This story grew out of peer counseling I did with a former Philadelphia Police Narcotics officer paralyzed in a drug bust shooting. Not unexpectedly he had tuned out and turned off, almost driving his wife away. I didn't tell him anything different than the psychologist, but a walking White doctor who stands over his African American patient and talks "at" him doesn't quite connect.

I sat wheelchair to wheelchair and bluntly told him, "Look 'Bro," (maybe I am White and he is Black, but we were brothers in disabilities, even if for different reasons). "I've had more and better sex since being impotent and paralyzed than you probably had your whole marriage!" A white lie (probably given how pretty his wife is), but I wanted to make point. He blew up, but after the expected posturing, we started talking -- and more importantly, he started listening.

Lazy, sensual sax tones swayed and sauntered across the large club room and the slow caress of a brush on the cymbal added an even counterpoint. Then the large dining room and the stage grew dark as she appeared, a single spot-light transfixing her. Her flawless dark chocolate skin was unmarred and velvet smooth. Long, slender arms reached out to take the microphone and cradle it gently in perfect hands. The shimmering strapless yellow silk gown she wore embraced her lush body intimately, seemingly held in place by the static electricity she generated.

Then she started to sing, and the band was forgotten even as they enhanced her words. All thoughts of food forgotten, the room fell into an even deeper silence than before as her husky contralto reached out to grab all of us and dig into our very souls with a story of love and betrayal.

She looked at me. She couldn't possibly see me, but she must have known I was there, and where I sat. I couldn't help coming here. I was drawn here every night she sang. I needed to see her, to hear her.

To love her.

But I couldn't.

A bullet had taken care of that. A bullet in my spine that had left me paralyzed from the waist down.

For the next hour I sat frozen in my wheelchair. I could almost believe she was singing only to me, just like she used to, and I absorbed it like parched earth greeting a soaking rain. Her set was long, but I knew that she preferred that to splitting it up into smaller ones. She felt the mood would be broken if she didn't keep the stage. I thought she was wrong. That sultry voice and those smoldering eyes? They were relentless as they took one prisoner. Liquid notes, and soft hazel eyes that could shift from ice to fire to match her mood.

But all too soon the spell was broken, and she disappeared behind the heavy maroon velvet curtain. The room was totally silent for a moment, as if in shock, and then everyone stood up to release a thunderous cascade of applause. The audience tried to draw her back, but she wouldn't come. She never did. I knew why. At the moment she was collapsed in a chair behind the curtain, overcome with exhaustion that was mostly emotional. She poured her whole being into her music, and after her set was over, she was depleted -- dry, shaking and weak.

Much as I felt.

It never lasted long, I remembered, but it was the secret of her power. Every Monday and Wednesday night when she sang, the room filled up. The cover had been raised to outrageous levels, but still they came. Black, White, Brown -- it didn't matter -- here she ruled the night. There were always a lot of repeat customers, but many came because they had heard about Nina's magic voice from friends. And most of them came back -- provided they could get a reservation. I was the only one with a permanent reserved seat.

From time to time, Nina even turned down a record producer, insisting that what she did could only be done live. I had originally wondered if she was right, but I had become convinced that a mere recording could never wield as much power as her live performances.

I sat still as the sound of silverware and voices gradually swelled up again with an almost embarrassed hesitancy at first, and I looked around to see that it was as if everyone was just waking up.

Then a heavy, scarred hand fell on my shoulder. Half ebony, half scarred ivory, it made some look away, but I knew it was a badge of honor earned by rescuing a baby trapped in a burning building.

"Hey, Rob," a familiar bass voice boomed. "Why do you keep coming, Bro'? It's killing you."

It was Chip Brewer. He had started the Jazz Palace, and made it into a cultured showplace of jazz talent and dining perfection. But that had been after we had spent a life together; first in the police academy, and then a decade on the force watching each other's backs.

But a lottery ticket had made his dreams a reality, and a bullet had brought me face to face with my worst nightmare: life without Nina.

Except in small, painful doses like these.

I looked up at him and grabbed his arm. "I know, but I've got to try again. Would you ask her to come out?"

"You're one persistent bastard." He shook his head. "But at least you don't force yourself on her. I'll try, but she isn't ready. You really ought to wait till she calls you. She knows you've been coming--"

"I'm not going to sit around and..." I stopped myself. No more anger. "Please. Try again. Tell her how I've changed. I know I was a bastard the first year after the shooting, and I don't blame her for leaving. Hell, looking back at the way I was acting -- I would have left me."

Chip pulled out a chair, turning it backwards and straddling it as he leaned flame-scarred arms on the backrest. "Okay buddy. In a bit, after she's rested. In the meantime, tell me what happened since the shooting. You sort of dropped out. When you called me and started coming here last month, I got vibes that you didn't want to talk about it. Now I think you do."

"You're right. I didn't, and I don't know if..." I lifted myself up for a moment to shift places on my cushion -- God, I was tired of sitting! What had happened since that night Chip and I took that call from dispatch...

¶

Our undercover operation against a big new Philadelphia drug ring had been going nowhere... until we got a call that a buy was going down in an old warehouse down on what used to be called Delaware Avenue. As usual, Chip took the back, while I took the front; going in low through a small open door set into the large sliding one. As I entered and the narrow door closed behind me, I knew I was a dead man. Waiting for me were three masked men armed with semi-automatic rifles.

But they had made one mistake: I was wearing my bullet-proof vest. I hated them, and normally didn't wear them because they were hot, heavy and uncomfortable. But I had had one of my 'hunches'. The same kind of hunch that had saved Chip and me on several occasions.

And it did it again as the three AK-47's started spraying lead. I already had my .38 out, and returned fire as I ducked to the side, but there was no cover and it was like getting hit by a car as the wall of bullets slammed me across the room and ripped my flesh open in a dozen places. I was barely aware of one of the assailants going down from one of my shots, or of the crash as the room's locked and aluminum-backed rear door burst open from the force of a filing cabinet crashing into it -- propelled by Chip's raging two hundred-twenty pound body.

Everything faded at that point until I woke up in the hospital.

The vest had been battered and virtually destroyed, but it had saved my life. My chest was a mass of bruises, and I was covered with bandages from flesh-wounds on my arms and legs, but nothing had stopped the bullet that had hit my back as I had been spun around and thrown to the floor by the force of the bullets - - just before Chip had broken through to take out the two remaining gun-men.

The doctors were very kind and sympathetic, but the verdict was final. I was suddenly only half a man...

¶

What had happened to me?

I tried to explain as Chip sent a waiter for a couple of drinks.

I had lived in a state of shock for too long after that and I had shut out the rest of the world, including my wife and my best friend. Only Nina had had the strength to stay close -- for longer than I had deserved. As most of my physical wounds healed, I had grown more and more bitter and angry, and she had tried to bear with me. She had held out for almost a year. First, by visiting me in the hospital and then in rehab every day, no matter how unbearable I became. And after my discharge, she had tried to help me adjust at home, putting up with my moodiness and angry reactions against the adaptive aids I was suddenly dependent on. But finally she had had enough and had been about to tell me she was leaving.

But in a fit of guilt, I had beaten her to it, and I had moved out into an accessible place the department found for me.

There I had raged on alone for several months until I had finally begun to realize what I was missing with Nina out of my life.

Self-examination had finally done what the department shrinks had been unable to accomplish, and I had gradually begun to accept what had happened to me. Bit by bit I had worked on getting my life back together. First by digging out the old case files to start looking into the shooting and the drug gangs we had been after. And that had led to an apologetic call to Chip after Nina had refused to answer me. I wanted his help in re-opening the case, and in winning back Nina.

Now I poured it all out to him over a non-alcoholic Pina Colada as he listened attentively, a peculiar frown pulling his bushy eyebrows into a solid furry line.

"The self-pity was the worst of it," I admitted. "Poor, poor macho cop who's no longer a man! Over and over with that. And anger was another element. Anger at the bastard who set up the ambush and was never caught." We had both agreed that there had to have been a leak. "And anger at being paralyzed and forced out of work--"

"Did you take it out on her?" Chip interrupted, seemingly more at ease. "When she came to me for a job, she wouldn't say anything about it, except that you two had split up."

"Never!" I shook my head. "Well, not directly," I amended. "But I didn't have to. It hurt her enough to be around my self-pity without being able to do anything for me. And she might as well have been living with a monk for all the good I did her in bed."

He shrugged. "Hey, if what you got don't work, you work with--"

"-- what you got," I finished. "I know, I know! I got the same speech from the department shrink, but I didn't listen. I wish I would have." I looked over at the drawn curtain wistfully. "We had a good marriage. If I would have been less hung up on what I had lost, we could have made things work. There are many ways of making love -- if you let yourself feel the love. But it took me too long to absorb that. And now it's academic, because Nina's gone. And I don't want anyone else!"

Chip studied my face for a moment and then sighed as he got up to slap me on the shoulder.

"Okay buddy. One more time."

I reached out to clasp his hand briefly before he disappeared; brown around scarred piebald. We were brothers beneath the skin if not by blood, and bound together by having repeatedly faced and beaten death, side by side. I had lost count of the number of times we had saved each other's lives. What had been a game at first, had become a feeling of mystical awe as we had considered our fortune over the fates.

Of course I had not seen it that way after the shooting. But now, finally, I could look back and know that our luck had not changed.

The Canadian Lottery, and its full cash payment, had saved Chip from having to break in a new partner -- and probably get killed by some rookie's foul-up. And I had been the recipient of a dozen bullets and had lived, though it was obvious I had been meant to die. It was time to start pursuing that threat again -- after reclaiming my most important loss.

But my repeated messages through Chip still had not brought back Nina; the one missing piece of my sanity.

Maybe tonight?

But I saw Chip come out from behind the curtain all too soon, once again giving a familiar shake of the head. I spun in my chair and headed for the door. My money was no good here, and the doorman smiled sympathetically as he held the door open to let me roll past and out to the wet sidewalk.

It was raining lightly; a fine, cool mist that required no umbrella and which was refreshing after the earlier suffocating July heat. I embraced it as I wheeled the short distance to where I had parked in the reserved handicap spot Chip had put in for me right outside the door. The flashing neon signs along the street cast shifting and gentle rainbow reflections over the mirror-like wet blacktop, and I enjoyed the show as the power-doors of my van swung open and the lift unfolded. But halfway down, I stopped it. I was giving up again!

I could understand why Nina had left, but why wouldn't she at least see me at the club? To tell me to my face that it was over? She had never filed for a divorce. Didn't that mean something?

I closed up the van and made my way around the corner towards the backstage door to wait. It was time to stop hiding behind Chip and try for myself.

As I came around the side of the building, I saw Nina come down the steps from the back door and head across the lot towards her car. I called her name as I rolled to intercept her, but she ignored me and unlocked the door.

"Nina, wait," I called again as I rolled up behind her. "Please."

She stood rigidly frozen for a moment, and then turned to face me. She looked tired. Her make-up was scrubbed off, there were tired circles beneath her eyes, and while the rain had almost stopped, her short, tight black curls were matted with the same moisture that dotted her skin like a fine sweat.

God! She was beautiful.

"What is it, Rob?" She leaned back against the car with a weary sigh, heedless of the wet surface. "I just want to go home and drop into bed and sleep. Alone. I even told Chip that."

"Chip?" My stomach twisted.

"Yes. I'm sorry..." She straightened defiantly. "No, I'm not. You obviously didn't want me, and he does. I've been seeing him from time to time. He's been real sweet. He got me this job, and he's even got me booked for a concert tour next month. I'm not your wife anymore--"

"I haven't noticed any divorce..." I stopped myself. "No. You're right. I haven't been your husband for a long..." I stopped myself with the realization. "You have every right to see other men," I conceded, even if the words had to be forced out. The thought of her being with someone else was like a knife twisting in my chest. But how could I blame her?

"But it hurts that it's Chip?" She slumped briefly and looked away. "I'm sorry. I don't even know how that happened..." Then she straightened suspiciously and her eyes flashed fire. "It wasn't gratitude, if that's--"

"I know. I know you better." I reached out to take her hand. It was cold... and so small. "He's a good man. I can't imagine anyone I would trust better to treat you right. It just takes a little getting used to. I was..."

"What?" she prompted.

"I don't know. I've been hoping that maybe we could try again. I've changed a lot since we split. I've learned a lot. I can't give you what he can, anymore. Not physically, or materially. But we had six years together before the shooting. What we had, what I still feel -- I just can't deny it, anymore. Can he give you that? I love you. I've just lately realized how much. It sounds so trivial when I say it like this, but I need to give you that love, in whatever way that I can. I want you with me again to share my life... to talk to, to laugh with, make love with in whatever ways I still can..." I couldn't go on as I burned with the longing that had been twisting in me for months.

"So why haven't you tried to tell me this before?"

There was a tremulous break in her voice and though I couldn't be sure, I thought I saw a trace of tears. But I was confused.

"I have! I sent Chip back with half a dozen messages this past month..." Now it was her turn to look puzzled and I asked: "Hasn't he told you I've been coming here every night that you're on?"

"No."

I could barely hear the soft denial as she shook her head. Was that rain on her face? Or tears?

"I had no idea," she whispered.

I reached out to take her hand. "Almost every night you sing, I'm here. Captivated, entranced, all those silly romance novel words. But I've been there, listening. Can't you believe I've changed?" I explained what her leaving had done to me. For me. Did she believe me? Trust me?

Why hadn't Chip told her like I had asked?

Stupid! It was obvious.

Suddenly she twisted away and slipped into her car before I could react, and I was left to stare at her dwindling tail lights. Then I turned as I sensed eyes on me, and realized why Nina had fled. Chip was standing in the shadows.

"Couldn't leave it alone, could you?" He seemed different. Cold.

I rolled towards him. "It's starting to make sense."

He stepped forward into the light, a wary look in his eyes. "What makes sense?"

"Why Nina never came out or called. Obviously you didn't want me interfering."

"Oh." He relaxed, and a hand came out of a coat pocket. "I'm sorry. I don't know--"

"-- how it happened. I just heard that. It hurts, but I guess I can understand." Neglected instincts surfaced and nagged me as I studied him. Baggy pocket... his hand had been in it... something was concealed there.

He noticed the direction of my gaze, and his eyes narrowed. "Forget it. Just nervous about how a jealous ex-cop husband might respond."

"Oh." But ugly thoughts were beginning to surface, and I forced a smile onto my face, pretending to stifle a yawn. "Well... as long as you treat her right." I gave him a glare that was as much for show as a warning. Then I turned and started to roll back towards my van. "See you," I called over my shoulder. "I've got to get some rest." Every instinct screamed warning, but I turned my back on him and put some shoulder into it, wheeling across the cracked and wet sidewalk -- glad I had my leather wheelchair gloves on for traction on the rain-slick wheels. I felt his eyes on my back every inch of the way, calculating and dangerously intent. Any second, I expected to feel... what? A bullet? A rough hand? Why was I suddenly feeling threatened? I shook my head. I was over-reacting. He had been dating my wife and didn't like to see me come around her. I couldn't blame him, or her. She was a beautiful woman, and I had hardly been a husband to her since the accident.

But I didn't breathe normally until I was back in my van and pulling away from the curb. My neck was aching fiercely, and I realized I had been tensing my whole body since leaving Chip. I was too wound up to go right to bed, and for a long time, I just drove around, trying to forget the sick ache in my chest. I kept telling myself that heart-ache was just indigestion. But it didn't help. Finally I gave it up and headed home with a growing determination that Chip was about to get some competition. It was time to stop hiding!

¶

As I closed the door behind me -- angry that I had forgotten to lock before going out -- I froze. There was a trace of familiar perfume hanging in the air. Just the faintest hint of Tea Rose. Leaving only the hall light on, I rolled towards the bedroom with my heart pounding.

"Nina?" I was afraid to hope too much. I was probably imagining it. But as I rolled through the doorway, I saw a familiar figure draped across the bed, only faintly illuminated by the hall light behind me.

"Nina! God, I missed you!" I angled in next to the bed and reached for her hand, taking it in mine... but it was limp and cold.

The overhead light snapped on and I blinked from the sudden brightness. My eyes were tearing, but it was from the sight of Nina's still body on the bed. She was lying face down, crumpled on the bed like a life-size doll tossed by a careless giant child. Blood stained the white fitted bed spread she had made soon after our wedding, and I felt frozen and numb. I turned to see Chip standing in the doorway, the compact pistol in his hand magnified into a cannon by its bulky silencer.

"Too bad, buddy. You couldn't let her go, could you?"

I fought the urge to throw myself at him. "Why? I wouldn't have stood in your way--"

"You fool! This isn't about her. I'll admit, she was a nice bonus, but it made me screw up. I see now that I should have just told you I was dating her, and you might have left me alone. But now that you know I was hiding one thing from you, the next step would have been to ask what else I might be hiding. And you would have figured that out soon enough. I've worked with you too long to think you might have missed it."

"I don't get it." But as I sat there, pieces started clicking together in the back of my mind and Chip nodded.

"See, I told you." The gun started to rise.

"The lottery..." Keep talking, and think! "...it wasn't the Canadian lottery, was it?" I remembered again the number of leads that had dried up in the last year of our operations; the dealers who somehow had always anticipated our raids; and the suspicions I had denied.

"The drug deal at the warehouse," I guessed, "it was a set-up! The only dealers we busted were competitors to someone else, weren't they? Someone who was paying you. How long were you helping them?"

"Yes, yes, yes, and over a year," he answered in turn. "They paid me well, and you're right: that last buy was a total set-up. You were getting too close in your side investigations. I tried to distract you, but you wouldn't let it go. You would have blown it. I didn't want to... but I had no choice."

For a moment, the hard face shifted. "After the fire... it wasn't the same. I started dreading the calls from dispatch and trying to find some way to get out..." He shook his head. "I never meant for you to get... I tried to keep you out of it but you wouldn't get side-tracked!"

"So there was no call on the radio to go to that warehouse while I was in the bathroom?" I guessed again.

Chip shook his head. "I'm afraid not. I had no choice," he repeated defensively. "It was you, or me. I had to prove myself or lose everything."

I couldn't believe that I was so blithely accepting that my partner of ten years was the one behind the destruction of my life and I heard myself ask: "So you got a bonus?"

He nodded. "Exactly. With you dead, it would have been risky for me to keep informing. So I gave them an offer to retire and keep quiet--"

"In return for some compensation. And I'm sure you covered yourself so that if anything happened to you, they would be exposed?"

"Naturally, on both counts. Of course, now that you figured it out, I'm afraid that you're a liability. One I can't afford."

"And Nina?" A burning rage had been building, and it flared as I thought about her limp body on the bed behind me.

"She decided to give you another chance," he explained. "And when she caught me here, she started to ask too many questions." He looked over at her body wistfully. "I am going to miss her. But..." He shrugged after a moment. "At least she's insured. The club has a policy on her since she is the star attraction."

That did it. While we had been talking, the gun had drooped, and Chip had relaxed a bit and moved closer. Meanwhile, I had been shifting slowly in my seat and gradually realigning my wheelchair. I had already pressed down the release lever to one arm of my wheelchair and I was ready. His callous crack gave me strength as I threw myself forward out of the chair at the same moment that I yanked up on the arm, pulling it loose and swinging it down towards Chip with all the force I could muster. It smashed into his gun-hand -- I thought I heard bones breaking -- as I rolled into his legs to bowl him over. I felt like yelling 'Strike!'. The gun dropped onto the floor and skidded over near the foot of the bed as Chip collapsed on top of me.

Then it was a scramble for the gun -- Chip's advantage -- as I grappled with him, trying to get a grip on his neck. A stray hand -- was it mine or his? -- knocked the gun even further away and I cursed as Chip's arm clenched around my neck in a choke hold, his weight crushing me. Without the use of my legs, I had no leverage, and I gasped for breath as his grip tightened.

"Let go!" a strained voice ordered. It was Nina! She was alive! She had just been unconscious, and cold from being out in the rain.

Chip's grip relaxed and he rolled off to rise.

"Put the gun down, darlin'," he coaxed.

I was finally able to breathe, and looked up to see Nina kneeling on the floor, her face grey and sweating, but determined as she strained to hold the heavy gun aimed at Chip. A massive bruise on her forehead was still oozing blood.

"Are you okay, honey?" I called out, dizzy with relief.

She nodded. "Just real queasy. He slugged me pretty hard. Can you take over here? I think I'm going to puke."

She looked sick and I started to scoot my way over, calling out to Chip as I did. "Move it, over by the wall."

He shook his head. "Forget it, Bro'. Nina, my love, you'd better blow me away or let me out that door. If I go to jail, I'm a dead man. A Black ex-cop--"

"Offer to testify in exchange for a deal," I tried.

He laughed. "Get real, Rob! Conspiracy and racketeering, maybe, but assault with intent, and two counts of murder one? No way they'll let me walk, or let me into the witness protection program. I'll be doing hard time, and there is no such thing as protection inside. Not from the people I've been dealing with. You know it."

He was right.

He backed deliberately towards the door, keeping an eye on Nina.

She slid the gun to me in a convulsive heave as she buried her head in a pillow that had tumbled to the floor. Chip ducked, and too late I remembered the second gun he always kept around his ankle as I reached desperately for the gun Nina had tossed over. My fingers closed on the cold metal just as Chip's small but lethal .32 cleared its holster. I rolled and fired with a dull pop just as he let off a quick, thunderous shot that thudded into the carpet where I had been lying a moment before. My wild shot had taken him in the shoulder as he fired to spin him to the side, and I winced at the recoil on my unsupported hand.

I curled up and shifted gun-hands, rubbing my sore right wrist against my side as I kept the gun aimed at him. "On the floor, Chip. You know the position, face down and hands behind your back."

I heard retching sounds from over by the bed, and fought a surge of sympathetic nausea. I had just shot a man who had been my best friend and partner -- and who had just tried to kill my wife and myself! I felt sick and betrayed. But I pulled myself along the carpet to get closer to the phone on the night table so I could call the shooting in to the district. Luckily the officer who answered knew me, and he didn't waste any time taking a report as he dispatched an ambulance and a squad car. I leaned back against the bed and propped my gun-hand up so I could keep Chip covered. A wide stain of red was slowly spreading over the right shoulder of his tan sports-jacket, and his face was ashen and sweaty.

I heard a sharp bang from the pipes as the water in the bathroom shut off, and realized Nina had pulled herself together to clean up in the bathroom.

I looked up at her pale face as she came back into the bedroom with a sudden furious glare at Chip, that was mirrored as he turned his head to face us. Then his eyes locked on the gun.

"They'll kill me, you know."

I felt cold. "It was your choice." I tried to shut him out, and reached up a free hand to take one of Nina's cold and damp ones.

"You okay?"

She nodded weakly and looked down, her eyes full of concern. "I'll be okay. How are you?"

I was confused. "He was my partner... I..." How was I supposed to feel?

"And my lover," she added bitterly. She knew exactly how I felt. For a moment she just stood there, slumped and blank-faced. Then she dropped to her knees next to me. "I give up, baby."

She moved closer, and I drew her in with my free arm and leaned back against the bed as she molded herself against me. Her breath was sour and her wet silk blouse was stained with vomit. She was a mess. But I was lightheaded with hope as I pulled her even closer.

"Please, Nina! Stay with me. I need you. I love you."

Her arms tightened around me as she buried her face in my shirt, and I heard a muffled: "Okay."