When he double-parked in front of Mitch’s house, she frowned. “Aren’t you going to park and come in?”
“Well, I didn’t want to be presumptuous.”
She laughed. “The perfect gentleman. Okay, then. Would you like to come in?”
“Yes.”
“See, it’s settled. No presumption necessary. You have to come in anyway, I have something for you, and it’s buried in my suitcase. On Monday, I took a couple of hours for myself, found this neat little shop and saw something that made me think of you.”
Once inside, she pawed through her suitcase and handed him a small, heavy object wrapped in brown paper. He unfolded the paper to find a stone griffin about five inches high, almost an exact replica of his tattoo.
“I thought it was perfect, so I had to buy it.”
“It is perfect. Thank you.”
“I missed you,” she said in a low whisper.
“I missed you, too.”
She smiled, took the griffin from his hand and put it on the coffee table, and when they kissed, all thoughts of griffins, ink or stone, vanished.
8
On Friday, when Jason got home from work, a flyer for a missing black-and-white cat named Percy hung on the light post next to his driveway. In his opinion, the name belonged to an English prep school student or a man who favored smoking jackets and cigars, not a fat tuxedo cat, but he hoped it came home soon, before the raccoon or something—or someone—worse found it.
The strange kid who lived across the street rode his bike in aimless circles in the middle of the street with a sullen expression on his face. When Jason got out of his car, the kid, maybe fourteen or fifteen, stopped the bike near the curb, staring in Jason’s direction with dark, dull eyes. Jason lifted one hand in greeting. The kid’s jaw moved, he blew a large, bright pink bubble, sucked the gum back in and rode off.
“Nice,” Jason said and went inside.
He’d invited Mitch over for Chinese food and a game of chess. Although he hadn’t played in years, when she told him she loved the game, he rummaged around in the attic until he found his old set, buried beneath a box of Shelley’s winter clothes.
Mitch arrived, carrying a bottle of wine, five minutes after the deliveryman, and he’d shown up thirty seconds after Jason finished shoving dishes into the dishwasher, gathering up dirty laundry and setting out candles on the coffee table.
While he unpacked the bag, she poured the wine; together they carried everything into the living room and curled up next to each other on the sofa.
She pointed toward the empty bookcase. “So what happened to all your books?”
“Take a guess.”
“I sort of figured.”
“Yeah, but they were mostly hers, anyway, not that she read much. She just liked having them around. Those are mine, though.” Jason waved his chopsticks at a small pile of paperbacks stacked on the corner of the coffee table, next to the stone griffin. “I picked them up last week. They just haven’t made it to the shelf yet.”
“We should go to the bookstore. I think you need more than four books. Those shelves look lonely.” She speared a chunk of sweet and sour chicken. “Maybe we should go tomorrow. Unless you have other plans?”
“Well, I do know this sexy blonde, and I was going to—”
A plastic-wrapped fortune cookie hit him square in the chest. “Sexy, huh?”
“Very,” he said.
She leaned over and pressed her lips, soft and sticky from the food, against his. When she broke the kiss, the corners of her mouth lifted. “I am going to kick your ass in chess.”
“You think so, huh?”
“Oh, I know so. My father taught me when I was eight.”
“I have you beat. My grandfather taught me when I was six. I beat him the first time when I was ten.”
“Lightweight. I beat my dad at nine. He was better at teaching than playing, but he never let me win. He said it was good for my character to learn how to lose. Not that I lost that much, but…”
After they finished the food and dumped the empty containers, Jason lit the candles and turned off the lamps, plunging the room into a golden glow that made Mitch’s hair shimmer.
“Kind of cheesy, I know,” he said.
She shrugged. “I don’t think so. I like it.”
She clapped her hands together when he pulled out the box containing the chess set.
“Wow,” she said, picking up one of the pieces. “These are all hand-carved, aren’t they?”
He nodded, placing the board on the table. “It belonged to my grandfather. My grandmother bought it for him when they were first married. He used to sit on the front porch and chain smoke while he explained strategies to me and my brothers, but I’m the only one who could beat him. He used to curse under his breath when I won, then my grandmother would come out and yell at him. He was like every movie version of the typical grumpy old man. He’d yell at the neighborhood kids for running across his lawn, grumble when it rained the day after he washed his car and gripe about whatever president served in office. All bark and no bite, though. A real softie at heart.”
Mitch set the piece down in its spot. “Like you. Oh, wait, before we play, we need to read our fortunes.” She unwrapped a cookie, cracked it open, and grinned. “‘Man should be like turtle. Slow, steady, and with a thick shell.’ I think this means it’s going to be a long game.”
Jason broke his in half. “‘A man without dreams is a man without vision.’” he read, and a chill raced down his spine. One of the candles sputtered out with a soft hiss, leaving behind a thin trail of curling smoke.
When he put the cookie aside, Mitch shook her head. “Nope, you have to eat it, otherwise you’ll have bad luck.”
He refilled their wine glasses, and they played chess in silence. A tiny crease between her brows appeared and disappeared as she contemplated each move. Flames from the candles reflected in her eyes, turning them into dark sapphire pools. Every so often, she’d shake her hair out of her eyes. Each time, Jason caught a hint of her shampoo—neither coconut nor the flowery sweet smell, but vanilla. Halfway through the match, Jason knew he’d lost the game, but they played on anyway. He liked watching her fingers touch the pieces with something close to reverence and the way she nibbled on her lower lip right before she lifted her hand away.
After several more moves, she looked up and smiled. “Do you want to keep playing?”
Without a word, he pulled her into his arms, tasting wine and fortune cookie when their lips met. His breath turned ragged and hungry as she traced long, lazy strokes up and down his back and gently tugged the back of his hair. He lifted off her shirt, ran his fingers across her collarbones, then down to her nipples, hard beneath the dark blue lace of her bra. When she pressed her lips against his neck, a shiver of anticipation raced up his spine. After he unhooked her bra, he bent his head down to her breasts, sliding his tongue around first one nipple, then the other.
She stiffened in his arms. “Shit, stop.” She pushed him away, grabbed her shirt and pulled it over her chest.
“What’s wrong?”
“I just saw someone looking in the window,” she said, breathing hard.
Jason stalked over to the front window, his hands clenched into fists. He’d shut the blinds, but two of the slats hung askew, leaving just enough room for someone to peek out. Or in. The neighbor boy’s bike sat on its side on the curb, one tire spinning in lazy circles, but there was no sign of the neighbor boy himself. Great. The psycho kid moonlit as a peeping Tom; wasn’t that behavior part of the serial killer’s handbook, too? Jason turned the rod to close the blinds and turned back to Mitch. “I’m sorry, I think it was the neighbor’s kid. I don’t know what the hell his problem is. Give me a second, okay?”
But by the time he opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch, the kid had fled, his bike disappearing into the shadows as he pedaled down the street.
9
“On three?”
“You know we’re going to get soaked.”
Mitch grinned. “But it’ll be fun, and we can dry off later.”
On the way to the bookstore, the light drizzle that started in the morning had turned into a full-fledged storm. They sat in the car, parked at the far end of the lot (the only available space Jason could find) with rain bouncing off the roof—a steady drone that swallowed up the ticking of the cooling engine. The streaks of water dripping down the windows coupled with the condensation on the inside made everything beyond the glass a blur of color and indeterminate shape.
“One.”
“We could just give it another five minutes,” Jason said.
“Two.”
“I should mention that I used to run track in school.”
“Oooh, so it’ll be a challenge then. Three!”
They opened their doors at the same time and sprinted across the lot, linking hands halfway. When they burst through the entrance with hair plastered to their heads and jeans soaked at the cuffs, a customer standing by the door shook his head. “You’re both crazy,” he said, but he wore a smile that reached all the way up to his eyes.
Mitch peeled off her jacket, pushed her hair back and shook the rain from her fingertips before she grabbed a shopping basket. “It was his idea,” she said over her shoulder as they passed the customer. “He’s the crazy one.”
Dodging bright-faced children and suburban housewives, they made their way through the aisles until they reached a section in the back. She stopped in front of one of the shelves, handed him the basket and rubbed her hands together. “Okay, where do we start?”
“I am at your mercy,” Jason said.
“Are you sure about that? Give me a half hour in this place, and I could empty your bank account.”
“I trust your judgment. Pick your favorites, and if I don’t like them, I’ll bring them over to your place, or you can read them when you’re at mine.”
She turned her face toward the shelf but not before he saw her smile.
“It’s a deal.” She tucked her hair behind her ears and ran her fingers across the spines. “Here, you have to read this one,” she said, holding out a paperback. “It gave me nightmares.”
The book had a black cat with glowing yellow eyes on the cover.
Come hang out in my neighborhood, and I bet that kid will wipe the snarl off your face.
Someone bumped into his hip, and he moved aside. When the bump came again, he turned with an admonition under his breath but stopped before it came out. An old man with a stooped back and a cane in one hand shuffled past, stopped to grab a book from the shelf, and sighed as it slipped out of his hand onto the floor. He leaned on his cane and started to reach down.
Jason bent down and picked it up, catching a glimpse of wrinkled cheeks, sagging jowls and wet, pale eyes before the old man took the book from his hand. The sleeve of his shirt slid up, revealing a tattoo of a snarling bear, oddly bright against his aged skin. Their fingertips touched, and Jason pulled his hand back fast, resisting the urge to wipe his hand on his pants to rid the loose, slippery feel of the man’s skin from his own.
“Thanks, sonny,” the old man said, with a voice as gnarled as his hands. “It is a rough thing, growing old. Enjoy your youth while you can.”
He gave Jason a wet, rheumy wink and shuffled out of the aisle, leaving behind a stale smell, a mix of cigarette smoke and something else, a sickly nursing home smell—a nursing home where all the patients had terminal illnesses, and the stink of their diseases leaked out of their pores. As he stepped out of sight, a raspy, singsong whisper emerged from his lips. “Had a girl and she sure was fine.”
It was, perhaps, a snippet from an old song, but his grizzled voice turned it obscene. The words trailed off into a hum as he limped out of sight, and Jason’s arms broke out in gooseflesh. Something about the song danced in the back of his head. He fought the urge to go after him and ask—
What? He’s just an old man who can barely walk.
Mitch wrinkled her nose and waved her hand in front of her face. “Poor thing,” she whispered, then pulled another book from the shelf. When she turned the cover in his direction, he put the old man out of his mind. “You’ve read this one, right?”
“No. I’ve heard of it, but I never had a chance to read it. You saw my entire, pathetic collection of books the other night.”
“Well, it’s one of the scariest books ever. Um, you’re not afraid of clowns, are you?”
“Not at all, at least I wasn’t until I saw that cover.”
“He’s great, isn’t he? Let’s see…” She scanned the shelves and added two more to the basket. “Oh, definitely this one. It’s more fantasy than horror, but the story’s great. And the other one is fabulous. Two boys, a crazy magician, a girl that is really a—” She laughed. “Nope. I'm not going to spoil it. You'll have to read it to find out.”
Jason shifted the basket to his other hand. “If you keep this up, we’re going to need another basket.”
“I warned you,” she said, leaning close.
He moved forward, bridging the gap between them, and kissed her.
“Imagine this.”
The voice rang out, too loud and too dramatic, accompanied by a whiff of perfume, and he and Mitch both jumped.
Just perfect.
“Hello, Shelley,” he said, turning around. “Nicole.”
Nicole’s face remained blank as she sized Mitch up with a long, lazy look, but Shelley kept her eyes on Jason’s, her lips pressed together in a tight, thin line. The ring finger on her left hand was bare, but on her right, a new ring with a dark blue stone sparkled in the store lighting, not quite large enough to cover the tiny, dark mole near her little finger. She caught Jason’s glance and raised one eyebrow, daring him to make a comment.
On impulse, he reached up with his right hand to idly scratch his left arm. The fabric at the edge of the sleeve bunched up, revealing the bottom of the tattoo. A flash of anger twisted her features, turning them hard.
See that, Frank? Aren’t you glad you don’t live with her?
He dropped his hand and waited, but she held her tongue, and an uneasy silence stretched out between them.
“So who’s your friend, Jason?” Nicole asked.
“This is Mitch. Mitch, Nicole, and you remember Shelley, don’t you?”
Mitch smiled. “Of course. It’s nice to meet you, Nicole.”
Nicole gave her a curt nod in reply.
Shelley looked down at the basket in Jason’s hand and finally spoke. “A little light reading?”
“Just refilling my bookshelves,” he said.
She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Yes, well, it’s obvious you’re not interested in filling them with anything worthwhile,” she said, her eyes on Mitch.
Mitch just smiled and slid her hand in Jason’s.
“I think that depends on your point of view,” Jason said.
“Well, we’ll let you two get back to your shopping,” Nicole said and tugged Shelley’s hand. Shelley opened her mouth as if to let loose with a parting barb, then shook her head and spun on her heels.
“My, my,” Mitch said after they raced out of the aisle. “I don’t think they like me very much.”
“Don’t worry. They don’t like me much either,” Jason said.
Mitch laughed and gave his hand a squeeze.
10
Jason rushed into the office on Tuesday morning, his hair still damp from the shower, holding tight to the backpack slung over his shoulder as he passed his boss in the hallway. He held his breath, but received nothing more than a raised eyebrow.
He’d screamed himself awake in the middle of the night and sat in bed shaking while the nightmare faded, grateful Mitch hadn’t spent the night. When he fell back to sleep, it returned; he woke the second time thrashing in twisted sheets, with nothing left behind of the dream but a sense of sorrow and pain and an odd stiffness in his left arm. His phone rang as he pulled out his laptop, and he
sank down in his chair before answering.
“I’m sorry to bother you at work,” his father said, “but your mother is convinced you’re mad at her and asked me to call you.”
“It’s okay,” Jason said, rotating his shoulder. “I’m not mad at her. I’ve just been busy.”
Frank, are you doing flips in there or something?
“That’s what I told her, but you know your mother. Shelley hasn’t returned any of her calls, either.”
“I’m not surprised. I didn’t think she would.”
“I didn’t either and honestly, I think it’s better that way. I told your mother that, too, but she doesn’t want to hear it. She always thinks she can fix things. She means well, you know that, but sometimes she only sees what she wants to.” His father cleared his throat. “Like with Ryan and Eve. Ryan keeps telling me they’re fine when I ask, but I know he’s lying. There’s no shame in calling it quits sometimes. Life is way too short to spend it miserable. Anyway, enough of that. How are you doing, son?”
The phone slid out of Jason’s hand, but he caught it before it landed on the desk. An innocuous question his father had asked many times before, but he’d forgotten one word this time.
How are you doing, son, really?
Jason had always brushed it off as nothing more than the words themselves, but the real meaning was hidden in the last word. He’d asked the same thing when Jason had a problem with a bully in fifth grade, but then it meant ”did that little punk give you any grief today?” When Jason’s answers went from ”okay” to ”I don’t want to talk about it,” his father went to the school. Although Jason overheard his dad tell his mom that trained monkeys could operate the school better than the morons who worked there, the bully left Jason alone after that, and the word—really—disappeared from his dad’s question.
How are you doing, son, really?
How many years had his father been asking the question since he got involved with Shelley? Jason traced the edge of his desk with his fingertips. Since the beginning, the very beginning, right after he introduced her to them.
Ink Page 9
