is adversarial —"
"What's an unfunctioning lawyer?'
"I've known a few."
"Yeah," Morgan said, remembering one in particular she had dated a couple of years ago. Another lawyer, ineffectual and lethal, occupied a more sinister place in their recent past: he of the Jaguar, of posthumous infamy.
"At least with two lawyers, they understand the rules."
She turned on the shower.
He raised his voice.
"I'm not sure what that means."
"What?"
Splattering water drowned out his words, but not hers.
"About the rules," he shouted.
"Stand where I can hear you, Morgan! The shower's steamed up — you couldn't see me for looking."
He stopped at the bathroom door. She was wrong; she was absorbed in washing and her body was revealed in waves as water sheeted against the glass door. It was full and lean, the body of a mature woman in splendid condition. He remembered her from the night they made love; she had seemed almost girlish then. He backed away and sat down on the chair by her bedroom window.
"Can you hear me?" she shouted. "Where'd you go?"
"I'm here."
She shut off the water and for a moment there was silence.
"Why do you think lawyers have all the power, Morgan?"
"Because they know the law."
"Because they know its limitations."
Morgan thought about that.
"The rest of us live in moral chaos," she continued. "And we grasp at the law to make sense of it all. Not lawyers. They don't give a damn about sense and morality. That's why so many of them are politicians; they want order — they're inherently fascist. Think of the utter stupidity of ‘yes' or ‘no' answers in the witness box. There are no ‘yes' or ‘no' answers."
"Now you're sounding like me."
"I could do worse."
Suddenly she was at the door, wrapped in a towel.
"Get out of here, Morgan. The lady is about to get dressed."
He regarded her with mild exasperation, got up, and ambled back to the living room.
Cops should marry cops, she had said. Given her splenetic response about lawyers he decided that was not something to pursue.
"Aren't you curious about why you're being hauled into action on a day off?" he asked.
"Well, let's see," she said. "Since it isn't a major metropolitan catastrophe, and you seem in a rare good mood, I would say it has something to do with our lovers last night. Am I right?"
He stood in the middle of the living room, still in her sightline, hands in his pockets, with his back to her, slouched in a waiting posture. He still had on his sheepskin coat, although it was unbuttoned and hanging loosely on his shoulders, rather like a cape, she thought. He was lean and muscular, more with the air of a soldier than an athlete: a man comfortable in his body who carried himself with the pride of a combat survivor.
"Am I right?" she repeated.
He shrugged equivocally, knowing she was watching him.
She let her towel drop and stood naked in her bedroom doorway, barely two steps away, amused to think that if he turned around she would be righteously indignant.
"Get dressed," he said. He knew what she was doing. Senses especially acute in the moment, he had heard the towel slide against skin to the floor.
She suddenly felt vulnerable and foolish. She mimed a posture of exaggerated modesty, stuck out her tongue in Morgan's direction, and retreated.
Miranda strapped on a shoulder holster over her blouse and tucked her semi-automatic into place. She put on a loose jacket and walked into the living room where her partner was still standing, as if he were holding a pose.
"Okay, Morgan," she whispered in a burlesque of sensuality. "I'm packin' heat. Let's go."
She kissed him impulsively on the cheek as she walked by.
"I don't think you'll be needing that," he said.
She took off the jacket and holster and put her Glock in her purse.
Miranda sometimes carried her weapon, and Morgan seldom carried his. She liked the feeling it gave her of being a little bit dangerous. He liked the sense of relinquishing power, of playing danger against wit. They had talked about this several times, each accusing the other of subverting gender stereotypes, in deference to Freudian principles they both abhorred.
Miranda was surprised when they walked out of her building to find that Morgan had picked up a car from headquarters. "Okay, Morgan," she said, "this must be serious. You do not ever take charge of transportation. In our fair division of labour that's my job. You drive," she declared, as she slipped into the passenger seat. "And after this, lock the doors when you park. You'd feel like a fool if someone made off with a cop car."
Driving up Yonge Street, Morgan focused on manoeuvring through runnels of frozen slush. This late in the season, there wasn't even salt on the roads. The car lurched from rut to rut as he overcorrected, damning the shortfall on the city budget.
He was losing patience, waiting for her to ask again why they were back at work on a day off. She was resisting, certain that he would break by the time they reached Eglinton. One block south, the car caught an edge of ice and swerved. Morgan wrenched it out of the groove, eased it through a long skid, and let it slide to a stop smack against the curb.
"You drive," he said, and got out of the car. When they had exchanged places, he explained, without being in the least defensive. "You're better at winter driving than me. You enjoy it. I don't."
It was true, she liked to drive, even in bad conditions. He was not a nervous passenger, nor particularly a nervous driver, just not a very good one. Having grown up in a family without a car, he could never relate to men who measured their manhood by their prowess behind the wheel.
"If you do something, anything, just to prove you're a man," his father had said, "then you're not."
When he was eight years old, his father taught him to box. Not because it's a manly sport. "Hammering someone into unconsciousness, boy, that's nothing to be proud of. But the world's a tough place; you've gotta be tough to survive."
The boxing lesson came after a kid about ten years old had pinned Morgan down and cuffed him on the head until tears filled his eyes. He wasn't crying. It was an involuntary response. The kid wouldn't stop, so Morgan flailed wildly and landed a smack straight on the kid's nose. He broke his nose.
His father had been called in and had to take half a day off work. The boxing lesson was the only repercussion at home or at school.
His father made boxing gloves out of
