Bump in the Night

by J. D. Robb

  “How can you tell if someone’s playing games?”

  “You can’t always. Eddie fooled me too, or I’d have voiced my suspicions earlier, but . . . it doesn’t really matter. That’s not what’s important. Having your heart broken sucks, but it beats the alternative.”

  “Feeling nothing at all.”

  “Mmm,” he agreed, his gaze glued to the television as the mob boss talked to a topless waitress in his bar.

  “It’s better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all, huh?”

  He glanced at her, looked away and then met her eye to eye. “Don’t you think so? I mean, when all is said and done, it’s never the number of people who loved you that counts, is it? It’s the love you fill your heart with for others that matters. So, if you don’t love, your heart stays empty, and so does your life.”

  That’s what made those busy weeks with Mel so special, she supposed. His healing outlook on life; his simple, sensible answers to the most profound complexities of her life. His complete honesty about the mistakes she’d made and his total support when the fault wasn’t hers. He helped her make subtle changes to her self-image, patch some of the holes in her confidence, led her to windows into her personality she never knew existed.

  Seven

  The doorbell rang one afternoon and she climbed over stacked boxes and bulging garbage bags to answer it. Mrs. Kludinski stood in the hall holding a CD case in both hands.

  “Try this one it’s . . . Good heavens! Your hair!”

  The old lady’s eyes grew round with wonder and Charlotte reached with both hands to be sure what hair she had left was still there. Soft and airy and shorter than she’d ever worn it before, she combed her hair forward with her finger tips and stated the obvious. “I had it cut.”

  “It’s fabulous.”

  “Really? You like it?”

  “I do. It’s perfect for you. It shows off your long graceful neck, and your eyes look enormous. You look so young and fresh.”

  She grinned and for several long seconds she allowed herself to bask in the admiration she saw in her neighbor’s face. “Thank you. I needed a change.”

  “Changing your music, too?”

  “What?”

  She tried to look around Charlotte into the apartment, her curiosity large. “I heard blues last night and country this morning, but I didn’t hear any classical. This is Debussy. Piano mostly. You might like it.”

  “Is this your very sweet way of telling me I’m playing my music too loud?”

  “No. This is my very sweet way of telling you that it’s nice to hear signs of life up here. I was beginning to worry.”

  “Oh. Well.” Mel is pretty light on his feet for someone his size. “I used to enjoy all sorts of music but all my parents ever listened to was Rock from the fifties and sixties and. . . well, I’ve been cleaning and I found some old tapes, but if it’s too loud for you, I can turn it down.”

  “It’s fine for me. I love music, too. And it’s not that loud. I only used it as an excuse to come up here and see for myself what’s been going on,” she said frankly, once again trying to peer inside the apartment. Charlotte glanced over her shoulder at the furniture in the middle of the room, the boxes and bare walls. “What is going on up here? You’ve got Joe and Martha worried, too. Marty said she came across the hall one day last week to see how you were doing and she thought she heard you talking to yourself in here.” She stepped into the apartment as Charlotte stepped back to let her in.

  “Maybe it was the television.”

  “That’s what I said. But she said it was too early in the day, that you never turn it on until the news hour.”

  “Yeah. Well. Maybe I’m getting sick of being so predictable. Maybe I had it on just to mess with her head.” She leaned out the door to glower at her neighbor’s door across the large empty hallway. Busybody.

  “She was worried.” She put her hands on her hips and looked around. “It looks like you’re redecorating.”

  “Well, the furniture’s old and . . .”

  “And it’s not yours, is it? Thank the Lord.” She threw her hands in the air. “I was afraid you were thinking of moving. When you get to be my age and you have good neighbors, you like to keep them. So, you’re changing everything. Fantastic! What color have you decided on for the walls in here?”

  “I haven’t yet. I was . . .”

  “Yes, you have. Tell her,” Mel said.

  “Red.”

  “Red?”

  “Not bright red. Ah . . . a deep, warm Chinese red with a rich cream-colored trim, I think. And I want to pull up the rugs and refinish the hardwood floors, then put down an area rug . . . maybe something oriental with lush greens and that yellowish gold color . . .” Her voice trailed off. Mrs. Kludinski didn’t need all the details to call the scheme grotesque.

  “And a lovely blue, too, and maybe more of the red in the rug to pull it together because it sounds just fabulous. Charlotte, I’m so proud of you. It’s about time you cut loose and let that bright, colorful personality of yours shine.”

  “You see?” Mel folded his arms across his chest. “Bold is beautiful. And thinking outside the neutral box is creative, not crazy.”

  “And what is this you have going on over here?” She walked slowly toward the far wall, lifting the glasses that hung at her bosom up to her nose as she carefully examined the wide and varied assortment of pictures taped thereon.

  “Oh, that’s a . . . sort of a shopping spree waiting to happen. You shop all the time, but I find all the styles and colors and . . . everything in the stores overwhelming. Too many choices. Too many decisions. I . . . I thought if I knew pretty much what I was looking for and what I didn’t want, ahead of time, it would be easier.”

  “So organized and logical.” She wasn’t making a judgment, just taking note as she scanned the scraps of magazines and catalogs on the wall. “And yet, you have two very different styles emerging here, dear. Both are very nice, and a vast improvement on what you’ve worn in the past. No offense, but improvement is what you’re looking for, isn’t it?”

  “Just a change, really.” She sighed, resigned to the truth. “Yes. Improvement. Big time.”

  “Yes. Indeed.” She stepped back to see the bigger picture. “And the men in black leather?”

  Charlotte’s whole body cringed with embarrassment and she squeaked as she quickly ripped several of Mel’s donations off the wall. “Those are . . . you know . . . just . . . nothing.”

  Mrs. Kludinski’s smirk relaxed as she continued to study the wall.

  “Fascinating. One style so . . . conservative.”

  “She means boring,” Mel said, I told you so written all over his face.

  “And the other so . . . revealing.”

  “Slutty.” She pinned Mel with a look.

  “Gracious, no!” Mrs. Kludinski looked surprised, and not by the word. “Revealing as in expressive, interesting, intriguing. It’s fine to cover yourself neck to toe in these lovely suits for business if you want, if dressing like a man helps you feel as powerful as a man. But the rest of the time . . . well, I would love to see you—all women really—be open and honest and proud of your female form, no matter what shape it is.”

  “I couldn’t have said that better myself.” Mel nodded and smiled fondly at the old lady.

  “But all that skin . . . Professionally, I can’t—”

  “Dear Charlotte.” A sage smile curved her thin lips, and her pale blue eyes were positively wicked. “There is more power in the curve of a woman’s neck and the turn of her ankle than in ten male bodies put together. And with every additional inch of leg and cleavage shone, the strength increases tenfold.”

  “Oh my.” Mel was impressed.

  “It’s how you use the power that defines your professionalism. Until you get to be my age, of course. Then it’s wise to have an alternate power source. Like money.” She laughed.

  But Charlotte was only half-listening as she reconside
red the pictures on the wall. “What if we compromise and do a little of both? I don’t want to be too intimidating.” She grinned. “But maybe a conservative suit with a more revealing blouse . . . or from the other direction, a shortish skirt instead of slacks.”

  “There you go. Or this little strapless sheath with the shorter bolero jacket. Or even just a little thin shawl while they’re still in style.” They made several other possible combinations, lifting the pictures off the wall and retaping them closer together, laughing when they didn’t quite work and gasping with pleasure when they did. “There. See? Show enough to be enticing, leave a little to mystery, and avoid being so mysterious you’re like the grab bag at a charity auction.”

  Mel whistled. “I bet this old broad was hell on wheels when she was young.”

  Mrs. Kludinski turned as if she’d heard him, but only looked around the room again. “I also know of a nice young man who does a good job painting. He’s reasonable and fast. Would you like his number?”

  “Well, we were . . . I was . . .” She heard Mel moan laboriously behind her. She wasn’t all that keen on doing the job herself either. She realized it was the nice young man that had her balking. “He isn’t single is he?”

  “I don’t know. It didn’t come up while he was painting my guest room last fall, and I didn’t ask. Does it matter?”

  “No. Not really.” She felt foolish. She wasn’t really the sad victim of an international blind-date conspiracy—it just felt as if she was sometimes.

  Shortly after the varnish dried on the freshly sanded floors, the air in the apartment grew thick with the smell of latex paint.

  Guy Westfield, the painter, was a prompt and efficient man in his early thirties, who liked to stand around and talk in the mornings if Charlotte didn’t make herself scarce.

  “He’s a sociable guy, our Guy,” Mel said, following her into her office, where she’d spent most of the previous two days hiding from the painter.

  Mel didn’t usually join her in the office. When she worked, when she needed time to herself, he was very good about sensing it and getting out of her way for a while. And then he would just be there later, as if he were simply returning from the kitchen with a glass of water or had been reading in another room. It was one of his many tricks that she appreciated, and didn’t question—it was best not to question.

  “A sociable guy I’m paying by the hour, thank you very much.” She sat down at her desk and brought her computer screen to life. “Besides, I hate watching someone else doing a job I’m paying them to do simply because I hate doing it myself. I hate to vacuum and dust and I haven’t hired a maid service for the exact same reason.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s secondhand guilt from your parents who grew up in a frugal do-it-yourself era.” He flopped into the chair at the opposite desk. “I’m the one who’s been nagging you to get someone part-time and rationalizing it as good for the economy, spreading the wealth around and supporting the job market.”

  She stared at him. “That was you? I thought it was the devil, tempting me with sloth.”

  “I know. And don’t think I wasn’t insulted. Not to mention frustrated that, once again, you couldn’t distinguish his voice from mine. This is something we need to discuss sometime before I leave, by the way.”

  Her heart flipped and constricted; tears pushed and stung in her eyelids. “You’re leaving me?”

  His smile was reassuring. “Not while you still need me.”

  Charlotte didn’t want to think about him leaving, couldn’t bare thinking about it. So quickly he’d become the best and truest friend she’d ever known.

  Oh, he teased her and provoked her and was difficult to take to a crowded movie theater where empty-looking seats were hard to hold on to, but he was also wise and comforting and a companion who made even the most mundane everyday activities more pleasurable.

  And she was happy. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so happy. She couldn’t help it. He made her feel all gooey and girly inside. He was feeding huge portions of faith and fervor to her femininity, and she found she was as dependent on him as she was the new diffuser on her blow dryer.

  “And, little lady, please don’t think that you have successfully changed the subject from Guy to God,” he went on, leaning back in the padded chair that once belonged to her father. “Because we both noticed he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring and he seems like a nice enough guy. Guy, not God—though, I suppose He’s probably nice enough too, just a little out of your league.”

  “God, not Guy, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I’m not going to hit on the painter.”

  “Why not? He’s already seen you in that shirt with the baggy jeans I distinctly recall putting in the Goodwill box myself, and he can still bring himself to look you in the eye. He is obviously a man with great depth perception who can see beyond your foolish attachment to all that is dumpy and ill-fitting to the real you. . . who is still screaming to get out, I might add.”

  She simpered at him. “They’re comfortable.”

  “So are the new ones. You admitted as much.”

  “But why wear out my new jeans just hanging around the house working?”

  “Because dressing well and looking nice is going to become your second skin.” He held up his hand when she started to object. “You can be comfortable in clothes that look nice on you as easily as you can in . . . what you’ve been wearing and. . .” His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “And stop trying to change the subject.”

  “I’m not attracted to him, okay?”

  “How do you know until you try?”

  “You don’t try to be attracted to someone; you just are.”

  “Not always. Sometimes you meet someone, you become friends, and then you become attracted. They grow on you. We’ve read all the same articles, seen all the same movies, listened to all the same talk shows. This love-at-first-sight you’re so hung up on is usually just an infatuation and those never last. You know that.”

  “I know that for two people to be friends even, they must first have something in common. What do I have in common with this man?”

  “How should I know? But you can’t tell just from looking at him that you have nothing in common. He might be a painter who loves poetry and sappy movies, who likes music and dancing and books about Edna St. Vincent Millay. You never know. He could be the man who opens up the new world of skydiving for you.”

  “Scuba,” she said, her expression bored. “I want to try scuba diving.”

  “I know. Just checking. And . . . Guy could be the guy to teach you.”

  “So, if I ask him if he scuba dives and he says no, we can drop this?” His stare was taxed. She sighed. “I’ll think about it. But not until after the painting is done. If it gets ugly I don’t want him running off and leaving me with a half-painted apartment.”

  “Oh, ye of little faith. What if it turns out great and he decides to forego his bill?”

  “Then I’d know we were incompatible, for sure. I never heard of anything so stupid.” She turned back to the computer and her own work. “What sort of incompetent businessman is he that he’d paint someone’s apartment for free, just for a date?”

  “Not for a date and not for free. For love.” He said it like a prayer.

  She shook her head. “That’s bartering. You can’t barter for love. I told you it wouldn’t work out with him.”

  And besides, I have you. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him squirm in his chair a few seconds later and buried the thought in numbers.

  Eight

  They watched the Mariners play at Safeco Field and spit off the observation deck of the Space Needle. They drove to Port Angeles and rode the Black Ball Ferry to Victoria, British Columbia, quite possibly the prettiest city in the northern hemisphere, in Charlotte’s opinion, and they stayed for all three days of the Tall Ships Challenge. Mel liked the Ballard Locks. More than once she found herself standing at the rail watching
boats of all shapes and sizes move up and down, passing from the Puget Sound to the fresh water of Salmon Bay—or vice versa.

  August was already September before she began to feel as if she were finally settling into her own skin. Her reflection in the store front was as young and alive as she felt. Her reflection, not some stranger with similar features; her all stylish and put-together, eyes sparkling, head high.

  Mel turned his head and then turned his body completely to walk backwards as they strolled Bellevue Square pretending to window shop at the various high-end stores and boutiques. Pretending, as they’d already blown her new clothing budget on an Ann Taylor suit and a pair of croco-embossed T-strap pumps at Banana Republic.

  “Did you see that?” he asked.

  “What?” She turned from the window. “And it better not be another Fuzzi skirt. I never would have bought that skirt if it hadn’t been for you.”

  “It’s a beautiful skirt. But no, did you see that guy, the one in the yellow shirt, the sandy brown hair? He almost broke his neck trying to get a good look at you.”

  She smiled but didn’t look back. It wasn’t the first time she’d turned a head in the last few weeks, and it was almost as satisfying as not being recognized by people she’d known for years. That look of confusion on their faces, then the surprise, then the awe and admiration was better than . . . well . . . better than anything she’d ever known but. . .

  “That’s not why I did all this, you know. It’s a nice side effect, having men notice me, but I’d be just as happy if they didn’t. Or maybe not as much anyway. I mean, everyone wants to be noticed, of course, but they don’t have to stop traffic and stare. That’s not what all this is about.”

  “I know.”

  “This is about me doing everything I should have done years ago to become the woman I always thought I’d be.”

  “I know.”

  “This is about reclaiming my life.”

  “I know. Let’s cross over here.” He was barely paying attention to her. He snatched up her hand and started for the shops on the other side of the second level.