Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

murdered
a man, a man I assume loved you and was
helping you, and now you want me to step in his place and
love you and help you, and … I can’t. I cannot do it. I won’t
do it.’
‘Nick, I think you’ve gotten some bad information,’ she
said. ‘It doesn’t surprise me, all the rumors that are going
about. But we need to forget all that. If we are to go forward.
And we will go forward. All of America wants us to go
forward. It’s the story the world needs right now. Us. Desi’s
the bad guy. No one wants two bad guys. They 
want
to 
like
you, Nick. The only way you can be loved again is to stay
with me. It’s the only way.’
‘Tell me what happened, Amy. Was Desi helping you
all along?’

---

She flared at that: She didn’t need a man’s help, even
though she clearly had needed a man’s help. ‘Of course
not!’ she snapped.
‘Tell me. What can it hurt, tell me everything, because
you and I can’t go forward with this pretend story. I’ll fight
you every step of the way. I know you’ve thought of
everything. I’m not trying to get you to slip up – I’m tired of
trying to outthink you, I don’t have it in me. I just want to
know what happened. I was a step away from death row,
Amy. You came back and saved me, and I thank you for
that – do you hear me? I 
thank
you, so don’t say I didn’t
later on. I 
thank
you. But I need to know. You know I need to
know.’
‘Take off your clothes,’ she said.
She wanted to make sure I wasn’t wearing a wire. I
undressed in front of her, removed every stitch, and then
she surveyed me, ran a hand across my chin and my chest,
down my back. She palmed my ass and slipped her hand
between my legs, cupped my testicles and gripped my limp
cock, held it in her hand for a moment to see if anything
happened. Nothing happened.
‘You’re clean,’ she said. It was meant as a joke, a
wisecrack, a movie reference we’d both laugh at. When I
said nothing, she stepped back and said, ‘I always did like
looking at you naked. That made me happy.’
‘Nothing made you happy. Can I put my clothes back
on?’
‘No. I don’t want to worry about hidden wires in the
cuffs or the hems. Also, we need to go in the bathroom and
run the water. In case you bugged the house.’

---

‘You’ve seen too many movies,’ I said.
‘Ha! Never thought I’d hear you say that.’
We stood in the bathtub and turned on the shower. The
water sprayed my naked back and misted the front of
Amy’s shirt until she peeled it off. She pulled off all her
clothes, a gleeful striptease, and tossed them over the
shower stall in the same grinning, game manner she had
when we first met – 
I’m up for anything!
– and she turned to
me, and I waited for her to swing her hair around her
shoulders like she did when she flirted with me, but her hair
was too short.
‘Now we’re even,’ she said. ‘Seemed rude to be the
only one clothed.’
‘I think we’re past etiquette, Amy.’
Look only at her eyes, do not touch her, do not let her
touch you
.
She moved toward me, put a hand on my chest, let the
water trickle between her breasts. She licked a shower
teardrop off her upper lip and smiled. Amy hated shower
spray. She didn’t like getting her face wet, didn’t like the
feel of water pelleting her flesh. I knew this because I was
married to her, and I’d pawed her and harassed her many
times in the shower, always to be turned down. (
I know it
seems sexy, Nick, but it’s actually not, it’s something