"I get to pick?"
She nodded. "Your choice."
I smiled. A hell of a choice. Bra, skirt, shoes. I figured she could keep her shoes on. For a spell, anyway. Maybe all night long.
I said, "Skirt."
She obliged. There was a button and a zipper at the side. She popped the button and slid the zipper down, slowly, an inch, two inches, three, four. I heard its sound quite clearly in the silence. The skirt fell to the ground. She stepped out of it, one foot, then the other. Her legs were long and smooth and toned. She was wearing tiny black panties. Not much to them. Just a wisp of dark fabric.
Bra, panties, shoes. I was still sitting on the bed. She climbed into my lap. I lifted her hair away and kissed her ear. I traced its shape with my tongue. I could feel her cheek against mine. I could feel the smile. I kissed her mouth, she kissed my ear. We spent twenty minutes learning every contour above our necks.
Then we moved lower.
I unsnapped her bra. It fell away, insubstantial. I ducked my head. Her head went back, arching her breasts toward me. They were firm and round and smooth. Her nipples were sensitive. She moaned a little. So did I. She moved and kissed my chest. I lifted her off my lap and rolled her on her back on the bed. Then she rolled me. Twenty fabulous minutes, spent getting to know each other above the waist.
Then we moved lower.
I was on my back. She knelt over me and slid my boxers down. She smiled. So did I. Ten amazing minutes later we changed places. Her panties came down over her hips, and then she lifted her knees to let me finish the job. I buried my face between her thighs. She was wet and sweet. She moved, uninhibited. She rolled her head from side to side and squirmed her shoulders and pressed herself down on the mattress. She ran her fingers through my hair.
Then it was time. We started tenderly. Long and slow, long and slow. Deep and easy. She flushed and gasped. So did I. Long and slow, long and slow.
Then faster and harder.
Then we were panting.
Faster, harder, faster, harder.
Panting.
"Wait," she said.
"What?"
"Wait, wait," she said. "Not now. Not yet. Slow down."
Long and slow, long and slow.
Breathing hard.
Panting.
Long and slow.
"OK," she said. "OK. Now. Now. Now!"
Faster and harder.
Faster, harder, faster, harder.
The room began to shake.
Just very faintly at first, like a mild constant tremor, like the edge of a far distant earthquake. The French door ticked in its frame. A glass rattled on the bathroom shelf. The floor quivered. The hall door creaked and stuttered. My shoes hopped and moved. The bed head hammered against the wall. The floor shook hard. The walls boomed. Coins in my abandoned pocket tinkled. The bed shook and bounced and walked tiny fractions across the moving floor.
Then the midnight train was gone, and so were we.
44
Afterward we lay side by side, naked, breathing hard, sweat pooling, holding hands. I stared up at the ceiling. Deveraux said, "I've wanted to do that for two whole years. That damn train. Might as well make use of it."
I said, "If I ever buy a house it's going to be next to a railroad track. That's for damn sure."
She moved her position and snuggled next to me. I put my arm around her. We lay quiet, and spent, and satisfied. I heard Blind Blake in my head. I had once listened to a cassette tape of all his songs, transferred from beat-up old 78s, the absurd roar and scratch of ancient shellac surface noise almost drowning out the quiet, wistful voice and the agile guitar, as it picked out the rhythms of the railroad. A blind man. Blind from birth. He had never seen a train. But he had heard plenty. That was clear.
Deveraux asked me what I was thinking about, and I told her. I said, "That's the guy my brother's note was about."
"Are you still mad about it?"
"I'm sad about it," I said.
"Why?"
"This mission was a mistake," I said. "They shouldn't have put me on the outside. Not for this kind of thing. It's making me think of them as ... them. Not us anymore."
* * *
Later we had a languid conversation about whether she should go back to her own room. Reputations. Voters. I said the old guy had come upstairs for me when Garber had called. He had gotten a good look inside the room. She said if that happened again I could delay a second and she could hide in the bathroom. She said they rarely knocked on her door. And if by some chance they did the next morning and there was no reply, they would assume she was out on a case. Which would be entirely plausible. She wasn't short of work to do, after all.
Then she said, "Maybe Janice Chapman was doing what we just did. With the gravel scratches, I mean. With her boyfriend, whoever he was. Out in her back yard, at midnight. Under the stars. The railroad track is pretty close by. Must be amazing out of doors."
"It must be," I said. "I was right next to the track at midnight last night. It's like the end of the world."
"Would the timing work? With the scabs?"
"If she had sex at midnight she was killed about four in the morning. What time was she found?"
"Ten the next evening. That's eighteen hours. I guess there would have been some decomposition by then."
"Probably. But bled-out bodies can look pretty weird. It would have been fairly hard to tell. And your department doctor isn't exactly Sherlock Holmes."
"So it's possible?"
"We'd have to explain why she put on a nice dress and pantyhose sometime between midnight and four in the morning."
We pondered that for a moment. Then we surrendered to inertia. We said nothing more, about dresses or pantyhose, or voters or rooms or reputations, and then we fell asleep, in each other's arms, outside the covers, naked, in the still silence of the Mississippi night.
Four hours later I was awake again and confirming my longest-held belief: there is no better time than the second time. All the first time's semi-formal niceties can be forgotten. All the first time tricks we use to impress each other can be abandoned. There's new familiarity, and no loss of excitement. There's a general sense of what works and what doesn't. Second time around, you're ready to rock and roll.
And we did.
Afterward Deveraux yawned and stretched and said, "You're not bad for a soldier boy."
I said, "You're excellent for a Marine."
"We better be careful. We might develop feelings for each other."
"What are those?"
"What are what?"
"Feelings."
She paused a beat.
She said, "Men should be more in touch with their feelings."
I said, "If I ever have one, you'll be the first to know, I promise."
She paused again. Then she laughed. Which was good. This was already 1997, remember. It was touch and go in those days.
I woke up for the second time at seven o'clock in the morning, thinking about pregnancy.
45
Elizabeth Deveraux was sitting upright in the bed when I woke. She was on my left, in the center of her space, facing me, back straight, legs crossed, like yoga. She was naked and unselfconscious. She was very beautiful. Just spectacularly good looking. One of the best looking women I had ever seen, and certainly the best looking I had ever seen naked, and definitely the best looking I had ever slept with.
But by that point she was mentally preoccupied. Seven o'clock in the morning. The start of the work day. No third time lucky for me. Not right then. She said, "They must have had something else in common. Those three women, I mean."