Chapter 4: You're so foxy

The following Friday Kalinda received a postcard at work. The front was white and empty, but on the back the words You're so foxy were scrawled. Though it was not signed it could only be from Zach. No one else would send her postcards, let alone with the daft phrase he had added. I mean, she thought, foxy? Who said that? That was something people said in the seventies and even then most people would have ridiculed it. She smiled wryly as she pictured him agonising over what to write before he decided on that. Now he was probably regretting his choice of words. As he should be.

She put the card into the waste basket. On second thought, she took it out again and shredded it. Alicia could have seen it and recognised the handwriting. Then she returned to her work. In the afternoon she stood in the back of the conference room while Will and Alicia questioned a small time dealer. The guy was a walking stereotype. He had the obligatory bling, the expensive and flashy designer clothes. Every other word he spoke was either 'ya know' or 'bro' and he did his best to look menacing, but wound up looking like an idiot. It was difficult to see from where she was standing, but she thought he might even have a golden tooth. His attorney was not thrilled that he was talking and kept advising him to keep quiet, but the crook ignored him completely.

After the criminal and his useless attorney had gone, Alicia started to sort out the files and notes in front of her. Will turned off the camera and told Kalinda to see whether she could find any of the dealer's known associates and hear what they had to say about him. She nodded, flipped shut her notepad and walked around the table. As she was about to leave the room the postcard suddenly popped into her mind and she smiled.

'What are you smiling about?' Will asked and Alicia looked up from her notes. Her gaze was disinterested, yet she did not return to what she had been doing and remained calmly staring at Kalinda. It was no shock to her that Alicia couldn't care less whether she was happy or unhappy and why. What was a bit undesirable was the pang Kalinda experienced in the face of her former friend's disregard.

So, here she was thinking about a meaningless postcard and feeling guilty. Would she have felt like this if another colleague had a son who was courting her in the most juvenile manner? She didn't think she would. In a fucked up way she still considered herself Alicia's friend.

'The golden tooth. It was so classy,' Kalinda said and Wills smirked. All Alicia did was allow her lips to form a smile briefly and then she busied herself with the papers again. A bit shaken Kalinda left the room. For the rest of the day she felt out of sorts.

(***)

That night she was seated in a boot. Usually she sat at the bar, but she was not in the mood for men walking up to her and trying out their pickup lines on her. From her seat she could see people come in, but if she leaned back she was invisible from all but one or two places in the bar. On the table in front of her was a shot of tequila. The minute she had ordered it she had known she wouldn't drink it. She wasn't in a tequila drinking mood. It was a drink reserved for when she was out with a friend, which never happened nowadays or for cheering herself up. While she did need cheering she sort of didn't want to be cheered up. Her gloomy mood suited her for now. She saw Zach as he walked in. Her sigh was so loud that several people turned their heads and Zach spotted her and approached. He was forever popping up at the most inopportune moments. Even in her mind.

'I'm here to have lunch with Alicia,' he said. Realising he was joking she smiled at him, which he took as an invitation. As he slid into the boot too, she chastised herself for encouraging him.

'Ok, I heard you sometimes come here, but this is the first time I've arranged a meeting, I swear,' he admitted. She asked him about the night of Alicia's promotion party, but he claimed to have been wandering around the city and happened to see her talking to the guard. It was an implausible story, yet she was inclined to believe him. Perhaps she was underestimating him. Like everyone he possessed the capacity to lie and he would have used it before. There was just an inkling of a feeling that told her he would not be very good at lying and that he would not lie to her. Why was that? Men lied to women all the time, especially when they were attracted to them.

'I shredded your postcard,' she said. For a moment he looked puzzled. His right foot tapped against the table leg involuntarily.

'What postcard? Why did you think it was mine? What did it say?'

Kalinda appraised him over the table. His blue eyes betrayed nothing. If he had not sent it, then who had? It had been callous of her to assume he had been the sender. Now she had been feeling slightly rueful for no reason whatsoever.

'It wasn't signed. It read 'you're so foxy',' she whispered and he flushed in embarrassment.

'You thought I would send that to you? That is like something straight out of Starsky and Hutch. Why did you shred it?' he asked. Apparently, he had really not been the one to send it. The fact that she thought he could have done it humiliated him, which was plain to see.

'Since I thought it was yours I thought Alicia might recognise the handwriting.'

'Kalinda, if I send you a postcard I would sign it. It would not be so lame and it would not be sent to your work. The last thing I would want to do is cause trouble for you at work,' he said. His casual use of her first name felt wrong. She felt that if he should call her anything he should call her Ms Sharma. He asked whether he could get her anything; she refused. After he excused himself to get a drink she eyed her shot of tequila. As he returned she remembered something she should have remembered sooner.

'Are you even allowed in a bar?' she asked. Her voice was hushed. As much as he did not want to cause trouble for her, she did not want to cause him trouble either. Alicia would find out he had been in a bar. With her. It was exhausting how it always came back to that: Alicia. Plus, Kalinda liked him.

'Probably not,' Zach answered, 'but I'm only having a coke.'

He added that sometimes it came in handy that he did not look his age. The tension she had felt at the promotion party was gone. Not a tension between them, but the feeling of unrest that his fixation on her had created. His gaze was sweeping over the other people in the bar until they came to rest on her shot glass. As he drank his coke he seemed perfectly contend to be quiet. Perhaps she had been wrong. It appeared he had given up attempting to seduce her and as a result she felt at ease. Searching for a neutral topic, she asked him what courses he was taking. Leaning forward slightly, he confessed his main course was economics.

'Not politics or the law,' Kalinda said.

'No.'

'You don't want to follow in the footsteps of your parents?' she asked. Sometimes she hardly understood herself. It was as if she couldn't consent to being comfortable. Peter and Alicia needed to be brought into the conversation. Because sitting there in a bar where colleagues of hers regularly came, talking to someone not of legal drinking age was not complicated enough.

'No. Once I did consider both and I think I could be good at that, but I don't want to be the kind of person who is good at that,' Zach told her and paused briefly before continuing, 'That was arrogant and insulting; all in one sentence. I'm sorry. It seems I'm always apologising to you.'

'There's nothing wrong with being confident and knowing what you want, or don't want,' she assured him. Her left hand closed around the shot glass and she downed the tequila in one go. It was more a night for slowly sipping at a tumbler of scotch or whisky, but it would not do to engage in heavy drinking in front of Zach. Lately, a lot of things wouldn't do.

'It's just that I see how my mother struggles with it. She loves her job, yet she feels she is often not on the right side. It is hard for her. And my father, well, he has fewer issues with it, but he is... ethically challenged,' Zach explained, trying to find the right words to describe Peter. She burst out laughing and clasped her hand in front of her mouth. Her face fell when she considered the irony of him telling her his father was naturally dishonest.

'Are you...' he began, but he hesitated. Instead of finishing the question he drank the last of his drink and left it to her to guess what he had meant.

'Ethically challenged? Yes, I am,' she responded. Regardless of the pitfalls he was unaware of, such as her being one of his father's indiscretions, she was astonished when she realised she was actually enjoying the conversation. That was not something Kalinda usually did. Conversations were mostly necessary to glean information and often they were structured more as interrogations than as talks. It momentarily confused her, until she stood up and announced she was going. Despite her protests he got up too and after retrieving an umbrella from the foyer he joined her outside.

A soft drizzle was falling. It did not bother her too much. In a sense it was refreshing. He had an umbrella that he was in the process of opening. She was not in any danger of getting soaked. What happened next was not the logical thing to do. She knew it wasn't. Yet, she asked.

'Want to walk me home safely?'

He responded by pretending to chop an assailant in half. It was a quasi-karate move and it made her laugh again. Kalinda had taken self defence classes a long time ago, but she didn't like the principle of self defence. The first thing you learned was helpful. Do not scream for help when you're attacked, because people are bastards and won't help. It was the idea behind the second lesson that rankled. Self defence was based on temporarily incapacitating your attacker so you could run away. Kalinda saw the sense in that, but nevertheless felt fleeing betrayed weakness. Furthermore, she could never be satisfied by simply incapacitating the idiot who attacked her. She wanted to hurt him and preferably permanently.

It wasn't until afterwards that she realised she had made a conscious decision at that point. Sex didn't just happen. Two adults decided it would happen. At the time it had merely been easier not to think about it. To pretend something else had acted. However, they both knew what her question meant. It was the first step and, against all odds, she had been the one to make it. After that, asking him to come up to her apartment was only one of many little steps and mistakes that followed.