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The first time I’d seen her, the jazz pianist was nude, but right then she was naked, stripped down to the bone.

Somewhere in the devastation Minnie thought of something.

She looked up from the pile of coagulating pasta and asked, “So, you’ve been hired to find Dalia?”

“No.”

“Who, then?”

“Like I said, I’m looking for Arman’s granddaughter. Her name is Twyla—Twyla Macintosh, the daughter of a woman named Mara Macintosh.”

“And Arman is the girl’s grandfather?”

“That’s what he told me.”

“You’ve talked to Arman?” she asked. “And you’re sure that he never killed Dalia?”

I nodded.

“So that means I didn’t kill her?” she asked, probing deeper.

“That’s right.”

For a while there I disappeared from her awareness. Her face changed from wonder to self-examination and finally into an innocence that somehow managed to exist without actually being innocent.

“I’m going to call a car,” she said a few minutes later.

“I understand.”

I was fumbling with the lock on my third-floor apartment when the door was thrown open.

In the quarter second that I was deciding whether to duck or attack, Leaf Alyssandra Morton jumped into my arms and kissed me passionately.

The power and desperation of that kiss brought me back to the blue church and its naked congregation. I lifted her and kicked the door closed behind. Dumping her on the bed, not giving either of us a chance to undress, I kissed Leaf like I meant it. We were still partially clothed an hour later, the first time we slowed down.

“Well,” Leaf said. “At least that answers one’a my questions.”

“Which one?”

“If you had been with another woman.”

“Because I don’t smell like perfume?”

“Nah, because after all that you just did, you couldn’t’a been.”

I tried to explain about where I’d been and what it meant, but she wanted my mouth only for things I couldn’t say. After a while, the events of the night before settled into the background.

19.

IT WAS MIDMORNING when I awoke. All that was left of Leaf was a note set on the red table, scrawled in pink ink on a sheet of paper that had been torn from a lined journal.

King,

Last night started with me all worried and sad. You know, I never been jealous of no man or woman. I never worried about where they were or when they might come back. But last night, I expected to see you and when I didn’t, and when you didn’t answer my texts or my calls, I got all upset. And then you were there, with me, in love, and I knew that this was what I’ve been looking for. You.

Aja had Wednesdays off and so I took my time before going downstairs. I shat, showered, and shaved. Then I looked at my phone and found that, the night before, Leaf had called eight times and texted me thrice.

Hey baby… Where are you?… Is something wrong?… The texts read.