Клео Коул - Through The Grinder

“Not since Terry Bradshaw was a Steelers quarterback,” I said. (I’d followed football back then primarily because dear old Dad ran a bookie operation in the rear of my grandmother’s grocery back in western Pennsylvania.) “But if you don’t want to talk about your marriage problems, now that you’ve told me you have them…” I shrugged. “It’s pro teams, the weather…or I could give you the culinary history of penne alla vodka. What do you think?”

Quinn sighed and smiled. He actually smiled. “Sorry,” he said. “Shutting down is a knee-jerk reaction of mine, in case you haven’t noticed…”

In case I haven’t noticed? I stared at the man. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I don’t want to be rude, Clare. Especially to you.”

I shook my head. “It’s okay. We really don’t have to talk about it if you’ve changed your mind. It’s your business.”

“I’m just not good at this.”

“At…what…exactly?”

Quinn began fidgeting again, this time like a teenage boy, playing with this silverware, then awkwardly scratching his square, freshly shaved jaw. “At asking for personal advice…”

“It’s okay. I understand.”

“Do you?”

“When Matteo was cheating on me…” I began. Then I stopped, stared, and took another sip of wine — a long one.

All of a sudden, I felt a little more forgiving of Quinn’s reluctance to talk. When you spend most of your adult waking hours trying to look dependable, responsible, and together, the last thing you want to do is admit to anyone, let alone yourself, that your personal life had once gone totally to shit.

I put down the wine glass. “When I found out he was sleeping around,” I continued, “I was so ashamed. I couldn’t tell anyone. For a long time, I just pretended it wasn’t happening. At first, I blamed the work, all the traveling that went with his job…and then I blamed the cocaine. I tried to tell myself he wasn’t really himself…he wasn’t really responsible. The thing is…I loved him so much, and I knew he loved me. And there was Joy to consider.”

“Yeah, that’s my main concern…Molly and Jeremy.”

“I know.”

“So…” said Quinn slowly. “What made you finally decide to…?”

“To give up?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Well…” I began. “It wasn’t easy. I didn’t just love Matt, you know? I was in love with him. So much in love, I even thought for a little while that I should try to make it work the way he wanted. An open marriage — at least for him because I could never cheat and live with myself…but then, a little at a time, I shut myself down emotionally. And the more I shut down, the more he turned away, until finally I decided I couldn’t live that way anymore.”

“Was there any one thing that happened or did you just…?” Quinn shrugged.

“One morning I was preparing an urn of our Breakfast Blend, and I just broke down. It sounds silly, but I was grinding this beautiful freshly roasted batch, and it just hit me that my marriage was doing to me what that grinder was doing to those beans. On the outside I held it together, but on the inside, I was being ground up into unrecognizable pieces.” I shrugged. “That’s when I realized the truth.”

“You wanted a divorce?”

“No…that it was impossible for me to fit myself in a filter, pour steaming water over myself, and serve myself in cups to customers.”

Quinn stared at me for a second.

“It’s a joke,” I said.

We both burst out laughing.

It was good to hear him laugh.

Quinn exhaled, and the tension he’d carried since he’d arrived seemed to leave his entire body. (And here I had thought he’d been uptight because of his caseload.)

Then his eyes met mine, and he stopped laughing.

“She’s had affairs for years, Clare.” His voice was eerily cold. Unemotional. Dead. “With men. And, lately, with a woman. She’s shredded our marriage vows into worthless rags. Lied to me more times than I can count.”

I took a deep breath. “Then the real question is whether you’ve come to the point where you can live without her.”

With his free hand, Quinn reached for the wine glass again, but only to finger the stem. His eyes wouldn’t meet mine now. They focused on the fine Waterford crystal, its facets reflecting the flickering candlelight.

I waited for him to continue — because I thought we had all evening, and I had plenty of time to hear more about his marriage, about any attempts he might have made at marriage counseling, and generally to witness this rare occasion of his finally opening up. But then Quinn’s cell rang. The second he heard the voice on the other end, that glacier curtain came down. Work, of course. Something had come up and they needed to call him in.

“Are you going to a crime scene?” I asked after he flipped closed his cell and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

“Yeah.”

“Tucker’s managing downstairs tonight,” I told him. “Stop in and ask for a tray of lattes to go. On the house.”

He thanked me, and I walked him to my duplex’s door. Then, on the landing above the service staircase, he stopped.

“Mike? Did you need something else?”

He just stood there, looking down, as if considering his answer. “Thanks,” he said, then without another word, he was gone.

Hiding in the crowd of tenants, the Genius watched the tall, broad-shouldered detective in the dark brown coat case the crime scene.

“Sorry, Mike. Sorry to pull you in.”

“It’s all right. What have you got?”

“Jumper.”

Uniformed police had already cordoned off the area around the body and were scanning it for evidence. But it was a waste of effort. They’d quickly come to the same conclusion as the other cops at the other crime scenes — suicide.

Ms. Inga Berg, they would assume, had said goodnight to her big date earlier than expected…because taking off one’s panties may get you sex, but it doesn’t guarantee a long night of lovemaking by any stretch. After retiring for the evening, Inga had decided to take the elevator to the rooftop parking area, walk to the edge, and somersault over the banister.

Inga Berg, they would conclude, had leaped to her death.

“Objective achieved,” whispered the Genius.

Slipping away was the last task left, before the police began to question the tenants. This being a new building, few of the tenants would know each other. These people would naturally assume the Genius to be just another tenant, or friend of a tenant. So departing would be easy.

But the Genius couldn’t leave just yet. It was too good a feeling, seeing the handiwork appreciated for the first time. The tape being put up, the police photographer snapping photos, the chalk being drawn, the detective staring up into the cold, black night, estimating the trajectory of the body’s fall, then snapping on latex gloves to gently examine the woman’s smashed body.

She looked a bit like she was sleeping actually, except for the splattering of blood and brain matter.

Inga Berg’s white shoes had been torn off in the fall, but she was still clothed in the white fur-trimmed parka, beneath it, the cream silk negligee with lace trim, her long, dyed hair a blonde mop across her face.

The Genius watched the detective crouch down, tenderly push the long blonde hair away, to reveal staring brown eyes, a mouth frozen open forever.

This was just too good. Seeing the accomplishment like this.

The Genius almost didn’t notice the detective rising, turning, scanning the crowd.

Time to slip away, the Genius decided. Slip away…slip away… And after slithering slowly backward through the heart of the crowd, that’s exactly what the Genius did.