Terra's boots kick a path through discarded t shirts and soiled socks to the tiny kitchen on her left flooded with fluorescent light. Her package takes it place among the many cardboard and Styrofoam containers on the counter, the empty remnants of a convenient single life. The emptiness now is as large as an elephant in her tiny apartment, the clutter an annoyance tap dancing on her nerves. Terra wades backward through the living room past her second-hand brown leather couch and the one red vinyl chair where the television sleeps, backward in time to the day before yesterday when she wore her impatience with the details of ordinary life like a medal. She had more important things to do than be neat the day before yesterday; she had a desk to cozy up to instead of a home.
Here in the hour of need, there is a half made bed with month old navy blue sheets, unscented lotion and deodorant like antiseptic on her clammy skin. Terra turns from the bedroom to the bathroom. She strips down, her hips seemingly a warm cinnamon hue in the low light reflecting off of the peach tile. A rainfall of hard hot water erases his fingerprints, his kisses; tears hotter still surge up from her belly, heating her skin with anger and grief. Her hand smacks the slick tile, smacks and smacks until her palm itches. But still the wall is hard, nothing at all like the chest of the man whose memory opened a sinkhole in her stomach.
Several hours watch her lying on the bed, sandwiched between fresh white cotton sheets, swaddled in a cloud of baby powder, a soft smell that almost conjures up visions of the mother she never knew. Her eyes roam over the tiny brush strokes of the painted ceiling, grouping lines and splotches into the profile of a face: Stark's suspicious squint; Darwin's sympathy; Harlowe's betrayal. He was the last man she ever called by name, the last man she ever tried to possess or allowed to possess her. Three years of trying seems to have left no legacy, certainly not loyalty, perhaps not even friendship. She didn't even play at trying with Mason; she didn't dare — he was a dangerous game. And yet she jerks away from the image of his face that her mind is building from a database of death. Sleep pulls on her eyelids; she snaps them open. But the soundtrack remains, repeating in her ears: Pop. Mason shot at her. Pop. Pop. Boom. Game over.
A slight shimmer of sound from the front room penetrates down to her cop's sixth sense. Terra's arm slinks down the side of the bed; her fingertips graze over the fabric of her pants and instinctively reach for real protection — her father's old Beretta, well-oiled and ready. She rolls quietly out of bed; a shock of shorn hair dips around the threshold, then her eyes, narrow and focused on the front door. A large presence accompanies her small footfalls, her movements silent except for the swish of the oversized white wife beater and panties clinging to her torso. Terra's gaze dissects the front room and the kitchen even as she moves steadily to the door; she squints through the peephole and frowns as she turns the lock. "What're you doing creeping around my door?"
"Well hello, sugar." Grinning, Harlowe wedges his frame into the doorway, his loafers over the threshold blocking the door's closure. Two fingers tip up a square of paper, wave the white flag back and forth. "I was leaving a note for you."
"For what?"
"You didn't pick up the phone."
"Didn't want to talk to you," Terra grouses, curiosity drawing her gaze to the note and indignance yanking it back.
Harlowe straightens up, his smile waning as he takes the measure of her animosity. "When'd you start wearing pj's?"
"None of your business."
"Used to be. Used to be a time I couldn't keep you in clothes. Who this come from?" he demands, stretching the neck of her tank top with one long finger.
He doesn't touch her, but the feel of distance closing between them pushes Terra two steps back. She pulls open the door and gestures him inside with her Beretta-bound left hand.
"Whoa." Harlowe's long khaki-clad legs cross the front room in three strides. He stops in front of the two cushion couch and shoves one hand in his pocket; his free fingers find the collar of his brown henley and toy with the buttons. "Time warp. Ain't you got the pockets for some real furniture by now? What the feds paying these days?" He turns at her silence, grimaces at the tight pinch of her lips as she shimmies into a pair of abandoned jeans. "You always tote a gun to the front door, or are we just tight like that?"
"You got something for me, or you just wasting my time with this chit chat?"
"I heard what happened. I'm sorry."
Terra's eyes round to pennies; she snorts. "Hey, yeah — I got the boot. Congrats, detective."
"I heard you just got suspended."
"Gossip's as good as a pink slip, right? If you heard I was gone. . ." She stops, huffs. "Everybody knows. . ." Terra sniffs loudly to mask the dwindling of her voice to a frightened squeak.
"Still can't finish a sentence, huh?" The cushions wheeze under his two hundred pounds of solid muscle; a diamond winks at his earlobe, as sparkling as his porcelain teeth as he drums up a smile. "Everybody knows I love my job like it was my own child. Everybody knows I still love you, James, and I should carry my butt back to the NOPD."
"Look," she bellows, swinging her fist toward him, "I know you don't believe me, but O'Neil said—"
"You wanna put that away?"
The television thumps onto the carpet; the gun thumps on the television. Terra folds one foot under her thigh and slouches in her red chair the way men do to feign less wariness than they feel. "O'Neil. Tape. Bust out your pad and write this down, 'cause he's lying on me. And please tell me that a Harbor police log isn't all you got to verify his whereabouts, because damn, detective—"
"I know, broad; don't tell me how to do my job. I cracked him as hard as I cracked you. But I need to know what's going on." His eyes sear her as he leans forward and thumps his chest. "Yesterday, you're public enemy number one. Today, Stark's pulling out like he broke a rubber on a smack-whore. He trying to tell me that Barnaby torched his own place, but he's still digging through your closet like the holy grail's in that motherfucker."
"Barnaby blew it? For real?"
"That's what they trying to say. Spinning it hard, too, but it don't add up to me."
"No," Terra murmurs dully. She stands and drifts toward the kitchen, wading through a sudden flurry of unattended information from the past two days. One swipe of her arm sets empty boxes clattering onto the floor tile; she rips into the plastic takeout bag concealing her package. "Come here and look at this," she shouts over the breakfast counter that serves as both dining table and desk. "This and this," she sputters, fanning out several pages for Harlowe's inspection. "Bills of loading from the dock's daily records. Read. I need some hot sparky to get my brain going."
"You slept any—"
"Read," Terra snaps, eyeballing the thick brown ring at the bottom of her coffee pot.
"Blah blah, X number of crates of X dimension with X contents: strontium—"
"Fireworks parts. Go on."
"—blah blah blah. . . blah blah. Same shit everyday for three weeks. So what?"
"That's my point. It was red stars and green fizz. Box after box, and . . ." Her words creak like an old woman's bones, weary of weaving sense. Sense fractures along a frustration line; an empty box of coffee filters clatters to the ground while Terra mummifies her hand with paper towels. "Okay, and the only thing out of whack was that little crate that came in by Custom's courier the day before the raid. Clean as a nun's butt. Barnaby knows the Feds are eyeballing him; why blow a clean warehouse?"
"Hold up — you checked all the shipments yourself? Every day?"
"Yeah, me and Darwin. You didn't want none, right?" Terra's gaze lingers on a tablespoon full of instant coffee; she flashes a toothy apology at Harlowe.
"Nah," he chuckles, his hip finding a comfortable spot against the door frame, worn thin over the many hours he spent standing there waiting to be let in to her life. "How in the hell did Stark get the seizure order? You can't get probable cause for a search warrant off of a bunch of firecrackers."
"They came in talking about illegal arms. Detonators and—"
"Arms by the truck load, right? In all those big shipments. But you checked, and they were all duds. How come Stark seizes right after that little crate? What was in it?"
Terra scrapes a tuft of bangs from her forehead, clearing out space for thoughts. None come to her. "I don't know."
"You said—"
"I didn't check that one; I wasn't there."
"Whatchu mean? You weren't there for your own investigation?"
"I was busy, okay?"
Harlowe's lips curl; his smile is a sharp dagger and his fingernail an axe that chips dull white paint from the door frame. "See? Every time I get ready to believe you, I remember who you were giving it up to."
"What is you talking about, boy?"
"Please, girl," he spits in return, "it was all over your face when I questioned you. You almost, almost looked emotional," he jeers, peering at her through the thimble-sized space between his thumb and index finger. "Don't you think I know what you look like when you lose a good lay?"
An anvil of silence drops between them; Terra's eyes narrow against the unexpected assault. "You wasn't that good."
"Maybe, but at least I didn't up and die on you." The battlefield fractures along the line that was drawn in the sand years ago; they revisit their heartbreak, his heart constricting while hers bursts into furious bloom behind her eyes. "Terra—"
"Get out of my place."
"—I'm sorry."
"Get out! Out!" she repeats, uselessly shoving him. Shoving becomes a side kick that nearly connects with his sternum; his shoulder blades smack the wooden door panel.
"I'm sorry, alright? Dang! I didn't mean it like that."
"Don't lie," Terra growls. "You hurt me — butch up and claim it. When I kick you in the balls—"
"I swear, I'm sorry," Harlowe half pleads, half chuckles as he stumbles backward through the front door.
"Don't come back here no more. I mean that," she hisses over the squeal of the hinges closing. "Don't laugh at me!" His amusement slithers under the door, its venom more powerful than his six feet for withering a woman to an unnaturally small size. "See? That's why I dropped your ass in the first place!"
"Terra! Look, just. . ." he trails off wheezing, resting his head against the door while he straightens his face, "just think about what I said. You can't scratch up a seizure order overnight, boo. Maybe Stark knew something was coming and he had the order waiting in the wings."
"Waiting on a cake box?" She snatches at her bangs again; days old and greasy, they stick up like exclamation points or porcupine needles. Terra grits her teeth, prickling against his nearness and the corresponding mutiny of her thoughts. "I ain't your boo," she rumbles, re-drawing the line. "You trying to say this whole thing was trumped up?"
"I'm saying all the paperwork and personnel was in the right place and there ain't nothing to show for it. But you best believe somebody was scrounging for something to be down here task forcing like that. And I know it wasn't you."
"Say what?"
"You heard what I said, broad."
There is a small crack and then a canyon as Terra's left cheek collapses into a dimple. "I could use a copy of the crime scene report."
"For what?"
"None of your business. I need it."
"What you need is something to eat; I could see your ribs through that wife beater. How about we go down to Smokey Bones right quick? They still got that Boston Butt—"
"Tomorrow," she cuts in, sharpening the line between them. "I need it ASAP."
"Yeah, I'll see what I can do."
"Don't come back here. I'll call you." Her breath hits the door panel and hangs there, a prayer moist and heavy with losses, a confession that she usually makes to the shower stall. "Hey — you heard me?" She opens the door with a gust that sweeps in the emptiness he left behind; she slams the door shut to break the ensuing silence, but it trails her around the apartment, echoing after each of her footsteps, after each shuffle of paper, after each breath that she issues like a call with no response.
A few days ago, silence was a prize and loneliness the badge of a hero. Terra abandons her apartment and leaps over the railing to her muscled steed; the Camaro's motor thumps low in her belly like the twist of passion. A few days ago. . . she sighs, scrubs her eyes, then suddenly lurches forward and thrusts her arm out of the open window. A small white square fills her palm, dinghy and crisp with dried morning dew:
Lay low. It'll blow over.
"Oh yeah?" Terra demands over the crinkle of crushed paper. No one answers.
