The Likeness

The flat smelled of tomatoes and garlic and herbs. I had a complicated sauce simmering and water boiling and a huge packet of ravioli at the ready, going by the same principle women have followed since the dawn of time: if you have something to tell him that he doesn’t want to hear, make sure there is food. “I’m being domesticated,” I told him. “I cleaned and everything. Hi, honey, how was your day?”

“Ah, sure,” Sam said vaguely. “We’ll get there in the end.” As he pulled off his coat, his eyes went to the coffee table: wine bottles, corks, glasses. “Have you been seeing fancy men behind my back?”

“Frank,” I said. “Not very fancy.”

The laughter went out of Sam’s face. “Oh,” he said. “What did he want?”

I had been hoping to save this for after dinner. For a detective, my crime-scene cleanup skills suck. “He wanted me to come to your case meeting tomorrow night,” I said, as casually as I could, heading over to the kitchenette to check the garlic bread. “He went at it sideways, but that’s what he was after.”

Slowly Sam folded his coat, draped it over the back of the sofa. “What did you say?”

“I thought about it a lot,” I said. “I want to go.”

“He’d no right,” Sam said, quietly. A red flush was starting high on his cheekbones. “Coming here behind my back, putting pressure on you when I wasn’t there to-”

“I would’ve decided exactly the same way if you’d been standing right here,” I said. “I’m a big girl, Sam. I don’t need protecting.”

“I don’t like that fella,” Sam said sharply. “I don’t like the way he thinks and I don’t like the way he works.”

I slammed the oven door. “He’s trying to solve this case. Maybe you don’t agree with the way he’s doing it-”

Sam shoved hair out of his eyes, hard, with his forearm. “No,” he said. “No, he’s not. It’s not about solving the case. That fella Mackey-this case has bugger-all to do with him, no more than any other murder I’ve worked, and I didn’t see him showing up on those ones pulling strings right and left to get in on the action. He’s here for the crack, so he is. He thinks it’ll be a great laugh-throwing you into the middle of a bunch of murder suspects, just because he can, and then waiting to see what happens. The man’s bloody mad.”

I pulled plates out of the cupboard. “So what if he is? All I’m doing is going to a meeting. What’s the huge big deal?”

“That mentaller’s using you, is the big deal. You’ve not been yourself since that business last year-”

The words sent something straight through me, a swift vicious jolt like the shock from an electric fence. I whipped round on him, forgetting all about dinner; all I wanted to do with the plates was throw them at Sam’s head. “Oh, no. Don’t, Sam. Don’t bring that into this.”

“It’s already in it. Your man Mackey took one look at you and he knew something was up, figured he’d have no problem pushing you into going along with his mad idea-”

The possessiveness of him, standing in the middle of my floor with his feet planted and his fists jammed furiously in his pockets: my case, my woman. I banged the plates down on the counter. “I don’t give a flying fuck what he figured, he’s not pushing me into anything. This has nothing to do with what Frank wants-it’s got nothing to do with Frank, full stop. Sure, he tried to bulldoze me. I told him to fuck off.”

“You’re doing exactly what he asks you to. How the hell is that telling him to fuck off?”

For a crazy second I wondered if he could actually be jealous of Frank and, if he was, what the hell I was supposed to do about it. “And if I don’t go to the meeting, I’ll be doing exactly what you ask me to. Would that mean I’m letting you push me around? I decided I wanted to go tomorrow. You think I’m not able to do that all by myself? Jesus Christ, Sam, last year didn’t lobotomize me!”

“That’s not what I said. I’m just saying you haven’t been yourself since-”

“This is myself, Sam. Take a good look: this is my fucking self. I did undercover years before Operation Vestal ever came along. So leave that out of it.”

We stared at each other. After a moment Sam said, quietly, “Yeah. Yeah, I suppose you did.”

He dropped down on the sofa and ran his hands over his face. All of a sudden he looked wrecked, and the thought of what his day had been like sent a pang through me. “Sorry,” he said. “For bringing that up.”

“I’m not trying to get into an argument,” I said. My knees were shaking and I had no idea how we had ended up fighting about this, when we were basically on the same side. “Just… leave it, OK? Please, Sam. I’m asking you.”

“Cassie,” Sam said. His round, pleasant face had a look of anguish that didn’t belong there. “I can’t do this. What if… God. What if something happens to you? On my case, that had nothing to do with you. Because I couldn’t bloody well get my man. I can’t live with that. I can’t.”