The Rain

by Andrew Klavan

  “It’s about time,” I said. I smoked and watched her. I watched her breasts rise and fall with her breathing. I thought about her lonely life in the big city. I thought about mine.

  “When I met someone here … When I met someone worthwhile at long last …” she said. She could not go on for a moment.

  “Paul Abingdon?” I said.

  She faced me. “What?”

  I waited. I waited for her to lie.

  “No,” she said. “No, not Paul. Allen Simon.” I nodded. She was coming clean. “Allen was one of Paul’s aides. I met him at this restaurant where I worked, and he was just so … so polite and … and regular … just like real folks …”

  “But he was Susan Scott’s guy,” I said.

  She smiled. She flushed. She lowered her eyes. “You get to know everything after a while, don’t you?”

  “I get the story,” I said. “I’m a reporter. I told you that.”

  “Okay.” She lifted her chin. “Okay. He was Susan Scott’s guy. At least she thought so. She brought him into the restaurant where we worked and we just … got along, that’s all. I mean, he told me that Susan didn’t even like him all that much. He told me she was just hanging around him to meet interesting people. And to get his apartment, too, when he left town.”

  I smoked my cigarette thoughtfully. “But you got his apartment,” I said. “And you met the interesting people.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah, great. Real interesting.”

  “Wally says you thought Abingdon was going to help your career.”

  Her voice broke. “He said he was!” She covered her mouth with her hand as if ashamed of the cry that had escaped it. “Oh, John, you must think I’m so horrible. You must think I—I use men to—to—but it happened step by step. It all seemed so … I don’t know. It seemed all right, at the time. You know? Allen introduced me to Paul and Paul was sweet and polite and interested in my career and he said he was going to introduce me to all the right people and Allen didn’t seem to mind at all … in fact, he started taking me to these parties … these private parties where he knew Paul would be, just so we could … get together …”

  The thunder struck hard just as her tears started falling. I saw the glow of lightning flash in the northern sky. Georgia put her hands over her face. Her shoulders shook. I heard her sniffle. And when she turned to me and spoke her voice was filled with hurt and indignation.

  “They used me!” she said. “They traded me off from one of them to another without my even knowing it. Like I was a piece of property. Like I was a thing. Do you know what that’s like, John? To be treated like some sort of—of object? Like you’re just a body, a piece of—of meat that’s there for them to use the way they want to. It’s like they’re telling you you don’t have a soul inside you, like you’re—you’re making life inconvenient for them if you pretend to have a soul. Do you know what that feels like to be treated that way?”

  “No,” I said.

  I snuffed my cigarette in the ashtray on the coffee table. I put my hands in my pockets. I walked over to the bay. I stood over Georgia where she sat in the love seat. She looked up at me. The tears rolled down her bruised cheeks. The tears were transparent. She was not wearing makeup. She was just fresh and pretty all on her own. Being young could do that for you.

  I took one hand from my pocket, reached out and touched her hair. She trembled. She cried.

  “Is that the truth?” I said.

  “What?” She turned her head. She pressed her cheek against the palm of my hand.

  “Is that really the way it was?”

  “I swear. I swear. I just … I just want to go home,” she said. The words were muffled as her lips brushed my hand.

  “I want to help you, Georgia, but if you lie to me now—”

  “It’s all true. I swear.”

  “How many times did you sleep with Paul Abingdon?”

  She covered my hand with her own as she moved against it. “Once. Just once.”

  “Where?”

  “I—what, I—in an apartment. Downtown somewhere. He said it belonged to a friend. April something—I—I don’t remember her other name.”

  “Did you suspect there was someone there? The photographer?”

  “No. I only heard about the pictures a week or so later. Paul called me … he thought I was trying to blackmail him. He wouldn’t believe me. Those men, those men last night, they must have thought that, too. They all … Oh, I don’t know … Everyone else …”

  Her voice trailed off. “What?” I said.

  “Are you my friend, Mr. Wells? I don’t have anyone else. Are you my friend?”

  “I’ve got to write the story, Georgia. That’s what I do. I’ve got to.”

  She shook her head a little. I felt it against my palm. “Oh, I don’t care. I don’t care about that anymore. It’s just: when those men took me last night. Those terrible men … When they hurt me … And then, when you came for me, and fought for me like that, I just thought … I just thought: finally. Finally.”

  She took hold of my arm and drew herself out of the love seat. We were face to face. I watched her lips moving as she spoke to me.

  “I’ve been so scared. Even before last night. When that man was killed, the man with the pictures, I hoped it was over, I prayed and prayed it would be over, and when you showed up, I hoped I could get you to go away, to leave it alone.”

  She brought my hand back up to her cheek. I tried to tug it away. She held on. I watched her.

  “The woman who came to me today,” she said. “The woman from Paul’s office. She said if I didn’t leave town, Paul would tell lies about me.”

  “Yeah,” I told her softly. “He does that.”

  “She said Paul would say I tried to blackmail him, that I arranged to have the pictures taken.”

  “I can believe it.”

  “She said I might have to go to jail, that it would be my word against a congressman’s. Oh God.” She sobbed once. “I’m so glad you came back. I’m so glad you found me again …”

  She stepped toward me. She tilted her face up to mine. Her breath was warm.

  “Stop it,” I said—but I said it hoarsely. “You’ve been used enough.”

  “I’m glad you found me,” she repeated, defiant.

  “You’re too young. You could be my daughter, Georgia.”

  “That’s no reason. That’s no reason for us to lose each other, John. I won’t let you lose me because of that.”

  Her face swam closer to me. Her breath grew hot. I kissed her lightly on the lips before I even knew I had. And then I kissed her again more deeply.

  “Don’t leave me. You’re all I’ve got,” she said.

  I pulled her close to me and kissed her for a long, long time. I’d been wrong. All wrong about the need dying and the hunger dying.

  They do not die. They never die.

  24

  I was awakened by the rain. It hit hard when it finally hit. I opened my eyes to see it washing in sheets against the high mullioned windows in Georgia’s bedroom. For a moment, I did not know the time or the day or where I was. The room was in shadow. The sky was darker than it had been before but the long summer day had not yet ended. It felt odd to be in bed in the afternoon.

  I remembered all at once. I sat up, startled. Looked around me. The bed was large and soft. I was alone in it. I heard a noise, raised my eyes and saw a door, the bathroom door. A thin strip of light was showing underneath it. A shadow was moving in that light.

  I relaxed. I found my cigarettes on the bedside table. I lit one. I propped myself against the headboard. I sat gazing at the window across the room. Thunder banged loudly all around me. The rain slapped into the pane again and again. Lightning lit the droplets as they tumbled down it. I smoked my cigarette and watched the storm that had come at last.

  And I thought about Georgia. I thought about the long, slow hour of her and the feverish minutes. My hands remembered her nakedness.


  There was the sound of running water. I turned to the bathroom door. It snapped open. I saw her silhouetted, still naked, in the light. The sight of her held me silent. The curve of her breasts, of her hips. She killed the light behind her and stepped forward into the bedroom shadows. She came to the bed. She sat on the edge of it. The lightning sparked beyond the window. The thunder crashed. The rain kept up a rhythmic whisper, loud, then softer, then loud again.

  “You’re awake,” said Georgia.

  “Yeah.”

  “I didn’t know whether to wake you.”

  “Is it late? Have I been out long?”

  “No. Only twenty minutes or so. It’s only six-thirty or so. You have time.”

  I reached for her. I lay my hand on her thigh. The smoothness, the resilience—I almost thought I had imagined them.

  “You’re so young,” I said.

  She laughed. “Do you like that?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Oh, I’ll bet.”

  I laughed. “It was great.”

  “You’re great.”

  “I’ m old.”

  “You’re old and great,” said Georgia. She reached under the sheet and touched my thigh. “You’re still great.”

  “And still old. Careful, or you’ll wind up in the Enquirer. Scantily clad woman drags herself out from under dead lover.”

  “Stop that.” She giggled.

  “No, it’s true, it’s a condition I have. Too much bliss and—” I snapped my fingers.

  She giggled some more. I laid my cigarette in an ashtray. I pulled her to me. I kissed her. She kept her hand beneath the sheet.

  “You don’t feel dead,” she said.

  “Not yet.”

  She pulled away from me. She stood up.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “I’m going to get dressed.”

  “Come back.”

  “I can’t. We’re late.”

  I groaned. “For what?”

  “Your deadline, dopey. You forget? I won’t have you saying I seduced you to get you to drop this story.”

  She moved to a dresser on the wall with the window. She was lit by the gray light of the storm. The shadows of raindrops streaked her back. She opened a drawer, bent over and rummaged in it. I studied her. She looked back at me over her shoulder. “You thought about that, didn’t you?”

  “Don’t move,” I said. “You’re beautiful.”

  “Hmm. You did, though. I know.” She straightened with a pair of panties in her hands. She slipped them on.

  I sighed. I sat up on the edge of the bed. All in all, I felt well satisfied.

  “Say, how old are you anyway?” I said.

  She was slipping a bra on now. “Just never mind.”

  “I mean, this isn’t the most professional thing I’ve ever done here … Are you legal at least?”

  “John!”

  “Well, I feel like an old … you know … whatever—”

  “Lecher’s the word you’re looking for, and you are.”

  There was a lamp standing on the bedside table. I turned it on. I caught her just as she raised a light dress above her head. Then the dress came down. She tugged it straight around her. She threw back her chestnut hair. She saw me watching her.

  “What are you thinking about over there?” she asked me.

  I shook my head, and did not answer. I had been thinking about Lansing.

  My clothes were lying in a heap on the floor. I planted my cigarette in my mouth again as I tugged on my underwear and my pants. I stood up. I buckled my belt. Cigarette smoke gathered around my face and I squinted through it.

  I stood still and it was quiet in the room except for the wash and whisper of the rain.

  And then I knew that she had lied to me. That all of it had been a lie.

  It hit me that way. It hit me suddenly like that. But even as it hit me, I knew it was not all that sudden, not really. I knew it had been there for some long time under the loneliness and the lust and the loss of Lansing. But now, with the hunger satisfied, it swam quickly to the surface and I could not deny it anymore.

  I felt the blood drain from my face. I glanced at Georgia. She was looking into a makeup mirror atop the dresser. She was brushing her hair.

  “Why did they come for you?” I asked her.

  She heard the strangeness of my voice. The brush stopped moving. She kept looking at the mirror. But I saw her eyes—she was looking past her own reflection, at me.

  She laughed. “What …? Who?”

  “Marino. Dellacroce’s men. Why did they think you had the pictures?”

  “I …” The smile was frozen on her lips. “They said they followed you … I …”

  Then I was behind her. I had her by the shoulders. I spun her around. She cried out, her hair flying. I forced her to confront me.

  “John!” she said.

  “Look at me.”

  “John, why are you—”

  “Look at me!” My voice rasped deep in my throat. “You can’t be that good. No one’s that good. You can’t be.”

  Her face came around to me. Her sweet, fresh face. It was expressionless. Her soft, brown eyes seemed flat. I could see nothing beyond the surface of them.

  Then she smiled. Just slightly. Just at one corner of her mouth. She tilted her head and she smiled at me almost coyly.

  “That good?” she said. “Why—I’m going to be one of the greats.”

  I was afraid of her suddenly, and I let her go. I backed away a step.

  “Kendrick was your man, wasn’t he? Sure he was. He was working with you. Marino would have known that. He would have had his eye on Kendrick because of the hooker ring. When he finally killed him and the pictures turned up missing, it was only natural he would come to you: you were Kendrick’s partner.”

  She shrugged. “Poor Mayforth. He was a little scumbag, but he had his uses. He saw I was in with Abingdon’s crowd, and he thought there could be money in it.”

  I didn’t answer. I felt the chill of her voice deep in my flesh. I had caressed her, kissed her—I had been inside her not an hour ago. I recoiled another step. I met her smile with a wild rictus of my own.

  She made a face. “Oh, well, why not, John? I mean, really. Why shouldn’t I have gotten something out of it? Simon and Abingdon were passing me around like I was some little tart, weren’t they? They thought I was just a country girl who didn’t know what they were doing. Well, I just let them think that. I played it that way. But I knew. I knew, all right. And I’m not a tart. I’m not some little whore for them to fuck and forget and pass around—” For a moment, as I had in the car the other night, I looked in her eyes and took the fathomless measure of her rage. Then it was gone from view. “I’m an actress,” she finished coolly.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, you are. But what did you need me for?”

  “Sorry, Johnny, that’s the way it goes.”

  “No really. Where did I come into it? Why did Kendrick come to me? I mean, if Abingdon’s paid you off now, he’d have paid you off then. Wouldn’t he?”

  She nodded slyly, eyeing me sideways. “Uh-huh.”

  Then it hit me. My lips parted. I tried to speak. I tried again. “You wanted the ink,” I said. “You wanted the money—but you also wanted the ink.”

  She threw back her head and her laugh trilled like a bird’s song. “It was a good idea, anyway. A little scandal. Get the ball rolling. I mean, what the fuck, you know, John?”

  “Sure. Sure, what the fuck. And the Star was perfect. We might not have paid as much as the magazines, but we wouldn’t have printed the real raw stuff either. Just enough to turn the public on. Just enough to make them want more. After that, who knows what the magazines would have paid?”

  “Sure beats the hell out of auditioning,” she said.

  For a moment, in the chill of her voice, in the quiet cruelty of her smile, in the memory of my hands upon her and our bodies together, the world seemed so jumbled that I could not make
sense of anything. “Mrs. Abingdon told me today she wasn’t going to let her husband’s career be ruined by a blackmailer.…”

  Now Georgia’s smile broadened. Now it was a full, bright Ohio smile. “Mrs. Abingdon is an uptight little cunt,” she said. “She doesn’t know shit.”

  “I thought she meant Kendrick. She meant you. You went to them after Kendrick was killed, but … where were the pictures? I mean, even if you had them …”

  She shrugged again, sighed. “I didn’t need them. Abingdon knows that whoever has them can’t come forward anymore. It’d be like confessing to murder. All I needed to do was promise to stay out of town.” She snorted a little. “And you know what’s funny?” she asked me. “What’s funny is: I’d have done it before, if you hadn’t come along. I was going to go the minute Kendrick got offed. Then, you came around and, at first, I figured I’d put you off until I could reach Abingdon, but then I started thinking: why not? You know? I mean, really, when it comes down to it, I’d rather have the press than the money. And now with the pictures gone—”

  “With the pictures gone, you could tell the story any way you wanted,” I said. “But then what? What happened then? Did Dellacroce make it too dangerous? Marino scare you off?”

  Her smile faded. Her hand moved up to touch the bruises on her cheek. “He hurt my face,” she said. “I can’t afford that. My body is my instrument—”

  “So you went back to plan A. Stalled me and went to Abingdon. He must have figured he could buy me off too and end it there. But I wouldn’t play. I came after you.”

  She gestured blithely. “So now I get the money and the story.”

  “Only now it’s my story—told my way.”

  She tilted her head to one side. “You’re not that stupid, Wells,” she said. “You’re stupid. But you’re not that stupid.”