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She stared at him, taken aback. “What?”
“I’m a cop,” he said, then turned and walked back into his house.
Jaine stared after him, shocked. A cop?
“Well, fuck,” she said.
two
Every Friday Jaine and three friends from Hammerstead Technology where they all worked, met after work at Ernie’s, a local bar and grill, for a glass of wine, a meal they didn’t have to prepare, and girl talk. After working all week in a male-dominated atmosphere, they really really needed the girl talk.
Hammerstead was a satellite company supplying computer technology to the General Motors plants there in the Detroit area, and computers were still largely a male domain. The company was also fairly large, which meant the general atmosphere was a little weird, with its sometimes uneasy blending of computer geeks who didn’t know the meaning of the words “appropriate for the office” and the usual corporate management types. If Jaine had worked in any of the research-and-development offices with the weirdos, no one would have noticed she was late to work that morning. Unfortunately, she was in charge of the payroll department, and her immediate supervising manager was a real clock watcher.
Because she had to make up the time she was late that morning, she was almost fifteen minutes late getting to Ernie’s, but the other three had already gotten a table, thank God. Ernie’s was already filling up, the way it always did on a weekend night, and she didn’t like waiting in the bar for a table even when she was in a good mood, which she wasn’t.
“What a day,” she said as she dropped into the empty fourth chair. While she was thanking God, she’d add to the list her thanks that today was Friday It had been a bitch, but it was the last bitch—at least until Monday.
“Tell me about it,” Marci muttered as she stubbed out a cigarette and promptly lit another one. “Brick’s been on a tear lately Is it possible for men to have PMS?”
“They don’t need it,” Jaine said, thinking of her jerk of a neighbor—a cop jerk. “They’re born with testosterone poisoning.”
“Oh, is that what’s wrong?” Marci rolled her eyes. “I thought it was a full moon or something. You’ll never guess—Kellman grabbed my ass today.”
“Kellman?” the other three said in synchronized astonishment, their combined voices drawing the attention of everyone around them. They burst into laughter, because of all the possible offenders, he was the least likely.
Derek Kellman, age twenty-three, was the walking definition of nerd and geek. He was tall, gangly, and moved with all the grace of a drunken stork. His Adam’s apple was so prominent in his thin neck that it looked as if he had swallowed a lemon that became permanently lodged in his throat. His red hair was a stranger to a brush; it would be matted flat in one place and standing out in spikes in another: a terminal case of bed head. But he was an absolute genius with computers, and in fact they were all sort of fond of him, in a protective, big-sisterly way. He was shy awkward, and absolutely clueless about everything except computers. The office buzz was that he’d heard there were two sexes, but wasn’t certain the rumor was true. Kellman was the last person anyone would suspect of being an ass grabber.
“No way,” Luna said.
“You’re making that up,” T.J. accused.
Marci laughed her husky smoker’s laugh and took a deep drag off her cigarette. “Swear to God, it’s true. All I did was walk past him in the hallway. The next thing I know, he grabs me with both hands and just stands there, holding my ass like it’s a basketball and he’s about to start dribbling.”
The mental image had them all giggling again. “What did you do?” Jaine asked.
“Well, nothing,” Marci admitted. “The problem is, Bennett was watching, the jerk.”
They groaned. Bennett Trotter thrived on picking on those he considered his subordinates, and poor Kellman was his favorite target. “What could I do?” Marci asked, shaking her head. “No way was I going to give the asshole more ammunition to use against the poor kid. So, I patted Kellman on the cheek and said something flirty, along the lines of ‘I didn’t know you cared.’ Kellman turned as red as his hair and dodged into the men’s room.”
“What did Bennett do?” Luna asked.
“He got that nasty smirk on his face and said that if he’d known I was so hard up I’d settle for Kellman, in the interest of charity he’d have offered his services a long time ago.”
That set off an epidemic of eye-rolling. “In other words, he was his usual jerk self,” Jaine said in disgust.
There was political correctness, and then there was reality, and the reality was that people were people. Some of the guys they worked with at Hammerstead were nasty leches, and no amount of sensitivity training was going to change that. Most of the guys were okay, though, and it all evened out because some of the women were barbed-wire bitches. Jaine had stopped looking for perfection, in the workplace or anywhere else. Luna thought she was too cynical, but then Luna was the youngest of their group and her rose-tinted glasses were still intact—a bit faded now, but intact.
On the surface, the four friends had nothing in common other than their place of work. Marci Dean, the head of accounting, was forty-one, the oldest of the group. She had been married and divorced three times and, since the last trip through the courtroom, preferred less formal arrangements. Her hair was bleached platinum blond, her smoking was beginning to take its toll on her skin, and her clothes were always just a bit too tight. She liked beer, blue-collar men, rowdy sex, and admitted to a fondness for bowling. “I’m a man’s dream,” she’d say, laughing. “I have beer tastes on a champagne budget.”
Marci’s current live-in boyfriend was a guy named Brick, a big, muscle-bound oaf whom none of the other three liked. Privately, Jaine thought his name was appropriate, because he was as dense as a brick. He was ten years younger than Marci, worked only occasionally, and spent most of his time drinking her beer and watching her television. According to Marci, though, he liked sex just the way she did and that was reason enough to keep him around for a while.
Luna Scissum, the youngest, was twenty-four and the wunderkind of the sales division. She was tall, willowy, and had both the grace and dignity of a cat. Her perfect skin was the color of pale, creamy caramel, her voice was gentle and lyrical, and men dropped at her feet like flies. She was, in effect, the direct opposite of Marci. Marci was blatant; Luna was remote and ladylike. The only time anyone had ever seen Luna angry was when someone referred to her as “African-American.”
“I’m an
American,” she had snapped, whirling on the offender. “I’ve never even been to Africa. I was born in California, my father was a major in the Marine Corps, and I’m not a hyphenated anything. I have a black heritage, but I also have a white one.” She had held out one slim arm and studied the color of it. “Looks to me like I’m brown. We’re all just different shades of brown, so don’t try to set me apart.”
The guy had stammered an apology, and Luna, being Luna, had given him a gracious smile and forgave him so gently that he ended up asking her out on a date. She was currently dating a running back for the Detroit Lions football team; unfortunately, she had fallen hard for Shamal King, while he was known for his wild partying with other women in every city where there was an NFL team. All too often Luna’s dark hazel eyes held an unhappy expression, but she refused to give up on him.
