I’d thought we were one-stop shopping. We worked together often, and once, after a bad night, we’d fallen into bed together. I liked the way his big hands caught in my long tumble of shaggy black hair, liked his deep rumble of a voice. He was good, rough trade, with a hairline scar cutting through one eyebrow and a long nose that had been broken more than once. I liked its complicated, crooked path.
Once we started, we kept coming back to it. I was built tall and athletic, but his body was huge—a thick-armed, beastly thing. He could toss me to the bed like I was made of air and ribbons. It was unfamiliar and exciting, to be bent and twisted into shapes, lifted, hurled around. The sex was often my favorite kind, blunt and urgent, but then it could turn languorous, too. We’d stretch time until the sex felt almost sleepy, right up until the end. Then it wasn’t, and we’d tip each other into animal oblivion.
For months, we wore each other out nearly every afternoon. At his place, mostly. He didn’t like my loft. It was all open concept, with a back wall made entirely of windows facing Atlanta’s ever-rising skyline. He was the kind of guy who went right to a corner seat at any restaurant. He couldn’t eat if his back was to the door. My place felt way too exposed, and the only interior walls were around the two bathrooms and the laundry. My cat had the run of it, and that creeped Birdwine out. He didn’t like to look up and see Henry perched on the dresser like a fluffy white ghost, watching us and purring to himself. Birdwine was a dog guy.
So we’d come here. We’d close the door on Looper and have what I thought was convenience sex. Finest kind, yeah, but we didn’t snuggle up after for sharing time. We had the broad strokes of each other’s histories already anyway, from working together for so long. Our post-sex pillow talk was about the Braves’ chances or the angles of a current case or where my bra had gone.
I was surprised when he ended it, then shocked when he also turned down every job I offered. Then he stopped taking my calls altogether. I’d backed off, giving him room to cool down. He hadn’t cooled yet, going on six months later. So here we were.
I said, “I’m not a thirteen-year-old girl with a crack in my heart, Birdwine. We had a thing. It stopped working for you. Fine. I still respect the hell out of your work. I still want to hire you. Why throw the baby out with the bathwater?”
“In your metaphor, this is the baby?” He tapped the Skopes file. I nodded and he said, “I forgot what a hopeless romantic you are.” His tone was still light, but one hand came up to scrub at his eyes: another bad sign. “Why didn’t you title the email, ‘Job for you’ or ‘Can you find this guy,’ or hell, just the guy’s DOB and Social.”
I was wondering the same damn thing. It wasn’t like me; I was fine-tuned for connotation. But I matched his light tone and said only, “Well, next time you avoid me for months, I’ll know how to proceed.”
He chuckled. “I’m still avoiding you, Paula. There has been no break in my avoidance. You’re the one slumming it in my neighborhood.” He paused, then added, very drolly, “Hey, look! This is becoming a relationship postmortem, after all. Neat.”
“So take the job, and I’ll get out of your hair.” He didn’t answer, but I couldn’t let it go. Birdwine wasn’t replaceable. Finally I said, “What if I double your rate?”
That got his attention. Birdwine lived pretty strapped. He put a long, level gaze on me and said, “Will you stop with the muffins and the urgent, breathy letters?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
“Actually, send muffins anytime you want. I got no problem with muffins. But you need to stay on your side of town. Have one of your minions email me the files, and use a reasonable title, like ‘Here is a case for you.’ I’ll send you my results back in an email titled ‘Here are my results.’ How does that sound?”
Shitty and untenable in the long term, actually, but I said, “If that’s what it takes to get you back on my team,” which was the truth. Just not the whole truth.
I couldn’t work with Birdwine at a distance. Not indefinitely. I needed to see him on the regular; his binges happened at random intervals, but the signs of an impending one were cumulative. Today, right now, he could be months from breaking. The eye-rubbing, the little taps at his temple, these could simply be the stress of this unpleasant conversation. He could go in the house and not eye-rub or tap or drink himself into ugly oblivion for weeks and weeks. On the other hand, if the signs repeated and intensified, they were harbingers of an imminent disappearance that could leave me stranded at my deposition.
“Damn, but you’re pushy, lady. I’d forgotten that, too,” he said, and now he was laughing outright. “Okay. All right. Let’s get this clear—I’m not on your team. I’m doing a job for you because you’re paying me a stupid amount of money.”
“Good enough,” I said. It was a foot back in his doorway, and once I had a foot in, well, he was right. I was pretty damn pushy.
“I take it you need a fast turnaround?” Birdwine asked.