Third Degree by Maggie Barbieri Page A

and the fully exposed décolletage.
    “I’m not in the mood, Crawford.”
    “Must have been a tough day at school,” he said, taking my bag and sweater from me. “What happened to you?”
    “I fell,” I said, as if that weren’t apparent. “Those stairs behind my office have been there since the eighteen hundreds and nobody would think to fix them. Wait until some kid with a lawyer father falls down. Then they’ll get fixed.” I extended my left arm for Crawford’s examination. “Does my wrist look swollen to you?”
    “A little,” he said. He took it in his hand and examined it carefully. “Probably sprained but doesn’t look broken.” He had me run through a series of agility exercises that included flexing my fingers, bending my wrist, and then putting my arm around my neck, which he admitted was just so he could get a better look at my boobs through the ripped dress. He kissed the tip of my nose. “The wrist goes nicely with the black eye.”
    “Not. Funny.” I went through the back door, noticing that the screen had been replaced. I softened immediately. “Thanks, Crawford,” I said.
    “Not a problem,” he said. He put my bag on the table and leaned against the counter. “Now, do you feel like going out or staying in? If we go out, we’ll have to go to a place that doesn’t have a ‘no shirt, no shoes, no service’ rule.”
    “Out. Definitely out,” I said.
    “Are you feeling better?” he asked.
    “I’m fine. It was just the weekend, Crawford. I was just wigged out.”
    “That’s understandable.”
    “Let me get changed.” I started for the hall stairs. “If I find an Ace bandage, would you wrap this thing for me?” I asked, holding out my wrist. I went upstairs and took stock of the situation while sitting on the toilet lid. The dress was a goner, the wrap part having been torn from the waistline and getting ripped in the process, but my shin was surprisingly unharmed. My elbow was a little scraped but nothing I couldn’t live with. I rummaged around in the drawers of the vanity and came up with an Ace bandage because the wrist was clearly the most troublesome of all of the injuries.
    I handed it to Crawford when I reentered the kitchen; I had put on a pair of jeans and a linen shirt and looked slightly more presentable. He had me sit at the table, wrapping my wrist tight and affixing the metal clip. “How’s that?” he asked.
    “Better,” I said. My wrist was now immobile but felt better as a result. I hadn’t had time to ice it so I figured this was the next best thing.
    We decided to go to a restaurant right on the river that was within walking distance of my house. Crawford asked the hostess for a table in the corner so that we were far away from the cluster of diners who were seated at the tables that ringed the restaurant and had the best view of the river. We saw each other so infrequently during the week that the river view wasn’t a lure but privacy was. After we sat down and each had a drink in front of us—me, my usual Ketel One martini with three olives, and him, a bottle of domestic beer—I told him about the missing angel.
    “I loved that angel!” I said, stuffing an olive in my mouth. “You know it. It’s the one with the broken wing tip. That angel’s been through a lot but it’s always there and that makes me feel better when I drive onto campus.”
    “Sounds like a troubled class already,” he said. He pulled a piece of bread from the basket and slathered it with butter. “Did I ever tell you about my first call as a rookie at the Fiftieth?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    He smiled at the memory. “I’m on the job maybe two hours when we get a call from the Avenue Cab Company …”
    “Ahhh, I remember it well,” I said. The Avenue Cab Company—555-5551—was a favorite of St. Thomas students when I was there. It ferried us back and forth to Broadway where all the bars were. I spent many a night in the back of one of their cabs, smelling