.
With his stalwart nose, Rafik invaded my briefs and rooted around in there for a while. When he backed out I felt him grasp my briefs and trouser tops with his teeth. Then, shaking his head like an animal, he pulled and yanked with his jaws until he had peeled pants and panties down off me, never once using his hands. Oh, the relief of cool air on my body!
Phase two started at my feet, where he paid great respect with tongue and lips to all ten piggies, and then traced elaborate designs with his pointy tongue on every surface of my feet, especially along the soles. (What relief that I’d showered earlier.) Then Rafik moved further up and lingered around my calves for an extended chew. At the same time he curled his body so that his erection could continue playing around on my feet, even working itself between my toes, thrusting like a minifuck. How can a penis be so smart?
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