The Naked Detective (14 page)

The look was scary, but suddenly I knew what a real detective would say right at this moment, and I did my best to say it with firmness and certainty. "Come on now, Lydia, if you want us to work together, you have to be straight with me."

Your basic standoff. We allowed it a moment to sink in. Then Lydia settled back into flirty mode and gave her hair a winsome shake. She leaned far forward and did some slick maneuver that made her boobs swell. At the same moment, her goons put their huge hairy hands on the arms of my chair. A pretty graphic carrot and stick. "Pete," she purred, "it's so much better we stay friends."

Friends? She had me abducted when she felt like chatting and wiggled her backside when she wanted information. This was not my idea of friendship. Then again, with the rank warmth of the thugs pulsing on both sides of me, I had to acknowledge it was better than some other arrangements I could think of. "Friends," I echoed. "Believe me, I agree. So don't hire me. Please. Let's just keep it..." Keep it what? Weird? Insane? Finally I had the word for how we'd keep it. I gestured down at my tennis outfit and my chilly legs. "Let's just keep it casual."

She looked at my crotch, I swear she did. "Casual. Okay. But let me give you one piece of advice. Check out Mickey Veale. Paradise Watersports."

"Why?"

"Because he's a scumbag and a liar and a sneak."

"Your father was in business with him," I pointed out.

"So am I," she said. "What of it?"

I'm not the kind of person who believes in miracles.

Miracles, angels, affirmations, apparitions— all that muzzy-headed New Age shit. I mean, come on.

But let me confess that, when Lydia's goons finally drove me home and I climbed from their car with my racquets and towel, I beheld something that partook of the miraculous: My bicycle was there, chained to the palm I always chain it to.

As if doubting its reality, I went over and touched it. The fenders were dented, and rust lived in the dents. The handlebars were rough with tiny bubbles of corrosion and not quite aligned with the tires. It was mine, all right. The only thing foreign was the lock. But I knew where that had come from; it could only have been Maggie.

I imagined her roused from sleep as the cops clambered aboard
Dream Chaser
. Drowsily coming up her companionway, perhaps, in time to see me carted off. And caring enough to climb down into the night to rescue my abandoned bike, to keep it safe. I pictured her rolling it over the gravel toward her trawler, locking it, with a mute nuzzling intimacy, to her own; and my throat closed down with gratitude. It was a small thing, maybe—but what was devotion if not the habit and the piling up of small considerations?

I went into the house. As I stepped across the threshold I saw a key and a brief note that had been slid under the door. The note said,
Hope you're okay. Teaching at noon. Home after that. Please come see me when you can. M.

A flattering invitation, if less emphatic than sending bruisers to kidnap me. I stepped into the kitchen to check the clock. Just after twelve-thirty. This meant that if I stalled, say, another ten or fifteen minutes, I could show up just in time to miss the more humbling exertions—the contorting and the coiling, the straining up and the clamping down—and to join in as the class was moving into its deep-relaxation phase. Dessert without the bother of the meal. Why not? I walked around in circles for a little while, then traded in my tennis towel for one big enough to lie down on, and headed out again.

It was great being reunited with my bike. I rode slowly, savoring. A few houses down from mine, jasmine was in bloom. Half a block beyond, the sweeter, pinker smell of frangipani overwhelmed it. A midday heaviness was in the air. Cats didn't wander; bugs didn't fly. Lizards stood on top of rocks, and blinked, and puffed their throats out. The asphalt had softened enough so that I could feel the slightest sexy yielding underneath my tires.

I locked up outside the Leaf Shed, took my sneakers off on the porch, and tiptoed toward the studio. Inside, ten or twelve people with assorted bandannas and tattoos and eyebrow studs and nose rings were standing on their heads; it was one of those moments when you can't help wondering: What if a Martian spaceship landed right outside and this was the first thing that the little green men saw? The more advanced practitioners shot their legs straight up in open air; a couple of beginners in red leotards used the mirrored wall to support their inverted asses. The mirror doubled the already ample volumes, and the reflected image suggested something grossly floral—Georgia O'Keeffe on a very bad day. At the front of the room, Maggie was as graceful upside down as right-side up. Her back was long and it seemed to cost her nothing to hold her hips aloft. Her gray tights traced out the muscles in her thighs; her taut calves reminded me of full-to-bursting wineskins.

I spread my towel on the floor and lay down on it. Suddenly I was sort of sleepy. No way was I going to launch myself into a shoulder stand. I rested.

I rested on a freelance basis until the class came down off its shoulders, and then I rested as part of the group, as Maggie eased into deep relaxation. Padding silently amid the prone bodies, her voice a mesmerizing purr; she urged us to let our weight settle into the earth, our eyeballs to float lightly in their sockets, our tongues to be soft in our mouths. Above all, our minds should be still.

If thoughts came, they should not be held but allowed to pass like breeze through a wide-open room, neither possessing nor possessed.

This was the part that gave me trouble.

I could soften my feet and let my ankles flop as well as the next guy, but, lying there, eyes closed amid the hot smells of ancient tobacco and baking limestone, I couldn't stem the restless flow of thoughts. Thoughts came, and when they came, they stuck, attached by burrs of suspicion.

Around the time I should have been relaxing my liver and my pancreas, I became preoccupied with recollections of last night's interview with the homicide detectives. While it was happening, it had seemed rigorous and long, but now suddenly I wondered if maybe they'd let me off too easily and too abruptly. They'd been nasty and intimidating—and then they gave me the merest wrist slap and sent me on my way. Why? Was there some deal implicit in their clemency? Were they as nervous as I was about what else might come out if the meeting continued . . . ?

By the time I'd let these thoughts pass through, I'd lost the opportunity to ease my diaphragm and the little muscles between my ribs.

I groped for serenity, and was finally settling down to releasing the sinews of my collarbone and throat, when once again my mind was shanghaied. This time it was Lydia. Her off-the-wall idea of hiring me. Her overly generous offer of pay. Was it a fee or a bribe? And then there was this near obsession with Mickey Veale. Was this a festering vendetta between the two of them, or just a way for Lydia to divert attention from herself? Then again, Veale was more than a convenient beard. He was also, apparently, a principal in Paradise Watersports, which trafficked in Jet Skis and snorkels. . . .

"Let go of any tension in the jaw," Maggie was cooing.

Yeah, right.

"The forehead is soft, unlined, unworried. The skin at the hairline is supple...."

The skin at my hairline was crawly, and it itched. Afraid of letting down my teacher; I didn't allow myself to scratch. I breathed deep and got through to the end of class.

When it was over, people rearranged their bandannas, found their sandals, and started leaving. I stood up and bided my time. Maggie came over and stood close to me. But we both felt shy, I guess; we didn't touch.

"Thanks for the bike," I said.

She said, "I'm glad you're okay. What happened?"

"Got arrested." To myself I sounded awfully blasé. Like I got arrested every other week.

"That's terrible. Your forehead looks all tense."

"No big deal. I'd never seen the inside of a jail before."

Her gray eyes got wide and maybe a little moist with sympathy. "I feel like it's my fault."

"It isn't."

"I feel terrible. It must have been awful."

"Not really. A little sordid, maybe."

"The way I kept pushing you, trying to convince—"

I badly wanted her to stop blaming herself, and I finally stumbled upon an awkward but effective way of getting her to. I closed the narrow space between us, wrapped my arms around her back, and kissed her. It was not the seamless, dewy, wholehearted kiss that maybe it should have been. There was some fear in it, some hesitation, and since her lips were moving as I zeroed in on them, we didn't quite connect dead center. Still, it was enough of a kiss so that I could feel the tiny nub of flesh in the middle of her upper lip, and would remember forever that her mouth tasted of raspberries.

Then I pulled away. We stared at each other. There's a look that two people share when it is inevitable that they're becoming lovers; that they've become lovers, in spirit if not yet in deed. The look is the bond that sex confirms. I think that was the look we shared, though of course you're never really sure till after.

The moment went on a long time. At some point I had to speak. Anything I said would have seemed clumsy and irrelevant. But what I did say was especially ridiculous. "Have you ever ridden a Jet Ski?"

Maggie's eyelids quivered as her mind traced out the preposterous segue. After a beat, she said, "I hate Jet Skis."

"So do I. They're noisy, vulgar infuriating, and generally run by trailer-trash morons. I thought we'd go out for sunset."

We looked at each other again. There followed one of those delicious and excruciating silences through which a torrent of possibility noiselessly roars. Finally I braced myself and said, "Got plans for the afternoon?"

Not grinning then was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. I summoned up the decades of relative maturity and used their gathered gravity to clamp down every muscle in my face. My cheeks got so tight that my eyes watered and I heard a ringing in my ears. I like to think I kept the grin to a worldly little curl at the corners of my mouth.

Maggie stared at me and finally answered with the tiniest lift of an eyebrow. We left the studio together.

Flinty, dry rosés get no respect in this benighted country, though there is no finer accompaniment for, say, cold poached salmon—or for getting naked with a new lover in the middle of a weekday afternoon. So I went into the wine room and grabbed a good Bandol.

Opening it, icing it, my hands felt blockish, awkward. I was nervous—I admit it. I tried to figure out if Maggie was too. It didn't show in her posture or her movements. Unrushed, smooth as ever. With her usual lack of ceremony she opened up the fridge, found some cheese and olives, put them on a tray. Then she asked me if I had an extra robe.

Robes! Why hadn't I thought of that? Terry cloth, shawl collar—very elegant, very Hepburn-Tracy. I ran up to my bedroom and grabbed a couple.

Maggie slipped into the bathroom to put hers on. I tried to feel suave and cool about this; I failed. She was in my house and removing all her clothing. This was an amazing concept. Her breasts would press against the inside of a garment that I myself had worn; her nipples would touch the very same terry cloth loops. Her freed loins would be barely hidden by curtains of cloth that would shift and flutter and separate with every breeze and every motion. Nakedness as close as a loosely tied belt.... Forget about whodunit and what was in the goddamn pouch—this was suspense.

She came out of the bathroom. Small faint freckles ran down her chest and underneath her collar. There was intimacy in the way she'd folded up the sleeves. I could manage nothing better than a tight congested smile. I stepped inside to change.

The panels of my robe would not lie flat. For some reason I thought of that old saw about hiding one's light beneath a bushel basket. Okay, let's not exaggerate—a half bushel would work. I arranged myself as best I could and went back into the kitchen.

Maggie had taken the food and wine and moved out by the pool. I joined her at a little table in the shade. Fronds were lightly rustling and rattling; they were silver from reflections off the water and they sounded like maracas. The air smelled faintly of chlorine, more faintly of iodine wafting off the ocean. We clinked glasses, though didn't toast to anything in particular. Arousal was making it hard for me to talk. We sipped some Bandol and nibbled some olives. After a while I reached across the table and gently seized her collar. I held the bunched cloth as though it were her flesh, and pulled her softly toward me. We kissed.

Her mouth was cool from the wine and salty from the olives.

I asked if I could see a little more of her. She answered with her eyes, and I coaxed apart the panels of her robe; I felt the friction as the nubby cloth slid against her belt. I saw that the faint freckles stopped at the tops of her breasts. The skin between them was very pale but had a russet cast. There was a beautiful rounded chevron at the place where her last rib arched above her midriff. I reached once again for my wine with a hand that was trembling slightly.