In her bathroom with his shirt off and Dora running warm water in the sink he turned to look in the mirror. The welt along his back and arm was a swollen fiery red. She pressed the wet facecloth to it which burned at first and then soothed him. She wet the cloth again.
“Lift your arm,” she said.
The welt ran all the way around to his rib cage. It was gonna be a hell of a bruise. She pressed the cloth to it and pushed gently.
“That hurt?”
“Ow. Yes.”
“I mean, how much?”
“I don’t think he broke anything.”
He was very aware suddenly of the spicy scent of her and that he had not been this close to her for a very long time and certainly not stripped to the waist.
“That was a pretty good punch you got in, mister.”
“I’ll tell you. It surprised the living hell out of me.”
“Me too. No offense.”
She smiled and bent to the sink to wring out the facecloth and in the mirror he could see her breasts rise and fall beneath the scoop neck of the blouse as the muscles drew them up and then relaxed, watched them rise and fall again. He wondered if her breasts were as he remembered them to be. He remembered every inch of the girl he knew then. Or at least he thought he did. This woman would be another matter.
She glanced up into the mirror and saw him looking. He met her eyes and held them steady and felt a danger fly between them noted and acknowledged by each. She didn’t move, didn’t straighten. Only held the facecloth cupped in her hands beneath the warm running water. He looked down to her breasts again grained with gooseflesh.
What he was feeling didn’t confuse him at all though he thought it should have.
He had thought for a long time that flying to West Palm was the stupidest thing he had ever done. The biggest mistake of his life. He was now perhaps about to make the second.
She wrung out the washcloth again and now she did straighten.
She pressed the damp cloth to his back.
“I think Karen should be the one doing this,” she said.
Her voice was low. A hoarse whisper.
“Take off your blouse,” he said. “Let me see you. I want to see if you’re the way I remember you. If you’re the same.”
“I’m not. How could I be.”
“I want to look at you.”
He thought he saw fear in her eyes and something else too and then the fear was gone. She stepped back and placed the washcloth on the sink and lifted the blouse up and off over her head. It crackled with static and she wore no bra beneath the blouse but this he already knew. And her breasts were not the same of course but not so very different either—far more familiar than not and along with that familiarity came a yearning as urgent as he knew it was reckless. He held out his hand.
Come here.
He saw her hesitate.
No.
Then she took a step forward and placed her hand in his and each closed upon the other. He drew her to him slowly and slid his arms along her back and she reached up for his shoulders and he drew in the scent of her, orange and ginger, in her hair and on her skin and he pulled her close kissed her and her mouth had not changed at all.
She lit the cigarette and watched the smoke drift toward the ceiling like tiny vertical clouds in an indoor furnished sky. She felt the sweat cooling between her breasts and thighs.
“You know it can’t happen again,” she said. “Just this once and not ever again.”
“I know.”
His voice sounded flat and expressionless. As though he’d gone somewhere without her.
“I love you,” she said. “I’ll always love you. You know that?”
He didn’t answer.
“I loved you all through that stupid, stupid marriage of mine. In a way I think I married Sam because of you. I think I wanted to find somebody who’d treat me as badly as I treated you. I picked Sam. Then I kept on picking them. Bad apple after bad apple.”
“Hold on. You didn’t treat me badly. It was the other way around.”
“No? Five years we were together. Then because of one really idiot move on your part I shut you out completely. I was a bitch. Of course I was. You know I had my roommate listen to the answering machine? If it was you she had orders to erase it. I didn’t even want to hear you.”
“You were young, Dora. You were angry and hurt. Hell, you had a right to be.”
“I grew up angry. You know about my parents. So what. Why should that be an excuse?”
He didn’t seem to have an answer for that one and that was good.
“Just this once,” she said and nestled closer.
FOURTEEN
Matthew
He was on his way to work stalled in traffic alongside a minimall parking lot when he glanced to his left and saw her. She was leaning rigid against her car shaking her finger in the face of a tall bald man with a black muscle shirt and biceps like grapefruits and he could see they were seriously pissed, both of them.
The guy could have eaten her for breakfast but that didn’t seem to faze her one bit. The woman had balls, you had to give her that. Then he guessed she’d had her say and they both calmed down and as the light changed and traffic started to creep along ahead of him he saw her reach into her purse and pull out an envelope and hand it to him.
The guy stuffed it in his jeans’ front pocket and stalked away.
And then traffic was moving again.
What the hell was that all about? he thought.
He meant to mention it to Jim but then Freeman v. Weber got in the way in both the morning and then later in the afternoon and at lunchtime there was Cindy from the Blue Bar who he’d met the night before smiling at him over cocktails in a way that made him think there was a very good probability of something happening there. Which their date that evening proved absolutely true.
By morning he’d forgotten all about it.
FIFTEEN
Linda
Rick dropped her off a few houses away after their tennis date because her parents weren’t real fond of Rick since her brother Jimmy—who thank god was finally off to camp for the summer—caught them on the couch that time with her daisy dukes half unzipped and went and told their mom. She guessed Jimmy was just scared and confused with Rick’s hand down there so she couldn’t really blame him but it was retarded the whole big deal they made out of it. They were just basically friends with benefits. It wasn’t as though they were throwing rainbow parties every weekend, it was just an afternoon couch thing.
Still though her parents had known his parents for ten years and Rick wasn’t welcome in the house any more or even on the property so he dropped her a few doors down. She was walking across their new-mown lawn wondering who was parked in the driveway when the front door opened and out stepped Dora Welles in a bathing suit and open sleeveless blouse and even from a distance Linda could see she was upset.
She said hi though she really didn’t care much for Dora and Dora looked at her like she was the last person she expected to see there. She slipped something into the pocket of her jeans and then she smiled and said hi.
“I’m glad I caught you, Linda,” she said. “Your parents weren’t home and I didn’t just want to leave a note.”
“They’re at a barbecue over at the Finch’s. Oh shit. Did I leave the door open again?”
“I guess you did. The back door by the pool.”
“Ohmygod. You won’t tell them, will you?”
“Course not. Listen, I’ve got to leave for New York. But I’ll give them a call tonight to thank them for everything, all right?”
“Sure. Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. It’s just business. I’ll call tonight. Bye. See you soon I hope.”
But everything wasn’t fine. She could tell by her voice.
And she could swear she’d locked that door. But Rick had beautiful big brown eyes and soft hands and she might have been wrong about that.
SIXTEEN
>
Dora
She swung back into the lane and narrowly missed the black Mercedes that bleated down the hill behind her. She was driving way too fast for such winding streets and the tears weren’t helping any either but she wanted this risk, she didn’t give a flying damn. She dug into her pocket for the photo and gripped it and the wheel in her right hand while her left wiped away tears and mascara.
The photo from the box in their bedroom drawer showed all four of them in camping gear smiling into the camera. The kids in the middle and Jim and Karen on either side. All of them happy, not a care in the world. Behind them a beautiful lake in bright sunshine framed by tall stands of pine.
While she had what. Exactly what.
The photo twisted in her grip and she stomped on the accelerator and for a moment lost control and tore along a row of hedges—their branches like sudden hailstones along the side doors of the Lexus which shocked her back into some place other than where she’d been and left her thanking god that there were no sidewalks here in the hills and nobody to walk them.
In her bedroom the only light came from streetlights and neon shining up from the street and the tip of her cigarette. She lay in bed with the illicit ashtray beside her and the illegal pistol in her lap thinking did she dare this, did she want this bad enough and could she do it even if the answer was she did. When the cigarette was burned through she stubbed it out in the ashtray and put the pistol to her temple and pulled the trigger and then to her neck and then to her cheek and each time imagining the damage to her pulled the trigger.
It was not the first occasion she had done this and it remained a comfort to her. Why she didn’t know.
As she’d told Will Banks quite truthfully the gun was never loaded.
SEVENTEEN
Dora and Karen
She drove past the house and Karen’s car was gone so she pulled into the next driveway in the new gray Lexus GS she’d switched at the rental agency for the black LS and turned around. Drove back the way she came and pulled into an empty driveway two doors down across the street where she could observe traffic either way. She left the engine running. She smoked three cigarettes with the driver’s-side window open and the air conditioner on high. The morning sun through the windshield was punishing despite the fact that all she wore was a little two-piece bathing suit and a light open blouse so she turned the visors down which helped about as much as Tylenol after an amputation.
Two more cigarettes and she saw Karen’s blue Honda drive on past and noted that she was alone. Two more after that and she pulled out of the driveway and into theirs and parked behind the Honda. She hoisted the beach bag over her shoulder and stepped out of her car and closed the door. Which somehow recalled the image of her bags piled in the trunk as the bellhop slammed it shut a couple hours before. She’d taken only two of them. The rest she’d left in the room. She’d rented for the month.
The pool’s high wooden gate was unlocked as Karen said it always was and she thought of her last visit here yesterday and wondered was it fortuitous or not that Linda had left the back door open so it was a simple matter to go into the empty house and up the stairs into their room to find the photograph. And then wondered if she had not found the photograph—hunted for it really—whether she would even be here.
She heard a splash and closed the gate behind her.
Karen surfaced and shook her head and ran a hand over face. Saw Dora and smiled.
“Hey, you! What happened to New York City?”
“It’s still there. I just changed my mind about leaving today. Tomorrow’s soon enough. I figured, one last swim, right?”
“Absolutely. Come on in.”
Karen thought, take it easy on her. You could exercise all to hell and back but Dora was a smoker and swimming was all about breathing. Normally she did ten laps but Dora was falling behind after six so she figured split the difference at eight.
They clung to either side of the stair rail.
“Cigarettes…” Dora said.
“Quit on the flight back. In six months, come back here and make me look bad.”
“We’ll see. Where’s Linda?”
“Taco Bell with the girls. Then a matinee of Fog-heart.”
“Horror movies?”
“She eats ’em up. They all do.”
“I wouldn’t have thought that exactly her style.”
“She saw Strange Seed six times. Go figure.”
“So. What would you say to an afternoon libation?”
“Get some sun, sure. I’d say good idea.”
She stepped to the first rung of the ladder and then the second and felt the familiar pull of water draining through the bottom of her bathing suit at the third rung and as her right foot came down on the concrete lip of the deck she let go of the rail and felt Dora’s hands grip her left ankle and jerk her back so suddenly that as the concrete ascended she had no time for a single thought but only sensation and wonder.
“I’m sorry,” Dora said.
Her voice sounded small to her and startlingly close to tears. Karen’s eyes were open and blood already pooled from the wound. Her upper body was bent at the waist draped across the concrete and the top rung of the ladder. Her legs and hips bobbed in the water. Dora hauled herself up on the handrail and felt for a pulse in her neck. She couldn’t tell. There might have been one. Faint.
She swam to the next ladder and climbed out of the pool and heard a car go by headed fast down out of the hills and the water dripping off her onto the concrete. She walked to Karen and squatted down beside her and put her fingers to her neck again. Had she felt a pulse she was prepared to lift the head by the hair and bring it down again to finish her but she felt none. She moved the fingers directly in front of Karen’s nose. She could feel no stir of air.
Karen began to slide.
An inch first. Then two. Dora stood and watched as the weight of her lower body drew her slowly down. She saw the side of her face that lay pressed against the concrete pull up first into a grin and then a sneer and the trail of blood behind her head like a slug’s trail smeared by her arms which now extended straight above her as though posed for one last dive. She heard the tiny scrape of teeth on concrete.
She watched all this in a kind of wonder.
Karen’s breasts at the lip of the pool halted her descent only a moment and then her head splashed gently down to cloud the slowly stilling water like smoke from a cigarette in the lazy summer air.
She had never seen death before. Certainly never caused one. There was nothing to be done about it now so she watched. When she was through watching she dried herself off on Karen’s towel and draped it over a chair to dry in the sun and then snatched up her blouse and bag and headed for the car.
EIGHTEEN
Dora
There were two calls she needed to make. Both took some preparation, some thought. But first of all she had to calm down. She’d already scared the shit out of a cabbie and the doorman. Sixty-eighth and Third she’d said to the cabbie at the airport and he’d asked her did she want the bridge.
I want you to pick whichever route has the lightest traffic and I want you to find all the holes, she’d said. I want to get there quickly and efficiently and if you do that you’ll get a very good tip out of me and if you don’t you’ll get the meter. You understand?
The cabbie had shaken his head. I love this fuckin’ job, he’d said. Y’know? I just love the people.
The doorman had smiled and said welcome home Ms. Welles and asked could he take her bags for her. The bags are on rollers for a reason, Sergio, she’d said. No thanks. That one she regretted. Sergio had always been fine to her and didn’t deserve to be snapped at. She’d apologize to him tomorrow.
But she needed to calm down. Happily there was a half-full bottle of Absolut in the freezer. She poured one and it helped.
The other thing she needed to do was to order her thinking and get these calls exactly right. Content and tone. The Absolut helped there too. When sh
e thought she was ready she sat down on her bed and dialed.
Barbara answered on the third ring and it was apparent from the voices in the background that she was throwing a little party. Also apparent that she’d had a couple of drinks herself. Turned out that the party was for Barbara’s ex. His birthday. Her ex—with whom she’d remained as friendly over the last six years since their divorce as they had been during the marriage. Maybe more so. Toward the end, definitely more so. Dora always wondered how folks managed that.
They caught up and talked shop for a few minutes and then Dora hit her with it.
You want me to do what? Barbara said.
“I want you to buy me out. What do you think?”
There was a long pause on the other end and Dora wondered whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that Barb was a little tipsy at the moment.
“Well, I know we’d talked about it, I mean, somewhere down the line, but…”
“I think now’s the time, Barb. I want to try something different for a change. Someplace new. You know, sun, nice weather, that kind of thing.”
She could almost feel it slowly sink in.
“Okay, who is he?”
“What?”
She laughed. “This is Barbara, honey. Listen, why don’t you cab on over and tell me all about him. I’ve got Liza and Ned of course and Georgie and the rest of the gang over here and we’d love to hear…”
“There’s nobody, Barb. Honest. I just think it’s about time, that’s all.”
Another pause.
“Okay, okay, there’s no guy. If you say so. Come in tomorrow and we’ll talk about it. It’s kind of sudden. I’ll have to think it over. All right?”
“Tomorrow’s fine. See you about nine.”
“Nine it is. Bye.”
“Tell Ned happy birthday for me, okay?”
“Will do, hon. Bye.”
She hung up the phone and sat there for awhile and sipped her dirty martini until it was finished and then made herself another and sat awhile longer and then dialed.