Color of Love (37 page)

“She tripped, man.” Slack chuckled unsympathetically.

Jason turned on him. “Did you try something?”

“Man, nobody did nothin’ to her,” he said, annoyed.

Leah touched Jason’s arm to stop the accusations. She tried to laugh although it warbled.

“It … was my fault. Great footwork on the court; total spastic off.”

Jason looked at her as if he doubted the explanation, but after a moment he turned to Slack. “Okay, this isn’t a show. Where are you going?”

“To the joint,” Slack responded.

“All right, go.”

Slack squeezed past and disappeared around the corner, still chuckling. Jason turned back to Leah. Her eyes seemed overly bright and too wide.

“What happened out here? I thought I heard you scream.”

Her smile was self-deprecating. She didn’t have an explanation that could justify the disorientation. “I fell,” she answered. “Just like he said.”

Jason accepted that. He put an arm around her shoulder and led her back to the gym.

“You’re not used to this kind of exercise. Your legs feel like rubber, right?”

Leah nodded absently. “Right,” she whispered.

Everyone started to, leave. The boys traveling home or escorted to shelters and group homes. To her surprise a few even acknowledged her with good-byes, after a fashion.

“Hey, Jason. You givin’ me a lift home?” Slack asked when he returned to the gym.

Leah felt her exhaustion becoming heavy and oppressive. She waited.

“Not tonight. I asked Bob Chasen to drop you off.”

Leah sighed. She didn’t dare look to see Slack’s reaction.

“Hey, Jason, man,” Tall yelled after them as they made their way to the exit of the gym.

Jason looked back over his shoulder.

“She your woman?”

Leah looked up at Jason for his response and saw him blush. He smiled and reached to hold her hand. That was all.

Tall nodded. “She all right, man.”

Leah was watching the efforts of a toddler as he pushed away the attempts of his young mother to direct his curiosity. He stumbled after pigeons, pulled on the grass, tried to climb into his stroller alone. He squatted to pick up a leaf from the ground and aimed it straight for his mouth.

“Uh, uh, uh,” Leah heard the mother say, taking the leaf from the child and replacing it with a cracker.

The scene made Leah smile. She was both curious and fascinated. She didn’t know many children, knew no one who had babies. She wondered about the couple in front of her. How had they come together? When had they decided they were in love? When had it led to a life together? And a child?

Leah turned her head and saw that Jason was also watching the threesome. She knew that his thoughts were different from her own. Did the young couple and their child remind him of Lisa and Michael? Leah tried to discern from Jason’s steady gaze how much longing or regret lay behind the gray eyes.

She sighed and gave her attention absently to other people in the park. She and Jason never spoke of permanent. They never spoke of love. Leah wondered if it would ever come up. She turned her head to watch Jason for a second, studying the movements of his lips, the way he held his cigarette. She always knew when Jason was thinking about his past and all his losses, his mistakes. Leah knew she couldn’t change what had been, so she tried hard to concentrate on the now. Smiling, she reached over and pulled the remaining length from Jason’s mouth and tossed it away. Jason glanced at her, incredulous, but flopped back down with a shrug and chuckled.

“You’re going to stunt your growth,” Leah said breezily.

Jason rolled onto his side, facing her, propping his head in his hand. “I never realized you were so bossy,” he murmured.

“I’m not bossy. But I’m not going to waste my time on you if you’re determined to die of cancer,” Leah said tartly.

Jason’s chuckle was dry and ironic. “That’s the least of my worries. Lots of other things can do me in, sweetheart.”

He rarely used endearments and when he did, Leah always felt that that was when she was closest to him. She could feel Jason’s gaze upon her. Leah turned to meet the scrutiny and found a lazy, warm interest.

“When was the first time you fell in love?” Jason asked abruptly.

The question surprised Leah and made her wonder why he asked. She arched a brow. “Still trying to find out all my dark secrets?”

“Do you have any?”

“None that are interesting. Nothing I could be blackmailed with.” She sighed inwardly at the thought of Billy, then Philip, Ron, and Allen. “Anyway, it wasn’t love. It was infatuation. A deep crush that I thought at the time I would never recover from.”

She turned her head to look at Jason. He was watching her intently. How had the question of love come to mind?

“When did you first have sex with a girl?” Leah blurted out suddenly.

For a split second Jason was stunned, then he burst out laughing. “That’s not what I asked you.”

“But I want to know.”

He continued to laugh, shaking his head. Then he shrugged. “I don’t know. About sixteen, I guess. I did it with a cashier at the local market. I remember I kept going back for soda, for cigarettes, anything, for three days just to make sure I was reading her invitation right. It happened after she got off work one night. In the back of her car. In the store’s parking lot. She was twenty and gave me a lot of wet dreams for months.”

Belatedly Jason looked sheepish and gave Leah a wry glance. “I guess you don’t need all the details.”

“I didn’t know boys needed a reason to have wet dreams,” she murmured, looking at her hands. She saw smooth brown skin with slender, tapered fingers. Leah imagined that the cashier was probably blond, real or otherwise, with freckles and pink breasts.

“A ready, willing, and able older woman helps a lot,” Jason commented dryly. He sighed softly and looked off into the distance of the park. “The first time I thought I was in love was with Lisa. We met in high school. I’d drive her to classes, we’d meet for lunch, she helped me with English comp, baked me ginger snaps.”

Leah closed her eyes. “Sounds romantic and … sweet,” she said.

“We were too young to know anything. I proposed to her during halftime in the last football game my senior year. We went for pizza afterward to celebrate.”

Leah wrinkled her nose.

Jason grinned and nodded. “Told you I didn’t know anything.”

Leah suddenly felt tension spring to life under her rib cage. She wished the subject hadn’t come up. She looked at Jason, wondering where the conversation was leading. Was he trying to tell her something? She forced a light laugh so that her fears wouldn’t show.

“Only been in love once in your life?”

Jason lit a fresh cigarette. “I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure out what love is. Sometimes …” He left the rest of his thought hanging.

Leah’s tension sank to her stomach. “Well, you’re still one up on me. Never been married, never been engaged. Never been asked.”

Jason stared into space. “Ever have fantasies?” he asked softly.

“Lots of them.”

“Yeah. I guess girls do,” he murmured teasingly, letting his index finger stroke and outline her chin. “But … I think I was a big disappointment to Lisa. She didn’t think I was romantic … or sweet. I had to grow up before I knew about romantic.”

There was no sadness, no regret in Jason’s reflections. Leah could tell he was just reviewing the ways inexperience, hope, and love can lead a person into things, disappoint you and ruin your plans … and then save the day.

“It’s doubtful I’ve learned very much in all these years.”

Leah shook her head slowly and smiled at Jason. “You’re wrong, you know. You show real potential, Jason Horn.”

“You think so?” he asked. Then he grew quiet and pensive. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll never get it right. Maybe it’s too late.”

Leah didn’t answer right away, because along with the jitters in her nervous system that had been set in motion by the whole subject of love, she hoped desperately that Jason was wrong.

There had been a funeral for a fallen officer, and Jason was in full uniform. The service had been held at nine o’clock in the morning at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Whatever personal differences might exist between officers, today they were all united, drawn together by the death of one of their own. The tragedy of being killed in the line of duty happened just often enough during the year to make each of them angry, and vulnerable.

In summer blues they were dotted up and down Fifth Avenue, the rest of the citizens diverted to other streets. The enforced segregation made them all feel even more insular.

Joe and Jason had come in from Brooklyn in a black unmarked car, parking it illegally on Forty-eighth Street. Afterward Jason asked to be driven to Second Avenue to the building where Leah worked. Jason hated these funeral processions. It took too long afterward to stop thinking, it could have been me. He’d only ever been to three of these in all the years he’d been a cop. But this funeral was the first time that Jason felt the need to admit to someone he got scared and wanted reassurance instead of cutting himself off and working it out in isolation. He had no idea when the need had changed.

It was Gail’s idea to organize a small dinner party so that the two couples could get together. Leah didn’t say no, but she also thought that nothing good could possibly come from putting Jason, Allen, and her sister together in the same room. To put off a meeting, however, which Leah knew to be inevitable, would give the wrong signal. So she hoped against hope that all would go smoothly.

When Jason and Allen finally came face to face, there was a tentative and cool appraisal on both sides. They shook hands and tried to stare each other down, but neither would give in. Jason sensed, as only an adversary can, that Allen’s obvious disdain of him was more than male posturing.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Allen said by way of introduction.

“Sorry. Haven’t heard a thing about you,” Jason replied.

After that they understood each other perfectly.

Gail stood next to Allen, holding his arm. Leah was afraid to touch Jason, afraid that Gail would say something cutting, as was her wont. But after introductions Jason turned to slip an arm around her waist. He gave her a quick kiss. The kind where his mouth lightly captured hers and then slowly let go.

“Hi,” he whispered. His gaze was probing but warm and personal.

Leah returned his smile. But she could detect Gail and Allen’s disapproval.

“Easy, big guy,” Gail whispered with a smile, taking Allen’s hand and leading him to the sofa. They sat and she draped herself against him, stroking Allen’s arm. “That was only the starting bell. It’s going to be a long night.”

“You know,” Allen began in a conversational voice, “When we heard Leah was seeing a white cop we got worried. We thought maybe she’d lost it.”

Jason let his jaw tighten as he regarded Allen openly. He saw an attractive and strongly built black man with presence and self-assurance. But Jason also discerned arrogance and intolerance. Just like Gail.

Jason slowly sat forward in his chair. “Look, I’ve already been through this. I don’t think I want to be interrogated a second time.”

Allen leaned forward. “Take it easy, my man,” he said as if he were talking to someone who was about to become uncontrollable. “I’m just telling you how it comes down.”

Jason’s chuckle was dry and cynical. “You haven’t a clue how it comes down. It’s not Leah you’re concerned about.”

“Oooops,” Gail said softly.

Allen’s eyes narrowed. He adjusted his glasses. “What does that mean?”

“Here,” Leah said quickly, pressing a beer into Jason’s hand. For a moment their eyes met. She didn’t want Jason to have to act a certain way, or to be careful … or to be compromised. She didn’t want to be attacked, either. And Leah didn’t want another testy evening served up with the baked Virginia ham.

Jason relaxed and nodded imperceptively. He sat back again with his beer. He took a thoughtful sip. Leah turned away to serve drinks to Gail and Allen.

Jason put the beer down and took his time lighting a cigarette. “Why does it bother you? Me and Leah?”

Allen frowned, not disguising his resentment. “You know why. It isn’t acceptable. We’re her family. We have a right to be concerned,” he voiced authoritatively.

Leah set down the tray sharply. “Excuse me?” she directed to Allen with an affronted look.

Allen sat back, sighing in exasperation. He took a deep breath and mulishly became silent.

Leah stood with her hands poised on her hips. “I want you all to stop talking about me as if I’m invisible, okay?” She looked pointedly at Allen. “You are not family. Let us not forget from whence this all came.”

“Round one,” Gail whispered. “Isn’t this fun?”

“Stop it, Gail,” Allen said in irritation.

“I’m going to check on dinner,” Leah said. With an annoyed jerk of her head she left the room.

“What kind of beat do you work?” Allen asked. And then he smirked. “I bet you even have a black partner. Guys like you always do.”

Jason began to grin. He liked the way Leah had suddenly spoken up. For some reason it made him feel as if he had firmer ground to stand on and even more reason not to take this hazing. Allen had Gail. Jason was elated that Leah had decided she would have him. He hadn’t gone through all those years with Joe without learning something about the black male ego. He also had the satisfaction of knowing that Joe wouldn’t like Allen any better than he did.

“Nobody works a beat anymore. I do the usual stuff. And I work with kids.”

“Work with them?” Allen repeated skeptically. “I guess that’s better than shooting them.”

Jason’s body stiffened for a moment, an old ghost moving silently past him. He narrowed his eyes against the cigarette smoke. “The idea is not to shoot anybody. People don’t listen to you if you threaten them. Especially kids.”

“I don’t think I could be a cop,” Allen announced, bored.

Jason nodded. “That’s probably true. Always best to know your limitations.”

Watching Allen and Jason in conversation, Leah wondered if Allen would be so bold as to mention their past relationship. She was glad, however, that Gail was being reasonably civil, and didn’t seem inclined to join in as Allen and Jason circled like predators around one another.