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She jumped in the shower for one minute, re-dressed, brushed her teeth, thought about it, and put her toothbrush and a travel-sized tube of toothpaste in her purse. Hawkins was waiting at the desk, and they went out on the street, which was cool, with a soft dampness in the air.
The café was small, no more than a dozen tables scattered across one stoned-floored room and a patio, with dark wood walls. It smelled of something Letty thought might be a meat-and-vegetable stew, or pie. Somewhere close by, somebody was listening to Miley Cyrus’s “Flowers.”
They sat outside and watched passersby and talked about nothing until the food came, and Hawkins told her about studying at Oxford and his job, she told him about Stanford and working for Senator Colles and the Department of Homeland Security, and about the shootout at the Pershing bridge.
“When I killed the guys in the pickup, I was covered with baby blood and snot and poop and I’d handed one dead baby up through that bus…I confess I felt nothing for those guys. I shot them to pieces. Good riddance.”
“Blood and snot and baby poop…everything you need for a lifelong nightmare.”
“How about you in Afghanistan?”
“I spent most of my time on an American military base, looking at surveillance photos, trying to make sense of reports coming in from the field. I’d look for a nexus of Taliban activity and try to predict where the nexus would next show up, so a hunter-killer formation would be anticipating them.”
“How did that work out?”
“I was rather good at it. I’d spend hours looking at maps and combat histories and what I thought of as…pressures on the Taliban. Affinities. Like high- and low-pressure systems in the weather. As much mass psychology as anything else, I suppose.”
They both had a glass of wine with the meal, and after they’d finished, by common consent stopped at a hole-in-the-wall bar for Letty’s last drink of the day, a margarita.
“Tired?” Hawkins asked.
“Actually, I’m wide awake. It’s about four o’clock in the afternoon in Washington.”
“So what will we do for the rest of the evening?”
Looked at him, then closed one eye, considered—he looked so hopeful—finished her drink and said, “Heck with it. Your room or mine?”
—
Hawkins had beenmarried right after graduation, at twenty-two, and had remained married for six years, and so had a level of sexual experience—excellence?—gained from a three-times-a-week routine, at least when he was at home. Letty hadn’t encountered that with her sexual history of three young bachelors. Hawkins was, as she’d suspected, a horndog.
At two in the morning, she sat up in bed, stretched, and said, “That was nice. I better be going.”
“What? No, no, no. In my experience, an early-morning fuck is just the thing before a run. Gets the blood circulating,” Hawkins said. “You brought running clothes, yes? So, that’s settled.”
She eased down beside him and said, “You talked me into it.”
Hawkins went to sleep six minutes later. He didn’t snore but did make some heavy breathing sounds and occasionally muttered a word or two. When she was sure he was asleep, Letty got up and retrieved her bikini briefs and pulled them on, then got back into bed. The underpants made her feel a little more secure.
She’d never before done a one-night stand, despite a number of invitations, and even though this was apparently going to be a two-night stand, she was…uneasy. About what she was doing, and about what Hawkins thought and felt about her.
She knew, for sure, that she liked him a lot. Way too early to think she was falling in love, but he was smart, handsome, funny, and sexy, which overall was a nice combination. Yet, the sense of unease persisted. Was this really her, basically naked in a bed next to a totally and undeniably naked man she hardly knew?
Well…yes.
With that decided, she went to sleep, and the next morning, fully cooperated not in one, but two early-morning fucks, one before and one after a three-mile run along riverside tracks that Hawkins knew by heart.
“Our interview with Ann Sloam is after her tutorials this afternoon,” Hawkins told her, as he snuggled up against her. “I cleverly scheduled it later in the day so you’d have to stay another night. I plan to show you the virtues of the Reverse Cowgirl Laydown…unless you’re already familiar with it.”
“I don’t believe so, though I can sorta imagine it,” Letty said.
“It’s better than you can imagine,” he said. He got up, still talking, bouncing naked around the room. As far as she could tell, he had virtually no body shyness, which was a good thing.
—
They had alate, slow, comfortable breakfast, and spent the morning visiting Hawkins’s old haunts. They spent more time at the Ashmolean, examining the archaeological exhibits, and poked their heads into the Bodleian Library, which was nothing short of intimidating. Letty pronounced it too aristo for study, though it was nice to look at.
—
