Sugarland - Chapters 1-5 - Page 12

     When I came into the bedroom she was at the bureau, her back turned to me, in high heels and a bustier. She was bent forward, as if studying the dust on the top of the dresser.

     I walked up behind her and reached around to touch her stomach.

     “Warm hands, cold heart,” she said without moving.

     I looked over her shoulder. She had opened her makeup case, she had removed the mirror and was raking out four lines of the white stuff on it.

     “Now just hold on a second,” she said. “Let's get a little zip-a-dee-doo-dah in us first.”

     She put her face down to the mirror, and one of the lines disappeared. She stepped aside to let me take the next.

     “Yours,” she said.

     This was something new for us.

     “Don't you know?” I said. “This is passé. Really. I think I read it in Newsweek. Nobody does it anymore.”

     “The truly fine things in life never go out of style,” she said.

     She waited.

     “Oh come on,” she said. “Don't tell me I've been balling Cotton Mather all this time.”

     She waited.

     “You've never done this,” she said. “Have you? I don't believe it. Forty-one years old, you're a virgin.”

     “I used to put people in jail for this.”

     “Shame on you.”

     She waited.

     “Sweetie,” she said, “you're not a cop anymore. You can relax.”

     I didn't have anything else to say, and I didn't know what else to do. I bent and took the line.

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