Fast Women

  She winced at the name, the pain slicing through her because she wasn’t braced for it. “If he wanted to leave, he didn’t have to go to her,” she said. “You can’t tell me that he didn’t look at her and notice she was younger and firmer and—”

  “No guy would prefer Olivia to you,” Riley said, sounding disgusted with her. “Stop wallowing.”

  Suze ignored him and faced the truth: She’d ended her own marriage, and now she didn’t even have Olivia to blame for it. Jack. “I hate this.” She turned around to face Riley, a little surprised to find that he wasn’t standing close. He’d seemed so close. “And it’s all my fault.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Riley said, exasperated. “You married a guy who was so controlling that normal everyday life threatened him. You quit your job and close the checking account and then what? You going to sit in this dining room for the rest of your life, looking at those blue plates? Because I’m pretty sure you’ll have to give up all those cups with feet, too. They creep me out, and I’m not trying to hold on to you.”

  Give up the cups? “I need Nell,” Suze said and burst into tears.

  “Hold on.” Riley backed up a step. “Just wait a second.” She heard him retreat into the kitchen and dial the phone. I traded in the only man I’ve ever loved for a checking account and a bunch of egg cups, she thought, and then she put her head down on the dining room table and howled.

  A few minutes later, when the worst of it was over, she lifted her face and Riley stuck a box of Kleenex under her nose. “Nell’s on her way,” he told her, sounding as if he couldn’t wait.

  “Sorry about the crying,” she said and took a tissue to blow her nose. “That must have been awful.”

  “Yes, it was. Don’t do that again. Would you like a drink? Or something?”

  She sniffed again and tried to smile up at him. He looked trapped and wary. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Riley, I just cried, that’s all. My marriage died, I’m allowed to cry.”

  “Sure you are. Save it for Nell. She’ll be here in about half an hour. You sure you don’t want a drink? Because I do.”

  “Why half an hour? It’s not that far.”

  “Gabe was with her at her place. They were fighting over us not telling you and then they … stopped. She’s getting dressed.”

  There, Suze thought as she sniffed again. Nell had found somebody else. She hadn’t curled up and died when her marriage ended that Christmas, she’d—

  “Oh, God,” Suze said. Nell had waited two years. It was going to be another two years before she wasn’t alone again. And all Nell had had to get over was that worthless Tim. She was going to have get over Jack. “Oh, God.”

  “What?” Riley said.

  “It’s going to be two years before I have sex again,” Suze wailed.

  “I’ll just get those drinks,” Riley said and escaped into the kitchen.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Suze sat on the stairs at midnight and patted Marlene while she listened to Nell tell Jack exactly what kind of cheating, disgusting, degenerate weasel he was through the locked door. She’d put the dead bolt on, and she wouldn’t let him in, and eventually, he’d given up and gone somewhere else, probably to Olivia.

  “Tomorrow you get a lawyer,” she told Suze, coming up the stairs to her.

  “Tomorrow I have to go to work,” Suze said. “I have a teashop to run.”

  “You can call a lawyer from the teashop,” Nell said, and then stood by her the next day while she did.

  Suze’s days dissolved into a blur of blended teas and Margie’s cookies, drinks at the bar as a decoy for Riley, painful discussions with the lawyer, and long talks with Nell, who never got tired of listening, even when Suze kept going back relentlessly to the same themes.

  “I’d be ready to kill me,” she told Nell on Valentine’s Day. “I know I keep saying the same things, but I just can’t seem to get unstuck. I know I should file for divorce, the lawyer says it’s time, but I just can’t seem to—” She broke off. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You’re doing better than I did,” Nell said. “I didn’t say anything at all for a year and a half. What do you want for dinner?”

  They were at Nell’s, something that made Suze feel guilty because here was Nell, finally happy with a good man to love her, and there was Suze, planted in the middle, like the toad in the fairy tale, spoiling everybody’s good times. “Listen, it’s Valentine’s Day. I can go home.”

  “Over my dead body,” Nell said. “How about stir-fry? I can do that fast.”

  “Sure,” Suze said and wandered into the living room to pat Marlene again. It was amazing how therapeutic patting a dachshund could be, even one with an attitude as bad as Marlene’s. She stopped by Nell’s china cabinet and looked at Clarice’s dishes. The Secrets houses stood alone on the hill with their lonely smoke plumes and depressed the hell out of her, so she looked at the Stroud cartouches instead, the cheerful little orange-roofed houses inside the perfect little squares. For some reason they were worse, that lonely little single house trapped inside the square, everything so tidy, everything so impossible. Maybe that was what she was doing, trying to keep everything tidy, outlined in black. Your husband cheats, so you get rid of him. That was cartouche life, not real life. Real life was messy, complicated by doubts and regret.

  Maybe she should go home and call Jack. Maybe they should talk without the lawyers there.

  “You okay?” Nell said when Suze came out to the kitchen to help set the table.

  “Maybe I gave up too soon,” Suze said. When Nell didn’t say anything, she turned to look at her. “What do you think?”

  “I think that whatever you decide, I’m behind you one hundred percent,” Nell said. “And Margie will be behind you one hundred percent with a thermos of soy milk.”

  “What would I do without you?” Suze said.

  “That you’ll never have to know,” Nell said, putting a plateful of food in front of her. “Now eat. I worry you’ll be as dumb as I was and do the sleepwalking thing.”

  For all Nell worried about her, Suze worried about Nell. Working at The Cup with Margie and moonlighting at the agency gave Suze a ringside seat on Nell’s new relationship, and as far as she could see, if Nell didn’t wise up, they were both going to grow old alone.

  Because in spite of her obvious ecstasy, Nell wasn’t living a new life. Nell had remade her old life, running her new boss the way she’d run her old boss. The problem was, her old boss had been a wuss and her new boss wasn’t. Nell would ask for something, Gabe would say no, and Nell would work around him. Then Gabe would yell, Nell would drag him off to bed, and the whole thing would start all over again with something else Nell wanted, including her last three great goals, the ones even she was afraid to do an end run for: the couch, the business cards, and the new window. She and Gabe were either fighting or making love or on the way to one or the other, and while Suze could understand the exhilaration, she couldn’t understand how they kept going. She’d have needed medication long ago.

  “I don’t understand them,” Suze said to Riley when he came into the teashop to get away from the arguing one afternoon. She poured him a cup of tea and set out the plate of broken cookies she kept behind the counter for him, and he picked up half a star and nodded.

  “You had it right,” Riley said. “They’re both kissers. And if Nell doesn’t knock it off, they’re going to have real problems.”

  “Oh, it’s Nell’s fault, is it?” Suze said.

  “Yes, it is, and I’m not fighting with you so don’t even start.” Riley bit into the cookie, and Suze took a deep breath and calmed down. “Gabe owns the agency,” Riley went on, “she’s his secretary, she doesn’t get to make decisions and just assume he’ll rubber-stamp them. I can’t believe the crap he’s let her get away with so far, but it’s getting to him.”

  “How can you tell?” Suze said. “He looks the same to me.”

  “I can tell because they fight every goddamn day, and he doesn
’t need that with this thing about his dad driving him crazy. He’s going to crack, and I don’t want Nell to be his breaking point. She’s good for him, or she would be if she quit acting like she owned the place.”

  “Yeah, those pushy women,” Suze said. “You gotta keep slapping them down or they’ll run right over you.”

  “Why do I talk to you?” Riley said and went back to the agency, his cup still in his hand, while Suze sat over her tea and broken cookies and tried not to think about the mess everything was in.

  * * *

  The argument in Gabe’s office had ended the way their arguments usually ended, and Nell was feeling wonderful.

  “You know,” Gabe said, putting his pants back on, “my coffee breaks used to be a lot more relaxing.”

  “It’s the caffeine.” Nell stretched naked in front of his desk to feel her muscles move. “I used to be modest.”

  “I must have missed that era.” Gabe tossed her sweater to her and she didn’t bother to catch it. “Not that I’d be particularly interested in it.”

  She walked over to the bookcase, feeling the muscles in her legs flex. There was nothing like sex to remind you that you were an animal. Damn, she felt good. She drew her fingers along the edge of one of the shelves and said, “I bet this office has seen a lot of naked secretaries.”

  “I don’t think so,” Gabe said, looking around for something. “Most women insist on beds.”

  “So I’m bringing something new to the tradition,” Nell said, moving along to the coatrack.

  “God, yes. Where the hell did you throw my shirt?”

  “Over my head, I believe.” She unhooked the old blue pinstriped jacket from the coatrack and slipped into it, shimmying a little to let the silk lining slide on her skin as she wrapped the jacket around her. “You should wear this. You’d look great in it.”

  He stopped looking for his shirt. “Not as great as you do.”

  “Yeah?” She smiled at him, so happy she felt like bouncing. She caught sight of the cassette player and went over and pushed Play, and Dino began singing “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head.” She laughed and did a fast two-step to it to “I kissed her and she kissed me,” and then jumped when Gabe caught her hand a couple of bars later and spun her around into his arms.

  “You can dance?” she said, amazed as he moved with her, as graceful as he was shirtless.

  “I can if you let me lead,” he said, switching steps on her and laughing when she caught up right away.

  “What fun is that, following somebody around all the time?” She danced away a step and he caught her again.

  “Well, you get my arms around you,” he said, and when she cuddled closer, he tightened his grip on her and put his cheek against her hair.

  “Big price to pay,” she murmured into his chest.

  “It’s just dancing, Nell,” he said, swaying with her.

  “It’s all dancing,” she said and slipped out of his arms to do a jazzy shuffle, her hands in the pockets of the jacket, pulling it tight against her body, feeling free again.

  He leaned against the bookcase and watched her, and she missed his arms. “There must be some way you can dance with both people leading.”

  “You can,” Gabe said. “It’s called sex.”

  When the song ended, she stopped, breathless, and stretched her arms out to feel her muscles, and he pulled her back to slow dance to “You Belong to Me.”

  “Just give me one,” he said, and she relaxed into his arms, grateful for the way he felt against her.

  “You’re really good at this,” she said.

  “My mom taught me.”

  He sounded sad, and she pulled him closer. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll let you lead if you don’t slow me down.”

  “Deal,” he said and kissed her, still moving to the music, and when she broke the kiss, she put her cheek against his chest and thought, So this is what it’s like to be in love. Except he’d never said he loved her. They’d been together for more than two months now, and he never said it. He held her closer, and she had one small moment of panic—that it would end, that he would never love her, that one day he’d say, “The fights are just too much,” that she’d lose this feeling—and then she thought, Well, at least I’ll have had it.

  But later that night, when Gabe was spooned against her back, half asleep, she knew that wasn’t enough. She needed forever, and she needed to hear it. She knew that was desperate and pathetic of her, she knew it was too soon, but she been torturing herself with a thousand reasons why he didn’t love her, why he’d never love her, and she wanted reassurance now. The worst of the reasons was, Maybe he still loves Chloe. He never talked about Chloe, wasn’t particularly interested in the postcards she kept sending, but Nell knew Gabe didn’t show his emotions much. Maybe he was repressing his longing for Chloe. Maybe he pretended she was Chloe when they made love.

  She bumped her rear end against him to get his attention, and he stirred and patted her hip. “Do you ever think about Chloe?”

  “Sure,” he mumbled against her neck. His hand curved above her head, his fingers caught in her hair, and she snuggled back closer, wanting him more tangled with her, more caught.

  “When?” she said.

  He moved against her back and let his other hand fall down across her stomach. “When I smell the almond cookies,” he said and yawned.

  Suze baked almond cookies every day. “Do you miss her?”

  “Umhmm.”

  She could hear the sleep in his voice. “Do you wish she was back?”

  “She’ll be back.” He yawned again. “She just wanted to see something besides Ohio for a while.”

  He was too tired to be ducking her, so she decided on the blunt approach. “Do you still love her?”

  “Umhm.”

  “Oh.” Nell felt sick. “Do you—”

  Gabe sighed and pushed himself up on one elbow and away from her, and she fell back flat onto the bed. “No,” he said, looking down at her, still half asleep, “not like you,” and then he kissed her, and she was so startled, she held onto him, even when he ended the kiss.

  “Not like me?” she said.

  “I love you. Not like Chloe. Different.”

  He loves me. “Oh,” she said, swallowing. How different?

  Don’t ask.

  “Chloe was easy,” he said, as if he’d heard her. “Chloe was sweet. Chloe did exactly what I told her to. Chloe never caused me any trouble at all.”

  “Now say something nice about me,” Nell said, feeling panic start.

  “You drive me crazy,” Gabe said, finally awake, sliding his hand across her stomach. “You never do what I tell you to, and you challenge everything I say, and I wish to hell you’d stop it. You make me so mad I yell at you, and then I look at you, and I can’t get enough of you, and I know I never will. If I come down to the office and you’re not there, the whole day goes to hell. If I’m having a lousy day and you come in, the sun comes out. I—”

  “I love you.” Nell sat up next to him and clutched his arm. “Like nothing ever before. You let me be strong. I don’t have to pretend. I don’t feel guilty with you.”

  “Honey, I don’t let you be anything,” he said, with laughter in his voice. “You just are.”

  She kissed him, holding his face in her hands, loving him so much she ached with it. “I’m sorry about the third degree,” she whispered. “I’ll let you get some sleep now.”

  “Like hell you will,” Gabe said. “You wake me up, you put me back to sleep.” He bent her back down into her pillows, and she curled around him, thinking, He loves me, this one’s forever, even while she knew it might not be, that nobody knew forever until the end. That’ll have to be enough, she thought, and then she closed her eyes and loved him back.

  * * *

  The next morning, Gabe woke with his arm draped over Nell and fought through a fog of sleep, trying to figure out what had jarred him awake. Marlene was sitting up at the foot of th
e bed, her ears pricked, and then he heard something that sounded like muffled screaming coming from next door.

  “What the hell?” he said and rolled out of bed, grabbing for his pants,

  Nell sat up, and said, her voice sleep-fogged, too, “Doris.”

  By the time he got downstairs, Doris was pounding on the front door, practically falling in when he opened it. “What?” he said, and she said, “The basement. Oh, my God.”

  “What?” he said, and she said, “In the freezer,” and started to shriek again. He passed her over to Nell and went cautiously into her apartment and down the narrow basement stairs, thinking, The freezer? What the hell? but when he walked past a table full of pinecone wreaths and opened the narrow chest freezer, he sucked in his breath and almost screamed, too.

  Lynnie was crammed in there, blue and desiccated and long dead, on the run no more.

  * * *

  “How long?” Nell said, when the police had gone, leaving yellow crime scene tape all over Doris’s door, and Doris had left for her sister’s, claiming she wouldn’t spend another night in that house. “How long had she been there?”

  “Long time,” Gabe said, splashing Glenlivet into a glass for her. “My guess is, since last September. She was going off to meet her lawyer after you talked to her, right?”

  “That’s what she said.” Since last September. I moved in on top of her body.

  “And we never heard from her again.” Gabe handed her the glass. “Drink up. You look like hell.”

  “You didn’t tell the police about O&D,” Nell said and sipped the scotch.

  “Lynnie’s blackmailing O&D is a guess,” Gabe said. “I think it’s a good guess, but it’s not fact.”

  “But the embezzlement from you, that was a fact.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “You’re protecting Trevor, but not yourself.”

  “No,” Gabe said. “I’m giving the police all the information I have. They want facts, not hunches.”

  “You don’t want your dad’s name smeared,” Nell said. “You’re afraid Lynnie was blackmailing Trevor and Jack about Helena’s death and you’re afraid the police will find out your dad did it.”