Page 74 of Long Way Down

“Seriously.”

“Spit it out, then.”

“’Kay.” He took a sip for courage. “I get the impression…and this is just my impression, so it’s not like it counts for much. You think I’m an idiot anyway,” he said in a rush, and watched her brows lift. “But I get the impression that you have some…issues, I’d guess you’d say. About sex.”

It was like watching two pairs of shutters get slammed shut behind her eyes. An automatic, visceral rejection of his words.

“I know it’s not my business–”

“You’re right,” she said, voice gone oddly thick. Like speaking was difficult. “It’s not.”

“I know. I know, but, just…I’m not, like, judging you. It’s not a bad thing. I just…”

He was just flailing, was all. There wasn’t a wink or a line that could get him out of this mess of his own making. And she stared at him, all her shields up, furious or devastated, he didn’t know.

Might as well open another can of worms while he was at it.

“I noticed it early on. That you – well, that you maybe had some old, bad memories or something. Or had some idea that what we were doing was wrong, like you felt guilty about it. It’s never bothered me–”

“That’s a relief,” she said, flatly. “I’d hate tobotheryou.”

“No, I mean – shit, I’m not explaining this right.”

“No. You’re not.”

“What I’m getting at,” he said, frustration bleeding into his voice, “is that I noticed you felt bad, afterward. That you were – shit, I dunno, sad or something. My ma would say it was Catholic guilt, but I’m guessing you were brought up Baptist or something, down there. So it’s – like I said, I dunno what it is. But I know something bothers you – and not me. You’re not that bothered by me or you’d have told me to hit the bricks months ago. You like what we do. You likeme, I know you do.” He didn’t actually know that; could hear the desperation in his voice and do nothing but hope that he was right. “But there’s something that bothers you, and it’s bothering you a whole lot more, suddenly, now that you’re with Sex Crimes and you got hold of this case.

“So what I’m saying is: I’m here. I can listen, if you wanna talk.” He’d offered as much before, but not earnestly, not after stepping in every kind of shit. “If talking helps, you can talk to me, and I won’t even be a stupid asshole about it. Because looking at you downstairs just now, it was like you’d seen a ghost, and that felt like somebody punched me in the stomach.”

It was only after he’d said it that he realized how much he’d been disquieted by her strange mood; how much he cared that she was unhappy about something.

And now would come the moment when she’d toss him out and tell him to lose her number and address.

Long, painfully tense seconds passed. There was no audible clock ticking in the background, so he supplied the sound with his imagination.Tick-tock, tick-tock.

Melissa considered her beer, then lifted it and took several long, slow swallows.

He was a shithead for admiring the way her throat worked.

After, she set it back down, half-empty, glass chiming against the countertop, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her exhale rattled in the silence between them. A war was waged inside her head, glimpses of flying shrapnel and flashing ordnance visible when her carefully-shuttered gaze would flicker and waver. She lifted her beer again, and said nothing, in the end.

Pongo wanted to kick himself. Things had never been steady or sure with her; he’d always felt a bit like he was walking up an icy hill, slipping and barely catching himself, at risk of sliding all the way back down with one misstep.Having fun, Maverick had said. Toly had given him a withering glance and called Dixie adistraction.Use a club girl, it’s safer, Mick had suggested with a consoling pat on the shoulder, when Pongo’s smile had been a little too thin and fixed to fool him. He’d told himself that they were right, and that his days with Dixie had been numbered from the start…but found himself now wanting to cling with both hands and fight just a little harder, and a little longer to stave off the end.

Of his many faults, pride wasn’t among them. She was offering nothing, but he wasn’t too proud to return the favor.

So he said, “I killed a man when I was seventeen.”

She sucked in a breath, nostrils flaring. Knocked totally off her guard, she said, “What?”

He nodded, and took another sip of beer. “It was after school. Some of my friends and I were shooting hoops down at this little park just down the block from my house. This was Queens, so it wasn’t as shady as it is here, this side of the bridge. Quiet neighborhood.

“There’d been this guy hanging around, the last few times we went to the court. Scruffy, clothes in bad shape. Looked homeless, but somebody said it was this kid Dewey’s uncle. Nobody new. Just this guy. He would yell shit at us sometimes. Wanted our ball. Kinda batshit. My friend Paulie made up this story about him being ‘Still in Saigon,’ you know, like the song? Shell-shocked or something. His coat was army green, so it wasn’tthatcrazy an idea.

“So one day we’re on the court, and there were a buncha younger kids over on the playground. Doing the slide and monkey bars and shit. And one of ‘em started screaming.”

The day formed crystal-clear in his mind, his memory flooded with January sunlight, his lungs filling with the scents of cold asphalt and his own sweat, wafting up from the open neck of his windbreaker. He could recall the scream as if it had just happened, as if it was still happening; it haunted his dreams, during bad stretches. The high, shrill, scream of a little girl. Her jacket had been electric pink with little black and turquoise squiggles on the sleeves. She’d had a white woolen cap with bear ears on it, fallen on the ground when the man grabbed her. He never saw the wink of sunlight off a knife blade that he didn’t remember the nasty, dirty edge of the blade the man had lifted overhead, ready to plunge into the screaming girl’s chest.

“I threw the ball at him,” he said. “I took off running, and threw the ball. It hit his shoulder, and got his attention. Stopped him long enough so I could tackle him off of her.”

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