She pulled back, and I got ready for the protest, possibly a slap.

“Your mustache,” she said, “it scratches.”

“I’ll shave it off tomorrow. I promise.”

“No, it’s okay,” she said, then leaned in for another kiss.

46

The longest twenty minutes of my life, getting up from the table, finding the front desk, getting a room. But the moment that hotel-room door shut behind us, the two of us were locked in another kiss. I swept pillows and bedspread aside, stripped off my shirt, watched Alex shimmy out of her lace bra and panties, my lips on her breasts, the sound of breath catching in her throat. Rolling around on the bed, hands, fingers, lips slowly gliding over skin. Fumbling with a condom.

“Wait—” she said, pushing me back on the bed and getting on top, leaning down, her lips at my ear, whispering, “Tell me about your secret project or else.” She laughed.

I didn’t. The spell was broken, and I knew it showed on my face.

“I was kidding,” she said, crushed, a little girl scolded.

“It’s okay,” I said, taking a moment to get back in the mood, and it didn’t take long. I moved back in for a kiss.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just—”

“Shh, doesn’t matter,” I said, my tongue in her mouth to end the conversation.

Afterward, Alex’s cheek against my chest, I took in the room for the first time, noticing the same old-world charm as the hotel’s restaurant, flocked wallpaper, a cut-glass chandelier, our clothes strewn across the polished wooden floor.

“Oh God,” she said. “Tell me this didn’t happen.”

“It didn’t happen,” I said and laughed.

“I don’t do this, you know. Damn that grappa!” She tugged the sheet up to her neck. “I hardly know you.”

Did she really feel that way? I had told her things about myself I rarely told anyone. Maybe it was that I didn’t know her, though right now, I felt as if I knew enough; the rest I’d find out.

I put my arm around her, kissed her lips, her forehead. She traced the tattooed words on my arm, Kill Van Kull. I tried to cover it, but she pried my hand off and asked what it meant. I explained it was something I had done when I was fifteen, “just one of the stupid things I did when I was young, going along with my friends, a group thing, all six of us getting the same tattoo.”

“Were you a gang or something?”

I used the excuse that it was a long time ago, tried to change the subject, but Alex was now tracing the chain-link tattoo that circled my other bicep.

“Are you studying anatomy?”

“Just yours,” she said, which I liked. “So you were a bad boy?”

I sighed. “We told ourselves we were doing good, regular Robin Hoods.”

“Robbing from the rich to give to the poor?”

“Sometimes. Other times, we just sought revenge.” I growled the word to make it funny.