Chapter 22: After the Lights

"No," I said to Bernice. "I won't."

I didn't say anything else.

I walked out of the Drake Hotel on Samson's arm.

Three hundred people made a lane for us, and I didn't look back.

He drove to my condo without asking.

We climbed the stairs in the dark because the elevator was slow, and he carried my shoes in one hand.

Inside, the lamp was on, and the folder of receipts was still on the coffee table.

I swept it into a drawer, and I turned on the lights in every room.

"The whole place?"

"I want to see it. It's been a long time since I wanted to look at it."

He stood in the hallway in his tuxedo with his bow tie undone.

He looked at the photographs on the wall, a grandmother in a garden and a girl on a bicycle.

"It's beautiful," he said. "It's very you."

"Come here."

He came.

I took the velvet wrap off my shoulders and let it fall, and I put both hands flat on his chest.

"I've been the strong one all night," I said. "I'm done."

"Then let me."

His mouth came down on mine, slow this time, and it went on and on.

There was no anger in it, and no hurry.

He kissed me with patient, lingering deliberation, taking all the time in the world.

I backed him toward my bedroom, one step at a time, with my fingers in the buttons of his shirt.

The bed was the one my grandmother had slept in, with a white quilt.

I'd bought the sheets myself.

I pushed his jacket off his shoulders and unbuttoned the shirt.

He stood there bare to the waist, with the scar across his ribs, and let me look.

"Turn around," he said.

I turned.