I nodded. "Around the time I left the cops."

"Same reason?"

I shrugged.

"How come you quit the cops? Was it this stuff?"

"What stuff?"

She waved a hand at the bottles. "You know. The booze."

"Oh, hell, no," I said. "I wasn't even that heavy a hitter at the time. I just reached a point where I didn't feel like being a cop anymore."

"What did it? Disillusionment? A lack of faith in the criminal justice system? Disgust with corruption?"

I shook my head. "I lost my illusions early in the game and I never had much faith in the criminal justice system. It's a terrible system and the cops just do what they can. As far as corruption goes, I was never enough of an idealist to be bothered by it."

"What then? Mid-life crisis?"

"You could call it that."

"Well, we won't talk about it if you don't want to."

We fell silent for a moment. She drank and then I drank, and then I put my glass down and said, "Well, it's no secret. It's just not something I talk about a lot. I was in a tavern up in Washington Heights one night. It was a place where cops could drink on the arm. The owner liked having us around so you could run a tab and never be asked for payment. I had every right to be there. I was off-duty and I wanted to unwind a little before I drove back out to the island."

Or maybe I wouldn't have gone home that night anyway. I didn't always. Sometimes I caught a few hours' sleep in a hotel room to save driving back and forth. Sometimes I didn't have to get a hotel room.

"Two punks held up the place," I went on. "They got what was in the register and shot the bartender on the way out, shot him dead just for the hell of it. I ran out into the street after them. I was in plainclothes but of course I was carrying a gun. You always carry it.

"I emptied the gun at them. I got them both. I killed one of them and crippled the other. Left him paralyzed from the waist down. Two things he'll never do again are walk and fuck."

I'd told this story before but this time I could feel it all happening again. Washington Heights is hilly and they'd taken off up an incline. I remembered bracing myself, holding the gun with both hands, firing uphill at them. Maybe it was the Scotch that was making the recollection so vivid. Maybe it was something I responded to in her big unwavering gray eyes.

"And because you killed one and crippled another-"

I shook my head. "That wouldn't have bothered me. I'm only sorry I didn't kill them both. They murdered that bartender for no good reason on God's earth. I wouldn't lose a dime's worth of sleep over those two."

She waited.

"One of the shots went wide," I said. "Shooting uphill at a pair of moving targets, hell, it's remarkable I scored as well as I did. I always shot Expert on the police range, but it's different when it's real." I tried to draw my eyes away from hers but couldn't manage it. "One shot missed, though, and it ricocheted off the pavement or something. Took a bad hop. And there was a little girl walking around or standing around, whatever the hell she was doing. She was only six years old. I don't know what the hell she was doing out at that hour."

This time I looked away. "The bullet went into her eye," I said. "The ricochet took off some of its steam so if it had been an inch to the side one way or the other it probably would have glanced off bone, but life's a game of inches, isn't it? There was no bone to get in the way and the bullet wound up in her brain and she died. Instantly."

"God."

"I didn't do anything wrong. There was a departmental investigation because that's standard procedure, and it was agreed unanimously that I hadn't done anything wrong. As a matter of fact I received a commendation. The child was Hispanic, Puerto Rican, Estrellita Rivera her name was, and sometimes the press gets on you when there's a minority group casualty like that, or you get static from community groups, but there was none of that in this case. If I was anything I was a fast-acting hero cop who had a piece of bad luck."

"And you quit the police force."

The Scotch bottle was empty. There was maybe half a pint of vodka in the other bottle and I poured a few ounces of it into my glass. "Not right away," I said, "but before too long. And I don't know what made me do it."

"Guilt."

"I'm not sure. All I know is that being a cop didn't seem to be fun anymore. Being a husband and a father didn't seem to work, either. I took a leave of absence from both, moved into a hotel a block west of Columbus Circle. Somewhere down the line it became clear that I wasn't going back, not to my wife, not to the department."

Neither of us said anything for a while. After a moment she leaned over and touched my hand. It was an unexpected and slightly awkward gesture and for some reason it touched me. I felt a thickening in my throat.

Then she had withdrawn her hand and was on her feet. I thought for a moment that she meant for me to leave. Instead she said, "I'm going to call the liquor store while they're still open. The nearest place is on Canal and they close early. Do you want to stick with Scotch or would you rather switch to bourbon? And what brand of bourbon?"

"I should probably be going soon."

"Scotch or bourbon?"

"I'll stay with the Scotch."

While we waited for the liquor delivery she took me around the loft and showed me some of her work. Most of it was realistic, like the Medusa, but a few pieces were abstract. There was a lot of strength in her sculpture. I told her I liked her work.

"I'm pretty good," she said.

She wouldn't let me pay for the liquor, insisting that I was her guest. We sat in our chairs again, opened our respective bottles, filled our glasses. She asked me if I really liked her work. I assured her that I did.

"I'm supposed to be good," she said. "You know how I got into this? Playing with clay with the kids at the day-care center. I wound up taking the clay home, that yellow modeling clay, and working with it by the hour. Then I took a night course at Brooklyn College, an adult-ed class, and the instructor told me I had talent. He didn't have to tell me. I knew it.

"I've had some recognition. I had a show at the Chuck Levitan Gallery a little over a year ago. You know the gallery? On Grand Street?" I didn't. "Well, he gave me a one-man show. A one-woman show. A one-person show. Shit, you have to think before you talk nowadays, have you noticed?"

"Uh-huh."

"And I had an NEA grant last year. National Endowment for the Arts. Plus a smaller grant from the Einhoorn Foundation. Don't pretend you heard of the Einhoorn Foundation. I never heard of it before I got the grant. I've got pieces in some fairly decent collections. One or two in museums. Well, one, and it's not MOMA, but it's a museum. I'm a sculptor."

"I never said you weren't."

"And my kids are in California and I never see them. He has full custody. The hell, I moved out, right? I'm some kind of unnatural woman in the first place, some dyke who deserts husband and kids, so of course he gets custody, right? I didn't make an issue of it. Do you want to know something, Matthew?"

"What?"

"I didn't want custody. I was done with day care. I had fucking had it with kids, my own included. What do you make of that?"

"It sounds natural enough."

"The Maisie Pomperances of the world wouldn't agree with you. Excuse me, I mean Mitzi. Gordon and Mitzi Fucking Pomerance. Mr. and Mrs. High-School Yearbook."

I was able to hear the vodka in her voice now. She wasn't slurring her words any but there was a timbre to her speech that the alcohol had provided. It didn't surprise me. She had matched me drink for drink and I was hitting it pretty good myself. Of course I'd had a head start on her.

"When he said he was moving to California I threw a fit. Yelled that it wasn't fair, that he had to stay in New York so I could visit them. I had visitation rights, I said, and what good were my visitation rights if they were three thousand miles away? But do you know something?"

"What?"

"I was relieved. Part of me was glad they were going, because you wouldn't believe what it was like, traipsing out there on the subway once a week, sitting in the apartment with them or walking around Boerum Hill and always risking blank stares from Maisie Pomerance. Goddamn it, why can't I even get that goddamned woman's name right? Mitzi!"

"I've got her number written down. You could always call her up and tell her off."

She laughed. "Oh, Jesus," she said. "I gotta pee. I'll be right back."

When she came back she sat on the couch. Without preamble she said, "You know what we are? Me with my sculpture and you with your existential angst, and what we are is a couple of drunks who copped out. That's all."

"If you say so."

"Don't patronize me. Let's face it. We're both alcoholics."

"I'm a heavy drinker. There's a difference."

"What's the difference?"

"I could stop anytime I want to."

"Then why don't you?"

"Why should I?"

Instead of answering the question she leaned forward to fill her glass. "I stopped for a while," she said. "I quit cold for two months. More than two months."

"You just up and quit?"

"I went to A.A."

"Oh."

"You ever been?"

I shook my head. "I don't think it would work for me."

"But you could stop anytime you want."

"Yeah, if I wanted."

"And anyway you're not an alcoholic."

I didn't say anything at first. Then I said, "I suppose it depends on how you define the word. Anyway, all it is is a label."

"They say you decide for yourself if you're an alcoholic."

"Well, I'm deciding that I'm not."

"I decided I was. And it worked for me. The thing is, they say it works best if you don't drink."

"I can see where that might make a difference."

"I don't know why I got on this subject." She drained her glass, looked at me over its rim. "I didn't mean to get on this goddamned subject. First my kids and then my drinking, what a fucking down."

"It's all right."

"I'm sorry, Matthew."

"Forget it."

"Sit next to me and help me forget it."

I joined her on the couch and ran a hand over her fine hair. The sprinkling of gray hair enhanced its attractiveness. She looked at me for a moment out of those bottomless gray eyes, then let the lids drop. I kissed her and she clung to me.

We necked some. I touched her breasts, kissed her throat. Her strong hands worked the muscles in my back and shoulders like modeling clay.

"You'll stay over," she said.

"I'd like that."

"So would I."

I freshened both our drinks.

Chapter 9

I awakened with church bells pealing in the distance. My head was clear and I felt good. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and met the eyes of a long-haired cat curled up at the foot of the bed on the other side. He looked me over, then tucked his head in and resumed napping. Sleep with the lady of the house and the cats accept you.