Nature of the Game

by James Grady

  Wes opened his apartment door. The lights he snapped on showed him his home as he’d left it. Another night of no surprises.

  The door closed behind him with a solid click.

  He’d hung his topcoat in the closet, draped his sports jacket on a chair at the kitchen sidebar, and was inventorying his sparse refrigerator when someone knocked on his door.

  She stood in the hall wearing a blue blouse, jeans, bronze hair down to her shoulders, and a grin.

  “Let me guess,” she said, “you forgot my souvenir of Hollywood.”

  “I didn’t forget,” he said. “I couldn’t find anything perfect.”

  “That’s not a bad excuse.” Her face was free of makeup. She grinned. “I have an idea.”

  She reached around him, turned the button in his doorknob to unlock. He smelled the clean warmth of her skin.

  “Give me a minute,” she said, hurrying back into her apartment. He saw that her feet were bare.

  Wes stared at her closed door, then went back inside his home. His suitcase waited by the door to the bedroom. His briefcase lay on the kitchen sidebar. The pictures he’d taken from the L.A. hotel were in the inside pocket of his sports jacket.

  His door opened. She came in carrying a box under one arm, cigarettes and lighter in her other hand.

  “This came yesterday,” she said.

  His door clicked shut behind her.

  Beth strolled into his living room. Her eyes roamed over the crowded bookshelves, the stereo system and categorized CDs, records, and cassettes. Paused at the baseball resting on its stand: he’d knocked that grand slam homer into the bleachers and his Academy teammates all autographed it. She smiled at the framed black-and-white photograph of dying Lou Gehrig making his “luckiest man alive” farewell speech at Yankee Stadium, soaked in the framed print of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, a midnight diner scene so sparse and precise it was surreal.

  “I like how you live,” she told him.

  “Practice,” he said. Went to her. “What’s the box?”

  She handed it to him.

  “‘Fruit of the Month’?” Surprise lined his face.

  “It came for Bob,” she said. “The guy whose place I’m—”

  “I know.” Wes shook the box. “Must have been a gift.”

  “I’d forward it to him, but by the time it got there …”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t believe in waste,” she said.

  “So we should—”

  “Not give the rot more than we have to.”

  “Of course,” she added, “you’re the lawyer.”

  “Law is just some of what I know,” he told her.

  “We need to celebrate your return. You owe me a surprise.”

  He held the box to her. She popped the tape, folded back the lid.

  “Pears,” he said. “Green pears.”

  “They’re ready.”

  “I’ll get a knife, plates,” he said, but her hand on his arm stopped him.

  “Don’t be silly.”

  She lifted a pear from its styrofoam cradle, bit into it. Juice ran from the corners of her mouth and she laughed, cupped her hand under her chin.

  “God, it’s good!” she said.

  She held the pear up to him. As he bent to take a bite, he fell into her gray eyes.

  The fruit was sweet and wet and dissolved in his mouth. He felt its juice trickle out of his lips.

  “I’m getting you sticky,” he told her, gently cupping the hand that held the pear for him, moving it away.

  Beth laughed. One sharp, husky, honest burst.

  The silence rose around them, a pressure roaring and swelling until Wes thought his senses would explode.

  Her face tilted up to him, her lips warm. Wide. Parted.

  Slowly, carefully, his fingers touched her cheek. He bent down. Kissed her.

  And she let the pear fall. Her arms locked around his neck, pulled her body against his, her mouth opening. She tasted like lightning, smoky and fruit-sweet and hungry. All he knew of caution fell away: of the safety of his heart and health. Her hair streamed around his fingers, his hand pressed against her thin-boned back, her waist, the two of them turning, spinning, a ballet à deux in his living room. Is the door locked’? he wondered, and then his hand cupped her hips and she broke their kiss to sigh and arch her back, and he didn’t care about anything but her, about them, about now.

  She kissed his neck, his chest, her fingers moving down his shirt from button undone down to button undone down to button. His hand was massive on her chest; her breasts were flat, barely a soft, wonderfully soft, precious soft mound, her nipple stiff through her blouse.

  “Hurry!” she whispered.

  Wes ripped her blouse open and she cried out. She wore no bra and her breasts were white, soft sweet puffs of white, her nipples crimson-brown circles, swollen like pencil erasers, and he brushed his fingers across them, bent, took one in his mouth. She gripped his shoulders, pulled him close. She stood on her toes and he lifted her off the ground, lifted her high, covering her breasts with kisses as she bent over him, her hair draped over his head, panting, her leg wrapping around him.

  The chair.

  Somehow they were in the armchair. She was pulling off his shirt, shrugging out of her torn blouse. His hands unzipped her jeans. She twisted away without breaking their kiss, stood beside the chair as he pulled her jeans down, stepping out of them, kissing him as she hooked her thumb in her panties, pulled them off. He was half out of the chair, her hands undoing his belt, his button, his zipper. He shoved his pants and shorts off, kicked away his shoes; reached for her, but she pushed him back into the chair. Kissed him, his cheek, his chest, his flat stomach. She took him hard in her mouth and licked him and made him wet, slick. Again he reached for her, and she looked up, kissed him deeply. Pulled him out of the chair. Down. To the floor.

  He called her name as they sank to the carpet. Her arms embraced him and he rolled with her push. On his back, he was on his back, touching her, caressing her, her nipples, her face. He cupped her wet groin.

  She straddled him, her knees pressed against his sides, strong thighs gripping his hips, her hand holding him, guiding him as she lowered herself slowly, carefully. Together.

  He tried to say her name but she bent and kissed him, then arched back, her face turned toward the stars, her mouth open, panting as her hips rubbed back and forth, slammed up and down. She cried out and it was “Yes!” or it was “Wes!” or it was both or they were one and the same as he yearned for them to be. She shuddered—flamed. Again. He thought he would die and then could not think at all as he surged, as he exploded and cried out: “Beth” echoed through his home.

  They lay on the floor, curled facing each other on their sides like parentheses, staring, smiling, lightly touching each other, not risking words that can wipe away the wonder. Wes had barely dared to take the chair cushion to put under their heads. Protect this moment. Save this moment. Treasure this moment.

  She said, “Your socks are still on.”

  “No, they aren’t,” he told her.

  They laughed together quietly. Sweetly. Secretly.

  “How’d you know I was back?” he asked.

  “I heard you in the hall.” She grinned. “Welcome home.”

  “I didn’t expect this.”

  “Sure you did,” she said.

  This time their laughter was deeper, easier.

  “There’s a difference between what you hope for and what you think you can get,” he said.

  “Are you shocked?”

  Wes shook his head.

  “Sex is like a blowtorch to get to know people,” she told him. “I want to know you.”

  “You’re off to a hell of a start.” He lightly kissed her lips.

  Her eyes bored into him.

  “I’m not one for by the book,” she said. “Any book. I can’t seem to do things the smart way.”

  “Following the book isn’t being smar
t,” he said. “It’s trying to be safe. If that’s what you try, that’s the most you can get.”

  “That’s not how I’d expect a Marine to think.”

  “That’s me,” he said.

  She grinned. “Me, too.”

  Beth brushed her lips across the scar on his chin.

  “Is it still there?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said. “Scars are part of the package.”

  “No illusions,” he told her.

  “Just real dreams,” she said quietly. Completely.

  A strand of hair lay across her cheek. Wes brushed it aside. He let his hand trail down to her shoulder, gently covered her wisp of a breast, the fragile strength of her ribs beneath his fingertips. The palm of his hand traced the slope of her waist, the curve of her hip, the warm flesh of her slim leg. Except for the pinkish-brown circles of her nipples and a thatch of dark pubic hair, she was like snow in the mountains of New Mexico. He ached for all of her beauty; feared his embrace would make her melt.

  “What do you want from me?” she whispered.

  She brushed the back of her fingers across his cheek.

  “I don’t know,” he lied.

  In her eyes, he saw she knew the truth.

  Beth laid her hand behind his neck, her grip gentle as she lowered her back onto the carpet.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, and softly drew him down to her kiss.

  APACHE

  Nora usually closed her café in the desert at eight P.M. But not on the Wednesday night when Wes first made love with Beth.

  The café clock showed five to six. The counter was empty and the only occupied table was the one where Nora and Jud sat in front of finished dinners. Carmen was in the kitchen, watching TV.

  “What the hell,” said Nora, looking out at the fading light. “Once you know it’s a busted hand, forget it and fold.”

  She told Carmen to go home.

  “You sure is all right?” asked the cook, one eye on Jud.

  “See you in the morning,” said Nora.

  “You need me, call. Enrique and I, here in fifteen minutes.”

  “Your car isn’t that fast, Carmen,” said Jud.

  Nora smiled. Carmen kept her eyes locked forward as she marched out of the café.

  “She’s starting to like me,” said Jud.

  “Don’t bet on it,” said Nora. “Dump the plates, grab us some coffee, and let’s get out of here before a customer comes.”

  Jud carried two tan coffee mugs out to the porch.

  “One thing I don’t understand about your business,” he told Nora as she locked the café door.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  “Your business. This place loses money. You might as well feed dollar bills to the wind. You’re too smart for this.”

  “Like you said: it’s my business.”

  She took a mug from him, looked across the sagebrush flats to the blue-misted hills.

  “My partner in Vegas needs the write-off,” she said, “somebody to run the café. I get a great wage, any profit I make. A lawyer set me on to this, helped me get out of Vegas.”

  “What did you do in Vegas?”

  “What didn’t I do?” she answered.

  Out by the empty highway, the phone booth waited for travelers with someone to call. Twilight melted into night. One by one, hundreds of stars dotted the sky.

  “It’s quiet out here,” she said.

  The wind came up, pecked sand against the café windows, and chilled Jud’s bare arms. Nora poured her coffee on the ground.

  “Come on,” she told Jud. “I’ll make you some fresh.”

  He’d never been inside her house.

  White lace curtains hung from the windows. The living room had a couch, two easy chairs, a television. The kitchen was open. A hall ended at a closed closet door with the bathroom to the right; to the left was the bedroom.

  “What did you do in Vegas?” asked Jud again.

  In the kitchen, Nora flipped the switch on a coffeemaker. Water trickled through it as she said, “You ask a lot of questions for a guy stingy with answers.”

  “Ask me a question,” said Jud.

  She waltzed into the living room and he realized the brass in her blond hair came from impending gray. A desert dweller’s tan accentuated crow’s-feet beside her pale blue eyes and smile lines along her mouth.

  Nora whispered, “Do you miss the booze?”

  “Yeah,” he told her; guessed, “Do you?”

  “All the damn time!”

  She curled up on the couch, hugged her legs to her chest then stretched them out, lit a cigarette, and laughed.

  “This is a perfect time for a martini, but you can only wake up on a barstool in a pool of your own vomit so many times before you figure what the hell, maybe that isn’t such a good idea.”

  Jud eased down into a chair across the room from her.

  “I’ve been dry eight years,” she said. “How ’bout you?”

  “How long have I been here again?”

  This time they both laughed.

  “I didn’t figure you’d stay this long,” she told him. “Figured you for a couple meals, couple nights, back on the road.”

  “It’s quiet here,” he said.

  “Doesn’t it sometimes damn near drive you nuts!”

  “I thought you liked it,” he said.

  “Yeah, but not forever!” she said as Jud reached for the cigarettes. “There’s a whole lot I got left to do in the world.”

  While he lit a cigarette, she asked, “How about you?”

  “You never know,” he said.

  “I didn’t think you smoked.”

  “I’ve had my vices.”

  “Like what?” She grinned.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “It’s a big night out there. Might as well fill it up somehow.”

  “I didn’t know you hired me for entertainment.”

  Her face turned hard. “I didn’t invite you in here for parlor tricks.”

  Their smoke drifted to the ceiling.

  “Sorry,” said Jud.

  Nora shrugged. “You want to start again?”

  “How far back can I go?”

  She uncurled from the couch, brushed past his chair, and brought their coffee from the kitchen.

  “Start with now.” She put the warm mug in his hand. As she strolled to the couch, Jud saw the line of her panties under her tan slacks. Her hips were flat, narrow. “And no bullshit.”

  As she curled up on the couch, she said, “I’m forty-eight.”

  When Jud frowned, she said, “I knew you wondered. I figure I’ve got a few years on you.”

  “Neither of us are old.” He shrugged. “I’ve never planned on being around to collect social security. But don’t worry: I won’t let my trouble find me here.”

  “Like I said, a little trouble isn’t always so bad.”

  “Believe me, it’s bad.”

  She lit another cigarette, shrugged. “Okay, I believe you.”

  “Then why aren’t you scared? That’d be the smart thing, and you’re smart.”

  “If I’m so smart …” She waved her cigarette around the living room. “I came out here to get away from Vegas. Take a deep breath, get centered before I blossom into whatever it is I’ll blossom into next. It’s been nine months. Maybe I’m bored. Maybe I’m starting to blossom. Whatever, trouble’s never bothered me.

  “Are you a bad guy?” she asked.

  “You mean a crook?”

  “I mean a bad guy: baby raper or a heroin man or a loan shark, some mob guy with a bad-karma franchise.”

  “I’m a spy.”

  Nora shrugged. “What the hell, these days you must be out of work.”

  Jud laughed with her.

  “You married?” she asked.

  The room grew warm, close. Jud smelled lemon furniture polish, sand and sage and cigarette smoke, their coffee.

  “I was.”

 
“What was she like?”

  “Beautiful. Young. She had tawny-red hair. A writer friend of mine said her face was an Italian painting and her body would wake the dead.”

  “Could have been me, once, only I’m blond.”

  “And a lot tougher.”

  “Now. What was her name?”

  “Lorri.”

  “Was she nice? Smart? Funny?”

  “For a while.”

  “What happened?”

  “She became the effect of the game.”

  “We agreed,” said Nora, “no bullshit.”

  “No bullshit.”

  “Mumbo jumbo doesn’t make it either,” said Nora. “Did you love her?”

  “I must have.” Jud was having trouble breathing.

  “Where is she?”

  “Gone.” Jud shook his head. “Where’s your man?”

  “Right now, I’m not in love.”

  “Don’t count on me,” said Jud.

  “Gosh, mister!” Her voice was a schoolgirl’s; her wide eyes belonged to a virgin. “Thanks for the warning!”

  They laughed. The muscles in Jud’s back relaxed.

  “That first day,” said Nora, “when you nailed Harold with the fork: the mind to think of that, the heart to do it—do it and walk from it and let him walk, that style intrigued me.

  “That’s not why I hired you,” she added. “I need your work. But watching you, the way you make me laugh—hell, even Carmen gets a charge out of you and she won’t sleep easy until there’s a stake through your heart. Me, I like you.”

  “Why?” Jud’s heart beat against his ribs.

  “I figure there’s a chance you can understand me.”

  “Why?” he whispered again.

  “That’s for you to figure out.”

  “You think I’m good for figuring?”

  Nora smiled and it was sunshine in that dim room. She unfolded herself from the couch, leaned down to Jud. Her perfume was subtle and expensive.

  “You’re good for a lot more than that.”

  She kissed him, soft and sweet, and led him into kissing her back. He fought the terror.

  “I want you to respect me in the morning,” he said.

  “We’ll see.”

  She led him to the bedroom. He touched her where he should and she felt good. Her hands floated on him. They undressed in the dark, slid between the sheets. He kissed her, moved his hands on her breasts, her hips, felt her warmth and wetness and he wanted, he truly wanted her: now, it should be now. She reached for him. Found him. Didn’t shy away, kept kissing him, and he felt as if he could fall into her kiss and never stop and never care and he wanted her now and she stroked him and nothing. He made himself remember great times, Lorri, other women, women he’d never had, and nothing. Nothing. His heart slammed against his chest, his mind burned. He felt small and stupid and wanted to be blind and invisible, to run. Her hair brushed his belly, she took him in her mouth, gently Jesus doing that so good.