Red Leaves by Paullina Simons
It must have been in the teens with the wind-chill factor that afternoon. Spencer felt measurably colder just looking at her. One of her feet was planted firmly on the stair while the other was crossed over her knee as she was trying to pull the black boot up. she was struggling with it, finally putting the foot down on the stair and trying to pull up the boot that way.
As if hypnotized, Spencer walked slowly toward the stairs and watched her until she got the boot on. Instead of immediately putting on the other boot, she now threaded the black laces through the holes. Her foot continued to be planted on the cement stairs. Spencer’s eyes moved up from her feet to her long, bare legs, then to her dark green. Dartmouth T-shirt, then to her face and windblown hair. Spencer took his hand out of his pocket and stroked his chin again.
Her skin was very pale, though her cheeks looked ruddy from the weather beating on them. She glanced away from the boots for a moment. Her eyes locked into his. She had a big, wonderful, oval face, a young face if you didn’t see her eyes. The melting brown eyes had deep, solemn grooves around them, making her look older. Yet the eyes themselves were black-lashed, sweet and vulnerable. The combination of the innocence of the eyes and the lines around them made for an unsettling picture.
Clearing his throat, Spencer said, ‘You know, our bodies lose one degree of heat per minute.’
‘Ahh,’ she said, the corners of her lips pulling up into a smile. ‘Thank you.’
‘Yes. And I’ve been watching you for about five minutes. Maybe six.’
She flung her hair back, her hands not letting go of the laces. ‘How do I look?’
He saw her eyes and her chapped lips smiling at him. He maintained a serious expression - it wasn’t difficult, for Spencer tried to be a serious man. ‘Cold,’ he replied.
‘Actually, according to your calculations, I should be dead by now. A degree a minute, huh?’
‘Not dead yet,’ he said, nearly smiling. ‘But severely numb. Frostbitten. Lost all feeling in your limbs.’
She touched her foot. ‘You know, maybe you’re right. I don’t even feel cold anymore.’
‘See?’
He saw her lips stretch into a mischievous smile. ‘Well, then maybe you should stop distracting me, so I could put on the other boot and have at least a chance at survival.’
Spencer stopped talking, watching her until she’d laced up the other boot.
‘Where are your socks?’ he asked.
‘In the wash,’ she said, standing up. ‘And who are you?’
She was looking straight at him, and she was beautiful. Objectively, undeniably beautiful. Tall, thin, model-like beautiful, even with that unruly hair. The eyes were bottomless, Spencer thought, in their inexpressible emotion. Spencer felt a familiar pull in his stomach. He was still young enough to remember his high school days when he felt the pull every time he walked down the hall, looking at the girls in their white sweaters clutching books to their teenage breasts.
Walking up the stairs, he took off his glove and extended his hand. ‘Spencer Patrick O’Malley,’ he said.
She took his hand and shook it gently. Her hand was warm, and that amazed him. A warm hand on a barefooted girl in November in New Hampshire.
She asked, ‘Spencer, like Spencer Tracy?’
Spencer took a deep breath. ‘Yes. No relation.’
‘You look nothing like him. Kristina Kim.’
‘Nice to meet you, Kristina. Can I give you a ride somewhere so you can get warm?’
‘No, thank you. I’m going up to this building here.’
‘The Chamber of Commerce?’
‘No, the Review,’ she said.
‘Ahh,’ he said. ‘Aren’t they a bit extreme?’
‘No.’ She laughed. ‘But the reaction to them is.’ She was still holding on to his hand; then she slowly took it away. ‘If you have a Kleenex, I’d appreciate it,’ she said, sniffling.
‘I don’t, I’m sorry.’ He looked into her animated face. Her lips were smiling, too. ‘You must be from up North,’ he said. ‘Cold-blooded.’
‘I’m not from up North,’ she said. ‘But I am cold-blooded.’ She paused. ‘When I was a young girl and used to go and visit my grandmother near Lake Winnipesaukee in the winters,. I would break the ice in the lake and put my feet in the water to see how long I could stand it.’
Spencer absorbed that for a few moments. ‘How long,’ he asked slowly, ‘could you stand it?’
She smiled proudly. ‘My record was forty-one seconds.’ He whistled. ‘Forty-one, huh? How does frostbite figure into that?’
‘Prominently,’ Kristina said. ‘It was still a record.’
‘Bet it was,’ said Spencer. ‘Was it a competition?’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘You don’t do something like that just for the heck of it.’
‘No, of course.’ He raised his eyebrows at her. ‘Something like that you’d need to do for a really good reason.’
Kristina smiled mischievously at him. ‘That’s right.’
Spencer was curious. ‘Who were you competing against?’
‘Oh, you know.’ She waved her hand vaguely to punctuate her vague answer. ‘Friends.’
This was curiouser and curiouser. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Some friends. A little girl in the woods -’
‘On the lake,’ she corrected him.
‘On the lake,’ he continued. ‘Sitting there, breaking ice, looking for a hole in the ice to put her bare feet in. That just sounds so…’ He couldn’t find the right words. He remembered his own childhood and going out on the ice on the lake near his house. Even when the lake was frozen solid for weeks, he was nervous about stepping onto the ice, because ice was water to him, and he had heard of only one man who could walk on water, and Spencer was sure as hell it wasn’t himself. ‘So… intense,’ he finished. ‘Who was watching you?’
‘Grown-ups can’t watch over you every minute, you know,’ said Kristina, looking at her boots, and Spencer, thinking back to his own childhood, knew she was right. Grown-ups had rarely watched over him.
‘Why would you do that?’ he asked her slowly. ‘Why would you put your feet into freezing water?’
Shrugging, she said, ‘Because I was afraid.’
‘Afraid of what?’
‘Afraid of doing it.’
‘With good reason.’
‘I did it,’ she said, ‘to show that I wasn’t afraid.’
‘Show who?’
‘Me,’ she replied, a little too quickly. ‘Me… and my friends.’
He saw that she was shivering. He wanted to give her his own warm parka, but he didn’t think she’d take it. She didn’t seem the type.
‘Hey,’ he said on an impulse. ‘You want to go grab a cup of coffee?’
She shook her head, walking past him down the steps. He followed her. ‘Come on. A cup of coffee. It’ll make you warm.’
‘Warm?’ she said. ‘It’s twenty degrees outside. I’ll get back outside and just be cold again. I’d love to, really, but I’ve got a million things to do today.’
‘What’ve you got to do today, Kristina? It’s Sunday. Even God rested on Sunday.’
‘Yeah, well, did God have basketball practice? Did God have a quiz on Aristotelian aesthetics tomorrow? Thanks. Maybe another day.’ She looked up at him. There was something in her black eyes, something impenetrable and yet broken. He really wanted to take her for coffee.
‘Come on,’ he said. Spencer O’Malley was determined. It had been a while since he’d asked anybody for coffee. ‘It’ll be quick, I promise.’
Kristina sighed and smiled.
‘Come on,’ he repeated.
She tilted her head to the side. ‘Are you buying or crying?’ ‘Both,’ he said quickly, not wanting to show her how pleased he was.
‘Well, then, let’s go to EBA. They have Portuguese muffins that are to die for,’ she said.
‘I know,’ said Spencer. ‘I buy them by the dozen.’
They made a left on Al
Spencer took off his mittens, coat, hat. He saw her watching him.
‘What’s with the hair?’ Kristina said.
Spencer ran his hand through it. He had just had it shorn to his scalp.
‘Oh, you know.’
‘I don’t. Are you in the army?’
Spencer rather liked his new buzz cut. The lack of hair made his deep-set blue eyes appear more prominent. He liked that.
‘It’s just something we did.’ He didn’t want to tell her that one of the women at work had been diagnosed with cancer and when she began her chemotherapy, he and his colleagues, not wanting her to feel awkward, had shaved their heads. Ironically, she had come to work in a wig. However, it was the men’s unbidden act of solidarity that counted. And Spencer, the mildest-looking of men with his subdued Irish features, aside from his exaggerated Cupid mouth, actually looked tough with his cropped hair.
Touching his chin, Spencer wished he’d shaved. But Kristina didn’t seem to mind.
Kristina ordered a muffin and a hot chocolate. Spencer hated hot chocolate but ordered the same.
‘Spencer Patrick O’Malley,’ Kristina said. ‘You go to Dartmouth? Like, who doesn’t in this town?’
‘I don’t,’ said Spencer. ‘I work for the police department.’
‘The Hanover Police Department?’
‘Sure.’
‘Really?’ She livened up. ‘Wow.’ She seemed impressed. She leaned into the table. ‘What do you do for them?’
‘I’m a detective,’ he said. ‘A detective-sergeant.’ He’d been promoted from plain detective only a few weeks ago, but he wasn’t about to tell this girl that.
‘A detective? Wow,’ she said. ‘Do you do a lot of… detecting?’
I detected you, didn’t I, out of the corner of my eye, he wanted to say to her. ‘Plenty,’ he said. ‘I detect cars that are parked in the wrong place, I detect meters that are out of time, I detect drunk drivers on a Saturday night.’
She looked at him uncertainly, with interest and curiosity, with warm, soft brown eyes.
‘So you play basketball?’ he asked her.
‘Yeah.’
‘I sometimes watch men’s basketball.’
‘A mistake,’ said Kristina. ‘We’re much better. We won the title last year.’
He looked at her hands, which were long and slender, capped with beautifully manicured red nails. He preferred the short, clean unpolished look on girls, but long nails were somehow right on her.
Pointing to the nails, Spencer said, ‘Hard to dribble with those?’
She studied her nails lovingly, smiling. ‘I’ve adjusted. Listen, the other team, they need all the handicaps they can get.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Spencer thoughtfully. ‘Quite rare for a university girl to have those long nails. Especially a basketball player.’
Kristina shrugged. ‘I like them.’
‘Are you good?’
‘Very good,’ she said, smiling wryly. ‘First-team All-Ivy three years in a row.’
‘Ahh,’ he said, impressed, but not letting on. ‘What is All-Ivy exactly?’
‘You don’t know what All-Ivy is? Some detective!’ She sat there in a mock snit for a few seconds. Spencer almost laughed aloud.
‘For your information, All-Ivy players are voted on by the league coaches, out of the nine Ivy League schools. For each position, there’s an All-Ivy player. The league votes on five players for the first team, five for the second team, and then five for honorable mention. I’m the senior center. I’m the only first-team All-Ivy player in Big Green basketball right now -’ She stopped suddenly, blushing.
Spencer, smiling, leaned over his hot chocolate and said, ‘Kristina, are you trying to impress me?’
Looking flustered and red, she said, ‘No, of course not.’
‘Because I’m impressed,’ he told her, and she outwardly relaxed and smiled.
‘Are you a good detective?’
Spencer was going to rattle off a list of his credentials and successful cases as a joke, but he didn’t. Nodding, he said, ‘They say some detectives have skill as interrogators, and some as crime scene investigators. To be a good detective you should be good at both.’
‘What are you good at, Detective O’Malley?’
The question sounded suggestive to him. He raised his eyebrows.
‘You must have a categorical imperative,’ she said.
He looked at her blankly. ‘A categorical what?’
‘You know.’ Kristina shrugged, taking a big bite of the muffin, chewing it thoroughly, and swallowing before continuing. ‘A categorical imperative, one that represents an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.’
Spencer’s eyes widened at her. ‘Oh, yes, of course. I got a number of those.’
Kristina took another bite. ‘No, just one,’ she said. ‘You only have one. Kant. Metaphysics of Morals. It means -’
‘I kind of figured out what it means, and yes, I suppose I wouldn’t be an officer of the law if I weren’t driven - without reference to any other purpose -’ he mimicked her - ‘to do my job.’
‘Do it well.’
‘Do it the best I can.’
‘So what are you good at?’
He decided to take her at face value. ‘I’m like a hound. I like to think that I have a good sense of intuition.’ Spencer paused. ‘But my partner, Will, would disagree with you. He says I’m a dog whose nose has been ruined by too much pepperoni.’
‘You must be thinking about my dog,’ said Kristina. ‘You seem like a good listener.’
‘I am a good listener,’ he admitted. ‘I’m also a good observer. I watch people and I usually find out more about them by how they sit and look at me than by what they say.’
She smiled. ‘What do you find out by looking at me?’
Spencer smiled back. ‘That you are not afraid of me. You stare me right in the eyes.’
‘Are you saying I’m in your face, detective?’
‘Yes, that’s what I’m saying.’ He was trying to be serious. ‘You’re looking right at me, and you are not afraid.’
‘Got nothing to be afraid of,’ Kristina said, looking away, and Spencer noticed that.
Leaning closer and speaking softer, Spencer said, ‘What are you afraid of, Kristina?’
‘What, like in general? Or most?’
He thought about it. ‘Most,’ he replied.
‘Death. No, not death. Dying,’ said Kristina. Spencer nodded.
‘How about you? What does a cop fear most?’
‘I don’t know about a cop, but me, I’m most scared about having to live with my conscience. I like to sleep at night.’
‘Has your conscience been bothering you?’ She smiled.
‘Not so far.’
She nodded, sipping her drink. ‘In your line of work, you can’t afford to make mistakes, I guess. To be wrong about people.’
‘You’re right.’ Spencer took a sip of his drink. Where was she heading with this? ‘I’m not often wrong about people.’
She smiled coyly. ‘Think you’re wrong about me?’
He willingly smiled back. ‘I’m right on about you. You are brave and smart.’ He wanted to add that she was also very beautiful, but of course one did not say those things to a Dartmouth girl over coffee. Besides, she didn’t need to be told that.
‘Are you flexible, detective?’
‘I’m as stiff as a board,’ he said. ‘One of my many failings.’
‘You don’t seem like you have many of those,’ said Kristina.
‘You’re trying to be gracious. I’m full of bad habits.’
‘Yeah? Like what? And who isn’t?’
‘You, for one.’
‘Me?’ She laughed. ‘I have more bad habits than you’ve had dinners.’
‘Name one.’
‘Really? I’m compulsively sloppy.’
‘I really like to win at basketball,’ she said.
‘I really like to close my cases.’
‘I never wear enough clothing outside and always catch colds.’ As if to prove that, she sneezed.
‘Oh, yeah? I always bundle up too much and sweat profusely.’
‘I constantly do things to make my life really complicated.’
‘I constantly do things to make my life as simple as possible.’
She paused. ‘Sometimes I drink.’
He paused too. ‘Huh! Would that I only drank sometimes.’
And then they smiled at each other.
‘Are you twenty-one, Kristina?’
‘Tomorrow,’ she said, inexplicably excited. ‘Finally.’
‘I see. You didn’t tell me you drink, okay?’
‘Drink? I meant drink coffee.’
‘Good. We won’t mention it again.’ He paused. ‘So you’re happy to be turning twenty-one? For all the usual reasons?’
She nodded. ‘And then some,’ she said, raising her eyebrows. But she didn’t offer to explain and he didn’t pursue it.
They drank their hot chocolates and nibbled on the Portuguese muffins - a sort of English muffin but bigger, thicker, and sweeter.
‘So Detective O’Malley, have you had any interesting cases? I have to write this article on the death penalty for the Review. I’m thinking of writing something about the criminal.’
‘Well, that would be pretty revolutionary of you,’ Spencer said. ‘In today’s day and age.’ He was getting a good feeling about her.
‘Can you tell me anything about the criminal?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like why do people kill other people?’
Spencer thought about it. She was confusing him. She was too pretty. ‘Power,’ he said at last. ‘Power and intimidation. That’s all it’s about.’
‘Power and intimidation, huh? Serial killers, abusive husbands, rapists, all of them?’
‘Yes. All of them.’
Kristina smiled. ‘That’s really good. I like that.’
‘Enough about the death penalty. Tell me something about yourself.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like anything. What year are you in?’
‘I’m a senior.’