I realize someone is knocking on my bedroom door. “Just a minute,” I call out, clearing my throat and wiping my eyes. I splash cold water on my face and tuck the Hermes perfume into the tote bag. I go to the door, expecting Marino. Instead, Jay Talley walks in wearing ATF battle dress and a day’s growth of beard that turns his dark beauty sinister. He is one of the handsomest men I have ever known, his body exquisitely sculpted, sensuality exuding from his pores like musk.
“Just checking on you before you head out.” His eyes burn into mine. They seem to feel and explore me the way his hands and mouth did four days ago in France.
“What can I tell you?” I let him into my bedroom and am suddenly self-conscious about the way I look. I don’t want him to see me like this. “I have to leave my own house. It’s almost Christmas. My arm hurts. My head hurts. Other than that, I’m fine.”
“I’ll drive you to Dr. Zenner’s. I would like to, Kay.”
It vaguely penetrates that he knows where I am staying tonight. Marino promised my whereabouts would be secret. Jay shuts the door and takes my hand, and all I can think about is that he didn’t wait at the hospital for me and now he wants to drive me someplace else.
“Let me help you through this. I care about you,” he says to me.
“No one seemed to care very much last night,” I reply as I recall that when he drove me home from the hospital and I thanked him for waiting, for being there for me, he never once even intimated that he hadn’t been there. “You and all your IRTs out there and the bastard just walks right up to my front door,” I go on. “You fly all the way here from Paris to lead a goddamn International Response Team in your big-game hunt for this guy, and what a joke. What a bad movieall these big cops with all their gear and assault rifles and the monster just strolls right up to my house.”
Jay’s eyes have begun wandering over areas of my anatomy as if they are rest stops he is entitled to revisit. It shocks and repulses me that he can think about my body at a time like this. In Paris I thought I was falling in love with him. As I stand here with him in my bedroom and he is openly in- terested in what is under my old lab coat, I realize I don’t love him in the least.
“You’re just upset. God, why wouldn’t you be? I’m concerned about you. I’m here for you.” He tries to touch me and I move away.
“We had an afternoon.” I have told him this before, but now I mean it. “A few hours. An encounter, Jay.”
“A mistake?” Hurt sharpens his voice. Dark anger flashes in his eyes.
“Don’t try to turn an afternoon into a life, into something of permanent meaning. It isn’t there. I’m sorry. For God’s sake.” My indignation rises. “Don’t want anything from me right now.” I walk away from him, gesturing with my one good arm. “What are you doing? What the hell are you doing?”
He raises a hand and hangs his head, warding off my blows, acknowledging his mistake. I am not sure if he is sincere. “I don’t know what I’m doing. Being stupid, that’s what,” he says. “I don’t mean to want anything. Stupid, I’m stupid because of how I feel about you. Don’t hold it against me. Please.” He casts me an intense look and opens the door. “I’m here for you, Kay. Je t’aime.” I realize Jay has a way of saying good-bye that makes me feel I might never see him again. An atavistic panic thrills my deepest psyche and I resist the temptation to call after him, to apologize, to promise we will have dinner or drinks soon. I shut my eyes and rub my temples, briefly leaning against the bedpost. I tell myself I don’t know what I am doing right now and should not do anything.