“Also I love you,” Max went on. “Although right now I have to wonder why.”
“I love you, too,” Darla said. “And I’m doing a little wondering myself.” She walked over to the door and opened it. “Get in here before you freeze,” she yelled to Nick who was shooting a basket and knocking icicles off the hoop. “The fight’s over.”
But it wasn’t, she knew. It wouldn’t be over until she figured what the hell they’d been fighting over.
She had a real good idea it wasn’t Barbara.
Quinn started her move on Friday after school by loading a nervous Katie, her grandmother’s silver, and nine garbage bags of clothes into her car and driving to her new house. Edie and Meggy met her there and began to polish floors, moving on to windows while Quinn wiped down shelves, hung up her clothes, and put the silver away.
“This place really is beautiful, Quinn,” Edie said when they were done. “Lots of lovely quiet.”
“It’s a risk,” her mother said. “I don’t know what people are going to think, you living alone out here. And your next-door neighbor is Patsy Brady, for heaven’s sake, and you know her reputation.”
Edie rolled her eyes, and Quinn said, “Mom, stop it. I don’t care what other people think. I can’t live my life for other people, I have to live it for myself.”
“Oh, well, sure, that sounds good—” Meggy began.
“It is good.” Quinn stood in the middle of her house, feeling invincible. “I’m happier than I’ve ever been. The risks I’m taking like keeping Katie and buying this house”—and wanting Nick—“are making me feel alive.” She looked around at the now-gleaming floors, at the tall windows with all the light streaming through. “How can you look at this and not think it’s wonderful? Can’t you be glad for me?”
“I am glad for you,” Meggy said. “It’s just, all these changes—” She picked up her purse and sighed. “Never mind, I’m probably just jealous.”
“You want a new house?” Quinn said, confused, but Meggy shook her head and went out the door.
“It’s lovely, Quinn,” Edie said. “Have us all over for dinner when the furniture is in.”
“Right now that’s the pie safe, the washstand, Mom’s red couch and armchair, and our old twin beds,” Quinn said. “Although I did order this gorgeous bed for me, too. I deserve it.”
“Yes, you do.” Edie kissed her on the cheek as Meggy honked the horn outside. “Have a good life here, Quinn.”
“I’ll do my best,” Quinn said, and then left to pick up Darla at the Upper Cut so they could clear out the housewares department at Target together, leaving Katie to explore her new house and yard with her usual suspicion and dread.
“This is fun,” Darla said two hours later, folding the last of Quinn’s new mint green towels into the old-fashioned wall cupboard built into Quinn’s bathroom. “Maybe I’ll hit the savings account and buy everything new.” She shoved aside a pile of Quinn’s nightgowns to make room for towels and said, “What’s this?”
She pulled out a wad of white chiffon and shook it free and Quinn made a face. “It’s a nightgown Bill got me. Isn’t it awful? It made me feel like a virgin sacrifice. And then when I put it on, he could see right through it so he hated it.”
“Right through it?” Darla held it up in front of her and looked at Quinn through the filmy cloth. “Oh. And he hated it?”
“Bill isn’t into sexy,” Quinn said.
“Max is,” Darla said. “Or at least he used to be.”
“Then it’s yours.” Quinn waved her hand. “Use it with my blessing.”
“There’s a thought.” Darla wadded the gown up again and jammed it into her bag where Katie sniffed it and then sighed because it wasn’t food. Darla moved to the sink and opened the wall cupboard to stack soap and toothpaste into the cabinet. “You bought two toothbrushes?”
Quinn looked at the ceiling. “I bought a bed, too. You never know when you’re going to have somebody sleep over.”
Darla shook her head. “If you’re talking about Nick, that’ll be never. He’s allergic to sleepovers. Lisa got so frustrated she showed up on Christmas Eve and told him she was staying so they could wake up on Christmas morning together.”
Since Lisa was history, there was no reason for Quinn to feel jealous, and there was especially no reason for her to feel jealous since she had no relationship with Nick at all, but she did. Really, she was hopeless. “At least Lisa went after what she wanted.”
Darla snorted. “Yeah, but she didn’t get it. When they came to dinner, she was fuming. She said when she woke up, Nick was out in the living room asleep in his armchair. And then she was expecting a ring and got a CD set.” Darla closed the cabinet door and stuffed the now-empty Target bag in the trash. “And that was it for Lisa.”
“Was Nick upset when she left?” Quinn hated how needy she sounded.
“He was relieved.” Darla’s voice was sympathetic. “He always is. Round about the one-year mark, he gets itchy.”
“With me, it was at the half-hour mark,” Quinn said.
“Well, he’ll have to go longer tonight,” Darla said. “He has a lot of furniture to unload.” She checked her watch. “They should be at your mom’s right about now. Let’s go.”
Quinn thought about seeing Nick again and felt like throwing up. “Oh good.”
Bill watched Quinn and Darla drive away and scowled at the empty house. It was ugly, dirty and gray and skinny and derelict and isolated, and he hated that she was going to live there—especially live there with that damn dog, especially live there without him.
He got out and walked around the place, shaking his head at the patchy ground, full of weeds and stones, and when he let himself in the backyard through the alley gate, it was worse. Then the dog burst through a flap in the back door, barking at him hysterically, trying to get him in trouble, and he retreated to the gate before anybody could catch him there and jump to the wrong conclusion. He was just there to protect Quinn, to find out how bad the place was, and it was so bad, he knew he had to get her out of there somehow.
“What’re you doing?” a woman called, and he jerked around to see a blowzy-looking brunette leaning over the fence.
“Meter reader,” he called cheerfully, keeping his face averted as he waved and went through the gate. The dog followed him through, still barking.
If the dog wasn’t around, Quinn wouldn’t need a house.
He slammed the gate so the dog was outside in the alley—maybe it would get hit, it was dumb enough—and then he got in the car and headed for a pay phone. He’d call the pound and tell them a vicious dog was loose. Quinn couldn’t blame him if the dog got out, that was the dog’s fault. And the pound would call him since he’d paid for the license. “Put it down,” he could say. “I think it’s dangerous.” That was the God’s honest truth, too. It was dangerous.
As he drove away, he could see the dog in the rearview mirror, sniffing garbage cans, not even trying to run away.
Dumb mutt. It deserved to die.
They all unloaded the furniture from Meggy’s and carried it into the house under the appreciative eyes of Patsy Brady, who called out, “Hello, Gorgeous,” from her front porch as Max carried in an armchair.
“You get all the hot women,” Nick said, and Max said, “I’m going upstairs to put that bed together. You go talk to her.”
“Nah,” Nick said. “I know when I’m outclassed. Once they see you, I’m history.”
“This thing is huge,” Max said half an hour later, tightening the last bolt. “She have some plans we don’t know about?”
“I have no idea,” Nick said, but it was hard to look at the bed, glowing like the floors even in the growing twilight, and not think of Quinn on it, in it, under him. Knock it off, he told himself, and then he thought about her some more.
“We have a problem,” Darla said behind him, making him jump in guilt. “We seem to have lost that damn dog.”
“She’s nowhere in the house
or the next-door yards,” Quinn said behind her, her voice a little shaky. “I don’t get it. The gate is still closed and there are no holes under the fence. I checked the alley anyway, and she’s not there. The next-door neighbor said there was some meter reader here. Maybe he let her out.”
“Is this a sort of skinny black ratty dog?” Max said, looking out the front bedroom window. “Because there’s one of those in the street, and there’s an Animal Control truck headed its way.”
Quinn was down the stairs faster than Nick had ever seen her move, and he followed her through the dining room and out the front door just as Katie sniffed her way into the front yard.
Animal Control slowed to a crawl.
“I’ll go call them off,” Quinn told Nick. “You get Katie.”
Katie danced around the yard, looking for trouble, watching him bright-eyed. He took a step toward her and she crouched down, her bony butt in the air, ready to play.
“I’m not chasing you, mutt,” he said to her, and she cocked her head at him, clearly ready to make a break for it if he came closer.
“Cute. You run in the street, you’re hamburger,” he said, knowing as long as he talked to her, she’d listen. “So why don’t we just end this now?”
He took a step toward her, and she danced away, never taking her eyes off his face.
Okay, fine. Part of him wanted to just let her run away—she was the one who was causing all the trouble, breaking Quinn and Bill up, screwing with his life—but Quinn had asked him to, and he didn’t want Katie getting hurt, even if she was a rat on stilts, and besides, there was Animal Control.
So what did he have that this dog wanted?
There was probably a Burger King bag someplace in the truck. “How do you feel about really old fries?” he called to the dog, and she danced closer again, two steps forward, one back. He opened the passenger door to the truck and leaned in, feeling under the seat for possible trash, and Katie leaped in, scrambling across his back to sit in the driver’s seat.
Nick got in and slammed the door, trapping her inside with him. “Gotcha.”
Katie put her paws on the driver’s side window and looked out anxiously, probably wondering why nothing was moving. She looked over her shoulder at Nick and whined.
“We are not going for a ride,” he said, and she barked at him.
Actually, it wasn’t a bad idea. As long as she thought she’d always get a ride if she got in the truck, she’d be a piece of cake to catch, so if he took her around the block, he’d be solving a lot of future problems for Quinn.
Also he could stall going back in that light-filled house full of Quinn and beds for another fifteen minutes. He slid across the seat, picking Katie up to trade places, and backed the truck out of the driveway, waving to Quinn as he went.
Katie immediately climbed in his lap to press her nose against his window.
“There’s another one on your side,” he told her, but she was light and she didn’t squirm, and after the first minute, she sighed and sat down and leaned against him without trembling as he drove, watching out the window with her chin on his shoulder as the world went past.
She was a good little dog, Nick realized. She still looked like hell, of course, but she was a nice little dog. He scratched her behind the ear, and Katie leaned against his hand a little, the same way Quinn had that night.
Quinn had been so tempting there in the dark, so yielding.
And she was so off-limits he didn’t even know why he was thinking about her again.
He finished his circuit and pulled in the driveway, and Quinn came over to the truck, crossing her arms over that fuzzy purple sweater to keep herself warm. She looked great. He opened the door and handed Katie out to her, saying, “She likes to ride, so that’s an easy way to catch her.”
“Thank you,” Quinn began, smiling up at him with that lush mouth, all huge eyes and warm curves, and he cut her off with, “Don’t mention it, glad to help. Well, you’re all moved in, so I gotta go.” He slammed the door and waved as he backed out of the drive, and she watched him go with her mouth open.
It wasn’t until he was all the way back to the station that he realized he’d left Max behind.
Bill waited down the street until Darla and Max left. Then he parked in Quinn’s driveway and knocked on the ugly black front door—a door that had too much glass in it to be safe, another reason he really had to get her out of there. When Quinn opened it, she looked so beautiful that he just stared at her for a minute. She said, “Bill?” and he smiled and said, “I have a car full of your books. Where should I put them?”
She hesitated for a minute, and then she stepped out on the porch with him. “We can stack them in the dining room for now.”
She helped him carry the books in, which was great because it meant she was with him, but not great because it meant he’d get done twice as fast, that he wouldn’t have enough time to talk to her, to make sure she was all right, to make her talk to him again the way she used to. He needed to see her more often was the problem, so on one of his trips in, while she was at the car, he opened the shutter on the far window so he could see in if he ever had to. Just to make sure she was all right. It was the window that was behind the fence on the side with the vacant lot, so nobody would see him and stop him from checking on her.
The damn dog growled at him, and he fought back the urge to kick it. It was supposed to be gone by now, run over or in the pound, not here. But kicking it would be stupid. She might catch him doing it, and that was all he needed to make Quinn suspicious that he was the one who’d let the dog out.
When he came back in two trips later, she’d closed the shutter again—had she realized what he was doing?—so when she left for the last box, he reached over and snapped one of the lower slats off its staple so it wouldn’t go up any more. It wasn’t much of a change, he wasn’t even sure he could see through it, but it was something.
Anything so he could see her, see what she was doing, be with her until she came to her senses again.
“That’s it,” she said as she came in with the last box. She was a little breathless and her cheeks were red from the cold and she was so beautiful, he took a step toward her and reached for her.
She shook her head and stepped back as the dog growled again. “No,” she said. “I’m really sorry, but no. I’m happy, and I’m not coming back. This is my house now. I’m staying.”
And there was nothing he could do but nod and smile and wish her good luck even though he felt like hell, like shouting at her, like grabbing her, like making her listen.
Thank God Bobby had stopped her loan and she’d be out of there soon. And once she was out of there, she’d have to get rid of the dog, and things would be back to normal again. If it hadn’t been for Bobby stopping that loan, he didn’t know what he would have done.
Darla had dropped Max off at the station, and he called a little later to say that moving Quinn had put them behind, and that he and Nick were both working late to catch up. Darla felt one tiny twinge—are you with Barbara?—and then stifled it, knowing Max wouldn’t lie to her. “No problem,” she said in her best Understanding Wife voice. “I’ll keep dinner hot for you.”
“Don’t bother,” he said.
Don’t bother? “Well, I’ll be here whenever you get home,” she chirped, determined to make this work.
“Good,” Max said, sounding a little confused. “That’s where I figured you’d be.”
She’d fed the boys, argued with them about their homework, and was packing them off to bed when Max finally came home, covered in grease and exhausted. By the time he got out of the shower, the boys were asleep, so he plopped himself down alone in the dark living room to watch the news in the TV’s weird blue light, turning down her offer of a late dinner.
“I appreciate it,” he said. “But I’m beat.”
“No problem,” she said brightly and went off to lock herself in the bathroom.
She took her hair down in the bright l
ight from the round bulbs that surrounded their huge mirror, and she brushed it until all the kinks from the pins that had held it fast in her French twist were gone and it flowed silky, way past her shoulders.
Max loved it down. She used to trim it to get rid of the split ends, just half an inch, and he’d say, “You cut your hair.”
“Just a little,” she’d say and let it fall over him, tickle his skin, and he’d pull her close—
How long had it been since he’d done that?
She clamped down on critical thoughts. It didn’t matter. Tonight, they’d be what they’d used to be.
She flipped her hair back over her shoulders. She was getting a little long in the tooth for hair this length. If she’d been her client, she’d have said, “Cut it, go for something snappier, more sophisticated.” Long hair like this only worked on waiflike women, anyway. It was for little girls, perennial Alices.
And for women with husbands like Max.
She ignored her sensible long flannel nightgown hanging on the back of the door—she had at least a dozen, all gifts from her mother every Christmas—stripped off her clothes, and slid the white chiffon gown over her head. It felt like cream sliding over her skin, cool and smooth and liquid; it rippled around her like a waterfall. She flounced it a little to straighten it, and then watched it settle around her curves. You could see through it, her nipples were dark circles and down below—
If Max looked horrified at this, she was divorcing him and Barbara could have him.
She swished around the bathroom a little, not taking her eyes off the mirror, watching the chiffon settle and slide as her hair floated about her shoulders, turning herself on with how good she looked, how lovely the chiffon felt, how nuts Max was going to go when he saw her.
She heard him come into the adjoining bedroom and unlocked the bathroom door, waiting for him to walk through the door to get ready for bed. Maybe they wouldn’t even make it to the bedroom. Maybe he’d just boost her up on the counter. They’d done it that way in the station bathroom once and that had been at the station, not in their own house—surely he couldn’t say no in his own house. He sure hadn’t said no in the station. She shivered a little remembering it.