by Evy Journey
“What about the finer things in life?”
“I’m here now, enjoying some of the finest things with you.”
“I bet this is rare, though.”
“Of course, it is. How often do you have two chefs from the best restaurant cook for you? Actually, my sister is also a good cook, and I usually have dinner at her house on Fridays.”
“I still think you’re evading my question.”
Marcia gets up. “Leave it, Leon. Anyone for dessert?”
Leon says, “You know my answer to that. What do you have?”
“Gina said not to make anything too fancy. So I have goat cheese cake and fresh raspberries, with or without crème Chantilly—your choice.”
“I’ll have raspberries, please. A touch of crème Chantilly,” Brent says. “No goat cheese cake.”
“Why?” Marcia says, frowning and looking dismayed. “Is it the goat cheese? Don’t you like it?”
“I like goat cheese; but except for fruit, I don’t eat desserts. It’s the sugar.”
“But I make a great goat cheese cake. Ask Gina.”
“I’m sure you do. But I have diabetes in my family.”
“Sugar doesn’t cause diabetes.”
Marcia is still unhappy, so I say, “Marcia, let’s respect the lieutenant’s choice. Between Leon and me alone, we’ll gobble up your cake.”
Leon says, “Gina is right, Marcia. I know you’re quite proud of your goat cheese cake. But not everyone likes or can eat dessert.”
She turns towards her kitchen, mumbling, “How can anyone not like dessert?”
I say, “Can I help you with the dessert?”
She answers by tilting her head toward the kitchen.
In the kitchen, I watch Marcia take out a carton of whipping cream from the refrigerator. “What’s that all about, Marcia?”
She doesn’t answer. She’s scowling as she pours cream in a bowl, adds a swish of Grand Marnier and some powdered sugar, and turns on her mixer.
As she’s transferring the whipped cream into a pretty bowl, Marcia says, her scowl deepening, “How can I hook up with someone who doesn’t like my desserts? I love what I do, damn it. I want the person I live with to eat and love the product of my efforts.”
“Oh, Marcia, I’m sorry.” I begin to laugh.
“What’s so funny? I’m serious.”
“I know you are, but are you going to let something like that get in the way of what you want? Isn’t what you have between you and the one you love more important?”
“He’s not the one yet. Anyway, making pastries is part of who I am. How can someone know and appreciate me if he has no understanding of what I do?”
“I see. I’m sorry I laughed. I guess I was separating what you do for a living from who you are.”
“You can’t. Anyway, forget it. Let’s bring these to the table. I know Leon will like them.” She picks up the tray of goat cheese cake and whipped cream, and hands me the bowl of raspberries.
“I’m getting the sense that you and Leon know each other a lot more than you’ve let on.”
“Don’t go there, Gina. Not now. If you want, we can have a confessional later, just you and I.”
Leon and I go “ooh-aah” every few bites of the goat cheese cake, and praise the raspberries. Brent relishes his plate of berries, licking whipped cream off his lips. Marcia is uncharacteristically quiet.
Not too long after dessert, Leon says, “I’m afraid I have to call it a night. Jet lag. Work, too, tomorrow.”
He turns to me. “May I take you home, beautiful?”
“I came with Brent. I’ll go back with him.”
“Oh! All right. I’ll call you sometime soon.”
I don’t answer him. I start to stack up the dishes on the dinner table.
Brent says, “I’ll do it, Gina. You cooked. Marcia, can you show me where your dishwasher is?”
As if awakening from a nap, Marcia gets up to help Brent, then leads him toward the kitchen. I watch them with a nip of jealousy.
Leon says, “This was wonderful, Gina. Thank you for inviting me. Marcia said you hesitated to do that.”
“I thought it would be awkward. Not only between us after that afternoon at the coffee shop, but between you and the lieutenant.”
“I feel very much at ease with you, and you needn’t have worried about Brent and me. I like him. A whole lot. He’s a straight shooter. I’d like to be friends with him but we move in different social spheres.” Leon pauses an instant, then he adds, chuckling. “And who knows? Sometime in the future he may have to investigate another incident I am allegedly—I think that’s the word they use—involved in. If that happens, we’ll both need some distance between us.”
I smile at him. Maybe Leon is kinder, more considerate than I thought. I may have let gossip and events of the last few weeks taint how I see him. Tonight, all he’s said, all he’s done, have chipped away at the wall I’ve tried to build between us.
The ride back across the bridge to the East Bay is as pleasant as the earlier one to San Francisco. But Brent Hansen is quieter this time, almost as uncommunicative as he was the first time he came to ask me questions about the stabbing. I lean my head on the head rest. I’m drunk, I think, and I doze off. Sometime later, I hear Lieutenant Hansen call my name.
“Regine, Gina, we’re here.”
I open my eyes to gaze into his melancholy ones. Before I realize what I’m doing, my hand is touching his cheek. He places his hand on mine, peers into my eyes. I think he’s going to kiss me. I wait, my heart thumping so strongly I wonder if he can hear it.
He lifts my hand off his cheek and up to his lips. He kisses the palm of my hand, his lips lingering on it, his breath moistening the skin around it. I gasp. It’s the sweetest kiss anyone has ever given me. A kiss that seems to come from deep within. A kiss that tells me a lot about Brent. It’s a moment that will keep haunting me.
He raises his head, smiles, and with my hand still in his and resting on his chest, he says, “I’ll take you up to your apartment. You’re a little drunk.”
I nod in agreement. He gets out of the car, comes to my side to open the door, and helps me out. He puts an arm around my shoulder and I lean on him, clinging on his arm. I think, at that moment: It’s the place I’d like to be, enclosed in Brent’s warmth, reassured by his strong, steady arm around me.
He says good night after I open the door to my apartment and abruptly turns to walk away. I watch as his back recedes and disappears down the stairway.
“Stay with me,” I say to the oppressive air in the empty hallway.
14
I slip the eye mask off my eyes and over the top of my head. I put it on at night when I don’t have to go to work the following day.
Soft blue light, filtering through the dusty blue curtains, floods my bed. Outside, it’s a bright sunny morning but I can’t budge my body off the bed. Maybe I can stay a little longer and get more sleep. I pick up my cell phone from the bedside table and look at the time. Eleven in the morning. What is there for me to rush to? It’s Monday, a week after the dinner at Marcia’s apartment.
An extra half hour might be enough to wake my body up slowly. I close my eyes again. But not long after, the chores I have to do for the day scroll down my mind’s eye like the closing credits in a movie. I blink to zap the screen in my mind. Poof! Gone. But just as I’m dozing off, the film credits play again, large and white and defiant on a black background: Wash your underwear, iron your chef’s jacket, vacuum the dust off the curtains, go to the grocery …
Only one way to kill the pesky words for good, I’m afraid. I open my eyes to the diffused blue haze of the apartment wall directly in front of me; at least it’s not black. Goodbye pesky white words. But—hello chores. There’s always a price to pay.
I slide my slug of a body into sitting position. I’m sitting, but why does it feel like I left my brain on the pillow? The slug plops back down
to reconnect with my brain and curls up into a fetal position.
Jolted from stupor by the ringing of my cell phone, I kick my legs straight out from my curled body. It’s a half hour past noon. My brain, it seems, halted to a stop without informing me. For a whole hour, at least.
The number is one I vaguely recognize.
“Good afternoon, my love.”
“Leon,” is all I can say. My brain is not in gear yet.
“Have you had lunch? What if I buy you one? I know a food truck with great hamburgers that will be parked today a mere couple of miles from where you live.”
The mention of food wakes up my stomach. “You eat out of food trucks? Isn’t that too … too pedestrian for you?”
“Not this one. Anyway, ambience is important to me only for dinner. At lunch, if the food is fresh and well-prepared, I’ll bite. Literally.”
It’s tempting but I hesitate. How about my resolve to stay at arm’s length?
“Come on, Gina. It isn’t a date. Just two food lovers seeking out food. You might learn something from this guy. He’s into fusion. How do Korean-style hamburgers sound to you?”
A lunch of my favorite smoothie of bottled Mango Tango, crackers, and cheese? Or kimchi on a beef patty? The choice is clear for me. Plus Marcia’s words echo in my awakening brain. Take advantage of your advantages, woman!
“Okay. Half an hour?”
“I’ll pick you up.”
“There’s fire in them burgers,” I say after my first bite of a grass-fed beef patty adorned with pickled cabbage smothered in garlic, green onions and red chilies.
I take a gulp of my sparkling mineral water. Leon is having a small glass of wine with his kimchi burger. Who knew food trucks offered wine? But the food in this truck isn’t your run-of-the-mill offering. The burger is organic ground chuck.
He says, “Does the strong aroma of kimchi bother you?”
“Are you kidding? Some French cheeses can beat this sucker for fragrance anytime. I like it. Garlicky, spicy, stinky.”
“Great,” he says, chomping on his burger.
We eat in silence for a while. He bought his driver, Will—the thin man who has been bringing me the roses—American-style hamburgers, Asian fries (dipped in a soy-based sauce) and a bottle of beer. He’s sitting next to Leon, wordlessly finishing off his two burgers.
“Does it bother you? The smell of kimchi?” I ask Will.
“I was born and raised in a small town in Iowa, Miss Lambert. Pig town. But I’m too old for those”—he points his chin at my burger—“and stinky French cheeses.”
Leon chuckles, “Sometimes he has no choice, though. I’ve dragged him to places where he can’t get his American hamburger.”
“So, what’s the worst lunch Leon has forced on you?”
“Fried squid. The rings aren’t so bad. But they mixed in these pieces with little tentacles.” Will crinkles his nose and shudders in distaste.
Leon and I can’t help laughing.
I note that Will seems to enjoy dipping his fries in the soy-based sauce. “That’s not like in Iowa, though, is it?”
Will says, “I like soy sauce. Even in Iowa, we had Chinese restaurants. This is good. Wanna try it?”
I shake my head. “No thank you. I’ve had fries with soy sauce.”
Leon has finished his lunch. “I have to get back to the office. Meeting at two. How about we have lunch together on your days off, explore these little places that serve good food? I’ve scoped a few of them out.”
“Sure,” I say without thinking, without bothering myself with the thought that I’m being inconsistent. I’m discovering little facets of Leon that appeal to me. He isn’t the snob I thought he was. And he seems to have a sense of adventure.
“Pick you up same time tomorrow?”
For an instant, I’m dumbfounded. Is that what this means? Leon and I (and Will, most likely) lunching together twice a week, except when he has some other commitment? Maybe I agreed too quickly. And yet, I did have a very pleasant lunch. One I’d choose again over bottled organic Mango Tango, cheese, and tomatoes while scrolling or reading my cell phone screen in my pajamas.
I say, “Sounds good.”
And that’s how I begin to see Leon twice a week. Maybe it’s a clever ploy on his part, a strategy that will lead to “Have dinner with me?”
A few days later, the doorbell rings and through the peephole, I see white. All white. This can’t be Will the driver. I can’t imagine Leon sending me or anyone else white roses. White doesn’t mix well with drama.
It isn’t Will. A young man in short sleeves with a florist logo on his shirt says, “Good morning. Is this the residence of Miss Regine Lambert?”
“Yes?”
“Flowers for you, Ma’am.” He hands me the roses, mumbles “Goodbye, Miss,” and runs down the stairs.
The flowers are from Brent Hansen, with a card tucked among the roses:
I’ve been meaning to call you. Thank you for the best dinner I’ve ever had. I’m working on a new case—a hard case—and it has kept me very busy.
I offer a peace offering for taking this long to thank you. I hope you like it.
Think of me sometimes, Regine.
Think of me sometimes, Regine. How deceptive these words can be. To me, at this moment, they speak of endings, not beginnings. Memories, not fresh adventures. Do you mean to say goodbye to me, Brent Hansen? Does your passion for truth and justice exclude someone like me? Will you at least be thinking of me?
The card that came with Brent’s roses puts me in a gloomy mood while I’m getting dressed for work. But an hour later, the sight of Du Cœur makes me smile. It’s going to be another busy, exciting, exhausting day.
An hour before customers arrive, Marcia and I take a break. We’re once again sitting on the turned-over wood crates; taking simultaneous swigs from our bottles of water. My bottle is half-frozen and the first sip I take is a shock to my throat. It takes me some seconds before I take another. I stop drinking only when the content is down to the ice.
Marcia frowns. She has been watching me, her eyes amused. “Boy, are you thirsty, kid. What have you been up to?”
“To tell the truth, for the last two weeks I’ve been going out to lunch with Will and Leon on our days off. We’re sampling all kinds of places for eating. I guess I’ve been having too much kimchi and soy sauce lately.”
“Wait…wait. Are you saying Leon has finally gotten to you? And who’s Will and what’s kimchi?”
I grin. “Is Leon getting to me? Maybe. He’s fun, that’s for sure. Not the food snob I thought he was.”
“That’s great. Truly glad. Now I won’t have to feel so guilty about that diamond necklace. But how did this all come about?”
“Well, Leon called one day. Quick lunch, he says. Not a date. But what really got me was the kimchi burger.”
“Kimchi?”
“Korean pickled cabbage. Spicy stuff. Anyway, he says he knows other little places, most of them ethnic. It’s been fun trying them out and I’m getting ideas for dishes. We’ve only had one misadventure so far.”
“Which is?”
“A place that serves raw chicken. Just couldn’t get into that.”
Marcia makes a face. “Ugh. Me neither.”
I chuckle. “Will actually refused to come in with us. He went looking for a hamburger joint.”
“Who’s Will? Sounds like your chaperone.”
“Will is Leon’s driver. Nice man in his fifties. I think Leon used to drag him to these places. Now he’s taking two of us.”
“Leon does know how to have fun. I envy you. Now, if I can only get him to give a bit of that love for fun to Brent.”
I shake my head a little. “Brent sounds too busy for anything but work.”
She nods, “I sent him a text message the other day. To say hello.”
“You’ve forgiven him for the goat cheese cake. Good for you.”
/> Marcia chuckles. “Not exactly. I’ve decided he’s not my type. It isn’t just the goat cheese cake. He’s a bit too intense, too serious for my comfort.”
“He believes in what he does. Like you do. But he deals with death, you deal with pleasure.”
“It’s kinda chilling the way you put it: ‘He deals with death.’”
“But that’s what it takes, doesn’t it? Being a homicide detective. I’m sure it’s tough. Might make you lose faith in humanity.”
“But as they say, someone’s gotta do it. Anyway, knowing Brent made me realize I prefer my men easygoing and laid back. I don’t think I’ll want to listen to accounts of shooting and butchering before we make love. Can’t do it. Too depressing,” Marcia says, with an exaggerated shudder.
“Most people wouldn’t, I think. Maybe, Brent knows that and that’s why he’s got no girlfriend or wife.”
“You’ve thought about this, haven’t you? Sometimes I forget I have more than ten years of experience on you.”
I take what she said as a compliment. “No. Just thought of it when you said he was too intense, too serious.”
“Do you like him?” Marcia is regarding me closely.
I return her intent gaze. “I do. Despite what you call his brooding nature. He’s well put together, has things under control, and tries to do right by everyone. That’s reassuring.”
“I wouldn’t mind a few good laughs with him. Do you think he has a sense of humor?”
“If one is serious by nature, does it mean he can’t tell when something is funny or silly or ridiculous?”
Marcia laughs. “Watch it, kid. Don’t go philosophical on me. That’s nearly as grim as talking about dead bodies. Anyway, all I’m aiming for is a roll in the hay from time to time with the intense lieutenant.”
“Then I guess I have no more to say.”
Marcia grins. “One thing I got right, now that I’ve seen him up close. He’s awfully sexy and he doesn’t seem to be aware of it. It makes him even more irresistible.”