Salvation Boulevard by Larry Beinhart Read Free Book Online Page B

concentration. Then she yelled, “Dammit! Dammit all!” and threw the tea set to the tiled floor, where it smashed and shattered.
    She grabbed the kettle by the handle, yanked it off the burner, and put it on the one behind, banging it down. I was afraid she was going to scorch herself on the flame or splatter herself with the boiling water. I reached over and turned off the range.
    â€œDamn, damn, damn, and fuck and fucking hell, and all of it,” she said, kicking at the bits and pieces of cups and teapot on the floor. Then she stood still, standing in front of me, looking helpless and lost, her arms held at her sides. Her mouth was tight, and she was holding back the tears.

    â€œI’m sorry,” I said, automatically taking a step toward her.
    â€œAre you?” she asked.
    â€œYes, I’m sorry for your . . . pain,” I said.
    We were less than two feet apart. She was looking up at me, into my eyes. So many things were going on inside her.
    There was a connection.
    It gets tricky. As an investigator, like when I was a cop, I wander in and out of people’s lives. I meet women at vulnerable moments, or merely at moments when I’m an unexpected presence, and they don’t have their standard controls over their emotional and sexual impulses up and in place. If I tune into that, communication opens up. Back in the day, I would fall into those waters, way past any excuses that it helped with the job, taking advantage, sometimes doing damage. Now, I don’t want that kind of trouble, but I do want information, so I let the doors open, knock gently to get them to open, but if it’s a bedroom door, I remember that I’m just there to look, from the entrance way, not to go in and participate.
    I found myself reaching toward her to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
    At the moment that I touched her, the feeling in the air drew all together and flowed out of her shoulder and up my arm and back down again. Her tension—one kind of tension, at any rate—released with a slight sigh, and I felt her almost imperceptibly soften and move toward me.
    I dropped my hand. There was more there than I had anticipated or understood, and I froze, feeling awkward. Teresa kept her eyes on mine, her face tilted up, the emotions she was feeling as visible as clouds drifting across the sky: now one, then another and another, some far apart, some so close they overlapped in their passing.
    I’m not sure which of us moved, or if both of us did, but our bodies were touching. Then our lips touched. Just a touch.
    â€œI’m married,” I stuttered, moving back. Immediately after I heard the sound of my own voice, I worried that I was presuming too much, that maybe what I thought I saw in those drifting clouds was
the devil’s whispers in my own mind. I know that he’s always around, waiting for my return.
    â€œI saw the ring,” she said calmly, the connections closing down and her emotions going back behind the hiding place of the face that’s proper to wear in public.
    â€œI didn’t mean to imply that you . . . ”
    She shook her head, that she wasn’t offended and maybe that she wasn’t denying that my defensive reaction had cause. “I’m . . . in something of a state . . . , ” she said in her own confusion, “. . . emotionally. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
    â€œNo,” I said. “Your husband just died.”
    We hadn’t moved. We were still so close that with the slightest gesture we could fall into each other, arms around each other, body pressed against body, and her hands, like mine, seemed poised at her sides as if they knew where they wanted to go but didn’t know how to get there.
    â€œWe better . . . , ” I said, stepping back, “um . . . sweep this up. I’ll help you.”
    I bent down and started picking up the pieces, the bigger ones. I still had to ask her questions. I threw