Chapter2 - 3

“They gone yet?”

“No.”

She let the curtain drop. “Won’t the cops be looking for you, even if you aren’t there? A whole crowd of people saw the owner of the Amber Club fire that shot.”

“A whole crowd of people saw absolutely nothing. George was hustled away long before the cops got there, and the people who saw everything know better than to rat.”

“You sound very confident of that.”

“Confident enough.”

He took his hand out of the bowl of ice water. “But if you want me gone, I’ll leave now.”

“You get caught sneaking out of here, I’ll be thrown out of the house for having a man upstairs. Frankly I don’t care if you get caught by police or not—”

She didn’t know if that was true, but she said it anyway, her voice hard. “But I can’t lose my room, so please stay until the house is asleep.”

“I lose you this room, I’d be doing you a favor.”

His eyes traveled around the tiny apartment, and Nora saw with another acute burst of humiliation how shabby it was. The cramped space barely big enough for the rickety bureau and narrow bed, the hot plate and icebox, the narrow table. The one beautiful thing in the room was Xavier’s bouquet of lilies, scenting the stale air with their delicate fragrance. “You could live better than this. I know what salary you make at the Archives.”

“How do you know that?”

Nora put her chin up.

“I inquired. I wanted to know they were paying you what you’re worth. They are.”

“And if they hadn’t been, what would you have done?”

“Asked nicely that they give you a raise,”

he said mildly. “People tend to do things when I ask nicely.”

That faint flicker of a smile was back at the corner of his mouth. Nora felt something twist in her gut like a hook. She didn’t examine the feeling. She was afraid to.

“You got anything to drink?”

He twisted the diamond ring back around so the stone was on the inside, flexing his bruised hand.

“No.”

“Christ, Nora.”

He shook his head. A fine silver chain about his neck caught a gleam from the light. “Do you let yourself have one single creature comfort in this sardine can?”

“I work. I save. I eat dinner every Thursday at Grace’s. That’s my life. I’m sorry a gangster doesn’t find it adequately luxurious or exciting.”

“Businessman. You got no one to take care of you?”

“Does it look like I’m drowning?”

Nora picked up her kitten-heel pumps from where she’d set them aside for buffing, fetched a cloth from the ragbag. “I take care of myself. I always have.”

“That there? That’s why I want you, Nora Walsh. Quiet little thing you are, and underneath it’s steel all the way down. Saw it the first day.”

That smile in his voice again. “That, and my dog loves you.”

“Dogs love anyone who gives them a pat. I’m no dog.”

Nora sat on the bed, shoes in her lap, and began buffing the toes.

He sounded amused. “Why are you polishing your shoes?”

“I’m killing time until you can leave.”

Nora examined the heels. Worn down. “And I’ll make you a bargain. I won’t tell anyone what I saw outside the Amber Club, because I don’t want trouble. You’ll stop talking to me at the Crispy Biscuit and go pick up some... I don’t know... showgirl.”

“You’ve seen too many movies. I don’t want showgirls, I want you.”

Nora made the mistake of glancing up. Looking at her unwanted guest, sitting in his shirtsleeves on her straight kitchen chair, elbows balanced on his knees, cigarette smoldering between two blunt fingers, saucer of ash at his elbow. That direct, dark gaze.

“Let me take you to dinner this Saturday,”

he said. “Martin’s Tavern like we planned.”

“No.”

She went back to her shoes, buffing harder and harder.

“You want somewhere quiet, I’ll take you to my place on Colonial Beach. You want to scream and hit me, you can do it there.”

“I don’t want anything to do with you. I don’t date gangsters.”

“I’m not a gangster. I’m a businessman.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up,”

Nora snarled.

“It’s true. I’ll say it till you believe it.”

“That won’t happen.”

She held the shoes up, looking at the new shine, not really seeing it. “You know why?”

“Why?”

“I told you I was the kind of person who only has to hear it once to learn.”

She put her shoes aside, rising. “You’re the second bad man who said he wanted me. I learned from the first one.”

“I’m not a bad man,”

Xavier said quietly. “I got a bottle club, I got a dog, I pay my taxes. I’ve never hurt a woman in my life.”

“That’s what he said, too. With a smack to back it up.”

Xavier stubbed out his cigarette in the saucer, rising. He’d taken over the entire room; the whole space hubbed around him like a black sun. “Who was he?”

A slim build, a handsome olive-skinned face—Nora blocked it out, fast. “No one,”

she said, going to the window and peeking through the curtains. No more reflected glow of police lights. She watched awhile, until she could be sure. “Cops are gone.”

“House is quiet.”

She had to pass him to get to the door. He didn’t try to move in her way, didn’t try to touch her arm as she passed. Their sleeves brushed. The Andrews Sisters were crooning “I Can Dream, Can’t I?”

No , Nora thought, do not dream, Nora. Keep your eyes open and keep them on the track in front of you. Don’t fall off now.

She put her hand on the doorknob, listening through the door. Nothing but silence outside. He could leave, sneak down those stairs and out the back door with no one the wiser. She could lock it behind him. Quit her job at the Crispy Biscuit. Not have any reason to see him again. Except he’d still know where to find her...

“Nora.”

He was standing behind her, close enough for his breath to stir her hair. “Listen to me. You tell me to go, I’ll go. You tell me not to look you up again, I won’t. You want me gone, I’m gone.”

Her lips parted, but the words wouldn’t come. Her hand was on the doorknob but it wouldn’t turn.

“Every ounce of how I am in your life is up to you. Tell me to go.”

She could not get the words out.

His fingertip touched her side, gliding down the line of her ribs. “Tell me to go.”

She bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to sting. Keep to the track. Turn the knob. Just say it.

“Tell me to go.”

His fingertip passed the edge of her skirt, grazed the bare skin of her thigh, then reversed and slid upward beneath the hem. “Tell me to go.” Higher.

She wasn’t saying it. She was slamming her free hand against the door, keeping herself upright as she trembled, as he took her to pieces with one slowly circling fingertip. Saying with every stroke, “Tell me to go.”

She managed to swallow the cry that came out of her at the end, with the final burst. Managed to wrench her hand off the brass doorknob, distantly surprised her fingers hadn’t left dents. Turned, setting her back against the door, looking at him. He stood gazing back at her, dark eyes bottomless. She could still feel the words: Get out . If she said them, even now, he’d go. She knew that as sure as she knew true north.

“Xavier,”

she managed to say.

He stilled, then took a half step back. She felt the hook twist in her stomach again. The twist had been fear when she saw him put a bullet through a man’s finger outside the Amber Club, but even then, there was the twinge of something at the bottom that wasn’t fear. Something that had been stirring since their earliest lunches at the diner, something that had blossomed as they waited the hours away in this tiny room, something that had grown monster-size and insatiable the moment he put his gun aside and said That’s why I want you, Nora Walsh .

She reached out, tangled her hand in his unfastened collar. “Stay.”

One step and he crushed her against his chest, spearing her mouth on his. And Nora tumbled off the track.

Under the curtains, the sky showed charcoal gray. Dawn. Nora’s swollen mouth burned. Xavier sat on the edge of the bed, getting dressed in quick, precise movements. She sat up, hugging her sheeted knees against her chest, and watched him. He had a huge Celtic cross tattooed on his back from nape to waist, the short arms spanning his burly shoulders. He shrugged into his shirt, and Nora saw the round shape of a saint’s medal on a chain around his neck. She’d felt it earlier, dangling against her collarbone when he sealed his mouth to her throat, tasting metallic under her own lips as she kissed her way across his chest.

“What saint?”

she heard herself asking. Everything they’d done over the course of the night—against the door, on the floor, in the narrow bed—you’d think she’d know everything about him. But he was foreign territory.

“St.Jude.”

He tucked the chain beneath his collar. “I got a weakness for lost causes.”

“Is that what I am?”

“You?”

He grinned, a full outright grin, and it rocked Nora to the core. “You’re the last thing from a lost cause. You’re a winning thoroughbred leading post to post.”

I think I’m lost now , Nora thought. At some point around three in the morning she’d had the thought that maybe this one night would call it done: get it out of her blood, burn it away so she could climb, clear-eyed and hollow-veined, back onto her track. That was when Xavier had flung back the covers and padded naked to her icebox, tipping the dish of leftover corned beef and potato hash into a pan on the hot plate with the neatness of a longtime bachelor. “You learn anything in the Warring family, it’s how to dress up day-old hash,”

he said, dexterously frying a couple of eggs on top, then bringing the whole hot delicious mess back to bed where he fed Nora right out of the pan. “No one looks after you,”

he’d said gruffly, kissing a dab of runny egg yolk off the corner of her mouth. “That’s about to change.”

And Nora had felt something tighten inside, a whisper along her nerves that meant danger . Xavier Warring Byrne could work a lot more damage with a three a.m. breakfast and a steadfast gaze than he could work with a kiss, or even with the rough, devastating flick of one fingertip under her hem.

He crossed the room now, fastening his cuffs, and picked up the .22 where it lay atop the radio. He tucked it at the small of his back, saying, “You could move out of here. I can put you up somewhere nice.”

“I don’t want to be put up anywhere,”

Nora said. “I’m staying here.”

He nodded, not arguing. “I don’t want you getting in trouble with Doilies Nilsson because of me, though. Next time we go to my place.”

He’d remembered the jokey nickname for her landlady. She’d probably only said it once, but he remembered it. He remembered everything. Nora pulled the sheet around her shoulders. “Xavier, no next time. At your place or anywhere.”

“Okay. But I’m going to show up outside the National Archives today, because it’s a free country. You say you don’t want to see me, I’m gone. Anytime you say no, I’m gone. But you got to tell me no.”

She hadn’t said no all night. She’d said yes, over and over. She squeezed her eyes shut.

He came to the bed and tilted her face up, kissing her eyelids and her temples and her mouth. “See you later.”

“No,”

Nora said. But she didn’t manage to say it until he’d left her bedroom. And she knew she was sunk.

Xavier’s Corned Beef Hash

1 can corned beef hash, or leftovers from a corned beef and potato hash dinner 2 eggs

Place the hash in a skillet and heat thoroughly over medium heat. Make two indentations in the hash, fill each with an egg, and cook until the eggs are set to desired doneness. Enjoy in bed with a lover, with plenty of extra napkins, while listening to “Goodnight, Irene”

by Gordon Jenkins and The Weavers

“You’ll be coming home for Christmas, Nora.”

Mam didn’t ask questions; she issued statements and then sweetly dared you to contradict her. Nora sighed, turning against the paneled wall of the telephone nook in the hallway. Her eyes were gritty from sleeplessness. “I’m not coming home, Mam. Even for Christmas.”

She’d managed to stay firm on that since moving out—no visits, not for so much as a cup of tea. She hadn’t quite managed to draw the line at no telephone calls. She knew she should just hang up when Mam called, but Irish daughterly guilt had a way of kicking in.

“What about Christmas Eve Mass?”

Behind her mother’s voice, Nora could hear the clamor of the house she’d grown up in: her brother banging around looking for his freshly shined boots, his wife, Siobhan, shouting at the kids. The air probably still smelled of overboiled coffee and starch from Mam’s frantic ironing of Timmy’s police uniform. “Are you attending Mass regularly, Nora? Father Dominic says he hasn’t seen you at confession.”

I certainly won’t be going today , Nora thought. Just imagine babbling Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned to doddering old Father Dominic with her pocketbook full of all the tissue-wrapped condom packets she’d scavenged out of her wastebasket this morning to sneak out of the house so Doilies wouldn’t find them...

“I never see you,”

Nora’s mother went on, sighing. “Not once you’ve dropped in since moving out! Even to say a rosary for your father or help me make bread like we used to.”

“You know why,”