Rapture

by Thomas Tessier

  Jeffs manner intrigued her. It was as though he was showing off his city, its exotic sights and people. There were moments when Georgianne was sure she saw pride in his expression. Steering his sixtythousand-dollar car through the precincts of wealth and privilege, he looked proprietorial, and there was something amusing about that, because it seemed fairly obvious that he didn't really move in these circles on a regular basis. Georgianne would have bet that the glamorous side of L.A. life was as new to him as his Ferrari.

  She didn't know what to make of the car. A tenyear-old Camaro was Jeff's style. The Ferrari was something else altogether. It seemed too extravagant, all the more so since Jeff made the point that he'd paid the entire bill in cash, on the spot. But then, Georgianne had to admit that after more than twenty years she probably didn't know what Jeffs style was, or even what kind of person he had grown into. Now she was seeing him on his home ground, and getting to know him all over again.

  They returned to Jeffs condo, relaxed for a while, then showered and changed before driving back into the city for dinner at Spago's. Later, Georgianne couldn't remember the exact context, but at some point she mentioned Janice. And Jeff made a toocasual remark that upset her.

  "Isn't she-oh, it's probably just my imagination."

  "What?"

  "Ah, nothing, really. Well, is she a little ... uh ... butch?"

  "No," Georgianne replied after a momentary silence. "No, I don't think so at all."

  Jeff shrugged in a way that suggested he wasn't willing to concede the point, but he sipped his wine and changed the subject. The rest of the evening seemed a bit cooler.

  It was nothing more than a minor annoyance at the time. But when Georgianne thought about it later, again and again, it began to seem like a piece of calculated nastiness. Jeff had never been the kind of person to say something like that, either casually or inadvertently. Why would he even think it? Whether Jan was gay or not (and she emphatically wasn't), how could Jeff have formed an opinion and suggested it the way he had on the basis of one brief meeting.

  That was the second thing.

  The weekend went extremely well, Jeff thought, and he was quite pleased with himself when he looked back on it while driving home Sunday evening after returning Georgianne to her friend's house in Santa Barbara. Yes, yes, yes, he told himself. It's all here, it's all happening, it's all go now. He had been damn near perfect, he reckoned. Friendly, warm, attentive, lighthearted, generous, masterful, considerate-ah, let's see, did I say attentive? But never pushy, never too aggressive or forward or macho. Yes, it had all gone very well. So much so that Georgianne had agreed to come down again the next weekend. That said it all. Jeff had no doubt she'd be ready then for the one thing he'd been careful to avoid. Contact. Love.

  "So, tell me, how was your weekend with Magnum, RI.?" Jan asked sarcastically when she and Georgianne sat down with a nightcap. "Boozy? Automotive? Lavish? Sensual?"

  "Yes, yes, yes, and no, respectively," Georgianne replied when she stopped laughing.

  "Can you believe that car?"

  No, not yet."

  "All he needs is a mustache. Not that it would turn him into another Tom Selleck, but ..."

  "I know what you mean," Georgianne said. "Jeffs not quite the same person here that I knew back in Connecticut."

  "Well, I never saw him before the other day, but one thing was pretty damn obvious."

  "What?"

  "He wants you."

  "Oh dear, that's what I was afraid of. Are you sure?"

  "Are you blind? You really can't tell?"

  "I guess I can," Georgianne said quietly. "I just haven't wanted to think about it."

  "He didn't make a play for you? All that time the two of you were alone at his place?"

  "No. No, he didn't."

  "I don't care." Jan shook her head. "He will."

  "I'm going to spend next weekend there too."

  "Oh, you are, are you." Jan sat back, eyebrows raised. "So you're interested."

  "No, I don't think so. Not really. Let's just say I want to get to know him better-better than I thought I did."

  "Watch yourself."

  "Why? What did you think of him?" Georgianne asked. If Jeff could make a snap judgment about Jan, then she was entitled to one in return.

  "The truth?"

  "Of course."

  "Okay. I'm sorry if he is a good old friend of yours, but I didn't like him. I don't know exactly why, but I've been thinking about it all weekend, and it keeps coming back to the same thing. The minute I met him I felt a real chill-and he knew it. Something in his eyes maybe, or something not in his eyes; something missing. You know, we were standing just a couple of feet apart, but he gave me the feeling that he was far away, looking at me, watching from a distance. Do you know what I mean?"

  "Well..."

  "He gave me the creeps."

  Why wouldn't it go away? It was the last thing, the very last thing Georgianne wanted to think.

  She had found that she could live with almost anything. Her husband's senseless murder by strangers who mistook him for someone else? She had never been sure that's what had happened, but it was the best story, and she had come to accept it. Bonnie's suicide, arising from some terrible combination of loneliness, depression, and pain resulting from the loss of her father? Georgianne had never brought herself to believe that; it was impossible. But for six months, wherever she was, alone every night, she had cried for Bonnie, until she had reached the point where she had no strength left to rage against the possibility of her suicide, the fact of her death. And so, in a way, she had come to accept that too, or at least not to argue with herself about it. There were two gaping holes in her life, and all she had managed to do was surround them with scar tissue to contain them.

  Then she had come to Santa Barbara, and Jan had been able to make her smile for the first time in ages. All Georgianne had wanted to do was to lose herself in the company of her friends, and she was beginning to succeed. Then everything was suddenly changed.

  It was crazy even to think that Jeff-quiet, cautious, solid Jeff Lisker-could in any way be responsible for what had happened to Sean and Bonnie. But once the idea had entered Georgianne's mind, it wouldn't go away. Because the more she thought about it, the more she saw a certain perverse logic in it. The way Jeff had reappeared in her life after twenty years, shortly before Sean's murder. The way he had come back again after the funeral. The way he apparently-obviously, if Jan was right, and she probably was-felt about her. The fact that he drank malt Scotch, and his clumsy insinuation about Jan seemed more ominous when viewed in this light.

  But there was nothing to it, she tried to reason. Nothing of any real substance. Suppose Jeff did have some kind of obsessive fixation about her. Wasn't it much more likely that he would have made some grand romantic play for her months before, even when Sean was alive? Married people fall in love, get divorced, and remarry all the time. He wouldn't have had to go to the deranged extreme of wiping out her whole family. And even if he had been happy to see Sean removed from the picture, there was no reason, no need whatsoever, for Bonnie to die too. It was crazy, that line of thought. Impossible.

  The rest was the flimsiest of stuff. Coincidence and circumstance. During the week, Georgianne stopped at a pharmacy in Santa Barbara to buy something, and while browsing at the magazine rack she came across a full-page ad for a malt Scotch, She almost laughed and cried at the same time. You couldn't indict someone for drinking one thing or another, any more than you could for making an illconsidered remark.

  The notion was so unspeakably awful that it had to be wrong. But it also had a horrible fascination, and it wouldn't go away. It was bad enough dealing with her thoughts; Georgianne couldn't bring herself to articulate them to Jan.

  Jeff had a brilliant idea.

  He decided to throw a party. It would be small but lavish. A caterer and a bartender. A stock of good wines, champagne, and the best liquors. He thought his condominium was just large eno
ugh for such an event.

  He hadn't held a party since the minor fiasco he and Audrey had staged about ten years ago, when they were living in a boxy tract house in the Valley. All the top people at Lisker-Benedictus would come, of course. It would be a fine occasion for him to show off Georgianne. His woman.

  What if?

  That's what it came down to every time Georgianne thought about it. What if Jeff was the person respon sible? It didn't matter if there was only one chance in two hundred million, she had to face the possibility.

  And what if, somehow, she became convinced of it? She still wouldn't have any evidence to take to the police, and she knew she herself would be incapable of personally exacting revenge.

  What if she might be at risk? If things somehow reached that appalling, impossible point, would she be able to defend herself or would she give in, perhaps even gratefully, and follow Sean and Bonnie?

  I must be losing my mind, just to think like this, she decided. If I told anyone what's going on in my head, they'd recommend me for treatment.

  But there she was, Friday morning, sitting at the foot of her bed in Ian's house, holding a gun in her hand. It was an ugly little weapon, so small and light it was hard to believe it could hurt anyone. The bullets were like tiny pieces from a child's board game.

  The day she had arrived at Jan's, Georgianne was unpacking her suitcase and hanging up clothes in the spare bedroom when she found the gun and bullets in a shoe box on the closet shelf. Jan explained that she had bought it a few years ago, after there had been a number of attacks on nurses and women visitors in the area of the hospital. A suspect was caught, better lighting was installed, the attacks dropped off, and Jan eventually got tired of carrying the gun, so she put it away in the closet and forgot about it.

  A cheap, trashy little pistol, so dusty it probably wouldn't even work. Idly, Georgianne began to clean it with a piece of tissue paper.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Friday evening they went out to dinner at Ma Maison and resumed a desultory conversation, begun the week before, about Georgianne's plans for the future. Jeff was cool. He didn't try hard to persuade her to stay on in Southern California, but he carefully reinforced the idea by the way he acknowledged its advantages and appeared to discount the alternatives. He assumed, correctly, that Jan also wanted Georgians to stay and would be more direct and outspoken about it. So he took the softer approach.

  Once again, it struck Georgianne as odd that Jeff had virtually nothing to say about Bonnie. No questions, no comments, no hint that he wanted to sympathize or share in her sorrow. It was as if Bonnie had been ruled ineligible as a topic for discussion. But because she wasn't really looking for sympathy and was herself reluctant to mention her daughter's death, she was still faced with the possibility that Jeff was simply being considerate.

  After dinner, neither of them felt much like doing anything special, so they returned to Santa Susana and drank several nightcaps while watching Hanover Street and Vertigo on cable.

  Georgianne made brunch late Saturday morning. When she turned on the radio, she heard the latest reports on the wildfires in Los Angeles and Ventura countries. Contained in some areas, the fires had nonetheless continued to burn and spread throughout the week. The desert winds, which had let up for a day or so, had regained force and were now said to be blowing at fifty miles per hour in some places. At Ravenswood Estate, it was another hot Saturday, with the temperature at about eighty degrees, twelve percent humidity, and a glorious sunny sky, clear but for a distant plume of gray.

  Jeff had told her to bring her bikini, and she had bought one in Santa Barbara, but she wasn't in the mood to go anywhere. She didn't even want to take the short drive to the beach. Instead, they spent part of the afternoon at the Ravenswood pool, swimming and sunning, swimming and dozing. Aware of how pale she looked in the land of the permanent tan, Georgianne was glad to take on some color. She had the kind of skin that didn't burn easily, and she applied plenty of suntan lotion. The sun felt great on her body.

  It was almost four in the afternoon when they picked up their towels and walked slowly back to the condo. Georgianne liked the feel of the chipped-stone path on her bare feet. But a strange, diffuse mood seemed to be gathering within her, trying to form itself into something more definite. She felt heavy and sluggish, not tired, but lazy.

  Her room was cool and dark, with the drapes drawn, the lights off, and the air conditioner humming softly. A shower, followed by a tall cold drink? No, she didn't want either of those yet. She folded her towel and hung it on the bar in the bathroom. She tried to focus her thoughts, and wondered briefly if she hadn't wanted to go to the beach because she was afraid of seeing some girl there who would remind her of Bonnie, or because Bonnie had died at a beach. But her mind wouldn't settle. She stood indecisively in the middle of her bedroom until the realization finally came that-

  The door to Jeffs room was ajar. He had taken off his swim trunks and put on his black robe. He was now laying out on the bed the clothes he intended to wear after he showered. They hadn't decided whether or not to go out for dinner. He didn't really care, though he would be a little happier to stay in. But broiling a steak was the limit of his ability in the kitchen. Was there a bag of French fries in the freezer, he wondered.

  "Jeff."

  Because he wasn't expecting it, he wasn't sure he'd actually heard it. He hesitated a couple of seconds, then tightened his robe modestly and went to Georgianne's door, which was slightly open too. He tapped on it once before entering. She was standing there, still in her bikini, with an uncertain look on her face.

  "Did you call me?"

  She gave a short, sharp nod, as if it required a special effort for her to move at all. She was waiting, helplessly it seemed, and she didn't speak.

  "What are you doing?" Jeff asked delicately.

  "Nothing." A hint of a shrug.

  "Are you all right?"

  "Yes." Then, "I don't know." Then, "No." Then, in a voice cracking with conflict, "Would you hold me?"

  Jeff embraced her immediately. He couldn't think straight but that was good, because if he could think, he would say something and he knew this was not the moment for talking. She felt magnificent in his arms. He experienced a jumbled sensory rush. The texture of her skin. The trace of chlorine from the pool in her hair. The buttery smell of suntan lotion. The heat that radiated from her body.

  "I need you"-she almost used the word "some- one"-"to hold me."

  Jeff squeezed her a little more tightly and lifted her chin so that she was looking up at his face. He smiled. In his mind, he could see the smile perfectly. It had warmth and tenderness. It was a smile that said, It's all right. It was a smile that communicated love. And when he felt the smile had achieved its purpose, he kissed her. He was a man in control. Sexual passion was building rapidly within him, and he let Georgianne know it with that kiss-but carefully, not too forcefully, not yet. He was rewarded. Her arms came up around his back as she responded to his embrace and kiss with her own enthusiasm.

  The realization finally came that ... she was going to make love with Jeff. Part of her rebelled weakly at the idea, but she was surprised by the force of certainty she felt. How could she if she thought there was the slightest chance he had been involved in the deaths of Sean and Bonnie? But, paradoxically, that seemed to be part of the impulse, as if she knew instinctively that it would take more than dinners and drinks and scenic drives to get past his smooth, resilient facade. To learn what he really thought and felt. Maybe it was also the sun, the heat, the sight and proximity of his body, and the fact that Georgianne hadn't made love in more than a year. She seemed to have reached the point where intimacy could no longer remain implied, an abstraction, but had to be faced and tested. Now. Before they showered and dressed and sat down for another round of cocktails. Before the moment was lost.

  Not that Jeff had any intention of letting it pass. He had waited more than half his life, and his time had finally come. The
vague, inarticulate yearning, the doomed marriage, the years of total immersion in work, the substitute bodies, the intermittent but everrecurring dreams and fantasies were all behind him, and he knew that he had succeeded in retrieving from the past the only thing, the only person he truly wanted.

  Georgianne's desire was obvious as they moved to the bed, clenched in an embrace and kissing passionately, and it struck Jeff with all the power of a religious revelation: She wants me. The words repeated in his mind.

  Her body was a delight. Not quite as firm and hard as Diane's or Bonnie's; yet it was more beautiful than he had imagined, perhaps because he had it at last and could begin to savor its richness. This close, he could see the incipient lines around her eyes and feel the slight softening of her breasts-but those things didn't matter; nothing did. For once, the reality was greater than the dream.

  Even as her body responded to his, Georgianne could sense the aching hunger in him, the enormous depth of his desire. It was like a force that had been held in check, perhaps too long, and was now breaking loose. It felt good to experience this, to be with a man again, but there was something awesome, almost frightening, about it too. She had nearly forgotten the kind of intensity that can be created between two people.

  Everything changed in a few moments. As they rolled about on the bed, Jeff eased off her bikini bottom, unhooked the bra, and shrugged out of his robe. He moved on top of her, and as her legs opened to accept him, Jeff and Georgianne seemed to reach a clearing, a tender pause in their passion. She looked at him with half-open eyes, trying to hold back the tears that, for no reason she could think of, were trying to find release. He smiled lovingly at her and kissed the tears away. He had an idea how sensitive and emotional this moment must be for her. But it was his moment too, and he was so confident of his control that he thought he could hold himself there, rock-hard and ready, long into the night if need be. 'Jeff ..."