“For what?”

“Anything or anyone we thought was wronged.”

“A regular knight in shining armor.”

“Not everyone would agree, definitely not my parents or teachers—or the police.”

She asked if I’d ever been arrested and I admitted to once, omitting the times I’d come close.

“For what? It wasn’t murder, was it?”

“God, no!”

“Did you go to prison?”

“No! Can we stop talking about this? It’s embarrassing.”

“Everyone has something they’re embarrassed about.”

“Do you?”

She hesitated, as if thinking it through. “The usual…you know, bad dates, wrong choices.”

“At least they’re not tattooed on your body.”

“I think they’re hot… Your tattoos, I mean.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No. I was always such a…good girl. I’m impressed. Did your gang stick up gas stations and things like that?”

“Please. Stop. I beg you!” I tossed the sheet over her face.

She pulled it down, went back to my Kill Van Kull tattoo. “What’s this above it?”

“A bridge.”

“I can see that. What bridge?”

I didn’t want to talk about my background anymore, but she wouldn’t let it go.

“The Bayonne Bridge,” I said. “Happy?”

“I don’t know. Should that make me happy?”

“You don’t even know where it is.”

“Bayonne, I imagine.”

“Right,” I said.

“Where you’re from?”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “You like the idea of slumming with a Bayonne boy?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Alex propped herself up on an elbow, narrowed a look at me. “Are you trying to pick a fight?”

“No. Sorry. I’d rather not talk about it, that’s all.”

“I’m just interested in knowing about you. Is that so bad?”

“No,” I said and kissed her. “One day, I’ll tell you the whole story of my misspent youth. It’s right out of Dickens.” Something about her made me want to open up, expose my well-defended vulnerability.

“How’d you get this?” Alex drew a finger through the scar that bisected my eyebrow.

“A fistfight,” I said. “One I obviously lost. Are you finished with my physical exam, Doctor?”

“For now,” she said.

I started to get up.

“You’re not leaving, are you?”

“Just going to the bathroom.” I leaned over to give her another quick kiss, took in her blue-gray eyes, the slight down just barely discernible on her cheeks. I held her face in my hands. “I’m not going anywhere. Anyway, I’ve already paid for the night, and this place is expensive! Sorry—that came out wrong.”

“I’ll say.”

“I want to stay,” I said. “Though how come we didn’t go to your place?”

“It was you who got the room,” she said. “You didn’t ask to go to my apartment, though I’d have said no. It’s a mess. Suitcases exploded, clothes everywhere. We’d never have found the bed!”

“I think I would have.”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“You mean my place?” I pictured my tiny hotel room, the worn chintz bedspread, the shower without a curtain. No way I’d have brought a woman like Alex to my no-star hotel. “My place is even more of a mess, like a teenage boy’s bedroom.”