You Have the Wrong Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

from me for a few moments. It didn’t seem as if Pamela would be coming home soon. He said he wasn’t going to waste his time waiting to say goodbye to someone a second time. He asked me to convey the message for him.
    “What should I tell her exactly?” I asked him.
    “Tell her she’s immature. How about that?”
    “That’s a little harsh.”
    “Now, you. Why can’t she take you as a model?”
    I smiled.
    Leon said, “Pamela better behave herself or she’ll be losing something when you give her the heave-ho.”
    I won’t give her the heave-ho, I thought to myself. Leon, of course, had already excused himself from any further involvement with Pam. He looked at me across the table. His eyes didn’t dismiss me as we stood up. He took my elbow and tugged me around to face him.
    “Where’s Garland?” he said.
    “Where’s Pam?” I answered, as if our exchange had been rehearsed and cued, delivered with the bold alacrity of a witty stage production.
    “I mean it,” he told me. “Where are they?”
    I walked ahead of him up the stairwell. I killed the hall switch and followed the moonlight’s slack bed sheet across the old planking. I was first in my bedroom and I turned around in the doorway to greet him. Given his youth, Leon’s perceptions of me had been accurate from the start, that moment when we maneuvered through the dark and were unmoored in a momentary swell which took these weeks to crest.
    He untied the collar loop on my robe. The satin piping dangled, and then the robe fell. I pushed the heel of my hand up the tight trellis of his ribs, rotated my wrist at his shoulder, and coasted my fingertips down his spine. Despite a fear that Pamela would show up, our lovemaking was sweetly edgy, prolonged, and forgiving. Leon betrayed Pamela in each hesitant discovery and into the next. I sensed it was a slave’s secret worship at the eve of his freedom, and he still thought of her. After all, it was she who led us to this union and she would serve to unlink us afterwards. Perhaps I am too seasoned, but her echo didn’t spoil any of it for me. Leon endured the halting scrutiny in my touch, and, in turn, I indulged his playful, cantankerous urges, which he had not dared to introduce to her. How often would we come across these same luxuries?
    In an hour, we dressed and walked out to the curb.
    There was the fish truck, newly washed. Its silvery panels still looked wet beneath the street light, blue-white and iridescent as haddock skin.
    “So, you’re all loaded for tomorrow?” I asked him.
    “It’s all set,” Leon said.
    “The usual?”
    “The same. The cod’s a little ripped up tonight, weird. But, we’ve got some nice tinker mackerel, tiny as slippers.”
    When I told him how much I liked tinker mackerel he went around and opened the padlock on the truck. He hopped into the mist; his shoe slipped on the wet tread but he regained his balance and he pulled me up into the narrow aisle. I stood beside him, between the tiers of fish, as he found the plastic tray of mackerel and lifted the lid off. The fish were tiny, mottled with gold and silver dapples; the flesh along their spines was deep cobalt. “They’re beautiful,” I said.
    “For breakfast?” he asked me.
    “I can’t wait until breakfast, maybe tonight.” I said. We both laughed at my greed for the taste of the local delicacy.
    Leon looked around the truck for a container, but there wasn’t anything. I pulled out the hem of my jersey and we laughed as he stretched the fabric around a half-dozen fish. He was begging off, leaving just these fish as keepsakes. I forgave him. He got behind the wheel of the truck and rested his elbow out the window, showing his luxurious ease, which I still admired. He seemed to know it impressed me and he smiled. I waved to him with my free hand as I steadied the icy hammock of fish at my waist.
    Pamela came home at midnight. I broiled the fish with mustard and vinegar and set it down in front of her.