Page 115 of Antihero

She looked at him through the rolled-down passenger window. “You heard me. I got you. Get in.”

They drove in silence all the way to the 405 and up over the Sepulveda Pass. Evan wore a too-small Columbia Law School sweatshirt Mia had in the trunk that choked him at the collar. She glanced over at him and glanced over again. “What?”

“It’s tight on me.”

“Of course it is.” She smirked, not unkindly. “Sorry. Just enjoying the symbolism.”

He reached up, tore the collar down vertically a few inches at the throat, a boxer’s cut. She did not object.

They passed the Getty, a white palace up high on the right, then dropped down into the Los Angeles Basin.

“Is that…?” He stopped.

“What?”

“All there is?”

“What do you mean?” Mia asked.

“That’s what I’m protecting? For other people? It’s for that? That’s what they do?”

“That’s not all we do. But yes. People spend a lot of time in quiet comforts, getting by, fighting off loneliness.”

Sunset Boulevard flew past and then Moraga. Wilshire Boulevard came up, their exit.

“I always thought it was so much more,” he said.

Evan walked Mia to her condo and cleaned up in the bathroom while she paid the babysitter. Peter was sleeping.

When he came back out, she was sitting on the couch, hugging a shaggy lavender throw pillow to her stomach. Jangly brass streamed from digital speakers, Thelonious Monk’s “’Round Midnight.” The place smelled of one of those plug-in air diffusers, a wintry flavor, apple and cinnamon. Textbooks were piled on the coffee table, thick like religious tomes. A dozen mostly dead lilies drooped in a cobalt-blue vase, adding a sickly sweet aroma to the diffuser. A laundry basket sat heaped high in the hall, a lavish sundae, ready to be moved to the next station. In the kitchen, a pizza box sat atop the burners, lid open, chewed crusts piled like bones.

Her condo was messy and welcoming, abundant with signs of life.

He pictured what he was going home to, sharp edges and wiped surfaces, concrete, glass, stainless steel. There was such comfort in it. Discomfort, too, but of a known variety. There he could function. There he knew who he was.

“When we were seeing each other,” Mia said, “I thought I could, dunno…” She looked to the ceiling for her next words. “Go with the flow. Be a free woman.”

He tugged at the ripped collar. “Aren’t you a free woman?”

“Of course. Free to have responsibilities.”

“I understand.”

“But I can’t. Just go with the flow. It’s like … like being on perennial vacation. Nothing to build on. So nothing builds.”

That feeling was back, soaking into him, flesh, bone, and marrow. A contamination of sentiment. He said, “I understand.”

“Do you?”

He stared at his scabby knuckles. “I can’t live with one foot in each world either. Just turn it on and turn it off.”

“I can imagine, given your training.”

“How long have you known…?” He couldn’t finish the sentence. He’d never spoken that phrase out loud. Not once.

“I am,” she said, with levity in her voice, “a trained professional.” She tapped the cushion next to her and he sat and together they breathed apple and cinnamon and looked at each other. “I’ve seen you do the impossible too many times to not put it together.”

“You gonna try’n arrest me?”