The Girl in Times Square (31 page)

She stopped taking the Alkeran. Stopped cold. It was doing nothing for her counts and it was affecting her SEX Life. It was either cancer or SEX. Lily chose to have both.

Then, a miracle! The following week the platelets were up to 150, without any drugs! The white cells were not elevated! The red was almost normal. DiAngelo was very impressed with her platelets and the flush to her cheeks; he said her blood looked good and clean. He shook her hand and sent her home.

Lily skipped from the hospital on 66th down Fifth Avenue, past St. Patrick’s Cathedral, past the pews and the priests and the crying rooms. She couldn’t wait to get home before she called him, so she beeped him from the noisy street near the Empire State Building. When he didn’t call back in five minutes, she beeped him again.

“Guess what?” she burst when he finally called. “I’m clean!”

“Is that so?”

“No…I mean I’m
clean.
”

“That’s great. Thanks for letting me know.”

“My counts are all up. No more chemo, Spencer. Do you understand? No more Alkeran. No more tiredness, throwing up, feeling horrible, looking horrible.”

“I understand.”

“Where are you?”

“In the car.”

“Your police car?”

“Yes.”

“Are you alone?”

“No.”

“Hmm.” Lily was still out of breath, but so giddy, so happy, and feeling a little mischievous. “But
sometimes
you’re alone in
your police car,” she drawled, lowering her voice to bedroom.

“Yes.”

“Mmm. Say you’re alone drivin’ in your car, and you find me in the street, like now, say, being rowdy, disobedient, suspect me perhaps of being…indecently exposed, would you, mmm, pull me over?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe turn me around, pin my hands behind my back, splay my front against the hood of your car, my back to you…”

“…Yes.”

“Put the cuffs on me…”

“All right then, thanks for calling.”

“And search me between my legs…”

“Right, yes, that was very helpful. Call me if you have any more info.”

“Because, Detective O’Malley, I’ll confess right now, under my short short denim skirt, I’ve got a completely bare p—”

“Thanks, you have a great day yourself.” He hung up as Lily laughed with joy.

Gabe was driving and he looked over at Spencer, who sat staring straight ahead. “Nice charade there, O’Malley. You think your terse little yeses and nos are going to fool a homicide detective?”

“Oh, nothing can get past you, McGill,” said Spencer, trying in vain to calm the fire in his loins.

At lunch they walked up 5th Street to Second Avenue. Gabe pointed to a public phone booth on the corner, where stood Lily, her back to them. Spencer took her in, Gabe said isn’t that your friend, and then Spencer’s beeper went off. Gabe raised his eye brows. Spencer glanced at the display.
Harlequin
it said.

He motioned to Gabe to keep quiet, moved his gun back a little so it wouldn’t accidentally hurt her and came up behind
her, gripping her with both hands just above her hips. “Very
very
naughty,” he said into her ear.

He knew she would get scared, and she did, she squealed and whirled around, his hands remaining on her hips, and then saw them, and relaxed, punching Spencer lightly in the chest as he stepped away from her and laughed. “Detective O’Malley, isn’t it against the law to frighten young civilian women?” she said. “Hello, Detective McGill.”

“Hello, Lily. Nice to see you again.”

The three of them stood. “You boys are going to McCluskey’s for lunch?”

“Yes. Would you like to join us? You just paged Detective O’Malley. Is everything all right?”

“Yes, yes.” She squinted at Spencer. He squinted back. “No, you two go ahead, I’m sure you don’t have much time.”

“We don’t. Let’s go, O’Malley.”

Spencer’s eyes were only on Lily. “Gabe, can you give me a minute? I’ll meet you inside.”

Gabe slapped Spencer’s back. “You know what, how about if I just meet you back upstairs at two. We need to be in Trenton by three-thirty, so don’t be late.”

As soon as Gabe turned his back, Lily moved closer to him, so close, and looked up smiling so happily, and he moved closer to her, sliding his hand around the small of her back. When Gabe at the doors of McCluskey’s glanced back at them, Lily, in a jean skirt and a cropped pastel shirt, with spring ponytailed hair, was completely encircled by Spencer in a suit and tie, in a crowd on Second Avenue, being kissed by him as if the war was over.

Saturdays Lily hired a Lincoln Towncar to come pick up her and her work and take them to her spot on 8th, where half a dozen people might be waiting. Waiting! For her to show them what she drew that week.

Her art was full of Spencer and herself. Lily painted them eating waffles in bed, and in Odessa, painted them walking
through Tompkins, having ice cream on the corner of 9th and Avenue C, sitting having hot dogs in the well of the Twin Towers.

The kissing pictures always went first. Lily started drawing more of them. No matter how many she drew—and one week she drew twenty-seven—they always went first and to the last one.

“I’m glad you’re immortalizing me,” said Spencer, “but are you keeping any for yourself, or am I going to find myself one day hanging in Wal Mart next to the stationery and party supplies?”

“Next to the hardware, maybe.”

Spencer kissing her neck from behind, near his police car, with the lights flashing. Spencer kissing her hands across the Odessa diner booth, Spencer and Lily kissing in front of the April tulips on the streets of New York. Lily in Spencer’s lap on a bench in Central Park, her arms around his neck, her lips on him.

“All right, saucy, you’re not drawing me naked, are you? I draw a line at that.”

Lily showed him that she did draw him naked, standing in front of her, while she was sitting on the bed. The artist’s eye was on him, fully frontal, while she was seen from behind, her bare back exposed, just her eyes turned up to him, her breasts turned up to him. The picture was so sexy that Lily had to hide it behind eight others, but even then, the voluptuous span of it was overwhelming her studio. Spencer breathed out when he saw it. “This is what you do when I’m at work? You do this from memory? It’s unnerving. I thought artists needed models to draw? I thought that was mortal man’s only protection?”

“You’re not safe from me.” Lily grinned. “I see you fully at all times.”

“Do you have to see me so fully naked?” But his delight and hunger were apparent on his face.

In Lily’s exquisite April, joy was wildly brought and wildly given.

They were lying in her bed. She was staring at him, circling his lips, his face with her ink-stained fingers. “Spencer?”

“Hmm. Talk to me but don’t stop doing that.”

“Tell me about Mary.”

“Oh, no. All right, stop doing that. What about her?”

“I don’t know. I never asked before, it wasn’t my place.”

“Is it your place now?”

“I don’t know. Is it?

“What do you want to know, Liliput?”

“Are you…still seeing her?” Lily couldn’t believe she was asking. Was she going to be the other woman? Is that what she had been? It hurt her to think it, drawing parallels that led her to demon rooms within. But she couldn’t not ask. She didn’t even know what she was going to do with the wrong answer.

“No.”

Lily only realized she was holding her breath after she let it out. Spencer laughed and kissed her face. “You’re a funny one. Lily, I can barely handle one woman at a time. My life simply won’t allow for your brother’s personal complexities.”

“Oh. That’s good. When did you stop seeing her?”

“Early March.”

“You were seeing her until March?” Why was that so sharply, unpleasantly surprising?

“Yes, on and off.” Spencer gathered her into his arms. “She was my insurance against the complexities of Lily.” He kissed her forehead.

“What does
that
mean?”

“I didn’t want to be accidentally swayed by your ice hard nipples that you were so gamely parading for me, trying to lure me into your bed.” His fingers, his mouth, went around them.

“Spencer!”

“What? Lily, for a long time you were unbelievably vulnerable, then sick, then vulnerable again. Sometimes it hurt for me to even
think
of coming to see you, much less actually sitting on your couch. To a man, such susceptibility screams have sex with
me, have sex with me now. The flesh is weak. I didn’t want a base appetite akin to hunger to cloud my judgment. It’s clouded enough as it is.”

“You kept sleeping with Mary so that your judgment would not be clouded by your wanting to sleep with me?”

“Now you got it.”

“So what changed?”

“I really really wanted to sleep with you, Lily.”

She wanted to draw sustenance from him. She wanted him every day, and realized that every day was not enough. She wanted his hands around her, she wanted from him his humor, his Irish blood, his lips, his heart, his whole person, his soul. She wanted to say so much and couldn’t find the words. She drew him obsessively and hoped that spoke to him louder than her words ever could.

She hadn’t meant to do it. Falling this crashingly in love with Spencer didn’t take Lily by accident. It took her by storm.

They were asking for Spencer upstairs. He just couldn’t understand it. He hadn’t pursued any new information on the McFadden case in months and Harkman was permanently out of commission. So why was he being hauled into the lion’s den again?

He sat with his arms crossed, his legs crossed. He hadn’t even nodded when he walked into the room, did not speak a hello.

“We are not the enemy, Detective O’Malley,” said Liz Monroe, reacting to his visible hostility.

“I have a job to do,” said Spencer coldly. “Twenty-five separate special investigations into missing persons, all open, all pressing.”

“We also have a job to do,” she said no less coldly. “We investigate allegations of corruption and grave misconduct by our fellow officers.”

“I know very well what you do, Ms. Monroe. Do you have new witnesses? Have you collected and analyzed some new records and evidence you would like to share with me?”

“Yes.”

“Shoot.”

“Detective, a Pontiac Firebird that fits your car’s description was spotted very late at night at the Old Greenwich train station. Some coincidence, wouldn’t you say? What looks like your car
is parked two miles away from Nathan Sinclair’s house and then he turns up dead?”

“Ms. Monroe, you cannot be serious. You can’t. What you’re saying…” Spencer shook his head, then laughed. “Come with me to the Old Greenwich train station right now. I will show you fifteen Firebirds.”

“The parking lot was empty then. It was night.”

“The Long Island parking lots are not empty even at night, but whatever, I don’t know anything about the Greenwich station. Perhaps it wasn’t empty. But I’m sure if you talk to enough people, you will find that there was a quote unquote dark blue Firebird parked at the local gas station, at a local diner, at a Dunkin’ Donuts down the street, and at the empty shopping mall. Come on now, Ms. Monroe. What else? I’ve got work to do.”

“But the person who gave us this information didn’t know you drive a Firebird, detective. He happens to be an owner of a local body shop, so he knows his cars. He simply described what he saw in the parking lot that night.”

“All right, Ms. Monroe. It doesn’t change any of the things I just said. Because you see, no matter what car your expert body shop owner saw at the train station,
my
Firebird was on its way back to Long Island at midnight. Perhaps your witness saw a dark Firebird passing on Interstate 95, also two miles away from Nathan Sinclair’s house, around midnight. Now
that
could have been me.” Spencer almost snickered but didn’t want to make her more aggressive. “Where is all this information coming from?”

Liz Monroe didn’t answer, writing things furiously in her notes, finally letting him go “for the time being,” but Spencer knew this wasn’t over. Now that they were seriously digging, they wouldn’t stop until they found something.

It was May. It was moving toward May 14. It was May 14. It was a difficult day. Lily wasn’t feeling well anyway, and on top of it, it was May 14, and the mind could not escape from it. It was a Sunday, and Spencer was with her. He had been with her the day before, too, even though Saturdays for one reason or another were not great days for him. Their baseball game day was great, but other Saturdays were much less successful. He brooded. This Saturday Lily brooded, too. She had her morning in the Village. She’d painted Amy all last week, sold Amy this week, sold a beautiful oil on canvas of Amy for seven hundred dollars, but even the person who bought it said, “No love this week?”

Yes, love. Love for Amy, Lily wanted to say.

She went to lunch with Paul, with Rachel. She couldn’t call Jan McFadden.

And on Sunday night, in bed with Spencer she cried in his arms, and he tried to comfort her.

“Spencer,” she said, “Tell me honestly—”

“Please, Lily, don’t ask me in that tone to tell you anything honestly.”

“Tell me what you tell Mrs. McFadden when she asks you? When she asks if you think Amy is alive or dead.”

“She never asks.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Well,
I’m
asking you.”

“Please don’t.”

“Tell me. Tell me.”

“I think she’s dead. I think she’s been dead since May 14 of last year.”

“Oh, Spencer.” How upset Lily was, how sad. He held her, kissed her.

“I think in her heart, Mrs. McFadden must fear that, too,” Lily said. “I think she must. I’ve never seen anyone less able to deal with her life. I mean, last month, she couldn’t even put together a proper birthday party for her kids because Amy wasn’t there. She just stood and cried into the sink. We didn’t know what to do. Her husband was so upset with her, you know?”

For many minutes, Spencer didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say. Lily was lying in the crook of his arm, and she couldn’t see his face, and wasn’t that interested in it anyway. She wasn’t looking for his reactions, she was trying to understand her own. So the silent minutes dripped by unnoticed by her, and if his body had stiffened, if his arm around her had become more tense, she didn’t notice that either.

Lily saw Jan McFadden and didn’t tell him!

Spencer breathed in and out, trying to find his poker face. He remembered Lily’s distress that one particular Sunday. She hadn’t wanted to face him, a familiar Andrew-related reaction. At the time Spencer couldn’t figure it out.

But now—

Finally: “Yes, yes, Jim
is
upset with her. When she called me distraught a few days ago, she said she didn’t know how she was going to hang on to her marriage.”

“Yes,” said Lily. “I saw that. Yes.”

So Lily went to Jan McFadden’s house for a birthday party. That’s an innocent thing, so simple. Why would she keep this from him?

What happened at Jan McFadden’s house that was Andrew-related that Lily could not tell him and was so upset by, that she couldn’t face him?

Quietly Spencer lay in bed with her. What to do? He too had trouble speaking when things were weighing heavily on his mind, especially things like this—where to draw the line, what was acceptable, what wasn’t, what he could use, what he couldn’t. She told him about seeing Jan McFadden by accident, she told him while naked in bed with him, betrayed by her closeness to him, after he had just made love to her, after she felt safe with him, secure, in his arms, kissed. He was just Spencer when she inadvertently slipped and told him that she had been keeping her visit with Jan a secret from Detective O’Malley for six weeks.

To say that the conflicted beast raged in Spencer would have been to understate matters.

He got up out of bed, went to get a drink, stood over the sink for a few minutes, his head bent, trying to figure out the unfigurable. Lily came out, and watched him for a moment. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” He finished pouring the glass of water.

He glanced at her and looked away, and then, because he knew she wanted him to, Spencer went back to her bed and lay down beside her.

“Spence?”

“Yes?” He was quiet.

Lily was curled up on her side and he was spooning her.

She thought they were lying together in warmth. “What happens to you on the weekends I don’t hear from you? Where do you go?”

Such warmth. That was then. Now such cold. Now Spencer moved away, he caught his breath. Lily could feel him grinding his teeth. Why did she have to go and ruin it?

“Why do you do that? Honestly, you can’t have five minutes of nice without blowing it,” Spencer said.

She turned to him and sat up because she didn’t want to be having this conversation lying comfortably down. “Why are you keeping secrets from me? I mean, how do you think it seems from my point of view?”

“I don’t know, Lily. Why do you keep secrets from me?”

She became upset under his intent cool gaze.

Then he was up, he was getting dressed. He didn’t answer her. His getting dressed was her answer. What to do? “Are you leaving?”

“I’m going home.”

“Why? Why do you run out when I ask you anything?”

“Not anything, Lil. This. Why can’t you just accept that I don’t want to talk about it? You have things you don’t want to talk about.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

Her heart was a sledgehammer in her chest. “I don’t know. Like what?”

“Just forget it.”

“You mean about Andrew? That’s completely different. Andrew has nothing to do with us. This does.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Tell me, I won’t be upset. Are you married?”

“You’ve been to my apartment. Was I hiding a wife in that apartment? What a stud I am – you, Mary, a wife. I’m surprised I can keep a job.”

“Why are you angry with me?”

His jeans on, his sweatshirt on, his boots on, God, his jacket already on! Spencer sat at the edge of her bed. “Listen to me,” he said. “I don’t want to have this discussion again. I don’t want to talk about this with you. Just like there are things you don’t want to talk about with me. But believe me—
this
has nothing whatsoever to do with you.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Lily said.

“Nothing to do with you! Why would you be afraid of that?”

“So if it’s got nothing to do with me, why won’t you tell me?”

“Why can’t you let it go? Why are we lying in your bed on a Sunday night, happy—or so I think—and all the while you’re stewing, figuring out when is a good time to ask me things that you already know I don’t want to discuss. I’ll give you a hint when—how about not after I’ve just made love to you, how about that? How about a different time?”

“Okay,” she said in a quiet voice.

“It’s not okay.” Spencer got up. “It’s not okay. I’m not ready to tell you. I don’t want to tell you. It’s none of your business. Nothing we do here entitles you either to ask me, or to have an answer. Nothing.”

“What about when you ask me things about my brother?” Lily flared up. “Anything we do here entitle you to that?”

She stopped speaking as soon as she said it, and he stopped listening as soon as she said it. He stepped away, she fell back on the pillow. “What, I hadn’t asked you about your brother before we started this?” Spencer said at last, but his back was to her. “You are really something.” He walked out, closing the door, on a Sunday night, at one in the morning.