The Oasis

During the first week of summer vacation, Carter took her son for a short trip to Virginia Beach.

During that same week Reese sent three counterfeiters to the hospital with gunshot wounds to various extremities. The woman ringleader of the gang ended up in the morgue.

On an educational binge, mother and son toured colonial Williamsburg and Hampton University, the campus where her parents had met more than fifty years ago.

Disregarding Finch's skepticism about the extent of the threat to their latest number, Reese rescued a college student whose family intended to make good on its massive debt payments by selling her to the loan shark who held their note.

Taylor would spend this summer, as he had the past six, with his maternal relatives in Roanoke. Carter always wanted him away from the city and its violent temptations in the summer, but the kidnapping made her even more anxious than in past years. Now surely sensing her heightened tension, Taylor accepted his summertime fate without protest. Reese figured the boy went meekly when his mother left him in the smothering arms of his aunts and cousins at the end of the beach vacation.

Reese didn't care for the beach. Before she left on her sand-covered expedition, he told Carter he didn't see the point of idling away the days in a hot featureless retreat with crowds of preening half-naked strangers slicked up in oil.

As she often did these days, she laughed at his stubbornness and scoffed at his strange prejudices. As always, he didn't mind this gentle teasing if she did it while rubbing circles over the tendons of his left hand as they watched a Mets game on Mrs. Soni's TV.

He wouldn't tell her that he had spent far too much time in deserts around the world, in Palestine and Iraq, in Central Asia and North Africa, to voluntarily seek out sand for recreational purposes.

The vast sensory deprivation chambers that were those trackless wastelands still made him shiver.

Bitter memories of coup plots he had hatched or foiled, prisoner renditions executed flawlessly, assassinations engineered, torture sessions endured in those desert redoubts were thoughts he worked hard to suppress. So many lives wasted, distorted, damaged, erased.

He knew he would never share that part - or any part - of his past with her.

During the second week of Carter's absence, Finch came up with three new numbers whose minor complexities kept Reese occupied, if not entirely engaged. Reese enjoyed these Sudoku-like mind puzzles as much as the more intricate challenges; compact and glittering like gems, these miniature cases kept him alert and focused, agile mentally and physically.

And although he claimed he didn't like shooting weapons, the fact was he thrilled to the danger and the emotional release of gun play. Stanton's exquisite training had indelibly linked in his psyche the shooting of bad guys with an ugly visceral relief that left him drained but excited.

He would never tell Carter that, although he didn't like guns, he craved how they made him feel.

One evening during the third week of Carter's vacation, Reese in his boredom let Fusco track him down to a peanut-strewn bar in the Bowery. There they sat for two hours in the steamy darkness, Reese nursing more than one beer, Fusco manhandling fries.

Country music and foreign cars, pious quarterbacks and moody point guards, Thai restaurants and Fusco Junior's Little League victories were on the agenda. Women, HR, Elias, and Carter were not. The two men ended the evening in the cloud of a companionable buzz, wordlessly agreeing to keep their meeting a secret and to do it again when they could find the time.

Every day Reese wondered where she was, what she was doing.

He wanted to know if Taylor was past the nightmares, if her relatives knew about the kidnapping; if she was really O.K. with letting her son out of her sight for the whole summer. But he knew he had no right to ask about these things. That wasn't the kind of relationship they were in.

Carter didn't tell him her exact vacation itinerary. She didn't call him while she was in Virginia. Their relationship didn't allow that kind of touching base. No need for periodic updates.

With her away from the precinct, he couldn't think of a work-related excuse to phone. He felt foolish for wanting to dial her number just to hear her voice. He wanted Finch to generate a reason for contact and hunched his shoulders in silent chagrin when the older man suggested he just make the call without a cover story.

Since she was gone, Reese didn't see the point in staking out her apartment building as he usually did. He skipped her block during his nightly tour through the borough.

So he didn't know exactly when Carter returned to the city.

Nor did he know how she found out he would be at Pooja's on the evening of her return.

But there she was, walking in the front door of the restaurant, casually greeting Anil the Maître d' like she had only been gone for a day, hugging Mrs. Soni who emerged just at that moment from her kitchen office.

She walked straight to the booth where Reese usually took his dinner and stood before him without saying a word.

Joss' face was burnished by the sun; her cheeks and nose were licked with a new rosy glow that he wanted to examine up close. Without offering a greeting, Reese touched her hand and she followed him upstairs to his room. As he lay next to her on their bed, he hoped that she wouldn't notice the way his hands trembled when he unbuttoned her white blouse.

He judged it was near noon when he awoke. The sun was slanting from a high angle through the yellow curtains that wafted into the room. Delivery trucks groaned and screeched their way down the street and he could hear slices of conversation from pedestrians below his open window.

Joss still slept beside him, curled facing the wall, two hands folded under her cheek. Tiny beads of sweat dotted her crinkly hairline and her nose was shiny in the bright light. He could feel warmth radiating from her body, the heat trapped under the thin sheet that covered them. The fan overhead stirred the dense air, but didn't dissipate the heat.

When he returned to bed from the bathroom, she was still sleeping. Was she so exhausted, worn out beyond recovery? Or was she simply satiated, filled to capacity? Or paradoxically emptied of all worries now? No matter what the case, he liked her this way: silent, transparent, smooth faced and relaxed. He could do this to her, for her, it seemed.

He pulled the white sheet from her body and let it fall to the floor. He wanted to study her without judgment or interruption. As if complying with his wish, she turned onto her back. He paused, afraid she was awake, but a few seconds of her deep breathing showed she was not.

Kneeling on the bed beside her, he matched his breathing to hers, hoping to absorb some of the peace she seemed to have found.

Unbidden, his mind drifted back to the first time he had flown over the Sahara desert. On a fifteen hour non-stop flight from London to Nairobi, he had slept for the most of the trip awaking only when the plane was crossing the undulating sands of Upper Egypt.

He had been first repelled, then fascinated by the austere landscape unrolling below him.

The subtle kaleidoscope of parchment colors, the almost visible waves of deadly heat, the staggering immensity of it all had mesmerized him. Hours passed uncounted as he watched the high dunes slide into gorges then rise again into daunting peaks marked only by the plane's insignificant shadow. Landing at last in the florid city, he sank into the dense combustible air of the early evening, dazed by the desolate panoramas he had seen.

Thoughts of that Nairobi assignment brought bile to his throat even a decade later. But if instead he focused on the serene desert vistas, he could push those other gut-churning images from his mind for a while.

So he mapped out his caravan journey with care, the goal pulsing darkly in his mind.

He began with feathery finger strokes over her earlobes and throat. A few grains of sand clung to the creases of her right ear, sparkling like minute yellow diamonds.

The brown prominences of her shoulders were reddened by the sun and as he touched his lips to them he felt a roughness that suggested the burned skin would peel soon. The flesh there was scented with a salty hint of the beach and the sea that prickled his nose.

Languidly, he kissed along the bony clavicles and navigated the slope toward her right arm. He noted the way the colors shifted as he passed: tawny sand drifted to chamois then to a deeper taupe along the taut skin of her bicep.

Her heavy breast was the milky shade of a cherished linen wrap where it curved away from her arm and sloped downward to join her torso. He traced with his tongue the shadow under her breast, the color there a more dusty apricot. He wanted to taste her nipple, its luscious hue of dark golden dates tempting him to break his journey. But to avoid arousing her for a few more moments he simply pressed his face against her pliant flesh and moved on.

He sipped the salty moisture from between her breasts, an expanse where the skin took on a creamy butter tint. Her heart beat rose slightly against his lips and she shifted under him as his skin brushed over hers; he wanted the pressure to be firm enough not to tease, but not so rough as to abrade. He didn't want to wake her too soon.

As he crossed this precious terrain, he had in mind the oasis at journey's end, a secluded refuge where he would be the welcomed intruder. If she would have him, permit him, shelter him there.

She was murmuring now, maybe his name, and as he pressed her thighs apart and settled his shoulders there, he was sure she was no longer sleeping.

He dropped his forehead to her stomach. Its lush swell felt smooth against his face. He was excited by the warmth and promise of the silky skin there and he grasped her waist with both hands to bring her closer.

The dark vertical scar that extended from belly button to hairline was familiar to him now, but he still marveled at its puckered texture and irregular path. The Caesarean section must have been abrupt, frightening. He had never asked her about it, only drawn his conclusions from the evidence of her flesh.

He wanted, as he always did, to press this jagged mark against the matching one on his own stomach.

Their past was stained with the blood these wounds had shed: his sacrificed because of her, hers given to gain a child.

Drawing his tongue slowly down the ridge of scar tissue, he paused where thigh joined body to study the fine tracery of bluish-green veins shimmering just below the skin like a network of underground streams. He ran his fingers along their pliable paths, feeling the racing pulse beneath his thumb pads.

She shuddered at his touch and he looked up to see her dark eyes, slitted and luminous, tracking his voyage over her body. He felt rather than heard the sigh as her fingers laced through his damp hair, drawing circles over his temples and behind his ears. Her skin was moist and heated now as the arousal coiling low in his belly urged him toward his goal.

His hands pressed down on her hips as he met the secluded prize. With his lips and tongue and teeth he embraced her and she trembled at his approach.

After a brief time he felt a series of subterranean shocks seize her. Her groans and his name blended into rhythmic vibrations he sensed in his mouth as well as his ears. He focused the pressure of his tongue strokes to draw from her more cries, more tremors.

He wanted to keep her in this moment forever, undulating and tense in response to his attention.

But finally, he spoke a single word and the hidden thunderstorm reached the surface at last, washing over her body in violent rotations and then rolling away.

He kissed his way upward toward her mouth, eager to penetrate her completely now. Her arms firm around his shoulders, her hands guiding his lips toward her breast again, she urged him to suckle deeply until he was sated.

Enclosed. Sheltered. Welcomed. His orgasm this time was a quieter release, so different from the ferocious explosions of the night before.

With her thumbs, she stroked the hollows under his eyes, wiping away stray tears or sweat, he wasn't sure which.

Quiet, entwined still, his hips cradled in hers, he discovered words for what he had wanted to say for so many weeks.

"I want to tell you about Ghadames. It's an oasis in the Sahara, about 280 miles southwest of Tripoli. I spent some time there once."

"Yes, tell me, John. Tell me everything."