Chapter 3
Two evenings later
"Iodine or ointment?"
In her right hand, Joss held up the dark little bottle caked on the rim with its dreadful liquid. In her left she squeezed the bottom of a tube of antiseptic.
John peered into the mirror in her bathroom, and they leaned forward together to examine once again the three scarlet scratches festooned across his left cheek.
They were both dressed in flannel – a gray and blue plaid shirt over black boxer shorts for him, pink striped pajamas for her.
"She got you pretty good, looks like!"
Joss felt bubbly, a fond smile dancing across her mouth as she stood beside him. He shifted from side to side, his bare toes curling against the cool tiles. The muted blue shades of the shirt did something wonderful for his eyes, but she wasn't sure if she wanted to tell him that just yet.
"Well, I don't know…"
He closed his eyes to block out the reflection of his battle scars, but she could see the bobbling of his Adam's apple which signaled he was on the verge of laughter too.
She insisted on showing off her expertise as she ran a finger over his cheek: "That's natural nails right there. No acrylics can leave marks like that!"
He sighed elaborately and pointed at the iodine.
"Going old school, hunh?"
She never doubted he would pick the traditional treatment, but it was reassuring to have her assumption confirmed. Somehow this tiny thing, just this little affirmation buoyed her confidence, made her feel that she could read him again.
She unscrewed the bottle, dipped a cotton swab into its clotted depths, and balancing on tip-toes, dabbed at the scratches until they were painted completely. He winced and she thought he looked handsome and brave with this war decoration. She would find a way to let him know that too in time.
"Tell me again: how big was this Reva woman and how did she take you down like this?"
She kept her voice soft and sing-songy, to make sure he knew she was just teasing. His raised eyebrows and quirked mouth showed he got her tone and was happy to return it.
"Five two, maybe three. One hundred and fifteen tops. But she didn't 'take me down' exactly. I handled her alright. I mean, after Dean Pinderhughes clocked her with a Yoruba sculpture she kept handy right there in her office, it was pretty easy to get Reva handcuffed."
They both laughed at the improbable images cast by his thumbnail account of the latest case.
First aid treatment complete, Joss led John by the hand to bed where they settled under the fluffy white comforter.
She picked up her Aunt Juliette's colorful old quilt from the floor and folded it around his shoulders, clucking softly as if to an invalid. She extinguished the lamp on her side of the bed, so that the cottony moonlight was their only illumination.
They both leaned back against the headboard, stretching their legs out straight, little toes touching under the covers.
If his face was scratched so was his ego, even though he accepted her teasing, so she let him turn the conversation to her role in solving the case.
"How did you and Finch narrow down all those suspects to pinpoint Reva Chang anyway?"
She was ready to boast so that simple prompt was all she needed to set her off.
"I just figured that we should start where we begin any investigation: if Galaxy Pinderhughes was the number, then find out who knows her, who works with her, who worships with her, who sleeps with her, who does her nails and tightens her dreadlocks. Those are our suspects. Either they want to kill her or she wants to kill them, straight forward as that."
John nudged his shoulder into hers and snorted softly.
"That seems remarkably cynical, Detective."
"Just realistic, wise guy. Works every time."
"O.K., so skipping the technical mumbo jumbo, I figure the machine spit out all sorts of lists once Finch asked for it."
"Yeah, within a few seconds the screen was just jumping with all these black tables floating in front of our eyes showing the names, ages, addresses, and nature of the relationship to Dean Pinderhughes."
"Hundreds of people?"
Joss could see a familiar sharpness in John's eyes, signs of a keen involvement in her story, even though his slumped posture suggested studied disinterest.
"Thousands. So I said to Harold, just give me the people working with Pinderhughes at Hudson University for starters."
"That's still over three thousand employees, Joss."
"Well, sure. We kept the three thousand, but sorted by educational background. I wanted to find out every person at Hudson who went to school with Pinderhughes. The university people I know have long memories and hold grudges like jackals gripping that last bite of carrion. If anyone wanted to kill her it wouldn't be just because of some new offense, some outrage that happened last week. The roots of the hatred had to go back years, maybe decades."
Reese pushed the account over the next hurdle with ease.
"Yeah, decades. Three to be exact. So you found out that Pinderhughes had been at college with Davis Chang?"
Joss nodded. "Galaxy was the crusading editor of the Oberlin student paper when he was the crusading president of the student senate."
"True love on the barricades, hunh?" His lip curled in a Presleyian sneer as he finished his rhetorical question.
"Hey, look who's all cynical now!" Joss bumped shoulders in imitation of his earlier gesture. "Yeah, they hooked up back then, but got unhooked pretty fast after graduation.
"And thirty years later they both end up at Hudson. She's Dean of Arts and Sciences, he's chair of American Studies. File it under S for Small World."
John shook his head at this thicket of academic entanglements.
"And how does Reva fit into all this?" He touched an index finger to the scratches on his cheekbone delivered by the irate young woman.
"Dr. Chang married Reva when she was still a graduate student of his. Just over two years ago."
"Yeah, but where's the motive? What made Reva so burned up about Pinderhughes that she wanted to murder her?"
"I asked Harold to run a list of recent publications by Hudson faculty and crosscheck for any mention of Galaxy's name. Nada. Zip."
Joss made her lips pop to emphasize the negatives.
"But then the computer came up with a new book by Chang, out just last week. When the screen flashed the dedication page, we had it all right there."
She leaned back and crossed her arms over her breasts, hoping that the smugness didn't overtake the satisfaction in her voice.
"O.K. I can see you're dying to tell me. So what was in Chang's dedication?"
Joss laughed and bent her face into the crook of his neck.
"Don't hate me, but it was Shakespeare. Hamlet to be exact."
"Fine. I'm holding off my hate. For now. Give me the quote."
"Davis Chang wrote: Quote I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a
king of infinite space—were it not that I have bad dreams Unquote. That pretty much told the whole story, I figure."
John's face split into a mischievous grin. Without missing a beat he offered the solution to the riddle.
"So the infinite space is Galaxy, right? And he would be her king if not for those bad dreams. Which would be Reva."
"Bingo!" She clapped her hands in triumph.
"As soon as Reva got hold of a copy of her husband's new book and got a load of that dedication, she started planning ways to eliminate her rival once and for all."
Joss's breathing was speeding toward panting and she could feel the warmth rising in her cheeks at the triumphant solution to the case.
"So now you're all hot for the machine, are you?"
His eyes caressed her face, but she felt he wasn't really teasing her despite the lightness of his phrases.
"Should I be jealous?"
"I've seen how it works now, John. I've seen its power, its scope. The complexity and daring of Harold's creation dwarfs anything we've ever experienced or ever could hope to know. It's quite literally a dream brought to life."
"And you don't have doubts about privacy issues?"
"Sure, I worry about that. I know Harold does too. But the good we can accomplish far outweighs those concerns, I think."
"A true believer now, are you?" His somber tone registered the seriousness of her change of heart.
And then in a flash, amusement scampered across his face and the wrinkles deepened around those remarkable eyes. He lowered his voice and blew a whispery question across her ear.
"So, how would you feel if I told you I was surprised to see you were the second tallest girl on your seventh grade basketball team? Still short, but kinda cute too!"
"You've seen those pictures?"
"Sure. It's all in your file, Detective. The one the machine keeps on you. It's pretty comprehensive."
Joss sputtered but failed to come up with a coherent rejoinder, which gave him the opening to continue unpacking his research discoveries.
"Your back-in-the-day hairdo was pretty amazing too: sort of short shingles up one side and then longer drapes down the other."
He waved his hands around his head in approximation of the whimsical contours of her middle school hair arrangement.
"And bangs chopped off way high! Was there a name for that look or were you just free-styling?"
She lifted a handful of hair over her ear and flicked a few strands like a fringe tossed by the wind.
"You mean like this?"
Shifting so that she could face him squarely, Joss settled over his legs, balancing on her knees so that her weight floated above his thighs without pressure. Using both hands, she held her hair on top of her head, arching her bare throat towards him.
She saw his eyes drop toward the scar on her neck. He stretched out a finger to touch the gnarled tissue there as she held her breath. As she watched, his transparent expressions flitted from light to dark in an instant. A smoky gloom settled over his eyes and he blinked twice.
He pressed three fingers lightly against her skin, just grazing the twisted ridge as his glance moved slowly from her clavicle to her jaw and then her mouth.
"I'm scared, Joss."
"I know."
"This…all of it. Everything. Just knocked the ground out from under my feet."
She tried a different simile to signal her understanding.
"Yes, I feel like I can't catch my breath yet. Like I've been punched in the gut and can't inhale."
But he wanted to run with his thought now that he was finally talking out loud.
"You ever been in an earthquake?"
She shook her head no and lowered her body onto his legs. Resting her hands lightly on his shoulders, she smoothed the flannel as he continued.
"I was in two: Once in Islamabad, then in Puebla, Mexico. Both times the feeling was the same: first you think it's your head or your stomach playing tricks on you. Like you're hung-over or sick or something. Then you realize it isn't in you, but outside you. The walls are shimmying, the street is rolling. The earth is falling out from under you. And you can't do a damn thing about it."
She raised her fingers above the soft collar and let them flutter against the hair at the line behind his ears. The vibrations carrying his voice thrummed against her palms.
"You feel so small in an earthquake. Lost and weak in the… Just the size of it all." He let out a shuddering breath.
"And now, I'm scared. Never was before, but now I am."
She leaned forward and touched her lips to his, her mouth open to accept his warm exhalations.
After several moments of silence, she spoke.
"I always thought I would get killed in the line of duty."
John smiled ruefully and coupled his shattered belief to hers.
"And I always thought I could protect you from everything."
When she had left a flurry of kisses on his eyelids, she concluded:
"Turns out both of us were wrong."
Talking done for the while, she carefully opened the buttons on his shirt, letting her fingers float over his chest until she could feel the heat wafting from his skin. His ears were pink and warm.
He kept his arms at his sides, even when she pushed the shirt off of his shoulders. When he slid down so that he was prone below her, she didn't try to work his wrists out of the cuffs, letting the sleeves and tail bunch under his back where he lay.
Splotches on his left shoulder had turned a warm ivory, erasing the angry yellow of an old bruise. As she watched, the knobs and sinews there flexed under her flying fingers, the muscles of his neck and shoulders straining for contact with her nails. Binding his arms caused the biceps to stretch and twitch as her fingers traced the bluish green veins there.
She studied the gentle rise and fall of his hard breast under her curving palm, the way the hairs there seemed to shiver as she leaned close. A fine veil of moisture rose on his flesh and when she exhaled his copper-colored nipples puckered in response. She drew her teeth against these tender nerve endings, nipping freely since he couldn't escape.
He moaned then and she drew her tongue along his ribs, leaving a filmy gauze that she could provoke to prickling tension with a plume of air.
With her ear hovering just above his chest, his heartbeat was like a whisper in the blood. So she kissed that place and another and another and another until she reached his trembling navel.
It excited her that she could orchestrate his body's responses with mere murmurs, undo his steely composure with a cool breath across the skin. To test her control, she puffed and sent a constellation of goose bumps skittering down his heated flanks.
Her loose hair draped across his stomach and laced with the wispy spray of darker strands that trailed down from the navel. Her tongue embroidered such fine patterns over and along and under the waistband of his boxers that he prayed to her for pity.
She raised up then and slowly undid the buttons on her pajama top. When it was open she let the lapels float over her breasts but didn't remove the shirt.
Between her breasts an airy silver chain suspended a dented bullet casing. She said nothing as the amulet bobbed over her heart, but she noted how his eyes started slightly at the sight. His lips parted as if he wanted to speak but couldn't. The pink interior of his mouth, that vulnerable moisture there, sent shivers dazzling through her insides.
She whisked the billowy pants off with a single gesture and resumed her place over him.
Gasping, his words were barely audible.
"Now me. Please."
She slipped off the boxers at last and took him into her body.
Flying above him, she felt transported, freed and light. His weight inside her was a solid anchor, rocking with her movements, rooting her even as she soared.
With her hands grasping his waist for leverage, she rose to make a space between them.
As she hovered over him, she curved her neck to better marvel at the perfect joining of their bodies: the clasping of lips and rustling of hair and gliding of hips and lacing of limbs; the joyful whooshing sound they made as they closed and the anticipatory whisper when they parted; inhaling as the rigid flesh met the yielding, then exhaling, then inhaling again.
When she was ready, she let her fingers drift down her belly. She touched the crisp curls and her own tiny erection, her fingertips darting in a tight pattern as he watched.
"Ah," he breathed. And she sighed, "Yeah."
Just before she climaxed, a hush calmed the atmosphere and she closed her eyes. She felt a hot breeze waft over her damp breasts and belly, the air feathering and shimmying around her face when she opened her mouth to cry out his name and God's.
With his arms still bound, he came in waves of silent pulses, searching, seeking, thrusting into her until he was exhausted.
Blowing gently, they lay together for several minutes. She slipped to his side as she always used to do.
But this time she stopped herself from curling up there. Pulling him upright, she drew the flannel shirt from his arms, helping him work his hands free.
Joss felt that a crisis had been surmounted, some dilemma dissolved in the fumes of their desire. She didn't want to analyze or understand or scratch away at what she had with John right now.
She doubted this was happiness, knew this wasn't security. But it was good and it was true and it was real.
So she took off her shirt too and arms entwined, they pressed their chests together. Breathing in unison they fell asleep, the bullet nestled between them.