“Cop.” Marino gave the nod as the Explorer stopped close to the plane.
“How do you know?”
“I always know,” he said.
The driver was in jeans and a leather coat and looked as if he’d seen life from every angle and was happy to pick us up. He packed our baggage in the trunk. Marino climbed in front and off they. sailed into one comment and story after another because the driver was NYPD and Marino used to be. I floated in and out of their conversation as I dozed.
“. . . Adams in the detective division, he called around eleven. i guess Interpol got him first. I didn’t know he had anything to do with them.”
“Oh yeah?” Marino’s voice was muted and soporific like bourbon on the rocks. “Some tear-ass I bet . : :’
“Naw. He’s okay . . :”
I slept and drifted, city lights touching my eyelids as I began to feel that empty ache again.
“. . . got so shit-faced one night I woke up the next morning and didn’t know where my car or crass were. That was my wake-up call . . .”
The only other time I had flown supersonic had been with Benton. I remembered his body against me, the intense heat of my breasts touching him as we sat in those small gray leather seats and drank French wine, staring at jars of caviar we had no intention of eating.
I remembered exchanging hurtful words that turned into desperate lovemaking in London, in a flat near the American Embassy. Maybe Dorothy was right. Maybe sometimes I was too much in my mind and not as open as I wanted to be. But she was wrong about Benton. He had never been weak, and we had never been tepid in bed.
“Dr. Scarpetta?”
A voice grabbed my attention.
“We’re here,” our driver said, eyeing me in the rearview mirror.
I rubbed my face with my hands and stifled a yawn. Winds were stronger here, the temperature lower. At the Air France ticket counter I checked us in because I didn’t trust Marino with tickets or passports or even finding the right gate without being an ass. Flight 2 left in about an hour and a half, and the instant I sat down in the Concorde lounge, I felt exhausted again, my eyes burning. Marino was in awe.
“Look at that, will you?” he whispered too loudly. “They got a full bar. That guy over there’s drinking a beer and it’s seven o’clock in the morning.”
Marino took that as his wake-up call.
“Want anything?” he asked. “How ’bout a newspaper?”
“Right now I don’t give a damn what’s going on in the world.” I wished he would leave me alone.
When he returned, he was carrying two plates piled high with Danish, cheese and crackers. He had a can of Heineken under an arm.
“Guess what,” he said, setting his breakfast snack on the coffee table next to him. “It’s almost three o’clock in the afternoon, French time.”
He popped open the beer.
“They got people mixing champagne and orange juice, you ever heard of that? And I’m pretty sure there’s somebody famous sitting over there. She’s got sunglasses on and everybody’s staring.”
I didn’t care.
“The guy she’s with looks famous, too, sort of like Mel Brooks;”
“Does the woman in sunglasses look like Anne Bancroft?” I muttered.
“Yeah!”
“Then it’s Mel Brooks.”
Other passengers, dressed far more expensively than we were, glanced our way. A man rattled Le Monde and sipped espresso.
“Saw her in The Graduate. You remember that?” Marino went on.
I was awake now and wished I could hide somewhere.
“That was my fantasy. Shit. Like that schoolteacher giving you tutoring after hours. The one who made you cross your legs.”
“You can see the Concorde through the window over there.” I pointed.
“I can’t believe I didn’t bring a camera.”
He swallowed another mouthful of beer.
“Maybe you should go find one,” I suggested.
“You think they’d have those little disposable cameras around here?”
“Only French ones.”
He hesitated for a moment, then gave me a dirty look.
“I’ll be back,” he said.