by R.J. Ellory
Somewhere beyond the far reaches of her thoughts she heard the street door open and close. Footsteps on the stairs. Sullivan, unmistakably. And when he reached the landing she heard him pause, and then – perhaps sensing the need to leave Annie undisturbed – she heard his apartment door open and close. She closed her eyes and smiled again.
Another sound. A sound behind her.
She turned, the glass of juice in her hand, and saw David standing there. He was naked, and for the first time she saw the shape of his body, the way he looked in the late afternoon light, and she felt herself react to his nakedness, the feeling inside her that she wanted to feel that same nakedness close against her once more.
‘Fuck me,’ she whispered. ‘Fuck me again David.’
He turned.
Annie set the glass on the counter and followed him, unbuttoning her shirt – his shirt – and letting it fall to the floor as she went.
This time it was different. Passionate. Heated. Angry almost.
She remembered clawing at his back, his stomach, digging her fingernails into his thighs as he thrust himself into her time and again.
She remembered feeling the headboard smacking against the top of her head, but she didn’t care, didn’t care at all, for the pain she felt was drowned out by the sound of her own voice as she moaned beneath David’s weight. At one moment he turned her over onto her hands and knees, and then he was behind her, and with his one hand finding her breast, the other gripping her shoulder, he pushed himself into her and kept going until she felt she would collapse.
Sweat ran down her forehead and into her eyes. She bit her own lip until she tasted blood. She clenched her fists until she felt her fingernails would puncture her skin, and then the sound from the base of her throat was like some animal lost in a wilderness of emotions and feelings and sensations.
And then she did collapse, and David rolled sideways, and still holding her from behind he thrust back and forth in slow motion, his thighs against her buttocks, sweat adhering to their skin, his hand between her legs, stroking her, massaging her, kissing her neck, her shoulders, his fingers finding her nipples and pinching them until the pain was almost more than she could bear. And then there was that warm release inside her, every muscle tensed, every nerve and sinew rushing with electricity, and as he moaned she moaned with him, and the sound was like one voice echoing up against itself and then separating into two.
‘Oh Christ, oh Christ,’ he was gasping, and rolling onto his back he withdrew from her, and turning to face him she held his hand, pressing it then between her legs, using his fingers to touch her, pushing them inside her. She rolled onto her front, and then kneeling up she straddled his chest, leaning forward and kissing his face, holding handfuls of his damp sweaty hair, and then she felt his hands around her waist, pulling her forward, her own arms outstretched until she felt the cool surface of the wall behind the bed against her palms. Pulling her forward again he leaned back, and with one final movement she felt his face between her legs, his mouth beneath her, his tongue finding its way inside her. Looking down she watched him, his eyes closed, his expression intent, and before long she could watch no more, aware of nothing but the feeling inside her, the sensation of everything within rushing to escape from between her legs. She screamed, a scream of ecstasy as she hurtled over the edge of anticipation into orgasm. He kept going, his tongue pressed up inside her until she couldn’t bear any more. She rolled sideways, collapsed beside him, and turned to hold his face between her hands. His skin glistened with her sweat, with her passion, with everything she was, everything she had become within these moments.
She smiled. She closed her eyes. She pressed her lips against his. His arms enclosed her, pulled her tight.
And then they slept once more.
*
When Annie woke it was dark outside.
The rain had stopped, but still she could hear the wind playing around the edges of the building and against the windows. She pulled herself closer against David. He stirred, murmured, shifted slightly, and then relaxed. He did not wake, and for this she was grateful.
Lying there in the semi-darkness, the room warm, the gentle rising and falling of David’s breathing beside her, she asked herself why she had so long divorced herself from such a life as this. This was real, this was what life was all about – the knowledge that there was someone there, someone who wanted you as much as you wanted them. She gazed at his profile and wondered if it was her decision alone that had brought him into the store that day, a day only a little more than a week before. If we were all responsible for the actions and events of our lives, then David was responsible for this as well. He must have wanted something such as this as much as she had. Such a thought comforted her: she had not been alone in her desire, her longing, her loneliness. Now there was someone with whom to share her thoughts and feelings, and believing that this beginning – this perfect and timeless beginning – could only be the start of something infinite, she closed her eyes.
She thought of Sullivan and smiled: there was a deal to honor, and honor it he would.
SEVENTEEN
The sound from the street was just as bold, floating up with the breeze like a bright-colored streamer, and from the sidewalk vents the smoke and steam crawled like tired ghosts from the underground below. And yet the sound was somehow different, and leaning against the frame of the bedroom window, her nose against the cool glass, Annie watched the people below as they emerged into morning.
Sunday morning, the first day of a new month, of a new life perhaps, and turning as David stirred she watched him surface from sleep, his eyes flickering open, a momentary hesitation as he adjusted his thoughts to where he was, and then he smiled as he located her, as he stretched out his hand towards her, as he opened his mouth and slurred: ‘Come back … come back to bed Annie.’
‘Breakfast,’ she said. ‘I could chew the ass out of a moose.’
‘Christ Annie,’ he said, hauled into consciousness, ‘that’s the grossest thing I ever heard.’
She laughed, standing there naked and aware of herself, but without any self-consciousness, and then she crossed the room and sat on the edge of the mattress beside him.
He snaked his arm around her waist and tried to pull her down, but she resisted.
‘Seriously,’ she said, leaning forward and kissing him. ‘I am famished.’
She ran her fingers through his hair, over his ear, his cheek, and leaning once more to kiss his forehead she said: ‘You want something to eat you get your carcass out of bed … otherwise you can lie there and starve.’
Annie stood up, David grabbing the air behind her, and from the chair beside the bed she took her panties and tee-shirt, slipped them on, and walked out of the bedroom to the kitchen.
Standing there, eggs cooking, filling a jug with orange juice, spooning coffee grounds into the filter, she heard a sound. Stepping back into the front room she heard the sound again, a sound like glass clinking. It came from the hallway beyond the front door.
She crossed the room, unlocked the door, inched it open, and there on the mat she found three bottles of Crown Royal, two of them full, one a third empty. She started laughing, laughing out loud, and within a moment David was beside her dressed in just his jeans, his hand on her shoulder as he looked down and saw the bottles.
‘Your milkman?’ he asked. ‘Hell, I should’ve moved into this neighborhood.’
‘Sullivan,’ she said.
‘He leaves bottles of liquor on the doorstep for you?’
Annie shook her head. ‘We had a deal.’
‘A deal?’
‘I can’t tell you,’ Annie said as she gathered up the bottles and closed the front door behind her.
‘Can’t tell me what?’
‘About the deal.’
‘Trust,’ David said. ‘Trust means no secrets, Annie O’Neill.’
‘But this is personal –’ she started.
‘And what happened yesterday was
n’t?’ he asked.
He was goading her, teasing her, for she knew that if she held her ground he would not push her.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But if you say a word of this to Sullivan I will be so mightily pissed.’
David nodded. ‘Not a word,’ he whispered, and pressed his fingers to his lips.
‘He drinks too much, far too much,’ Annie said. ‘Sullivan was a journalist, Vietnam, Haiti, Cambodia, El Salvador, all those places. He’s seen some terrible things … he has ghosts, you know what I mean?’
David nodded, and in his eyes she could tell that he understood what she was talking about.
‘So he drinks too much, and we made a deal …’
Annie looked at David Quinn. David’s expression was hesitant, anticipatory.
‘Not a word,’ she reminded him.
He shook his head. ‘Won’t even think about it.’
‘The deal was that when I got myself … you know?’
David raised his eyebrows. ‘What?’
‘You know … When I –’ She waved her hand as if to fill in the missing words.
‘When you …?’
‘Christ David, when I got laid, okay? When I got myself well and truly laid, then he would stop drinking. That plain enough for you?’
David smiled. ‘Very plain Annie, very plain indeed. So evidently he felt that whatever happened last night was well and truly enough.’
‘Evidently –’ she started, and then, ‘Oh hell, the eggs!’
She pushed past David and rushed into the kitchen, found the place filled with smoke from blackened eggs in the pan, opened the window and started wafting a towel to clear the air.
David came in behind her. ‘Coffee’s good enough for me,’ he said. ‘Let’s have some coffee and go back to bed … perhaps we can make enough noise for Sullivan to send a case over.’
Annie put the burned pan in the sink and filled it with water. She poured coffee, handed a cup to David, and they walked back to the bedroom.
The coffee wasn’t drunk. It went cold after a while. Hell, coffee was the last thing on Annie’s mind that Sunday morning.
Later, an hour, perhaps two, she lay beside David, his arm around her, her face on his shoulder, and with her fingers she turned tiny circles in the hairs on his chest.
‘When was the last time?’ she asked him.
‘Katherine Hellmann,’ he said. ‘August two years ago in New Jersey.’
‘That’s very specific,’ Annie said, a little surprised.
‘And you?’ he asked.
‘A man called Michael Duggan about three years ago … here in fact as far as I recall.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Very different from you,’ Annie said. ‘What was Katherine Hellmann like?’
‘She died.’
Annie leaned up, her expression one of concern. ‘She died?’
David nodded.
‘How’d she die … if you don’t mind me asking, that is.’
‘I don’t mind. She died in October of the same year … came off the back of a motorcycle and was hit by a car.’
‘Oh Jesus,’ Annie said. ‘Not your motorcycle?’
‘Nope. Her brother’s.’
‘And her brother was riding it with her?’
‘Yes, he was riding it with her.’
Annie was speechless, couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say.
‘Let it go,’ David said.
‘Let what go?’
‘The image of someone coming off the back of a motorcycle and being hit by a car.’
She closed her eyes tight, tried to think of something else, anything else – an elephant, a stained-glass window – but still the fleeting horror pressed against the edges of her mind.
‘Tell me about Michael Duggan,’ David said, reaching for his cigarettes and lighting one.
‘Michael? Michael was an English Language lecturer at Barnard. We went out for a year or so. He was thirty-three years old, and our relationship ended when one of his students gave him a blow job in his office.’
David smiled, started laughing.
‘What’s so funny?’ Annie asked, a little surprised at his reaction.
‘Christ Annie … it’s a bit clichéd isn’t it?’
‘Mister fucking sensitive aren’t you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s just that –’
‘It’s just a bit clichéd, you’re right,’ she interjected. ‘Anyway, that was the last man in my life and that was how it ended.’
‘And what do you want now?’
‘What do I want now … want from what?’
‘A relationship,’ David said. ‘What is it you want from a relationship?’
‘A relationship or this relationship?’
‘Okay, this one,’ David said. ‘I didn’t want to be presumptuous.’
‘You had no problem with presumptuousness yesterday, David Quinn.’
He smiled, leaned forward and kissed her. ‘So tell me,’ he said. ‘What do you want from this relationship?’
She was silent for a time. She believed she’d never been asked such a question by a man. There were deep waters beneath the glassy surface, undercurrents of consideration that she appreciated. ‘A friend predominantly … an ally, a confidant. I want trust and loyalty. I want someone who can be serious when seriousness is required, but the rest of the time someone who can take things easy, relax a little, do things just for the hell of it, you know?’
‘I do,’ he said.
‘And you?’ she asked. ‘What do you want?’
He said nothing for a time, and then he turned slowly, and looking directly at her, his eyes bright, his face inches from hers, he said: ‘You Annie O’Neill … I want you.’
He leaned forward and kissed her, and she knew such a question could have been answered no better way than that.
Why she told him about Forrester she didn’t know. It was early evening – five or six – and they had risen, dressed, and were at the table in the front room eating cold chicken and potato salad. She had opened a bottle of wine, and there was a stillness between them, a hiatus, and into that she brought Robert Forrester as a topic of conversation.
‘He just turned up at the store?’
‘Uh huh,’ she said. ‘Just turned up out of the blue, said he’d known my father many years ago.’
‘Your father never mentioned him?’
‘I was seven when he died.’
‘And your mother?’
Annie shook her head. ‘My mother barely spoke about my father, let alone anyone he might have known.’
‘And you think he’s straight up?’
‘I do,’ Annie said. ‘I don’t know why he’s come around now … but then he could have come around anytime and it wouldn’t have made a difference. I get the idea he’s just a lonely old man who wants some company.’
‘And he said he’d just moved here?’
‘He didn’t say he’d moved anywhere … just that he was here for a few weeks, perhaps a few months, and that he wanted to revive the tradition he’d started with my father.’
‘The reading club?’
‘Right, the reading club.’
‘And he brought letters from your father?’
‘Two so far, and I get the idea he will bring one every time he comes.’
‘How did he end up with letters your father wrote to your mother?’
Annie shook her head. ‘I’m not exactly sure. From what I can work out they must have lived together for a while, and when my father died they were still with Forrester.’
‘So your father could never have sent them, or he wouldn’t have still had them in his possession.’
Annie frowned. David was right. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how it happened.’
‘When does he come again?’
‘Tomorrow night,’ Annie said.
‘And what do you read?’ David asked.
‘He brought a stor
y … well, several chapters of a story … said that it was something written by one of the original members of the club.’
‘Any good?’
Annie smiled, shrugged. ‘Good? I don’t know that it’s the sort of thing that falls into the category of good or bad. It’s like a biography of someone, a guy called Harry Rose.’
‘And what does Harry Rose do?’
‘He was an immigrant out of Dachau, he was brought here at the end of the war by an American soldier, and when the soldier died he became a gangster.’
‘You have it here?’
Annie looked up.
‘The story?’ David asked. ‘You have these chapters here?’
She nodded. ‘Yes … why?’
‘I wondered if you’d let me read them.’
Annie was silent for a moment. Uncertain, a little anxious perhaps. Why, she didn’t know. It seemed that there was something so personal about the letters, the chapters also, that she was unsure of letting anyone see them. But then hadn’t Sullivan read them? Sure he had. But Sullivan she’d known ever since she’d moved in.
‘If you don’t want me to it’s okay,’ David said, perceiving her hesitancy.
Annie shook her head, asked herself what she was worrying about. Wasn’t this new viewpoint all about letting people in, stopping herself excluding all of life in the belief that life would be better alone? Sure it was.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Actually I’d like you to read them … after dinner, okay?’
David nodded. ‘Sure, as long as –’
‘I’ve decided,’ she said. ‘You can read them after dinner.’
Which is what he did, there on the couch, Annie beside him, and she read them for a second time over his shoulder. He asked no questions, he read quickly, and when he was done he turned to her and said: ‘It’s one helluva story.’ He smiled and shook his head. ‘This Johnnie Redbird guy is some character.’
