Spoiler Alert! Don't read this unless you have already read Dance Noir as published. 

The following is the original ending I wrote, which is now the alternate ending. 

Chapter 13

 The Woman in My Bed - Alternate Ending

I had been fond of her when she was little, when she was Lena, but I have fallen in love with Selena over the past several weeks. Nothing good could come of that, but I did love her…that way… Maybe something had been revived in me, something I thought had been long dead…

She got in her car and drove away. Out of my life forever. 

I drove back to the boat. I didn’t want to go to the diner, see anyone else, or talk to anyone else tonight. When I took off my jacket, I noticed the Havana cigar that Victor had given me in the pocket.  

Spoils of war…

I took out the cigar, bit the end off, and lit it. I laid my jacket over a rail and poured myself a whiskey. With what seemed like the weight of the world, I sat heavily in my deck chair, sipped my whiskey, smoked the cigar, and watched the river go by. I guess I was contemplating my regrets.

The only thing that interrupted the tranquility of the river flowing by was a car crossing the bridge, its lonely tires singing against the metal grating of the deck plate, its headlight illuminating the iron bones.

I went to bed around eleven that night. The moon was almost full, and the night was bright from its light. The air was hot and still, so I was only wearing my boxer shorts and a sheet to cover myself. I fell asleep soon enough. I think I was dreaming of Selina, what might have been.

I woke, maybe an hour later, there was something, no, someone, on my boat, in my cabin. I reached for my 45, but a soft, feminine hand pressed mine down, and a female voice said, “No, it’s alright.” I relaxed. It was Selena. She was standing there by my bed, and I could see by the moonlight that she was undressed. The scent of her perfume filled the cabin.

I began to protest, but she put her fingers to my lips to quiet me and said, “Shhh, tonight you will bend your third rule for me.”

I started to say, “Selena, I can’t…”

She shushed me again and said, “No, I am not Selena; I am Mary, Mary Smith.” She slipped under the sheet and kissed me. I acquiesced, and we made love, and then we fell asleep together.

I woke up around six in the morning, as usual. The sunlight peeked through the ports. I was alone in bed. Selena was gone. Only the scent of her perfume lingered on the sheets. 

Slipped out in the night….

I got up, put on my grey suit, and made some coffee. It was Sunday, so I thought I would go to Church. I needed to do what I could to keep my soul in this line of work.

I learned a couple of things from all this. First, I liked to dance, and second, perhaps I could still love again. I had shut that part of me off after the war and what I had lost, but maybe it was still possible…

Maybe I would ask Vera if she would like to go dancing. Perhaps I would buy a blue pinstriped suit…

I stepped out onto the deck. The same spot I’d been sitting the night before, staring out at the river and thinking too damn much, when something caught my eye; a woman’s travel case. At first glance, it looked like the one Selena had carried out of the house the morning we gathered some of her clothes.

It wasn’t just similar. It was her’s…

I looked around, but nobody else was there. I walked the few steps over and picked it up. It had some weight to it, like it had something to say. I set it on the table, unlatched the clasp, and lifted the lid.

Right on top, resting on silk lining, was a handwritten note. Same paper, same scent, same cursive hand as the first one that kicked this whole mess into motion. Just one letter at the bottom, L.

I took a moment to drink in the scent on the note, perhaps a moment too long. Then I opened the note and read:

Nick,

This is for you. I knew I could never divorce Luis, as that hadn’t gone well for his mother. So I planned to go away quietly one night, without a note or a trail. Another week or two and I would have disappeared. You saved me again, and this is my way of saying thank you. I had been skimming from Luis’ safe for months without him knowing, a bit at a time, until I could gather enough money to leave him and start a new life. Now that I have the money in the safe, I want you to have what I've been putting away. Call it a bonus. Take a vacation, fix up your boat, or both, but know that I love you and will never forget what you did for me, twice.

Thank you for everything.

L

As I looked at the contents of the case, I stared at the stacks inside. I thumbed through the cash. Seven clean stacks of twenties, two grand apiece, and another half-stack for good measure. Fifteen grand in folding green. More money than I’d seen in a good long while. 

I let out a slow whistle and said to myself, “That’s a lot a lettuce.”

I decided not to use this ending with Selena as the bedtime visitor, and wrote the scene with Vera instead because I wanted to develop Vera more as a recurring character and stay consistent with Nick's moral compass. I didn't want to muddy the Nick and Selena relationship, for while it seems to end here, who knows if she comes back in another book. The Vera ending was better for playing into a series too. We will see Vera again in the next book...