Angel City (8 page)

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you're going to have to give me a better reason if you want me to consider asking Inspector Gobet about it.”

Katherine pushed her plate aside and drilled Officer Jannsen with algid eyes.

“Okay, how about this, best girlfriend ever? It's really nice having you and the Swiss Guard protecting me and all. But if what you're telling me is true, that there's some international gang of bad guys still after me, then I don't want one of those motherfucking creeps coming anywhere near me. And if one of them does, I want to know how to blow his fucking head off, all by myself.”

T
HE BEST THING ABOUT NOWTIMES IN THE GREAT
A
MERICAN
Northwest, Katherine liked to tell herself after afternoon tea, was her bathtub. The kind a girl could stretch her legs in, Jacuzzi jets on demand. With a few inches on either end, she could do laps. She climbed in. The water was hot and it felt good, and there was a window at the foot of the tub with a view of the rainy world outside.

She thumbed through
The New Yorker
again. Satisfied she'd read all the cartoons, she dropped the magazine on the floor and slid down into the water. She lay there a moment, thinking about . . . about nothing. She held her breath, closed her eyes, and let her head sink underwater. She forced herself to stay down, fighting the urge to come up for air. When her heart began to pound, she tried to slow it down.
No fear, no fear . . .
She sat up and gasped, wiped the water from her face. Officer Jannsen was sitting on the stool next to the tub.

“What are you doing, Kat?”

“Meditating.”

“Underwater?”

“Dolphins do it, sometimes days at a time. I read it in
The
New Yorker
.”

“No you didn't.”

“No?”

“Dolphins are mammals; they can't spend days at a time underwater. And, you set off the pulse monitor.”

Katherine looked at the green rubber bracelet she wore 24/7 like a piece of hipster jewelry. That's what Katherine thought it was when Officer Jannsen strapped it to her wrist just before they left Lausanne. Turned out it was a gadget to monitor her well-being. Max had one, too.

“Oops.”

Officer Jannsen stood, pulled a bathrobe from the wall hook, and set it over the stool. Katherine saw the Glock on Officer Jannsen's hip. Then she saw the swelling of breasts under the sleeveless T-shirt, then the nice shoulders. Katherine was aware of a sensation she hadn't felt in a long time.

“Anne?”

“Yes?”

Katherine bit her lip. “What's for dinner?”

“The boys are going to town to pick up pizzas. You want to share one with me?”

“Oh, yes, please. With anchovies.”

Officer Jannsen bowed.

“
Je vous en prie, madame.
Anything else?”

Katherine slid down into the water again. “Nope.”

Officer Jannsen left and closed the door behind her. Katherine watched her toes wiggle in the water.

“Such a stupid girl you are, Kat Taylor.”

She opened the drain, climbed out of the tub. She threw on the bathrobe, grabbed a towel.

“‘What's for dinner?' Jesus, how lame can you get?”

She wrapped the towel around her hair and walked into her bedroom. She could see Max's room through an open door. He was still down for the count. She stood before the mirror, her mind wandering. More like wondering where the hell that little buzz in the tub came from. Must bring it up at her next meeting with the shrink, she told herself. She remembered the last session, last month. The shrink asked if Katherine had experienced any sexual feelings. Had she masturbated, for example, or thought about masturbating? Katherine, never shy about sex in her life, went ballistic.

“Are you out of your fucking mind, you fucking freak?”

It took a healthy shot of whatever it was the doctors put in the needle to calm her down. Then, a few weeks later, she's staring at Officer Jannsen's breasts under a sleeveless T-shirt and feels a rush of
oh, yes, please, and don't forget the anchovies
.

“Really, really stupid girl.”

Katherine pulled the towel from her hair and ran her fingers through it like arranging her thoughts. She and Officer Jannsen had been together since she'd left Lausanne. They had grown to be friends, even though Anne Jannsen was first and foremost a Swiss cop in girl's clothing.

Katherine's mind wondered and wandered a bit further. As in how close they might be, even though neither of them had said a word about it. After all, Officer Jannsen never took vacations. And she never went out on her own, and she most definitely did not fool around with the hunky Swiss Guard boys.

And then there were the rings.

At first, Katherine would take off her ring when returning to the house from the candle shop, or the doctor, or one of their long walks together. Katherine noticed Officer Jannsen kept hers on all the time. Not like she'd ever forget to put it on or take it off, Katherine thought. Anne Jannsen wasn't just a Swiss cop, she was part Saint Bernard and never forgot a thing. And then there was the way Officer Jannsen looked at her with that half smile of hers.
As if she
likes
looking at me,
Katherine thought. Katherine slowly opened her bathrobe and took a look at the goods.

Her breasts had dropped a cup size since she stopped nursing. They still had great shape and didn't sag. Her nipples had changed for sure. They'd become . . . well, nipples that looked like they had been sucked on by a hungry critter for months. But they were kind of cute the way they poked out from the areolae of her breasts. The rest wasn't looking too bad, either. The boys had set up a gym in the garage, and Katherine worked out with them three times a week. Real Swiss Army grunt and sweat stuff that turned her into something of a hard body. In fact, she was in the best shape of her life.

She pulled her hair into a clip, let the robe fall to the floor, and sat at her dressing table. She rubbed lotion over her skin. She remembered Officer Jannsen's half smile, then the solid shoulders, then the breasts under the sleeveless T-shirt. Katherine shook her head.

“Forget about it and get dressed.”

She threw on a pair of panties and a bra and went to the closet. She put on the usual baggy sweats. She saw herself in the mirror.

“You look like a sack of potatoes. And you've been a sack of potatoes for too long.”

She kicked off the sweats, pulled on her favorite pair of Levi's. She slipped on a cashmere sweater, the one she thought went well with her hazel-colored eyes. She took another gander at herself in the mirror. Better, but something was missing. There was a scarf somewhere. A birthday present from Officer Jannsen, as a matter of fact. She went through the chest of drawers looking for the damn thing. In the bottom drawer, buried under her collection of mismatched socks, she found a makeup bag. She couldn't remember ever buying makeup, not since she'd come to Grover's Mill, anyway. She opened the bag. Eyeliners, lipsticks, mascaras. All unopened and unused. And it was the good stuff.

“Huh.”

She picked up the Lancôme mascara and worked the brush through her eyelashes, just a touch. Then she began to trace a line of Armani red across her lips. There was a knock at her bedroom door.

“Kat?”

The lipstick skidded over her lips.

“Oh, fuck!”

Another knock.

“Kat? What's going on?”

“Don't come in!”

She dropped the lipstick and ran to the bathroom. She quickly washed her face and grabbed a towel. She ran through the bedroom and opened the door, saw Officer Jannsen standing in the hall, taking in the curious expression on Katherine's face.

“Are you feeling all right, Kat?”

“Yeah, fine. What's up?”

“Max is up.”

“Is he?”

“They hear him babbling in Control.”

“Oh, yeah, Control.”

Officer Jannsen stared at Katherine.
And damn,
Katherine thought,
she's flashing that cute
half smile of hers again, and her eyes are smiling
even more.

“What are you up to, Kat?”

“Just, you know, finishing up.”

“
D'accord.
I'll change Max and take him downstairs and get him started with dinner.”

“No, that's all right, I'll get him.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“Pizzas will be here in thirty minutes. I like your sweater, by the way.”

“Huh?”

“Your sweater. It's cute. It goes with your eyes.”

“Thanks.”

“See you downstairs.”

Katherine eased back into her room and quietly closed the door. She slumped into the chair at her dressing table and looked in the mirror. Her eyes were flared and her skin was flushed and she felt her stomach doing the kind of flip-flops she hadn't felt since she was sweet sixteen and never been kissed when Janice Binkley, Emerson High School's hottest cheerleader, took Katherine under the grandstand at halftime to smoke a joint and said, “Open your mouth, pretty girl,” and blew dizzying smoke into Katherine's body and kissed her long and deep.

“The shrink is so going to love this one. He'll fucking cum in his trousers.”

She opened the drawer and shoved the makeup back in.

She walked to Max's room, saw him standing in his crib, holding on to the rail. He saw her and went quiet. Against the last of the light bleeding through the sheer white curtains, he was shadowlike and still.

“Well, don't just stand there, buster, say something.”

Max gurgled and bounced up and down on his legs. She switched on the lights and Max squealed excitedly, as if he'd just seen a rabbit pulled from a hat.

“Yeah, yeah, you love that trick.”

She walked toward him and he stared at her with that intense look of his, as if he were trying to read her face. She stopped in front of him and stared back. It was the same game each time Max woke up: the two of them standing like gunfighters at the O.K. Corral, waiting to see who'd make the first move. Katherine threw up her arms in surprise.

“What?”

Max squealed and gurgled and bounced up and down some more. Katherine lifted him from the crib, kissed the top of his head.

“And you love that trick, too, don't you?”

She carried him to the changing table, laid him down, and unsnapped his pajamas. His cloth diaper was soaked in the front, loaded in the back.

“And this is your favorite trick of all.”

She undid the pins and turned up her nose.

“Whoever said your own baby's poo doesn't stink was lying through their teeth because, buster, you stink to almighty heaven.”

Max had a vocabulary of six or seven words in varying languages courtesy of Officer Jannsen and the multilingual Swiss Guard protecting the house and grounds.
Mommy
was often the French
Maman
,
milk
was the German
milch
, his pacifier was the Italian
ciuccio
, even though Katherine always called it
Mister Gummy
. But for the most part, Max chose to express himself with a word he made up himself. It covered everything and anything that might be running through his little boy brain.

“Goog.”

“Oh, goog yourself.”

Katherine dipped a soft cloth into a water basin and washed him. She used another cloth to apply lotion to his skin. She powdered him and dressed him in a fresh diaper and T-shirt.

“There you are, fresh as a daisy. Let me get rid of the evidence and we'll go downstairs.”

“Goog.”

“No, I'm having the pizza. You're having a tofu burger.”

“Goog, goog.”

“Tough.”

She dressed him in fresh flannel pajamas with little blue bears printed on the material, lifted him from the table, and set him back in his crib. He looked at her with a frown and uttered another of his favorite words, in French.

“Non.”

“Pas de panique.”

She handed him a small rubber hammer and a Whac-A-Mole game. Hit one on the head here, another one pops up there. Repeat until sleepy.

“Bang on this awhile. I'll be right back.”

“Zeug.”

That one came from
spielzeug
, German for
toys
, but
zeug
was close enough for Max. He attacked the contraption vigorously.

Whack, whack, whackwhack.

“Zeug!”

Katherine went into the hall and opened the closet. She tossed Max's T-shirt and used pajamas into a laundry basket. The soiled diaper and washcloths went into a sealed bin. All the laundry was taken care of downstairs, even Max's diapers. Problem was, laundry day was every day with Max. And as much as she loved the little squirt, and as much as Officer Jannsen kept telling her doing laundry builds character, Katherine sometimes felt she was trapped in a B-movie prison flick (starring Katherine Taylor as Prisoner 99 doing a ten to twenty stretch for grand theft auto). About six months into diaper duty, she asked Officer Jannsen (starring as the Warden Bitch of Cell Block 4) if she could get a lighter sentence and switch to disposable diapers. Katherine was told it was a security measure to use cloth.

“Not the best idea to be seen with boxes of disposable diapers,” Officer Jannsen said.

“Anne, the locals all know Max. The kid could get elected mayor by a landslide.”

“There are other concerns.”

“Like what?”