The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)

Harry?”
    She said it sweetly and with sleep still in her voice. It was not a challenge or a demand.
    “I had to do a few things, then I had a few drinks.”
    “Hear any good music?”
    “Yeah, they had a quartet. Not bad. Played a lot of Billy Strayhorn.”
    “Do you want me to fix you something?”
    “Nah, go to sleep. You have school tomorrow. I’m not that hungry anyway and I can get something if I want it.”
    “C’mere.”
    He made his way to the bed and crawled across the down quilt. Her hand came up and around his neck and she pulled him down into a kiss.
    “Yes, you did have a few drinks.”
    He laughed and then so did she.
    “Let me go brush my teeth.”
    “Wait a minute.”
    She pulled him down again and he kissed her mouth and neck. She had a milky sweet smell of sleep and perfume about her that he liked. He noticed that she was not wearing a nightgown, though she usually did. He put his hand under the covers and traced the flatness of her stomach. He brought it up and caressed her breasts and then her neck. He kissed her again and then pushed his face into her hair and neck.
    “Sylvia, thank you,” he whispered.
    “For what?”
    “For coming today and being there. I know what I said before but it meant something to see you when I looked out there. It meant a lot.”
    That was all he could say about it. He got up then and went into the bathroom. He stripped off his clothes and carefully hung them on hooks on the back of the door. He would have to wear them again in the morning.
    He took a quick shower, then shaved and brushed his teeth with the second set of toiletries he kept in her bathroom. He looked in the mirror as he brushed his damp hair back with his hands. And he smiled. It might have been the residue of the whiskey and beer, he knew. But he doubted it. It was because he felt lucky. He felt that he was neither on the ferry with the mad crowd nor left behind on the dock with the angry crowd. He was in his own boat. With just Sylvia.

    * * *

    They made love the way lonely people do, silently, with each trying too hard in the dark to please the other until they were almost clumsy about it. Still, there was a healing sense about it for Bosch. Afterward, she lay next to him, her finger tracing the outline of his tattoo.
    “What are you thinking about?” she asked.
    “Nothing. Just stuff.”
    “Tell me.”
    He waited a few moments before answering.
    “Tonight I found out somebody betrayed me. Somebody close. And, well, I was just thinking that maybe I’d had it wrong. That it really wasn’t me who was betrayed. It was himself. He had betrayed himself. And maybe living with that is punishment enough. I don’t think I need to add to it.”
    He thought about what he had said to Edgar at the Red Wind and decided he would have to stop him from going to Pounds for the transfer.
    “Betrayed how?”
    “Uh, consorting with the enemy, I guess you’d call it.”
    “Honey Chandler?”
    “Yeah.”
    “How bad is it?”
    “Not too bad, I guess. It’s just that he did it that matters. It hurts, I guess.”
    “Is there anything you can do? Not to him, I mean. I mean to limit the damage.”
    “No. Whatever damage there is, it’s already done. I only figured out it was him tonight. It was by accident, otherwise I probably would have never even thought of him. Anyway, don’t worry about it.”
    She caressed his chest with the tips of her fingernails.
    “If you’re not worried, I’m not.”
    He loved her knowing the boundaries of how much she could ask him, and that she didn’t even think to ask him who it was he was talking about. He felt totally comfortable with her. No worries, no anxieties. It was home to him.
    He was just beginning to fall off when she spoke again.
    “Harry?”
    “Uh huh.”
    “Are you worried about the trial, how the closing arguments will go?”
    “Not really. I don’t like being in the fishbowl, sitting at that table while everybody gets their chance to explain why they think I did what I did. But I’m not worried about the outcome, if that’s what you mean. It doesn’t mean anything. I just want it to be over and I don’t really care anymore what they do. No jury can sanction what I did or didn’t do. No jury can tell me I was right or wrong. You know? This trial could last a year and it wouldn’t tell them everything about that night.”
    “What about the department? Will they care?”
    He told her what Irving had told him that afternoon about