Love Nest

by Andrew Coburn

  “If you want to get in touch with him, ma’am, there surely is an easier way of doing it. Just pick up the phone.”

  “I thought my way would be quicker. I was wrong.” She smiled once more, innocently. “You’ll give him the message.”

  “Yeah, sure. If I see him.”

  • • •

  Officer Billy Lord, not yet on duty, settled himself with occupying force in a chair in Sergeant Dawson’s cubicle office. Dawson, his appearance rumpled, was drinking coffee at his desk. Officer Lord lit up a small cigar and said, “Did you hear about my cat?”

  “Which one, Billy? You’ve got three.”

  “I got four. It’s the black one I’m talking about. He was out tomming last night and got in one hell of a fight. I know he won because he came home with three eyes, one between his claws.”

  “Jesus, Billy. Don’t tell me that stuff.”

  “My wife went into hysterics. She kicked him out of the house.”

  “Get him fixed.”

  “Can’t do that, Sonny. He’s got a right to his balls, the way I figure it.”

  Dawson batted the air and averted his face. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t blow your smoke my way.”

  “It’s not me, Sonny. It’s the air currents. Look, no matter how I hold it the smoke goes where it has to. It’s like when you squeeze off a raunchy one. Somebody could be talking to you and be none the wiser. Downwind, of course, the person might keel over. Christ, you could go to jail.”

  “Billy, shut up.”

  “People are always telling me to shut up. I’ve noticed that.”

  “Listen to them.”

  There was a scratching on the glass of the cubicle. Officer Hawes poked his head in, his manner hesitant and diffident. His cap was in his hand. “I wonder if I might talk to you, Sergeant. Private. Alone.”

  “Something personal?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Dawson waved him in, and Billy Lord said, “Don’t worry about me, Hawes, I’ll hide my head.”

  Hawes looked at Dawson, and Dawson said, “Go ahead, what is it?” The young officer gave a quick account of events at the Southwick Lane residence, passing his cap from one hand to the other, running a finger over the visor. Then he blushed.

  “I thought she might be a special friend of yours.”

  “She’s special,” Dawson said, “but she’s no friend. When did this happen?”

  “Little before noon.”

  Dawson looked at his watch. It was after three.

  “I’d have told you sooner,” the officer said, “but you weren’t around.”

  “I’ve been here all day.”

  “Then I guess I wasn’t. I was busy on — ”

  Dawson dismissed him with his eyes and watched him leave. His bottom desk drawer was open. He closed it with his shoe. His stomach felt savage, and he rubbed it. Too much coffee. “She’s been on my mind. She must’ve read it.”

  “She don’t sound sensible to me,” Billy Lord said. “I was you, I’d be careful.”

  Dawson neatened his desk, slipping reports under a newspaper, tossing his plastic-coated coffee cup into the wastebasket. “I’m always careful.”

  “I don’t know about that. My observation is you’re not always too clever with women. They seem to get the best of you.”

  Dawson rose from his desk, straightened his tie, and slipped on his coat. “I don’t know about that, Billy. I really don’t.”

  Billy Lord stirred in his chair, making it squeak. He half grinned as Dawson slipped by him. “What d’you say, Sonny? You want a backup?”

  “I’m a big boy now,” Dawson said.

  • • •

  Despite the cold, the door had been left partly open for him. He rang the bell as he stepped inside and got an earful of chimes, along with a stark look at himself in the oak-edged mirror. He called out her name and then, closing the door behind him, followed her voice. Wonderful house. Thickest carpets he had ever walked on, not a sound from his soles. “Wrong way,” she said with a catch in her breath. “In here.” It was the study, warm from a leaping fire, perhaps too warm. He saw her face, broad with sweat under the red band. She stood in her deeply stained gym costume with her legs spaced wide, as if she had been wrenching her trunk, touching her toes. He could tell something was ticking inside her skull. “You took your time,” she said.

  “I got your message late.”

  “No harm.”

  “I wish you’d gotten it to me a lot sooner.”

  “Let me take your coat,” she said and advanced on him with a husky stride. Her hands reached out to help him. He did not want his back to her, but it was so arranged. As the sleeves of his coat slid away, she felt his arms through the herringbone of his jacket. “You have strength in those arms, Sergeant. I imagine you can take care of yourself.”

  “So far.”

  She stepped away with his coat and draped it over the back of a leather chair. “That’s my husband favorite chair. It’s where he reads his Kennedy books. He’s a Republican to the core, loves Ronald Reagan, but for style and class he has always admired Kennedy. Americans are finally learning to worship their dead, don’t you think?”

  “Is your husband home?”

  “Why? Would that worry you?” The fire from the grate threw heat against her face. “I worship the memory of my son. I was awake during the birth. I felt him squeeze his way out.”

  “It wasn’t suicide, was it?”

  She ignored the question, gave no indication she even heard it. “Whose memory do you worship? Melody’s? She was never a proper whore, you know. She never had my moves, but perhaps she didn’t need them. People just naturally gave to her. Among other things, Alfred gave her a Mazda. What did you give her, Sergeant?”

  “Not much.”

  “That was bad business on her part. I married Alfred and got everything.” She removed the sweat band from her head and pointed to her left. “Something I want you to look at. It’s on the bookcase. Lovely piece of furniture, isn’t it? Alfred says it has the lines of a woman.”

  He took three silent steps to the bookcase of cherry-wood and glass and lifted a photograph off the top. It was a large black-and-white glossy of a young woman in a trenchcoat and beret, blond and beautiful. He said, “Is it you?”

  “When I was an artist’s model. That’s what I was wearing when I met Alfred. Outside a brownstone in Back Bay. Nothing on under the coat. He told me I looked like a big Brigitte Bardot. I come from a family of strapping women.” Her voice swam at him. “I’m glad it’s not in color. Black-and-whites, Sergeant, give a sense of timelessness. I can look at that picture and know everything my body was doing then and what was in my mind.”

  Dawson returned the photo to the bookcase, feeling the heat of the fire through his trousers. She touched her hair and gave it a push back.

  “I wasn’t a hooker for long, not much more than a year, but Alfred said I was the best. Tony Gardella said I was numero uno. Top dollar is what I got.” Her sleeves were pushed up, every movement of her arms muscled. Her fingers were tangled in the drawstring of her sweat pants. “What do you think I’d get now? What would you pay?”

  “I’m not in the market,” he said, his eye jolted by a sudden glut of thigh. She slid her hand into her pubic hair, which was little more than a dusting, and brought up strands through her fingers.

  “I know all the tricks, Sergeant. Though I might as well admit it, I have mileage.” Her smile was toothy, dazzling, yet wistful. “I’m not nineteen.”

  The pungent aroma of Ben-Gay stuffed his nose, and he moved slightly, his back to the fire, which almost seemed to draw him into it, like arms. The heat put force into his voice. “Where’s your husband?”

  “Alfred?” Her voice shot up. “Alfred, where are you?”

  “He’s here?”

  “He must be in the gym, Sergeant.”

  It was a long walk, endless carpets. He knew he was close to it when he heard the hum of a dehumid
ifier and breathed in the sharp smell of chlorine. His head began to hurt when he pushed through the doors, one of them nearly hitting him because he did not move fast enough. Exercise mats were scattered about, and he tripped over one on his way to the tiled edge of the pool where Bauer waited. Bauer stared at him out of blue eyes pinpointed with hemorrhages, his open head unbalanced on a neck of loose skin. Crouching, Dawson felt for a pulse, knowing there was none. The weapon, a barbell, lay close by. Then his blood ran cold at the sound of Harriet Bauer behind him.

  “Would you call my lawyer? William Rollins.” Her voice was careless. “Would you do that much for me?”

  There were several telephones in the house and one nearby on the wall near the shower room, but he did not see it. All he could think of was the one back in the study. “You’d better come with me,” he said.

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Put something on.”

  The trip back to the study seemed longer, as if the carpeting were slowing him down, pulling at his shoes. In his dreams travel was smoother and reality sharper than this. In the study he stepped over her sweat pants, plucked up the phone, and punched buttons. “This is Dawson,” he said moments later. “Notify the state police there’s been a homicide at 10 Southwick Lane. I’m on the premises. If Billy Lord’s around, tell him to get over here. Also notify the chief.”

  He went back to the gym, but she was no longer there, only her husband. He called out in a voice that startled him but received no answer.

  Billy Lord arrived before the state police did, almost smashing into Dawson’s car in the circular drive. His bullfrog body labored to the front door, which Dawson held open. “Jesus, Sonny, what happened?” he asked, his flat eyes expanding.

  “Come in,” Dawson said and succinctly, in no more than a dozen words, told him what he knew and what he thought he knew.

  “Sonny, what’s that you’re holding?”

  “Her pants.”

  Billy Lord’s eyes went bigger.

  “I want her to put them on.”

  “Where is she?”

  “We have to look,” Dawson said. They moved quietly into the spacious dining area, which sparkled with crystal and china, and into the elongated kitchen, where a cuckoo clock cheerily announced the hour. Then, stopping abruptly, Dawson felt himself go sick. He gripped the back of a cane chair for support. “She’s nowhere downstairs,” he said with absolute certainty. “She’s up.”

  They mounted the wide stairs. At the top Billy Lord used fumbling fingers to unlatch the holster of his service revolver. Dawson stayed his hand. “We won’t need that.” The wail of a siren could be heard, state police arriving.

  “Let’s wait for them,” Billy Lord said. Dawson’s stomach bucked, then gradually behaved.

  “We won’t need to do that either.”

  “Where is she, Sonny?”

  “Her son’s closet.”

  Fifteen

  He hung on her voice. Listening to it hard was like palming a lotion over his hot skin after a workout. She told him to sit down, and he chose the chair nearest the bed, where she sat on the tight-made edge. In repose, his face regressed in age. He looked ten. “How did you know I was here?” she asked, and he pushed his fists into the pockets of his athletic jacket and answered with a moodiness she was used to.

  “I always know.”

  “But how?” she asked, and a pointless minute passed. He cast his eyes down in his sneakers, the lace loose on one and coming loose on the other. She said, “Do you drive through the lot and look for my car?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I have a new one.”

  “I know.” His lifted face darkened. “My dad gave it to you.”

  “Does that make you mad?” she asked gently and knew the answer without his giving it. In the sunlight flooding through the window, the drapes yanked back to their tightest furls, his fine-spun hair was more white than blond, spectral like a baby’s. “I didn’t ask for it,” she said. “I didn’t even want it.”

  “But you took it.”

  “Have you ever said no to your father?”

  “He’s not your father.”

  “It was a joke, Wally.” She knew well enough what was disturbing him and tried to talk around it, lightly and quickly. “Your dad didn’t like the Mondale sticker on my car. He wanted me to put a Reagan one on or at least take the Mondale one off. I wouldn’t, so he bought me a new car with nothing on it except the dealer’s decal. He called it a compromise.”

  “Do you and my dad still …” His voice trailed off in agony, and the large lobes of his ears colored.

  “We’re just good friends now,” she said softly and got a doubtful look. “Do you want me to swear to it?”

  “You don’t have to. Not if it’s true.” His eyes, which easily went dewy, glistened. “I wish we were the only ones in the world. Then nobody could …”

  “You make too much of me.”

  “I love you,” he said simply and frankly, and she immediately patted a space on the bed’s edge. Hands emerging from his pockets, he hoisted himself out of the chair and obediently sat beside her, though with noticeable room between them. He wedged his hands between his knees.

  “Today you love me, which is good,” she said. “In time it’ll be somebody else, and that’ll be better.”

  “Never,” he protested.

  “Some sweet chick in school, you wait.”

  He hung his head to one side, and locked his hands tighter between his knees. “I still don’t date.”

  “But you will.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Nothing has to be rushed.” She reached over and stroked his hair, smoothing parts that were wisping up as if to float away. “Isn’t that what Dr. Stickney keeps telling you?”

  “I don’t like him. He acts like he knows you better than I do.”

  “Maybe he only thinks he does.”

  “Everybody knows you better than I do.” There was a sulk in his voice, and she slid close to him, placing an arm around him, uprooting his hands. At once his nose nuzzled into the charcoal wool of her sweater, like a kitten remembering its mother. He dawdled a finger over the M monogrammed above the breast. “I still have it,” he whispered against her.

  “What do you have?” Her head dropped forward over his. “Are you going to tell me or make me guess?”

  “The garter belt my mom gave you.”

  “You snitched it?” She laughed. “I wondered what happened to it.”

  “I didn’t want you wearing it for anybody else,” he said, and she could feel the blood in his face. “Only for me. When I’m ready.”

  His breath cutting through her sweater irritated her skin, and she said, “You’d better sit up now.” His head rose slowly, a flush still in his face, his ears bright.

  “Can we lie on the bed and talk?”

  “Not today.”

  “But something might … work. I can feel it.”

  “Another time,” she said firmly, and something combative and glum passed over his face and drained it.

  “You’ve got somebody coming.”

  “Later.”

  “Who?”

  “You know better than to ask.”

  “I’ve a right to know.”

  “No, you don’t,” she said, wishing there was a way to spare him. Her voice mellowed. “It’s a kind of favor for somebody else. A friend has a friend who needs help.”

  “What are you going to do for him?”

  “Nothing more than I do with you. Just talk.”

  “You promise? You swear on your honor?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK, I swear on my honor.” She jetted up, tossed her hair, and looked at her watch. “You hungry, Wally? I’m starving! How would you like me to buy you a Big Mac?”

  He rose reluctantly, then grinned. “With fries?”

  She said, “Tie your sneakers.”

  • • •

  �
�You don’t mind, do you?” he said and drew the drapes with a certain flourish, as if shutting out an audience from a stage. He raised a wrist and viewed his watch. “I only have an hour. I wish I had all afternoon.” He lobbed her a lazy smile impaired by two martinis he had had at lunch with a customer of minor importance. “Melody, isn’t it? Pretty name. Fits.” It was her last little time on earth, and she stretched an arm to extinguish one of the lamps burning harshly on each side of the bed. “Don’t,” he said, gravitating closer. “I wouldn’t want you in shadow. Nineteen, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lovely,” he said. She did not like him. He sensed it and ignored it while removing his shoes, which smelled smartly of polish and the good leather beneath. His movements slowing, he shed his suit and sought a hanger for it, then one for his shirt. “Might as well be neat. I notice you are, everything stacked so nice on the chair.”

  She smiled politely. He did not like her manner but adored her looks. Rubbing a bare shoulder, he abruptly frowned because she was staring at his stomach, not at all the ripple of muscle it was when he rowed and played squash at Andover and Harvard. “Something you don’t like?”

  “Why don’t you relax,” she suggested.

  “I was about to say the same thing to you,” he said and his eye went on the alert for derision, though there was none. He skinned off his black hose but kept on his loose boxer shorts, buying time to soothe his self-esteem, which he felt had been tampered with. He placed a solid pallid knee on the bed. She was under the covers, and he lifted them with a slow hand. Looking at her, he drew in his mouth. He wanted to stare to his heart’s content and told her to close her eyes, which was something Harriet Bauer had advised her never to do, a cardinal rule. Never turn your back on a John was another. He wants to blow bubbles up your ass, make sure you’re looking over your shoulder.

  “You’re not being very helpful,” he said, heaving a sigh. “Do you know who I am?”

  “I have an idea,” she admitted.

  “Then you know you’re in good hands.”

  She knew only that she was chilly and sought to retrieve the covers, but he had swept them beyond reach, even his own, as if he had cut anchor and set sail, the waters rough. He shucked off his shorts, which made his belly look bigger, and touched her for the first time, grazing the length of a leg. In no uncertain terms he wanted her open, nothing hidden from the eye, pink parts showing, and then, impulsively, he wanted her to flip over.