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By Root 540 0

of cultures, it was between the Hispanic Edith and the decidedly WASP Peter. “Good God, Peter, you don’t even speak Spanish,” his mother had said to him after being introduced to her son’s choice of a mate. Edith laughed long and loud. She’d been born in the good ol’ USA, thank you, in El Paso, Texas, and her English was every bit as correct as Peter’s mother’s, albeit decidedly saltier. There was also the divide between how she and Peter spent their days. Each morning, he went to his white-collar job at a local bank where he did something with money, while she spent her days and nights chasing crack dealers down unlit alleys and trying to not get her shoes bloody at grisly murder scenes. Even their skin tones had created a breach. Peter was the palest human being Edith had ever known, constantly changing sides of the street to avoid the sun. Edith couldn’t get enough of it, turning her already dusky skin more like copper each summer day. Opposites certainly had attracted, and had repelled as quickly.

Moving to Adams Morgan had reunited her—mother Mexican, father half Spanish and half Irish—joining more than a quarter-million Hispanics living there: Cubans and Dominicans, Brazilians and Mexicans and a token number of Puerto Ricans. Plus, a growing Muslim population, plenty of African Americans, and Asians. Happily renting an apartment with a roof garden, she was free to spend her leisure time up there in a canvas recliner, a tall travel mug of iced Cuban coffee at her side, and ideally never again hearing Peter say, “You’ll end up with skin cancer.” That he was probably right wasn’t the point.

She caught the busy waitress’s eye, wrote in the air, and the check was placed before her as the man on the adjacent stool ordered another plate of hash.

“You get the papers yet?” the waitress asked Edith.

“Any day, says my lawyer. He’s been saying that for weeks. Can’t wait to get it over with and drop the hyphen in my name.”

Although she’d been told repeatedly that she never needed to pay for her breakfast at the Diner—“Nice having a cop around,” she was told—she always paid full price. She’d seen too many cops get in trouble for less than cornflakes and bananas. She left the Diner and started walking south briskly to catch the nearest Metro at Dupont Circle, a good hike, when her cell phone vibrated, then rang.

“Hello.”

“Buenos dias.”

She smiled. He always greeted her in Spanish.

“Hello, Joe. Como está usted?”

“Bien, gracias. You didn’t know I was a linguist, did you?”

“I still don’t. What’s up?”

“Jean Kaporis. What else could be up for me?”

“Nothing new, my friend, but I haven’t clocked in yet.”

“Morehouse is on the warpath. Or will be soon.”

“Until he puts on war paint and starts carrying a spear, I wouldn’t worry.”

“What about poison arrowheads? He has several.”

“Then I suggest you buy yourself a big shield and keep your distance. Look, I can’t walk and talk at the same time. Chew gum either. I’ll catch up with you later—if there’s a break in the case.”

“Thanks, Edith. Any scrap will do to feed the animals.”

As Violent Crime Branch Detective Vargas-Swayze, soon to lose her hyphen, picked up her pace again, she couldn’t help but think of the night she and Wilcox had ended up in bed together. Tell someone to not think of pink elephants and… A one-night stand, it was called, although they spent little of that night in a standing position. It had just seemed to happen, and it only happened once. Plenty of excuses on her part—the divorce, pressures at work, too much to drink, too long since she’d been in bed with a man. Him? He’d been riddled with guilt, which she’d tried to assuage, successfully, it seemed. “Let’s forget about it,” she’d said. “It was a one-time thing, Joe. Let’s not let it get in the way of the friendship? Okay?”

“Okay,” he’d said.

They hadn’t mentioned it since.

Wilcox wasn’t thinking of that night as he logged on to his computer in the Trib’s vast, carpeted, smoke-free, peaceful, and virtually silent newsroom, which had all the ambience of an insurance company. Only the barely audible tap