Lies You Wanted to Hear

by James Whitfield Thomson

  Close as Jill and I were, she didn’t like to talk about sex. She had gone steady with Robby Durant all through high school but refused to say how far they went. Not far enough for Robby, I guessed, seeing him droop along beside her like a lost puppy. (As for me, I surrendered my virginity in the tenth grade to a boy so sweet and desperate he cried afterward, and it almost felt like love.) Jill dumped Robby for Scott Fowler freshman year of college; Bernie Katz stole Jill from Scott. Bernie was the captain of the Harvard squash team, a great guy who was crazy about her but not crazy enough to risk alienating his rich father by marrying a shiksa. Next up, Terry O’Shea. Jill never went six weeks without a boyfriend, convinced each time that this was the one. This time she was right. Terry was in his final year of law school at BC when they met; now he worked as an assistant district attorney. He was good-looking, thoughtful, incorrigibly cheerful, and one of the most boring men on earth. Terry could spend ten minutes telling you about the great deal he’d gotten on a new rider mower from Sears with a sixteen-horsepower engine, detachable grass catcher, and a three-year service guarantee. Being a friend of Terry’s didn’t automatically disqualify the cop from consideration, but I had a feeling he wouldn’t be my type.

  Of course, when I was being honest with myself, I knew there wasn’t any type; there was only Griffin.

  ***

  I hadn’t mentioned it to Jill, but I had started going out again, not on dates, just drinking and dancing at some of the upscale bars and hotel lounges in Cambridge and Back Bay, lots of gigolo wannabes with their gold chains and bad cologne, out-of-town businessmen with silver money clips and pale outlines of wedding bands on their fingers. Occasionally I’d meet someone interesting and give him my number then kick myself if he didn’t call back or turn him down if he did. One night I met a pilot who flew corporate executives around the country in a private jet. He was easy to talk to and told me a great story about learning to fly a crop duster from his father when he was still a kid. At the end of the evening, he drove me home and wrote down my phone number, ready to leave, it seemed, without so much as a good-night kiss. I asked him in for a glass of wine and put Van Morrison on the stereo. The pilot studied the prints on my living room wall—six framed woodcuts in bold colors depicting various Tarot cards—discreetly ignoring the photographs of Griffin and me on the bookshelf below.

  “These are great,” the pilot said. “Who’s the artist?”

  “My friend Cody. He’s very talented. My favorite is the magician.” I pointed.

  “Le bateleur. My mother likes to give Tarot readings for fun.”

  “She’s French?”

  He nodded. “A war bride. She and my dad only knew each other for nine days when they got married.”

  The pilot’s mother had been part of the French resistance and sounded like a fascinating woman. She was from Rennes, not far from Saint-Malo, where I’d spent two weeks as a teenager visiting a friend who had been an exchange student in our high school. The pilot and I were sitting on the couch. He kissed me tentatively; I responded in French. My sweater and bra were on the floor, my nipple in the pilot’s mouth when he sat up abruptly.

  “We don’t have to rush into this,” he said. “I really like you. I don’t want to mess things up.”

  Great line, I thought. He may even have meant it. It was a caution worth noting; the self-help books don’t advocate having sex with a guy you’ve known for less than three hours if you’re interested in building a long-term relationship. But I wasn’t thinking long-term. After months of wallowing in anger and self-doubt, I needed to be desired. I needed to find a way to put Griffin behind me. I got up from the couch and led the pilot into the bedroom.

  Our lovemaking was quick and pleasant, nothing I’d celebrate or regret in the morning. Afterward, we were sitting on the bed, smoking, my head on his shoulder, his hand idly caressing my thigh when the telephone rang. I tried to ignore it, but my body grew taut, each ring more insistent than the last.

  “You better get that,” the pilot said, dejection in his voice, as if he knew as well as I did who was calling.

  I picked up the phone and cradled it to my ear. “Nothing much,” I said. “Just sitting here, thinking of you.” Which was true.

  I was still on the phone with Griffin when the pilot let himself out the door.

  ***

  “Wear something sexy,” Jill said. “That white Charlie’s Angels one-piece or the salmon mini-dress.”

  “I thought you said this was just for a drink.”

  “Yeah but, you know…first impressions.”

  “What exactly have you told him about me?”

  She laughed. “Very little. I didn’t want to scare him off with the truth.”

  “So what if I really like him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Can I take him home with me?”

  “You do and I’ll wring your skinny little neck.”

  Chapter 2

  Matt

  It was the hottest day of the year, temperatures up over a hundred. A crushed Pepsi can kept the front door of the Sweet Spot propped open for ventilation. The place used to have live strippers when I began patrolling the Combat Zone, but now it was just private video booths, couple of minutes of porn for a quarter. I went in the open doorway and said hi to Lenny.

  “Officer Drobyshev.” He saluted from his perch behind the counter with an electric fan blowing on the back of his neck. He was reading a battered hardback copy of The Mayor of Casterbridge, elbows resting on a display case filled with sex toys.

  “Scorcher today,” I said.

  “You’re telling me. I got four, five more weeks of this shit, and the boss won’t spring for a fucking air conditioner.”

  “How’s business?”

  “Couldn’t be better. Summer, winter, guys never stop jacking off.”

  “You been checking IDs?”

  “Please.” Lenny frowned. “There are real crimes happening out there, my friend. Don’t tell me Boston’s finest give a flying fuck about a couple of guys giving each other blowjobs in a private video booth.”

  “The brass wants us to crack down. Undercover picked up a young hustler at the Pussy Cat last night. Third or fourth juvie this month.”

  “Enterprising youth. I’m sure he makes a helluva lot more money than I do.”

  I smiled. “How’s the book?”

  There were underlinings on the page, the margins filled with notes in minuscule handwriting in different color inks.

  “Michael Henchard.” He shook his head. “The trouble with the past is, it’s never really over. Just keeps coming back and biting you in the ass.”

  Lenny had been working on his dissertation for years. He told me Jude the Obscure was one of the three greatest novels in the English language. I had a copy of the book on my nightstand but couldn’t get into it. I preferred history—Sacco and Vanzetti, the Nuremberg trials, General Sherman burning his way across Georgia. Stuff that really happened.

  I stepped through the black curtain to the peep-show booths in back. The room was divided into two narrow corridors with video booths on either side. The piney smell of disinfectant couldn’t hide the human stench underneath. Several men lurked in the corridors. I turned my head and caught one of them staring at me. In the half-second our eyes met, the man’s face seemed to change from desire to fear to shame before he turned away. What a life! Poor schmuck probably had a wife and three kids at home. I heard a guy whisper in the booth behind me and another man let out a moan. I pounded on the door with the heel of my hand.

  “One person to a booth,” I said and went back out front.

  “Thomas Hardy, my friend." Lenny held up the book like a gospel preacher. “He understood how weak the human race is. Every fucking one of us.”

  Back on the street I checked my watch. Twenty minutes till knock off. That left me an hou
r after work to go home and shower and get ready for my blind date. I was supposed to meet her for a drink at the piano bar at the Copley Plaza. Not the sort of thing I did often, but Terry O’Shea’s wife, Jill, cornered me at our last softball game and asked me to do it as a favor. The girl she set me up with was her best friend.

  “Lucy’s gorgeous,” Jill had said. “Smart, funny. Body to die for.”

  “And…?”

  “Terrible taste in men.”

  “Ah, no wonder you asked me.”

  Jill laughed. “No, no, that came out wrong. The last one was a total shit, that’s all. She’s been sitting at home, moping for months now. I figured if she went out with a really terrific guy…” She batted her eyes like Betty Boop. Jill knew how cute she was, even with all the weight she’d put on with her pregnancy.

  I said okay to the blind date. She wasn’t going to stop bugging me till I did.

  “Anything else you want to tell me?” I said.

  “Well, she’s not…” She crinkled her eyebrows. “Let’s just say she has an edge.”

  An edge was fine with me. The last girl I dated was as edgeless as fog. I met her as I was passing through Filene’s cosmetics department. I was on my way to the basement to look for some shirts and she caught me ogling her cleavage.

  “Would you care to sample the new fragrance from Chanel, officer?” She blocked my path. “For that special lady in your life.”

  “Sorry, I don’t have one at the moment.”

  “Maybe I could offer some assistance?”

  Some women have a thing about men in uniform. It’s one of those unwritten perks that comes with the job, like never having to worry about getting a traffic ticket. Something to help make up for the scornful looks cops get sometimes from strangers on the street.

  The Chanel girl and I met for coffee after work and ended up in bed that same evening. At first I was taken by her sunny disposition. She had been a cheerleader in high school and still had that chirpy, never-say-die spirit that keeps those girls leaping and chanting when it’s cold and rainy and the home team is down forty-two zip. But after a while it got irritating. She didn’t want to hear about the unsavory things I had to deal with on the job. I started calling her less and making excuses not to get together. One night over dinner, I told her I thought we should take a break.

  “But why?” she said. “I thought we were doing so well.”

  I sank low in my chair and tried the it’s-not-you-it’s-me maneuver, but she kept probing.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess it’s just…you’re too damned happy.”

  “Not anymore,” she said.

  Out on the sidewalk, heat rose from the cement through my crepe rubber soles.

  “Mr. Pleeze-man. Mr. Pleeze-man.” A woman was yelling and waving her arms on the opposite side of the street. “You come quick.”

  I couldn’t place her accent. She was short and round with dyed black hair. She didn’t appear to be hurt, but the front of her yellow waitress’s uniform was splattered with blood. I ran across the street, and she led me down an alley to a brick building with an apartment on the second floor. We hurried through her living room, and she pointed toward an open doorway.

  “In there,” she said. “My husband.”

  A hairy man was lying face down on the bed, naked except for the boxer shorts pulled down around his knees. Blood oozed from a lump the size of a tennis ball on the back of his bald head. For a moment I thought the man was dead, then he let out a loud snore. I felt so relieved I almost laughed. In five-plus years on the job, I’d found the dead body of a homeless man in an alley and another of a junkie who OD’d in the backseat of a car. But never a homicide victim. I wasn’t anxious for my first.

  “You did this?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  There was a shrill cry behind me. “No! Don’t you dare!”

  A girl ran into the room and tried to put her hand over the woman’s mouth. The woman started yelling in another language, her arms flailing to fend the girl off. I got between them and told the girl to calm down. She was about fourteen, short and chubby, in tight cut-offs and a Sex Pistols T-shirt. Streaks of mascara ran down her cheeks.

  I looked at the woman. “Tell me what happened.”

  The girl said, “I’ll kill you if you say anything.”

  “I come home from work and find him and this little whore—”

  The girl lunged, but I grabbed her around the waist and held her back.

  “Shut up, Mummy. I mean it. Don’t say another word or I’ll come in your room some night and slit your fucking throat.”

  I said to the woman, “Is this your daughter?”

  She nodded. I was still holding my arm around the girl’s soft belly, which almost made me feel like a pervert myself. The man on the bed groaned and tried to roll over.

  “We need to call an ambulance,” I said.

  ***

  By the time I talked to the detectives and got back to the station and filled out all the paperwork, I had less than fifteen minutes to get to the Copley Plaza for my date. No time to go home and shower and change. I had a pair of jeans and golf shirt in my locker. I asked Sergeant Barker what he thought I should wear.

  “Go with the fuckin’ uniform,” he said.

  “You think?”

  “Listen to Sergeant Barker, boyo. This is who you are. She don’t like it, fuck her and the appaloosa she rode in on.” In Barker’s thick Boston accent, there was an “r” at the end of appaloosa, none in his own last name.

  “The uniform it is.”

  “What time you supposed to be there?”

  I glanced at my watch. “Eight minutes. No way I’m going to make it on time.”

  Barker laughed. “Hop in the cruiser. We’ll hit the fuckin’ siren.”

  We pulled up to the Copley Plaza with our blue lights flashing.

  “Check this out,” Barker said, lifting his chin. A girl was crossing the intersection. “Maybe that’s her.”

  “Maybe. Fits the general description.”

  She was wearing mules and a sleeveless mini-dress—small breasts with no bra, nipples and panties outlined against the pink cotton. Summer tan and Jackie O sunglasses, light brown hair hanging halfway down her back. Two guys stopped to watch her pass. Her walk was slow and casual, like a lioness sauntering down to the waterhole.

  “No way you’re that fuckin’ lucky, boyo. That girl could melt the pennies on a dead man’s eyes.”

  I grinned and started to get out of the car. “Well, here goes.”

  “You really think that’s her?”

  “I can only hope.”

  The doorman made a little bow as he held the door open for the girl. I followed her into the hotel. The piano bar was on the right. She stopped in the entranceway and looked around.

  “Lucy?” I said behind her.

  She turned, took off her sunglasses, and smiled. “Hello. You must be…?”

  “Matt.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m terrible with names.”

  “Not my strong suit either,” I said. A lie. I had a knack for remembering names and faces, which served me well on the street.

  “I didn’t expect you to be in uniform.”

  “Sorry.” I looked down at myself. “I got tied up with a case and didn’t have time to change.” She had bright, mischievous eyes, gray-green with a dark ring around the iris.

  “No, it’s fine. A little arresting, but that’s okay.”

  I cackled like a madman. Stay cool, I told myself. It felt like a pinball was ricocheting around in my chest. The Copley was one of the best hotels in the city. Plush chairs and low polished tables in the piano bar, half the patrons dressed to the nines. I wanted to walk into the bar with her and see all those heads turn our way, guys w
ondering how I got so lucky. But it probably wasn’t a good idea.

  I said, “I don’t think the manager’s going to appreciate me sitting there in my uniform. Might make some customers nervous.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  Let’s skip the small talk and go back to my place. Make love till we set ourselves on fire.

  “I have a friend who’s the owner of the Café Budapest. It’s just a short walk from here. Have you ever been?”

  “No, I’ve heard it’s wonderful.” We went back outside. “Look, mimes,” Lucy said.

  In the middle of Copley Square, a boy and a girl in white face and black leotards were sitting at an imaginary table eating an imaginary meal.

  “Amazing,” I said. It was hard to believe they could sit in those nonexistent chairs without falling down. The boy crossed his leg, balancing on one foot. The girl mime was trying to uncork a bottle of wine. She kept twisting and yanking the corkscrew and did a back somersault. Her partner hurried over to help, but he was more worried about the wine than the girl. They struggled over the bottle till it crashed on the sidewalk. The two of them tiptoed sad-faced through the broken glass. Then the girl cut herself and started hopping around, holding her foot against her chest.

  I glanced at Lucy, wanting to share the moment, but she seemed far away.

  Chapter 3

  Lucy

  The first time I saw Griffin he was smoking a joint and talking on a pay phone in Harvard Square. He appeared to be about thirty—thin face with a patrician nose, strawberry-blond hair parted in the middle, charcoal gray slacks, beige turtleneck, and a navy blue blazer—one of those men who would look perfect in a rainstorm. I slid a dime in the phone beside him but couldn’t get a dial tone.

  “Sorry, Russell, but I can’t do that,” he said. “Have you taken economics yet? Supply and demand, my friend. Supply and demand.”