Golden Orange by Joseph Wambaugh

of me?”
    â€œWell, let’s see …” His speech was getting slurred and he knew it. So he took another drink. Too late now!
    â€œLie down,” she said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œHere. On the sofa. Lie back and put your feet up.”
    Tess dropped to her knees on the white carpet, lifted Winnie’s legs onto the sofa and slipped off his cheap penny loafers. She plumped the sofa pillows behind his head, got up and swayed toward the fireplace. She lit a small gas fire for effect. The logs were fake. Then she came back and knelt beside him.
    Winnie watched her take her jacket off and toss it carelessly onto the matching silk sofa on the other side of the glass table. She picked up his drink and held it to his lips, showing him an unreadable smile. She was acting just like a goddamn nurse! Was this one of those blue movies, or what?
    â€œComfy?” she asked.
    â€œYou kidding?”
    He thought she was going to lean over and kiss him, but she didn’t. She giggled softly. Wind chimes again.
    â€œStill scared?”
    â€œSure.”
    This time she chuckled out loud. “Win Farlowe, you’re perfect!”
    â€œI know. You said. A straight-ahead guy. Can I ask you something?”
    â€œOkay,” Tess said. “Anything.” She crept a little closer, resting her arm on the cushion beside his. He could feel the soft down on her forearm. In the firelight it was the color of polished brass.
    â€œI mean, I wasn’t conceived in a Cal Tech sperm bank. But I’m not stupid.”
    â€œOf course not,” she said.
    â€œI mean, I don’t like poems that don’t rhyme, but I’m no dummy.”
    â€œYou are definitely no dummy,” she agreed.
    â€œSo why me?”
    â€œWhy you, what?”
    â€œSomeone like you. Looks. Brains. Money. A real babe ! I don’t get it.”
    â€œYou’re the world’s only ex-cop who ever broke up a parade all by himself. You’re different.”
    â€œI’m different. Slumming, is that it?”
    â€œYou’re going to force me to get specific? Okay, starting with your looks, well, you look like … like daybreak at Catalina. When I was a girl and my dad took me over to the island for weekends, we’d sit out there on the water at dawn, fishing. Or rather, he was fishing and I was watching the sunrise. I thought, if there’s one thing you can depend on it’s that beautiful sunrise over the island. All this, after my mother and father had been screaming at each other all night and my fingers were bleeding from chewing my nails to the quick. Unlike you, I’ve always thought of the sun in masculine terms. Old mister sun rising up out of the sea at dawn. Anyway, I look at you and I think of that. That’s how you strike me, old son. There’s something certain and reassuring about you.”
    â€œThat’s why you call me old son? You mean like in the big sun up there?” Winnie pointed toward the twenty-foot ceiling.
    â€œCould be a subconscious choice of words,” she said. “I don’t pretend to understand myself any more than I’ve understood the men in my life: my father, my husbands, all three of them. But I think I understand a few things about you. You’re a straight-ahead guy.”
    â€œGot any kids?”
    â€œNo,” she said. “Guess I couldn’t bring myself to inflict the men I married on some helpless child. How about you?”
    â€œMy ex talked me into adopting her brats, I guess, so she could get a little more when her lawyer opened my veins. Never had any a my own. Sometimes I wish I had a son. Me, I had a great old man.” Thinking of his father, he sighed, then said, “So, how about all the guys around here? All the guys at your club? You don’t like em?”
    â€œThey bore me or threaten me or repel me. Maybe they seem as ruthless as my father, I don’t know. But you, you’re different.