Marisa re-entered, and the vibrations from her footsteps shook the wall behind him. She flicked the light switch on then off and walked to her side of the bed. The only lingering color in the room was from the lamp on his end-table shining low light over him, the rest of the room in shadows. She hopped in and curled the covers up to her nose. “You were right…it is a little chilly.” She giggled.
Steel sighed, but playfully. He reached both arms behind himself and aligned his two pillows and slid his head down from the headboard onto them and the cold softness chilled the back of his hair. What a fuckin’ day, he thought.
Marisa rolled over and stared in his eyes with the sexiest, most luring squint he’d ever seen, and he had an Adam and Eve moment: He would have eaten an apple and swallowed the stem whole, would have done whatever Marisa wanted him to. I understand, Adam, I understand, he thought. She rolled over and slid a hand under his white undershirt, which he always wore to bed, and circled her palm over his heart. The warm touch as though it reached through the skin and temporarily healed his depression, his heartache. She pecked at his neck, her warm lips dragging across his flesh. A sharp flash of heat sprung up from under the surface of his skin and filled every inch of his body. His heart kicked up a beat as if someone had turned its rhythm up like they would the bass of a stereo speaker—it thumped his chest. So much for not being in the mood, he thought.
He ran a hand along the lamp and killed the light, the room dark, his pupils grew. He turned his head toward her and rolled over, his warm body on top of hers, his and her thighs tangled in warmth. They kissed roughly, and her thin tongue colliding hard with his own was like a shot of Prozac for his depression and anxiety and untangled his tense back muscles. They rubbed cheeks, gliding up and down, skin on skin, breathing shallow and low. He sniffed her flesh, the scent of minty Lever 2000 soap, her vanilla hair shampoo, tasted her cherry lip balm. He dug his lips into her neck and kissed, then breathed alongside her ear. She twisted her neck and rolled her head, moaning. Her breathing labored. She gripped the small of his back and squeezed the skin. His heart pounded his chest harder and faster. Each undressed each other, their bones digging into one another’s, pulling up and down on clothing fabric and kicking off underwear, until she hopped up on top of him and straddled her thighs around his hips. He reached up and cupped her warm, sleek breasts. She spun her hand behind herself and slid her palm between his thighs, and his groin burned, on fire, tingled. He gripped her hips, and she leaned over him, her hair falling into his nose and tickling it. The hair blanketed the area around their faces like a bed sheet, and they kissed under the dark warmth, lips hovering over each other’s, meeting for deep, passion, warm, wet kisses. She pulled at the pillows above his head and her soft breasts dipped into his mouth. She slid her chest down his, moaned louder, and mouthed warm, jumbled words in his eardrum. He laid his hands just over her ass and flipped her over, her legs open and welcoming his body. They rolled around together, her thighs wrapped around him, each of their hands moving firmly and hard on one another like a massage chair at the mall, until he stopped the motion and lay on top. She spread her palms out over her head, and they clasped fingers, stared in each other’s eyes, the stare free of old hurts, hurts each had had before meeting one another, complete comfort, oneness, and soon buried their tongues in each other’s mouths as if there were hidden treasures within. The tips of her firm nipples pressed into the center of his chest and shocked his skin in tiny spurts like electric. He puckered his lip and dove into her neck, and it felt perfect, the two of them, this moment, ecstasy. They could stay this way for eternity and feel whole, as though their love-making removed the need to obsess about problems or fears, or even that people or a world or a universe existed outside their bedroom. Steel took in her smell again, tasted her moist lips. They kissed on the mouth and cheek, missing one another’s lips and planting hard wherever the lips landed, their breathing deep and hoarse. God, he loved this woman—her hair, smile, skin, lips, the shape of her eyes, her laugh, personality—loved it all.
After a few seconds, she hugged him, dug her fingernails into his back, and held on as if she were being airlifted from the ocean and he were the one rescuing her. Soon, he was inside her, moving in rhythm, each of their flesh meshing into one body. The bed squeaking and rocking and their moans and pants of euphoria in the darkness made the love-making feel transcendental, like they could reach up into the sky and touch God. Love at its heights.
After a while, he leaned his forehead against her warm, moist cheek, his hips still moving into her. Finally, he moaned, squeezed his eyes shut and stretched his mouth into an oval, and lost his breath until he was finished. His extremities numbed. He shivered. His release warmed his body. He wanted to moan or laugh to himself from the pleasure, tucking his face away from hers so she wouldn’t see his loss of control. He collapsed on top of her, breathed heavily, and lay with his ear over her shoulder, her skin slick with sweat, and its scent felt so right, he licked it. Her chest heaved for a minute and she panted until she caught her breath. She looked at him, her eyes glossy, both worn and satisfied, her forehead glistening. They stayed that way for a moment.
She spoke but the sound was dragged and subdued. “There’s something about us. Something magnetic. Something hidden in a higher realm.”
“Yeah.”
“Enough said?” she whispered in his ear.
He tapped a finger over her lips. “You know how we like it. Let the silence speak and explain. Better than words.”
She smiled, slid her fingers through his hair, twirled strands into loops.
He flipped his body over and they lay together, legs and arms tangled up, her hand caressing his chest, lightly scratching with all five fingernails and sending chills through his heart, his thumb brushing her damp hair away from her eyes. The room smelled of their love-making and vanilla shampoo and a chill in the air.
During the silence, and out of nowhere, the theme music to Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” danced around in his head. And for some reason a thought crossed his mind that maybe that’s all he really needed after all? But he wasn’t fully convinced. Nevertheless, he was just about ready to give it another shot in about an hour or so.
9
S
teel yawned at his desk, his mouth stretching and crinkling his lips, his tongue curling in the air. The day was Christmas Eve, and he decided to go into the office and review the case, try to connect a few things together. He’d have to put a hold on interviewing more people connected to Desiree Jones until after Christmas day, so much for solving this thing in the first forty-eight hours. Maybe Desiree’s killer had planned it that way. Maybe I’m dealing with a professional, he thought. He didn’t know.
He noticed it was almost 10 A.M., and all he’d done since arriving at the station at eight was sit at his computer and open each screen that applied to his research but didn’t work in them. The office was quiet, just a few detectives there, drumming their fingers on their keyboards and answering an occasional phone call. Steel’s desk was third in a row of six cubicles along the back wall. He and the detective behind him were the only ones working on that side of the desk alignment. And that co-worker, a little older than Steel, was a pain in the ass. Steel didn’t mind a prank here and there, but this guy took it to the extreme at times, acted like he was still in high school. He burped, farted, argued loudly with his wife on his cell phone, sent inappropriate chain-letter e-mails around the office, puffed on an electronic cigarette with a peppermint scent indoors although it was strictly prohibited, and hid fellow detectives’ computer chairs from time to time when they left their desks. He wasn’t a bad guy, though, everyone liked him. He just annoyed the hell out of them. And Steel heard the plastic of a computer seat crack and swirl and its wheels rumble across the floor and sensed a conversation developing.
“Steel,” the fellow detective said.
Steel craned his neck upward and spoke so that his voice would travel over the cubicle
wall. “Yeah, Johnny?”
Detective Johnny McKnight arched his body over the height of the cubicle, laid his forearms on top, and looked at Steel, his balding, round head slanted and his eyes hidden behind swollen sockets and excess cheek fat from a diet mixed of fast food, soda and candy bars. “Where you goin’ for Christmas dinner, buddy?”
“Nothing going on tonight for Christmas Eve, stayin’ home. Tomorrow we’re going to Marisa’s parents for dinner, in South Philly. You?”
“Taking the wife and kids to my parents up in the Poconos. Do a little skiing, snowboarding. Something different than spending Christmas in the city, you know?” Johnny didn’t take his eyes off Steel until he nodded with approval. The guy had a strange way about him, like a misunderstood middle-school kid, one minute calm, the next in detention, one minute happy, the next throwing temper tantrums. It seemed as though Johnny needed everyone’s approval, and Steel didn’t feel like being bothered because his head, just above the brow, pounded and throbbed, and acid spewed from his esophagus from his nerves and ached his upper chest, the pain shooting down to his stomach at times, a greasy, anxious fluttering swirling at the slightest movement.
Steel couldn’t stand casual conversation about universal small-talk things, either. What was he doing for Christmas? The same fucking thing everybody else was doing. Why do people care? he always thought. Why do we “have” to discuss these things just to have something to say? And he wasn’t even a Christian. Christmas didn’t have any real meaning to him other than getting together with family. But, he played along, told people his plans like they gave a shit. He knew this mood he was in had to change because he was on the verge of putting a fist through his computer screen for no reason at all. And he felt like an asshole for thinking the way he was thinking, for getting annoyed with a guy who was just trying to be friendly. And he reasoned he was most likely angry with himself, at his own poor social skills and inability to sustain a conversation, and that he’d often take it out on others and act as if they were at fault.
“Steel, you see that new girl from patrol, who was up here yesterday to pick up that file from me?” Johnny said.
Steel slumped in his seat, ran his tongue along his upper teeth, nodded. “Vaguely.”
Johnny tipped his head, a smirk stretching from ear to ear, too confident for a man who weighed two-fifty and had a hairline that started behind his ears. “Yeah, about twenty-five, blonde,” he whistled and swirled his eyes, “my God, what an ass. I think she was flirtin’ with me, smiling at me and shit.”
Steel laughed in his mind, and his head shook a bit, his face somewhat stoic, although his slight grin may have given him away. He wanted to tell this forty-five-year-old, married, overweight, balding man that he didn’t have a shot with a twenty-five–year-old blonde, but again he played the game. “Oh, yeah…what’d she say?”
“She kept smiling at me, longer than a usual smile…you know…she slapped my shoulder as she talked. Hitting is an indicator that a woman’s in to you.”
This guy couldn’t be too bright, Steel reminded himself. He figured men on the lower end of the IQ scale were always the most confident. He thought of a quote he’d heard: The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubt. Steel remembered that Johnny had actually once told him that he’d have a shot with Jennifer Lawrence if he were to talk to her for an hour. “Just give me one hour in a bar with her,” Johnny had said. Steel chuckled in his mind again at that thought.
Johnny scratched his lips. “What would you do with that, Steel?”
“With what?” Steel said, just to mess with him, not to give him the benefit of his arrogance.
Johnny jerked a thumb toward the door for some reason and scrunched his face. “The girl, from yesterday.”
“What would I do with that?” Steel said, his eyes circling in thought. How can I fuck with this guy?
This was another question he hated, what would he do with a woman? And it wasn’t that he was trying to be the morality police, and not that he was perfect—he knew he was far from it, that he had his own flaws, for sure. But he didn’t like these cliché conversations, as if it was cool to disrespect women and show you’re a “real man” to talk that way, and especially with people you didn’t even know that well—and regardless if you thought those thoughts to yourself from time to time—everybody did—but he was a private person and only shared his thoughts with a few trusted friends, if he shared them at all. And Steel didn’t have a problem hanging with the guys and talking sports or women, but he preferred to debate those topics intellectually, as philosophical issues, to discuss ideas, overall patterns of interactions between humans and biological drives, not just sex-talk for ego. He knew that in modern times a “real man” to some people was a guy who drank beer, obsessed over football and joined a fantasy league, didn’t like intellectual pursuits, ate chicken wings until he was obese, and dreamed of relaxing on a couch and watching mindless television rather than being outdoors. What a warped society we are, Steel thought. Bunch of morons, we have become. He always believed that real men are ambitious and have goals, treat everyone with respect, are in shape and care about their appearance, discuss the world and are curious, and, if blessed enough to have a family, love their wife and children and treat them well and with respect. He rubbed an eye and thought, Stop judging people. That’s what the shrink told you. Stop. You’re not perfect. Who the fuck are you? You piece of shit. He dug his back into his seat and swallowed.
“Um,” Steel said. “What would I do with her? Probably take her to a nice dinner, meet her parents, buy her something nice.”
Johnny slapped the top of the cubicle with a palm that was as thick as a New York strip. “No, no asshole. I meant sexually?” He chuckled.
“Oh, oh…I didn’t know that’s what you meant,” Steel said and laughed in his mind again—he could actually feel his brain trembling.
“Steel!” a voice called out.
Steel and Johnny spun their heads.
“Can I see you for a moment?” Lieutenant Detective Williams said.
“Sure can,” Steel said. Thank God, he thought.
He strolled over to Williams’ office and inhaled a few clean shots of air before stepping in, preparing for the wave of musky cologne that always hung in the enclosed space. Williams and his cologne, my poor allergies.
Steel entered, and as Williams sank into his seat, the plastic base whined from his weight. He rubbed his palms together and his skin scratched like sandpaper. He was dressed casually for Christmas Eve, a pair of blue jeans and a red polo shirt, opposed to his usual freshly-ironed white dress shirt, pleated black pants and shiny black shoes, and Steel figured he probably didn’t plan on staying in the office for too long. For a chubby guy, Williams carried himself well. The sun streaked the white wall behind him, and the paint glistened, his silhouette decorating its middle.
Williams stared through his burgundy tinted eyeglasses and spoke in a baritone voice, “Steel, what’s goin’, what’s goin’, man?”
“Ah, ya’ know, it’s goin’, sir. How about yourself?”
Williams had earned the title of “sir” over the years, being he was older than Steel by at least ten years, was his boss, and showed an unbelievable amount of respect for him after that case from hell he’d assigned him that past summer. He could have been a real prick about the way the case had ended, but handled it all right. As far as authority went, Williams was tolerable to Steel, and that was it, tolerable, because Steel hated authority. He always felt it stemmed from his strict Catholic school days, where he wasn’t able to voice his opinions or challenge teachers in debates and was ready to suffer imminent punishment if he even thought of breaking a rule. He’d often daydream as a kid and had envisioned walking into confession at his Catholic church and instead of saying to the priest, “Bless me Father, for I have sinned, it has been one week since my last confession,” he’d imagined saying, “W
hat’s up, buddy? We both have sinned, and it has been one week since our last conversation.” He always had a flare for sarcasm, even back then. In his young mind, that would have been revenge for the eggshell environment his middle school had created, the fear it had imposed on him, on top of the anxiety disorder he was born with. Now, as an adult, he felt wrong and blasphemous for even remembering what he had thought about the priest but also felt he had been witty and insightful as a kid. He knew the mind was a strange place, and that if given the opportunity to see others’ thoughts, we wouldn’t need horror movies for entertainment, our own demons and brains would scare the hell out of us. But thoughts left in the brain and not acted upon was what made humans noble, revered, he always believed. Everyone thought things they didn’t want to. He still resented his Catholic upbringing but always thought it was more because of his issues with authority and himself instead of a problem with God, whoever or whatever God was. And the Catholic Church was king with enforcing rules and “must-dos” and respecting hierarchy or else one’s soul would be damned to hell for eternity, at least that’s the way he’d seen it, and that was a tough thing for a kid with authority issues to process, even if he had taken its rules too seriously. But God was good, wasn’t as mean as his Catholic Church had painted, in his opinion. Maybe I better say a Hail Mary for the mental chatter tossing around in my brain, he thought.
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