by Dana Cameron
I eyed the spread dubiously. “You just pick them up? No forks? Hey, look at the ends of the ribs! You can see that they were sawn! You know, by looking at the way the bones were cut, you can tell a lot about the ethnic tradition the chef is following, or what was available to him locally. Now if they were snapped off the ribcage, or cut with a knife, you’d see a much more jagged edge—”
Again came that pitying look, mixed with exasperation. “Em. God almighty. Grab one. Start gnawing.”
I started in, tentatively at first, but rapidly becoming obsessed about scraping more of the tender meat off the bones. The smoky tang, the crunch of the cooked fat, and the morsels of sweet pork, were more than enough to convince me. “Whoa, Bri—”
“See what I mean?” he asked, tossing another cleaned gray-white bone on the heap. “It pays to chuck the Emily Post every now and then.”
“Easy for you to say.” I sucked the meat off another rib. “You don’t do anything, you eat everything in sight, you never gain an ounce. I, on the other hand…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He eyed my plate and the ribs that I hadn’t got to yet. “So, are you going to finish those?”
“Take a hike!” I pulled my plate protectively closer.
“Spoken like a convert!” He signaled the waiter for another round of drinks.
But even after some truly dedicated eating on my part, Brian had to help me clean up the last two. “You got another Wet-Nap?” I held my sticky fingers up.
A voice came from over my shoulder. “I’ve heard some interesting things about you, Ms. Fielding, but nothing to suggest the way you can put away the barbecue.”
I looked up to see Pam Kobrinski, still flushed from dancing, standing over our table. Her date loitered impatiently by the door with their coats, checking his watch in an obvious way. I wiped my hands off on my jeans as best I could, trying to decide if I was supposed to invite her to join us.
“Look, I don’t usually do business when I’m off, and I generally come way out here because I’m not likely to run into anyone I know.” She smiled wryly. “But since we’re both here, could you meet me Monday morning? For breakfast, maybe? We should talk.”
I groaned. “I’m never going to eat again!”
Kobrinski looked at Brian, who shrugged. “Neophyte,” he explained. “She doesn’t know she’ll be craving another pile in an hour.”
The detective sergeant took out a card and wrote on the back of it. “Not at the station. Meet me at Nancy’s Breakfast Nook. It’s right on Main Street in Monroe, about seven?”
I groaned again, but she turned to leave, saying, “Have a nice weekend,” before I could suggest a later time, even lunch.
“You know her?” Brian asked, watching her don her coat.
“She’s the cop investigating Faith’s death.” Saying it out loud cast a shadow over a fairly promising evening. “Damn.”
But apparently, Brian didn’t notice. “She doesn’t dance like a cop,” he said admiringly.
That woke me up out of my funk. “Hey! What are you doing, watching other women dance?”
“Just looking at the scenery, porkchop. Unless, of course, you wanted to—”
“I’m just waiting for you to ask!”
“Ah, here we go,” he said, leading me out onto the floor, where the band was playing a slow waltz instrumental. “Now, isn’t this nicer than La Vache Qui Pede, or wherever it is you wanted to go? I couldn’t step all over your toes there, could I?”
But if there was anyone stepping on toes, it was me. My mind just wasn’t on my feet, it was on my chance meeting with Detective Kobrinski. “Yeah. You know, I’ve been worrying over whether Faith was murdered and never stopped to think of a motive.”
Brian pulled me even closer and murmured into my ear, “Oooh, my darlin’, zat’s why I love you sooo; you feed ozair women drinks and bar-bay-que, take zem danzeeng, and what do they sink of? Ze sex! Le monkey lust hot! And zat’s it! But you, you speak to me in ze dulcet tones of murdair, ze mayhem.” He led me into a slow twirl, returning back to our close embrace, rubbing his cheek against mine. “Ahh, what man could ask for more?”
I kissed him, snuggled into his shoulder. “Sorry. Kind of jarred me, running into the investigating officer and all.”
Brian looked me in the eye. “And you noticed she was having fun, didn’t you? She wasn’t working. Well, not working much,” he hastily amended.
We glided back, even dared a small dip. “I’ll make a deal with you,” he said. “I’ll talk all you want tomorrow about Faith, work, the house, whatever, just let’s have fun now, okay? Just you and me, nothing else. After all, I won’t get to see you next weekend, remember? United Pharmaceuticals is recruiting at Stanford, and I pulled the short straw.”
“Oh, shoot, I didn’t remember.” I shook my head. “You’re right, anyhow. It’s hard to shut it off, sometimes.”
“That’s why I’m working so hard to distract you,” Brian said. “And if you’ll remember all the way back to this afternoon, you’ll recall that it’s better when you help.”
“Gotcha.”
By the end of the third song, we’d managed to whittle my unsure movements into a respectable two-step and decided to quit while we were ahead. As we left the music behind us indoors, the comparative quiet of the pickup was a shock and the ride home uneventful.
“Man, they don’t skimp on their drinks,” I said, as we pulled into the Shrewsbury parking lot. No hassles getting in this time.
“You all right?”
“Oh, fine. Just feeling a little loose, that’s all.”
“Should make you easier to catch, then.” Brian opened my door for me.
“Ha! I’ll show you who’s easy to catch!” I said. I dove out of the truck, not too unsteadily, and flew past him, bypassing the kitchen door and running three quarters of the way around the house to the front door. I looked over my shoulder—no Brian. That’ll teach him, I thought smugly, as I climbed the front stairs.
“Boo!” He stepped out of the shadows, startling me.
I shrieked gratifyingly and somehow through the ensuing game of slap and tickle managed to unlock the door and get us in. Brian faked right, then went left. I dodged him and ran into the parlor, waiting for him to get closer again. He caught up with me, both of us giggling, and we’d just about fallen over the back of the couch when the overhead light snapped on.
Brian yelped in surprise and jumped back; I fell clumsily to the floor with a squawk. I squinted against the light trying to see who was there, trying to slow my racing heart. “God almighty!”
A heavy sigh identified the other person more eloquently than any introduction could have done. “Evening, Auntie. Please don’t let me interrupt.”
“Uhhhh, Michael! I thought we…” Brian gave me a hand up and I tried to collect my wits. “I thought you were in Boston.”
“Obviously. But my weekend didn’t go exactly as I’d planned,” Michael said. He looked woebegone and considering his intentions this morning, distinctly undersexed. He went over to a chair, flopped into it, and closed his eyes. After a moment he said, “Just carry on as if I weren’t here. The rest of the universe seems to.”
Brian rolled his eyes at that response, and I dug a finger in his ribs. “This is my husband, Brian Chang. Brian, Michael Glasscock.”
I have to give my husband credit: Brian didn’t blink as I made the introductions or as Michael took his hand without ever actually opening his eyes.
“We didn’t mean to disturb you,” I said.
“Frankly, I’m fairly certain I couldn’t get any more disturbed if I stuck a rabid weasel down my trousers, but it is nice to be thought of. Good meeting you, Brian. And Emma, if you would be so kind—”
“Of course, Michael,” I said, snapping off the light.
We snuck up the stairs in the dark. “Does he always just sit like that?” Brian whispered. “Weird! And what was wrong with his hand? He had a big bandage on his wrist.”
“It was bothering him this morning. Yesterday too. I didn’t notice the bandage though, that’s new. I was too busy being mortified.”
“What do you have to be mortified about?” Brian said. “We were doing what normal people do on a Saturday night!”
“Normal’s not exactly the word I’d use to describe most of the folks at Shrewsbury, sweetie.” I let us into my room and shut the door on the outside world for the night.
The next morning, nice and late, I was sitting, watching Brian pack up to head home.
“You were really chasing rabbits last night,” he said.
“Sorry?” I shook off my inattention.
“What were you dreaming about? You were tossing around so much you practically knocked me out of bed. It’s not like you.”
I frowned. “I don’t remember. I haven’t been sleeping well. Maybe it was the spicy food.”
“Maybe.” He zipped up his bag. “Toss me some of that letterhead, would you?”
I reached over to the desk. “Sure. What do you want it for?”
“Address.” He sighed heavily. “I figured I should write a letter about our naughty boy, Constantino, to the board of directors. Best to get right on it, unless you think it would make things difficult for you politically? I can wait ’til after you’re done.”
“No, do it up. What can they do? I’m already here.”
Brian shrugged. “Probably won’t do any good, but you can’t fix anything by not speaking up, right?”
I rubbed his arm. “It’s a good plan.”
He dug out his keys, which had a little note stuck on the ring. “God, I’m getting old. I’ve brought a couple of messages for you. Bucky called to get your number. She’ll call. She wants her tapes and CDs back.”
“She’s my sister, I don’t have to give them back. Union rules. Anything else?”
“Nolan called, but to tell me about a reschedule.” Brian paused, then said, “But he told me you’re developing a real edge.”
That was high praise, and Nolan was stingy with it; he probably also knew that Brian would tell me. Which was nice, but it also meant he’d want more from me during our next session. I couldn’t tell when that would be, however; it was difficult to schedule my Krav Maga during the school year, and almost impossible during the field season. I’d managed to keep with it with an individual lesson every couple of weeks or so.
“Some edge,” I snorted. “It just means I can occasionally hit him back, now. He should be paying me for being his personal punching bag.” Maybe this was just Nolan’s way of getting me to pick up the pace a little; maybe he sensed I was thinking of dropping our sessions altogether.
“Well, keep at it. You get all these sexy muscles when you’ve been training.”
That’s the way we always talked about my sessions with Nolan, carefully avoiding the reason I’d started taking them in the first place. After my run-in with a homicidal maniac years ago, I had decided against buying a gun, the thought of which gave me the willies anyway, but opted for self-defense lessons in the form of Krav Maga. Brian and I made a point of not taking classes together, because when we sparred with each other, it was too easy to take it personally and get upset.
“How’re you doing, these days?” I said.
“Well, it’s been a while since I’ve done anything like exercise—”
I personally believe that Brian’s long-distant days of surfing and skateboarding did not count as exercise, not the same way running does, but didn’t tell him so. Those activities seemed too much like fun to be good for you.
“—but I’m hanging in there. I’ve got a new bruise for my collection.” He pulled up his sleeve and showed me a corker on the back side of his arm, just above the elbow. “It was my fault, I didn’t move fast enough.”
I leaned over and kissed the bruise. “Poor baby. I’ll try and land one on Nolan for you. He’s such a meanie, picking on you like that.”
“Oh, it wasn’t Nolan, it was one of the ladies in the class,” he said cheerfully. “I don’t know why you think he’s so mean, though. He’s always perfectly nice to us. Well, not nice, nice. You know, professional.”
“Maybe he’s got it in for me.”
Brian snorted. “Maybe he knows that pushing you is the best way to get you to learn anything.”
“Mmm, maybe.” I didn’t want to think about Nolan, now. I sat back. “You know something? This is nice. We haven’t done this for a while.”
He thought a minute, then nodded. “You mean, talk about something that wasn’t work, wasn’t the house, wasn’t a deadline? Wasn’t a problem?”
“Yep.” I wasn’t quite sure how to continue. “I really miss that.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” he said slowly, sensing something was up.
“But I don’t want you to think that I don’t like my job or my house—”
“Or me?”
“Right. Or you. It’s not that. And I like the fact that we can work together as a team, that’s really cool. Just, sometimes, I…I’ve been thinking about grad school, and how we didn’t have to worry about a house, and we didn’t have to worry about cleaning, because the place was too small, and work was a given, but at least we were young enough not to notice how tired we should have been. We managed to squeeze some fun in then, seemed like all the time. Now…it just seems like we’re not a romantic couple so much as a strike force.”
Brian thought about that, and then nodded. “Last night was our first date in a while.”
“Yeah. It was fun.” I glanced at him. “You had fun, right?”
“Yes, tons. And dinner and dancing after was good too.”
I punched him in the shoulder, remembering to avoid his bruise. “I just want to know that you still want to have fun with me.”
He looked very serious. “I don’t want you to ever think I don’t want to have fun with you. Only you. We should do something about this.”
I laughed, even though I could feel the heaviness sink back into my shoulders: This felt just exactly like what I was talking about. “Great. I’ll make a list, you go online to see what can be done about it.”
Now it was Brian’s turn to poke me. “No, not like work, not like the house. We can do something right now. Should we institute a date night?”
“We should do that anyway, but I need more than that.” I took a deep breath, a little surprised by what I was going to propose. “I want to call a moratorium on the house stuff. We’ve let it consume us.”
Brian blinked. “I thought you wanted to keep at it until it was all done.”
I returned his confused gaze. “I thought you wanted to keep at it until it was all done.”
“Aha.”
“Aha, indeed.”
“Good, then there’s one possible solution,” Brian announced. “We give it a rest until we’ve had a chance for a little extra R and R.”
I nodded. “I figure, we’re weather-tight and the toilet works. We’ve nearly got all the big stuff out of the way—fixing the floors and getting the insulation in—so most everything left on the list is cosmetic. Except for the barn.”
“Except for the barn, but we can pull that down anytime. So after the dining room’s done…”
“We put the tools away and think about how to enjoy what we’ve got for a while.”
“Cool. I like it.”
“I feel better.”
“See?” Brian said. “Old dogs can learn new tricks.”
I nodded. “They can even learn to do no tricks at all.”
We tramped downstairs. Michael was now lying on the parlor floor, fully clothed and coated, and we had no way of determining whether he’d been there all night or had simply gotten up early for some extra brooding.
“Nice meeting you, Michael,” Brian called after he’d kissed me at the door. We looked at each other and shrugged: What was the protocol for saying good-bye to someone flaked out in a public space?
Just as I was beginning to worry that Michael wasn’t just mo
ping or asleep, a hand rose from the floor and flapped once, twice, in farewell.
Sunday dragged on and on interminably after Brian left, and then Monday started badly, then just got worse as it went on. And apparently I wasn’t the only one feeling it. Not the best of early-morning risers, I’d slept through my alarm, making me already late for my breakfast meeting with Detective Kobrinski. I tore down the main drive in the Civic and I saw Harry and Sasha just pulling in—extraordinarily early for work by anyone’s standards. I thought about honking, but reconsidered when I saw that there was a heated argument going on behind the other windshield. Then while Harry was waiting at the guardhouse for the barrier to rise, Sasha got out, slammed the car door and began to hike up the slope by herself, a long, lonely, and chilly walk to work. They didn’t even notice me as I left by the opposite side of the same gate.
The drive would have been nice at any other—read: later—time of day. The sky was bright blue, without even fair-weather clouds, and it was almost possible to smell young plants struggling to break through the ground’s surface. Large, predatory birds soared on the thermals, and in the distance, I could see a factory clocktower, reminding us all that time was wasting. After twenty minutes of being buffeted by high winds along the hilly roads, I pulled into Monroe.
Main Street was pure downtown U.S.A., late nineteenth-and twentieth-century buildings converted to shop fronts in the 1940s, and not much changed since then. The wide street was just waking up and had few cars parked along it. When I got out, the wind was howling through the valley and the bitter cold made my eyes water. It wasn’t done being winter here just yet, not by a long stretch. I paused and out of habit checked my cell phone. Plenty of signal here. I found Nancy’s Breakfast Nook right in the middle of town, obviously a cornerstone of the community since its construction.
I began to perk up a little when I saw the interior: a counter of worn linoleum and chrome banked with stools, a menu on the sandwich board over a grill that hadn’t been changed in twenty years, and a few bright booths—complete with coat hooks and cracked vinyl seats—near the windows. To my infinite delight, at one end of the counter was a plastic pie keeper with three pies in it. By the looks of things the breakfast would be decent, I thought, though why Kobrinski had to pick the middle of the night for a chat was beyond me. By the time I arrived it was 7:05 and the detective was already pushing back an empty breakfast plate.