Chapter 24: Green Light

The police kept us on the roof until midnight.

The older detective took Minnie's statement at the cake cart, and he wrote down two hundred and twelve thousand dollars twice.

"We froze his accounts at four this afternoon," he said. "Your father's money is sitting in one of them, ma'am. The judge will release it."

Minnie stared at him.

"All of it?" she said.

"All of it. Your marriage is void, but your claim is not."

The first wife gave her statement in her wedding dress, with the train folded over one arm.

When she finished, she walked up to Minnie and took both her hands.

"I'm going home to my yellow kitchen," she said. "I'll bring you tomato plants in the spring, if you'll have them."

"I'll have them," Minnie said.

Maggie drove the first wife back to Milwaukee in the Honda, because she had refused to let anyone else.

Delaney stood at the elevator with her white skirt in her fist.

No one stood near her.

Her mother, her friends and her coworkers had all been at the party, and none of them crossed the roof.

She looked at me once, and then at the floor.

She pressed the button and rode down alone.

It was past one in the morning when Minnie unlocked the studio above her father's bakery.

The room smelled of sugar and old wood, and the streetlight through the window put a yellow square on the bed.

She shut the door and leaned on it.

"Nobody's wife," she said.

"Nobody's."

"I don't have a rule tonight."

"Good."

"I have a question."

I stood in front of her with my tie hanging loose.

"Ask it," I said.

She put her palms flat on my chest.

"Stay," she said. "And this time I'm asking you, not telling you. Stay with me tonight and tomorrow and the day after."

For a moment I couldn't speak.

"Yes," I said.

She reached up and slid the tuxedo jacket off my shoulders.

She undid my cufflinks one at a time and put them on the dresser, and she unbuttoned my shirt slowly, kissing every inch of skin she uncovered.

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