by James Hayman
She didn’t move, but he could feel her body stiffen. She lay there for a minute or two. ‘No,’ she said finally.
‘When you say no, do you mean “No, not now” or “No, not ever”?’
‘No, not now.’
‘Why not?’ he persisted. ‘We’ve been together two years. That ought to be long enough.’
‘Do we have to talk about this now?’
‘You’re thirty-one years old. I’m thirty-eight. I don’t want to get too Irish on you, but it’s time we got married.’
She turned onto her side and propped her head on her hand. His hand slipped from her chest. She studied him for a minute. ‘Up until this instant this has been a perfectly lovely day. Please, don’t fuck it up.’
McCabe pressed on anyway. He wasn’t sure why. ‘You’ve said you’d like to have kids of your own. Our own. Hell, with Casey turning fifteen next spring, we’d even have a built-in babysitter. At least until she goes off to college.’
‘I told you. I’m not ready.’
‘Is it because I’m a cop?’
‘That’s part of it. But not all.’
‘What’s the rest of it? That maybe you’ve got a problem with commitment?’
‘I really don’t want to talk about this anymore.’
He felt a surge of anger. ‘Well, dammit, I do.’ He swung out of the bed and found the sweats that were lying in a heap in the corner. He put them on. ‘If it’s about me being a cop, being a cop is what I do. What I am. You knew that when we started seeing each other.’
She studied him for a minute. ‘Yes, I did,’ she said. Then she rolled off her side of the bed and began walking around the room, picking up her clothes from where they’d fallen on the way in.
‘So why’d you get involved with me?’
She looked back at him, and suddenly there was an edge to her voice. ‘Because you were a good fuck.’
‘Oh, really? So that’s the headline? WASP princess from Yale School of Art gets her rocks off playing house with Irish stud from the Bronx? Is that what this is all about? Is that all this is?’
‘McCabe, you can be such an asshole. You know damned well that’s not what this is about, and, by the way, that was a really shitty thing to say.’
‘Oh, really? And “You were a good fuck” wasn’t?’
‘Yes. It was. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it. Listen, can we stop this and maybe start over?’
‘Okay. I’m sorry, too. Yes, let’s start over. If being a cop is such a terrible thing, why did you get involved with me?’
She started getting dressed. ‘A, being a cop is not a terrible thing. And B, as for why, I suppose it was for all the obvious reasons. Because you were fun. And smart. And good-looking. And yes, you were good in bed. Anyway, at the time, I didn’t really plan on falling in love with you. I wasn’t planning on falling in love with anybody.’
She sat down on the corner of the bed and continued pulling on her clothes.
‘But you did? Fall in love with me, I mean?’
‘Yes. I did.’ Kyra was still naked from the waist up. McCabe found himself looking at her breasts and felt his desire for her growing again. It felt like a weakness. Sensing this, she turned her back on him and slipped on her bra. She took a deep breath. ‘McCabe, I do love you. Though sometimes I’m not entirely sure why. So why don’t we both shut up before we do or say something we’ll both regret.’
She took the rest of her clothes, walked to the bathroom, and closed the door. He could hear sounds of running water. Kyra washing. The door opened. Kyra came out.
He knew he ought to drop the whole thing, but he didn’t. ‘Just talk to me. Okay?’ His voice was calmer now. Less combative. ‘You once told me you weren’t sure you could marry someone who could take another human life. Is that it?’
‘I did. But it’s not. I’ve come to terms with that,’ she said. ‘I believe you killed those men because you had to. I also believe, as you do, that the world is better off without them.’ She was looking around the room. ‘Have you seen my sweater?’
‘Over there on the rocker. Under my stuff.’
‘Thank you.’ She pulled it out and tugged it down over her head. Then she retrieved a brush from her bag and stood before the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door.
He stood behind her, watching her reflection, as she began brushing her short, curly blond hair. ‘You know there’s nothing wrong with what I do,’ he said. ‘It’s an honorable profession. It’s important. And it’s what I care about doing.’
She turned and stroked his cheek. ‘I know that. I respect it. I don’t want to stop you being who you are any more than I’d want you to stop me being an artist.’
‘So there’s gotta be something more.’
‘Alright.’ She sighed deeply. ‘Since you seem utterly incapable of letting it go, yes, there is something else. Something that frightens me, and, try as I might, it’s something I can’t seem to get out of my head.’
‘And what is it that frightens you?’
Kyra didn’t answer right away. She stood there looking at his reflection in the glass. Seconds passed. Then a minute. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘just tell me what it is.’
‘Alright, if you really must know, Carol Comisky frightens me. In fact, she scares the shit out of me. Do you remember Carol Comisky?’
Of course he remembered Carol Comisky. She was the widow of a cop who’d been killed the year before. He’d had his throat cut and bled to death trying to stop a killer from attacking a witness. The same guy came within a hair’s breadth of killing McCabe as well.
‘Yes. Kevin’s wife. Kevin’s widow. What about her?’
‘Remember her standing there at the funeral?’
She knew McCabe remembered. He remembered everything. All the words he ever heard or read. All the images he’d ever seen. At least all the ones that were important enough for him to notice when he first saw them. He had an eidetic memory. The scene at the cemetery reassembled itself in his mind in extraordinary detail, right down to the last blade of grass. ‘Mostly I see a woman in mourning. No crying. Just sort of a grim, determined look on her face. Black linen suit. Black shoes. Low heels. Dark hair cut short. No hat. Three kids, all under six, standing next to her. Next to them are Kevin’s parents. Standing right behind, Shockley and Fortier, in full dress uniform.’
‘Look closer, McCabe,’ she said. ‘Look at her face. Her expression isn’t grim. Or determined. It’s angry. She’s looking right at us. You and me. And she’s pissed. Pissed at Kevin for becoming a cop. Pissed at herself for marrying him. Pissed at you because you’re the one who sent him up to that room and, I suppose, because you’re still alive and he isn’t. She’s pissed at me, maybe me most of all, because I’m not alone and she is. What I see in Carol Comisky is a woman, about my age, standing there with a bunch of little kids next to an empty hole in the ground and seeing any chance she ever had in life going right into that hole along with her dead husband.’
‘Her dead husband the cop?’
‘That’s right. Her dead husband the cop. And you know what else she’s thinking? She’s thinking if only her husband had been an accountant or a salesman or a tugboat captain – almost anything but a cop – she wouldn’t be burying him, and she wouldn’t be raising those three kids on her own, and all the flowery speeches from Chief Shockley, all the twenty-one-gun salutes, all the bagpipe players marching up and down in their stupid kilts playing “Amazing Grace” won’t make a shit’s bit of difference.’
‘She may get married again.’
‘Yes, maybe, but the odds are against her. And even if she does, that’s not really my point.’
‘Then what is?’
‘I understand if we get married the chances are you won’t get killed. Most cops don’t, and, as you point out every chance you get, this is Portland, Maine, and not New York or Baltimore or Detroit. The problem is, McCabe, even assuming you live to a ripe old age, I’ll still have to lie here nigh
t after night for the next fifteen or twenty years, while you’re out chasing some nutcase, worrying that you may not come home, that I may never see you again. Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe it’s cowardly. I don’t know. I do know that right now, I just don’t want to put myself through that.’
‘Kyra, you want us to break up because you’re worrying about something that almost certainly won’t happen?’
‘No, I’m not saying that.’ Kyra put her arms on his shoulders and looked into his eyes. ‘I love you too much to even contemplate giving you up. All I’m saying is, every time I think about us getting married and maybe having children, the image of Carol Comisky pops into my head, along with your brother Tommy’s wife and all the others who’ve been left behind.’
McCabe’s narcotics cop brother Tommy, Tommy the Narc, had been shot dead by a drug dealer five years earlier. ‘I know it’s my problem, not yours,’ Kyra said. ‘Maybe someday I’ll get over it and we can go on with our lives. But for now I’m just not ready. I’ll let you know when I am.’
‘Kyra,’ he said, ‘people die. Truck drivers get killed in accidents. Cowboys get thrown from their horses. And God knows how many sedate business executives die every day from heart attacks or cancer. When Casey gets her license, and that’s less than two years away, I’m gonna lie awake at night like every other parent in the world dreading the idea that the phone might ring and somebody will tell me she’s been killed or maimed in some horrible crash. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to keep her from going out or getting a license. Or that I wish I never had her. We can’t stop living our lives together because something bad might happen.’
‘I know. You’re right,’ she said. ‘Just don’t push me for now. It’s something I have to work out for myself, and one way or another I will. It won’t be the reason I don’t marry you. If that makes sense.’
‘It doesn’t. Not much.’ He let it go, but he wasn’t sure what he was feeling. Something between anger at being rejected and fear that he might actually lose her.
Kyra nodded, then went to the hall closet, retrieved a fleece vest, and slipped it on over her sweater. Her bright red L.L. Bean down parka went over that. She headed for the door. Before going out, she paused. ‘Remember, tonight’s First Friday, and I’ve got those four new pieces hanging at North Space.’
‘Our cause for celebrating.’
‘Yes. And I’m very happy we did. I’m very happy I have you. And I’m sorry if I’m making you unhappy. But this will pass.’
From his perch on the window seat, McCabe stared down across the bay and wondered if he could summon the emotional energy to make small talk with the art crowd. On First Fridays most of the forty or so galleries in Portland stayed open late, many with opening receptions for new work. North Space was the most successful and best established of the lot. Kyra was proud Gloria Kelwin, North Space’s owner, thought so highly of her work. She’d be dreadfully disappointed if he didn’t show.
On the other hand, he could just sit here and say the hell with it all. With Casey gone till Sunday night, he could sit and drink all weekend if he wanted to. He didn’t even have to go out for more booze. There were three fresh bottles of the Macallan just sitting in the pantry waiting for him. All the makings for his own Lost Weekend. His mind flashed on images of the alcoholic Ray Milland throwing his life away in the 1945 Billy Wilder classic. Another bit of detritus from McCabe’s alternative life twenty years ago, as a young wannabe director at NYU film school. Would Kyra have wanted to marry him if he’d gone into the movie business instead of the police business? He supposed so. The artist and the auteur. A better fit than the artist and the cop. Except he never would have met her. Alternative lives.
He watched the lights of a giant tanker, laden with half a million barrels of North Sea crude, work its way into Portland harbor. A couple of tugs pushed and prodded its blue hulk toward the marine terminal in South Portland where the oil would be pumped into holding tanks to await transmission via pipeline to refineries in Quebec. As he watched he wondered about the men who worked big ships like these. Lonely men, he imagined. Hard men as well. Used to living without the comforts of women. Would they think him soft or self-indulgent? Whining about a woman who gave him everything up to a point. And then stopped. He supposed they would, but he didn’t much care.
He got up, took a last sip of the whisky, walked to the kitchen, and poured the rest, more than half the glass, down the kitchen sink. Hell of a waste of fine single malt. He was already feeling the effects, though, and he realized getting drunk wasn’t what this was about. He washed out the Waterford glass, the last of a set of four his sister Fran, twenty years a nun, gave Sandy and him for a wedding present. He thought about the irony of that. Of Sister Fran, the daughter of a drunk and the bride of Christ, giving her younger brother whisky glasses to celebrate his marriage to a slut. A beautiful slut, but a slut nonetheless. When the marriage failed and Sandy walked out on him, she took two of the glasses with her to her new life as the wife of a rich investment banker. The third was broken in the move to Portland. This was the last, and it was precious to him. He dried it carefully and placed it back on its high shelf out of harm’s way.
McCabe glanced at his watch. Nearly six o’clock. If he was going to make it to Kyra’s opening at all, he’d better get moving. He called Casey’s cell to make sure she’d arrived safely at Sunday River. She had. He took a quick shower. Before dressing, he clicked on the small TV in the corner to look at the Weather Channel. Fifteen degrees. Wind chill of minus five. Going down to single digits overnight with heavy snow predicted for after midnight. Jesus. When was this goddamned cold ever gonna let up? It’d been brutal all winter. Even forced him to renounce his inner New Yorker and buy some thermal underwear at the Bean’s outlet on Congress. He found a clean pair still in their plastic wrapper and put them on. He hated wearing the things but had to admit they did make the cold more tolerable. His small closet was stuffed with his minimal selection of clothing plus boxes of stuff he hadn’t unpacked from the move to Portland four years ago. He picked out a pair of brown corduroys and slipped them on over the long johns. Then a dark brown crewneck pullover. Then his sport jacket. Brown wool, butter soft.
A present from Kyra, purchased just before Christmas at a high-end men’s boutique in Copley Place in Boston. ‘Somebody’s got to dress you decently, McCabe,’ she said at the time. ‘Since you’re obviously incapable of doing it yourself.’
He remembered the weekend with pleasure. Casey was away that weekend, too, visiting her mother in New York. Sandy had only begun seeing Casey again last year after three years of total abandonment. This was the first time she’d be staying in her mother’s apartment, meeting Peter Ingram, Sandy’s new husband. Thinking about it had been making him edgy. Anxious. He needed a distraction. Turned out a friend of Kyra’s from Yale was heading out of town and offered Kyra the keys to her apartment in Cambridge. So they snuck down, just the two of them, for a romantic interlude. The idea was to eat well and maybe take in a Celtics game – the Knicks were in town, and Kyra’s friend, an art director at one of Boston’s hot young ad agencies, had access to season tickets. On Sunday, they planned to see a Hockney show at the MFA. As it turned out, they did eat well. But skipped both the Celtics and the Hockney and wound up spending the weekend alternately in restaurants and in bed. It was probably what both of them had in mind in the first place.
He strapped on his service weapon, a heavy Smith & Wesson 4506. The PPD was changing over to Glock 17s. Lighter. More accurate. In McCabe’s mind a better choice. Though he hadn’t made the switch yet. He pulled the sweater down over the gun. He considered his choice of outerwear. Either a lined army field jacket. Warm, but it’d look ridiculous over the sport coat. Or the old black cashmere that’d come with him from New York. Not warm enough for this kind of winter, but it’d have to do. Next year, if it was cold again, maybe he’d trade it in on a fleece-lined parka. Maybe not. He still preferred dressing like a grown-up.
Frigid air smacked him full in the face as he stepped out of his condo. Even so, he decided to walk the mile and some to the North Space Gallery on Free Street. The snow wasn’t supposed to start until after midnight, and the idea of being picked up for drunk driving wasn’t appealing. He didn’t feel like messing with a cab. Besides, a good dose of cold fresh air might be the best way to clear the buzz in his brain. He didn’t want to look the clown for Kyra’s opening. Even if he might be. If he walked fast enough, maybe he wouldn’t succumb to frostbite.
A steady wind was blowing in off the bay. Force five or six on the Beaufort scale. McCabe’s mind played with the words. He didn’t have a clue what the Beaufort scale was, but he always liked the sound of it. It was the kind of thing David Niven might say before sending a squadron of Spitfires out to confront the filthy Hun. McCabe sometimes wondered if his own secret life might be a little too much like Walter Mitty’s. Is that why he became a cop? To live out his fantasies? Freeze, asshole! Easy to do in this weather.
McCabe turned right and headed down the Prom, pulling the coat more tightly around himself. Dating back to his early days on the NYPD, it looked and felt its age. Worn elbows. Fraying cuffs. Maybe Kyra’d take him shopping to Boston again. He turned right on Vesper. The wind was at his back now, which felt better. He passed a couple of dog walkers, identities and gender hidden under heavy hooded parkas and boots. Great night for a mugging. What did the mugger look like, ma’am? Well, Officer, he was wearing this heavy parka with a furry hood out front. Nanooks of the North. More than ready to tackle the tundra. He remembered reading Endurance. The British explorer Shackleton spent a winter on an Antarctic ice floe with only a lined Burberry for warmth. Stiff upper lip? Absolutely. Not because Shackleton was British. The lip was just frozen in place. He turned left on Congress and headed west down Munjoy Hill. In spite of a decade of gentrification, the Hill still retained the look and feel of its working-class roots. Smallish wood-frame houses built sometime around 1900. Most divided into apartments. Tonight they were all closed up tight, curtains drawn. He continued down the hill, passing a few couples heading for one or another of the bars and restaurants that were sprouting like weeds. The Front Room, the Blue Spoon, Bar Lola – and, of course, his home away from home, Tallulah’s. All crowded on a Friday night. Each with a few intrepid twenty-somethings hanging out front, desperate enough to brave the cold just to suck up their daily ration of nicotine.