Now he sat up. “You talked to her?”
“I was in a shop, looking at this sun dress.” She pulled the dress from the shopping bag and held it up for him, a batik-patterned dress, deep blue and pale yellow.
“Nice,” he said. Then, “So?”
“So she came into the shop. So I, you know, I remembered what you had said about observing them and all, so I just walked up to her and asked her what she thought of this dress.”
“You didn’t.”
“Women do that all the time. We ask each other’s opinion. It wasn’t like I was doing something odd.”
“Okay, okay. Let’s get to the point.”
“The point is, she said how nice the dress would look on me, and then I tried it on for her and it did look nice. And then we just kept talking and we ended up going to lunch together! She paid for everything. She even bought us a drink afterward. A Dubonnet, it was called. It looks like Doo-bonnet but it’s pronounced Doo-bo-nay. It’s dark and kind of sweet—”
“The point?” he said.
“The point is that she is really very very nice. Her name is Helen.”
He tried the name out on his lips but not aloud, felt the way his tongue separated the syllables against the back of his teeth, the same movement of tongue he would use on her, the taste of her mouth in his....
“I don’t want us to do this to her,” Amy said.
“Look, she’s the one who’s going to have her husband whacked, remember? All I plan to do is to take the money from her boyfriend afterward.”
“I know but... I just....”
He waited.
“I mean, they’re in Pennsylvania, we’re in North Carolina, it’s just impossible, isn’t it? I don’t see how we can even think about it.”
He sat at the foot of the bed and stared at the wall. The wall was only four inches from his kneecaps.
Very lightly, with almost no touch at all, she placed three fingers on his shoulder. “You really got burned today. I can feel the heat coming right off your skin.”
“I’m doing it,” he said.
She lifted her hand away.
“You can go back if you want,” he told her. “Go back to being somebody’s peon the rest of your life. But I can’t. I’ll be 25 years old in two months.”
“Twenty-five is young.”
He turned to her. “Ever since I was 10 I’ve been listening to my old man piss and moan about how fast his life is going by. He used to lecture me about not letting all my opportunities slip away, about how I should stop expecting a better opportunity tomorrow. Well, you know what? He doesn’t lecture me anymore. Why do you think that is?”
She stood there blinking, her lower lip stuck out.
“Because he’s given up on me, that’s why.”
She shook her head no. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“I’m getting that money, Amy. It’s what I’m supposed to do.”
“Nobody is supposed to rob anybody.”
“Nobody is supposed to kill anybody either. But they’re the ones doing it, not me. Why do you think, out of all the hundreds of people on this ship, that I’m the one who happened to overhear their conversation?”
“I don’t know why,” she said.
“You don’t know what fate is?”
“Fate’s not about bad things. It’s not about breaking the law, is it?”
“I’ll tell you what it is about. It’s about it being our turn.”
He reached for her hands, covered them with his own, drew them close and held them pressed against his cheek. “Our turn,” he repeated. “How can that be bad?”
* * *
While still aboard ship they emptied out their individual checking accounts. A little over $800 from hers, a little under $300 from his. He sent a fax to his boss at Walmart, informed him that Rudy Fenton had been offered a job in Seattle, please forward the last paycheck to my father. He e-mailed his friend in Michigan to send another bogus letter to Amy’s employer, Grandma Idy is holding steady but still gravely ill. Consequently Amy will be staying on indefinitely to care for her; she does not expect her job to be held open.
“Now nobody, nobody will know when we go to Pennsylvania. We pay cash for everything, so they’ll be absolutely no paper trail. This is foolproof,” he told her.
He kept her from wavering too precipitously in her resolve by being generous with the champagne, doing a lot of window shopping, pointing out all the jewelry and clothing she could buy soon. Only once did she point out to him, “Fifty thousand dollars won’t last all that long, you know.”
“It’s a hell of a beginning though. It’s at least half of a house. You want us to have a house of our own, don’t you?”
“You mean... we’ll get married?”
“You don’t expect us to live in sin forever, do you?”
After that she was more optimistic about the plan. As for Rudy, the very thought of possessing $50,000 in cash only whetted his appetite for more. He found himself watching the older woman, Helen, at every opportunity.
On the last evening of the cruise, he was watching her from across the dining room, watching the way she raised a fork or a champagne flute to her mouth, the way her lips opened and closed, such full, moist lips. Every time he looked at her, his gaze was sooner or later drawn to those lips.
“She’s going to see you staring at her,” Amy whispered.
Under the table, he slid his hand out of his crotch.
“You should lighten up on the shrimp,” he told her. Her plate was piled high from her third trip to the buffet table.
“Hey, it’s the last night,” a man at their table said. He and all of his other dining companions, including Amy, were gorging themselves. Rudy felt something like revulsion for all of them.
They have no discipline, he thought. They’re weak. And I despise weak people.
He did not care if Helen caught him staring at her or not. In fact she had already done so, not once but several times. Most recently, she had held his gaze for a few seconds, and then, whether the gesture was accidental or deliberate, he didn’t care, she slipped her tongue through her lips, moistened her lips from corner to corner. Rudy winked at her. And she—she made his heart turn over, she smiled at him. Maybe she was laughing at him, maybe she found him amusing, he didn’t care. He continued to stare.
A few minutes later, both Helen and the tennis instructor said goodnight to their tablemates. They left the dining room arm-in-arm.
Rudy watched them exit. Then, “Excuse me,” he said, and pushed back his chair.
Amy asked, “Where are you going?”
“Restroom. Have some more shrimp.”
Out on the deck, Helen and the man were standing at the rail, 20 feet from the dining room entrance. Rudy waited in the doorway.
Helen and her companion talked for a while. At one point the man turned and walked off and then came quickly back to her, his face red. She jabbed a finger against his chest and said something that made him squeeze shut his eyes. Rudy found it all very entertaining. Especially when the man strode off and left her alone at the rail and she snapped open her purse and pulled out a new pack of cigarettes and tapped it—banged it, Rudy would have said—against the rail.
Rudy walked up to her. “Any chance you’ve got an extra one of those?”
She looked at him. Said nothing. Kept looking at him as she took a lighter from her purse and lit her own cigarette. Then slipped that cigarette from between her lips and handed it to him.
“Thanks,” he said, and felt immediately lightheaded, even before he raised the cigarette to his mouth, and more so afterward when he tasted the smudge of lipstick around the filter. He fought off the urge to lick it.
She lit a cigarette for herself.
“Not many smokers on this cruise,” he offered.
“That’s because it’s restricted to only a couple of places. This isn’t one of them.”
“I like women who take chances,” he said.
She
seemed uninterested in that subject. “You’re Rudy. Amy’s boyfriend.”
There was something of a challenge in the way she said this, something of an accusation. It felt like foreplay.
“How are you enjoying the cruise?” he asked, and made an effort not to drop his g’s, to keep his hillbilly accent in check.
“Like everything else, it gets boring after a while.”
He nodded. Then told himself to stop nodding, stop grinning, stop looking like an Alfred E. Newman dashboard doll with a bobbing head.
“And Amy?” the woman said.
“Huh? Excuse me?”
“Is she enjoying the cruise?”
“Sure, yes. She’s having a grand time.” As far as he could recall he had never before employed grand as an adjective. “Of course, this is her first time.”
“Everybody has one,” the woman said.
Despite his best efforts, he nodded. “I don’t believe I caught your name,” he said, just because he wanted to hear her say it, wanted to see her mouth open, see her tongue flick against the back of her teeth.
He waited, but she did not answer. She watched the water. He had come up with a sentence he wanted to say—It will be good to get back to my work on Monday—hoping that it would incite her to inquire of his work, and he would answer, carelessly, Computer graphics, web page design, that sort of thing.
But she did not tell him her name, gave him no opening. Instead she asked, “How many computers did it take?”
He forced himself not to jerk away, to appear too startled. “Excuse me?”
“To pay for this cruise. How many computers did you have to steal?”
And now there was something in her voice that emboldened him. The mockery was gone. He sensed a conspiracy in bloom. “Only three,” he said.
“Even so. It couldn’t have been easy.”
“Laptops,” he told her.
“Laptops? Well that’s a whole different matter, isn’t it? Laptops wouldn’t be difficult at all.” She was smiling now, smiling very broadly, warmly, her body turned toward his.
“A walk in the park,” he answered.
He noticed that she did not lean away from him after this exchange, did not face the rail again. He could almost feel her breast against his arm. He felt himself inclining toward her, in danger of falling. With his right hand he gripped the rail.
“I might suggest, however,” the woman said, “that Amy should be a bit more discreet with such confidences. She got lucky this time. I really have no interest in petty thievery.”
“Actually it’s classified as grand larceny,” he said.
“Oh my, well, that’s much more impressive, isn’t it?”
He inhaled deeply with his smile, filled his lungs with her scent. “You’re right about Amy though. She’s such a child sometimes.”
“I’m sure she’ll grow out of it.”
“Not soon enough for me.”
She said nothing. He could feel her eyes on him, could literally feel her gaze moving across his face. And he heard himself thinking, This is your chance. The only one you’re going to get.
Until that moment he had not admitted to himself that he was waiting for a chance, but there it was suddenly and he was not about to let it evaporate. “I much prefer older women,” he told her. “Women who aren’t afraid.”
She smiled at this. “Afraid of what?”
“Of keeping up with me.”
“Oh? Are you difficult to keep up with?”
“Always,” he said. He could not bring himself to look at her. His face was warm, his ears burning.
“What I have discovered,” she told him, “is the tendency in men to brag loudest about the qualities they least possess.”
He was about to answer that he was the exception who proved the rule, when it dawned on him suddenly that if he argued her point, he would be proving it correct. He thought this a brilliant insight, the most profound idea he had ever conceived. There was something inspiring about this woman, something that brought out the best in him.
He tossed his cigarette over the rail, flicked it away as if nothing in the world had ever mattered to him, then, smiling, watched it fall until the tiny orange ember blinked out.
He then brought his gaze up slowly, up over the invisible horizon, high into the ebony sky. “It’s going to be a good night to see the stars,” he said.
“You’re a stargazer, are you?”
“The sun deck is a good place to watch them from.”
“Is it indeed?”
“At midnight. Midnight is a good time.”
“How nice for you,” she said.
Despite her words he believed that he had made himself clear. He understood what she wanted from a man, what intrigued her. That was why he turned to her now and with a calm and steady gaze looked her straight in the eye and smiled without the slightest trace of nervousness and said, “Goodnight, Helen.”
He turned his back to her and walked away.
She said, “I can’t imagine that it would be very difficult to keep up with a man who watches the stars.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” he said, and he did not look back.
* * *
Eleven forty-five p.m. Amy was asleep, finally sleeping. He had done all he could to wear her out, had poured half a bottle of champagne on top of all that shrimp, and then had draped himself on top of her until she had had enough. Of course he had done the latter for himself as well, to quiet his nerves and increase his stamina for later, if it turned out that he needed it, and he was not at all confident that he would.
But there was nothing to be gained by not trying. To that end, he slipped out of bed and tiptoed into the bathroom and closed the door. A very quick shower, the spray turned low so that it would not patter loudly against the glass. He brushed his teeth and noiselessly gargled. Eased open the bathroom door but left the light on so that he could find his clothing.
Amy was sitting up in bed. “Hi,” she said. “Did I fall asleep?”
He reached for his trousers. “A couple of minutes is all.”
“Aren’t you coming back to bed?”
“I’m feeling a little restless. Thought I’d take me a walk. Get some fresh air.”
“Please come back to bed,” she told him. “We can do some more of what you like.”
He picked the remote off the bed and handed it to her. “See if you can find us a good movie. I’ll be back before long.”
He dressed quickly and slipped his shoes on and kissed her on the cheek so that she would not smell the mouthwash. Then out into the corridor and half-sprinting to the elevator. Up six decks to the top of the ship. It was already two minutes until midnight and he knew in his bones that Helen, if she came at all, was not the kind to wait for anybody.
He walked onto the sun deck and was surprised to see it so brightly lit. Somebody had turned on the lights in the pool and the whirlpool and the light over the open-air bar. She was standing at the port rail, her back to the ocean, hands shoved deep into the pockets of a trench coat, a man’s long brown gabardine with epaulets on the shoulders, the coat held together by a belt tied around her waist. Her feet were bare.
He came up to her and stood facing her and smiled. She was not smiling. “I thought you said this was a good place for looking at the stars,” she said.
“It’s all these lights. Let me turn some of them off.”
She grabbed the front of his shirt. “What else have you lied about?”
He opened his mouth to speak but he had no answer, no rebuttal. She gave him a last searing look and then ripped her hand down over his shirt, tearing off the buttons. She then laid one long fingernail atop his sternum, pushed in hard and dragged her fingernail down to his navel. He held his ground and tried not to grimace. The cool air stung his chest. He felt certain that he was bleeding but he would not let himself look down.
She turned her back to him then and leaned forward over the rail, laid her breasts on the outside of the rail as
if she were trying to see something on one of the lower decks.
“Lift up my coat,” she told him.
He heard the words but they confused him and made him dizzy and he wished she would say them again so that he could be certain of their meaning. But she said nothing and did nothing except to move her feet a little farther apart. He saw again that her feet were naked and though he had known it already it somehow seemed new to him, a revelation.
Gingerly then he took the tail of her coat in both hands and lifted it up like something dangerous and folded it over her back. Still she did nothing. He slipped his hands underneath the fabric and holding his breath leaned forward, alert for her protest, which did not come. Finally he smiled to himself and lay against her and pulled the front of the coat open. With one hand he cupped her breast, and with the other hand unbuckled his belt.
* * *
All the way to Pennsylvania on the Trailways bus, he felt himself wanting to be cruel to Amy, to say cruel things. So instead he was excessively polite. He allowed her to choose the motel where they would stay for the next two days, the Ramada on the outskirts of a little town called Tionesta, and the name under which they registered, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Dubonnet of Seattle, Washington.
His only insistence was that they maintain a low profile at the motel, that they remain in their room like newlyweds, eating only take-out from the fast food restaurants across the highway.
“Can’t I even use the pool?” she asked.
“It’s more for your protection than mine.”
There were two orders of business to attend to before the last Friday of the month. Both were easily accomplished. At a Walmart a half-mile from the motel, he purchased a paintball mask, a pair of black batting gloves and a small mallet with a blunt steel head. He would have preferred that the last item be a 9mm Glock but the paperwork could land him in prison. The man he intended to rob would no doubt be armed, else how to commit the murder? But he was after all a tennis instructor at the country club. How ferocious could he be?
The other order of business was to identify and locate the intended murder victim’s factory. This Rudy accomplished with a page-by page perusal of the town’s yellow pages.
Incident on Ten-Right Road Page 16
