Silent Prey

Nothing below the waist?”
    Lily laughed and said, “You cheer me up, Davenport. You’re so fucking crass . . . .”
    “So . . . ?” He went to the window and looked out; the thunderheads were gray, with soaring pink tops, and were bearing down on the line of the river.
    She shrugged, looked out the window past him. “So, Iwas seeing a guy. I still am. We hadn’t started looking for an apartment together, but the possibility was out there.”
    “What happened?”
    “He had a heart attack.”
    Lucas looked at her for a minute, then said, “Why does that make perfect sense?”
    She forced a smile. “It’s really not very funny, I’m afraid. He’s in terrible shape.”
    “He’s a cop?”
    “Yeah.” The smile faded. “He’s like you, in some ways. Not physically—he’s tall and thin and white-haired. But he is—was—in intelligence and he loves the streets. He writes articles for the Times op-ed page about the street life. He has the best network of spies in the city. And he has a taste for, mmm . . .” She groped for the right phrase.
    “Dark-eyed married women?” Lucas suggested, moving closer.
    “Well, that,” she said, the tentative smile returning. “But the thing is, he likes to fight . . . did like to fight. Like you. Now he can’t walk two dozen steps without stopping for a breath.”
    “Jesus.” Lucas ran a hand through his hair. He’d had nightmares of being crippled. “What’s the prognosis?”
    “Not so good.” Tears glistened at the corners of her dark eyes. At the same moment, she smiled and said, “Shit. I wish I didn’t do this.” She wiped the tears away with the heel and knuckles of her hand. “This was his third attack. The first one was five years ago. That was bad. The second one was a couple months after the first, and wasn’t so bad. Then he was coming back. He’d almost forgotten about them, he was working . . . . Then this third one, this was the worst of all. He’s got extensive damage to the heart muscle. And he won’t stop working.The doctors tell him to spend a year doing graded exercise, to stay away from work, from the stress. He won’t do it. And he’s still smoking, I think. He’s sneaking them. I can smell them on his clothes . . . in his hair.”
    “So he’s going to die,” Lucas said.
    “Probably.”
    “That’s not so bad,” Lucas said, leaning back, looking at her, his voice flat. “You just say fuck it. You do what you want, and if you go, you go.”
    “That’s what you’d do, isn’t it?”
    “I hope so,” he said.
    “Men are such goddamn assholes,” Lily said.
    After another long silence, Lucas asked, “So what are you doing for sex?”
    She started to laugh, but it caught in her throat, and she stood up and picked up her purse. “I better get going. Tell me you’ll come to New York.”
    “Answer the question,” Lucas said. Without thinking about it, he moved closer. She noticed it, felt the pressure.
    “We’re . . . very careful,” she said. “He can’t get too carried away.”
    Lucas’ chest felt curiously thick, a combination of anger and expectation. The electricity between them crackled, and his voice was suddenly husky. “You never really liked being careful.”
    “Ah, Jesus, Lucas,” she said.
    He stepped up to her until he was only inches away. “Push me away,” he whispered.
    “Lucas . . .”
    “Push me away,” he said, “I’ll go.”
    She stepped back, dropped her purse. Outside, the first heavy drops of rain careened off the sidewalk, and a woman with a dog on a leash dashed past the house.
    She rocked back on her heels, looked down at herpurse, then grabbed his shirt sleeve to balance herself, lifted one foot, then the other, pulled off her shoes, and stepped into the hallway that led to the bedroom. Lucas, standing in the living room, watched her go, until halfway down the hallway she turned her head, her dark eyes looking at him, and began to unbutton her blouse.
     
    Their lovemaking, she said later, sometimes resembled a fight, had an edge of violence, a tone of aggression. They might begin with an effort at tenderness, but that would slip and they would be bucking, wrenching, twisting . . . .
    That night, as the last of the storm cells rumbled off into Wisconsin, with the room smelling of sweat and sex, she sat on the edge of the bed. She seemed weary, but there was a smile at the corner of her lips.
    “I’m such a goddamned slut,” she