Chapter 5

That night Cecelia and I wound up going to bed at the same time, a thing which doesn't always happen. Her schedule is pretty regular – she gets up at the same time, goes to bed at the same time, has meals ready pretty much at the same time every day. What she does between waking and sleeping can vary – she takes Darlia to school when it's in session but not when it's not, for instance – but her hours don't change much.

I, on the other hand, have at best an irregular schedule, and that's being generous. Most people probably would say I don't have a schedule at all. I go to the office when I take a notion. I take a case only when I want to. I get up when I wake up and go to bed when I'm tired. And when I'm working my hours get even more irregular, for you have to follow an investigation when and where it leads. If I'm trying to find a particular prostitute to question her about a guy who might be beating on prostitutes, I can't go looking for her during bankers' hours. Her working day begins at sunset.

But that night we wound up going to bed together. Cecelia was a couple of minutes ahead of me, and when I turned out the light she was already in bed, wearing her sleeveless nightgown. She'd pulled the blanket up to her shoulders, her arms outside it, and as I walked to the bed my mind retained the image of the light glancing off the clearly defined muscles. I knew from long experience that even when she isn't flexing she has definite biceps and triceps, deltoids that provide only a slight softening over the knob of the shoulder, and tendons and veins that make her forearms look like those of a lumberjack, only thinner. Indeed, on each arm there's one vein – or artery; an anatomist I'm not – which runs up the front of her bicep and which I've learned is a sign that a woman's in shape. A lady may be thin, but flabby; when that vein shows, it means there's muscle underneath the skin.

I climbed into bed, and Cecelia snuggled up against me, her head on my chest. She'd released her hair from its ponytail for the night, and I could feel the pseudo-Afro of it against my skin. I felt her fingers come up and run over my mustache, my chin, my nose, my eyebrows. Then her hand clasped my upper arm, and she held me tightly for a moment. "Darvin," she finally said, "your choice of client troubles me."

I matched my voice to the softness of hers. "I ain't exactly thrilled either, C. I nearly turned the case down. But you know how I am – I take notions. And I taken one this trip."

The measure of her concern was the fact that she said nothing about my English; she didn't even indicate she'd noticed it. "You do indeed operate on hunches much of the time. And yes, I do remember your definition of a hunch – the unconscious mind drawing conclusions from data which the conscious mind hasn't noticed or put together correctly. I agree with the definition, and with your habit of heeding your hunches; I have known such attention to work to your benefit. But this is an occasion where it is difficult for me to silently acquiesce in your decision."

"I know, C." And I alluded to something that I wasn't sure we'd ever talked about before. "You've only had the one child, and so she's doubly precious to you..."

"You know, of course, that fertility in a marriage has two sides."

"Yeah, I do – and I suspect I'm the one here. After all, in all my years I've only had one kid."

"No one else ever became pregnant?" I couldn't have found a way to ask the question without hammering myself with the girls I'd been with in junior high and high school, and with the woman I'd moved in with after I graduated. But Cecelia's a born diplomat and had done it without a bit of difficulty.

"No, and there wasn't anything to prevent it either, at least not that I ever knew about. Maybe some o' them girls was on the pill, and Tina might have been when we first got together, but I'm certain that she wasn't by the time I left home."

Cecelia made a wordless sound of acknowledgement and left the digression behind. "I do indeed cling to Darlia with extra fervor because she appears to be the only child I will ever have. She came forth from my body..."

"Yeah, that's what I had in mind." I grinned into the dark. "I can't feature at all how a woman can allow someone to invade her womb like that, and destroy a living being."

"Nor can I – and I am the one with a womb. It seems to me a violation as reprehensible morally, and traumatic emotionally, as rape."

I nodded, my chin brushing her hair. I knew she'd feel the motion, but I spoke too. "It does affect women sometimes – more often than the abortionists want you to think. But some women are as callous toward their children unborn as others are toward their children delivered. You know as well as I do that there are women who do horrible things to children who've come from their bodies."