“Sure,” I said, getting out of the booth, and helping her do so, too. “But you’ll have to show me the way.”
Nine
She was a tad over-dressed, in that silk blouse, for watering the plants, but the plants didn’t seem to mind, and I certainly didn’t.
I followed her around as dutifully as a dog—she’d already fed the real dog, and put it on a leash and walked it, and I’d kept her company on those chores, too—and we’d already worked through a lot of small talk about the library and her friend Connie and a little bit about Rick, who she actually sort of felt sorry for (I let her get away with that) (for now) and currently she was filling me in on this beautiful house itself, which was as wood and stone inside as out, including a hall fountain that was like water rushing over mountain rocks.
I asked when the place was built, and she said, “In the fifties some time, by my friend’s father...my friend, Dave Winters—he owns the office furniture plant, that keeps Homewood going? This is his house now, his and Lisa’s....I met Dave at college.”
Following her to the next plant, I said, “I thought you weren’t a local girl.”
“I’m not,” she said, taking care not to over-water. She was using a little red watering can from the kitchen. “Dave’s on the library board—when my application came in, he recognized the name of course, and helped me get the job. His wife is great, too.”
“Lisa,” I said.
She frowned at me. “How do you know Lisa?”
“I don’t. You mentioned her, before.”
“Oh.”
And on to the next plant.
“Where are the Winters?”
She flicked me a longing little glance. “Nassau. A little month-long getaway.”
“Must be nice.”
Sighing, she moved to a corner where a palm-treelike number waited; from the size of it, this triffid could have walked to the kitchen to get its own goddamn water.
She was saying, “Hard not to envy Lisa and Dave— swimming and sunning and swimming and sunning and eating wonderful food and swimming and sunning some more.”
“Wouldn’t that suck,” I said.
She finished her rounds and I followed her to the kitchen, where she replaced the watering can under the sink. Turning to me with a lilting smile, she asked, “I bet you like to swim. You’re a swimmer, aren’t you?”
I frowned with my forehead and smiled with my mouth. “What are you, psychic?”
“No.” Her smile turned mischievous. “Maybe I’ve got you under surveillance....”
The swimming pool room seemed even larger when you were in there, an echoey cavernous dark-wood space with the lighted swimming pool a blue shimmering centerpiece.
Janet, in a light blue one-piece bathing suit, balanced at the tip of the diving board, bouncing a little, dark-blonde locks flouncing when I came in from the dressing room in a suit two sizes two small for me. Well, it made the package look bigger, anyway, even if it did cut off my circulation. Of course, cutting off the circulation would eventually not do the package any favors, either.
She didn’t say anything just grinned and bounced and laughed and bounced and laughed and grinned.
“Glad you’re having such a good time,” I said.
“Sorry....Dave’s not...not a big man.”
“Just in business,” I said, eyeing the vast chamber. I was standing at the edge of the pool like a guy on a building ledge contemplating suicide. I pointed casually toward her. “That Dave’s wife’s suit?”
“Yes. Lisa and me, we’re about the same size.”
“She has a nice figure.”
“Lisa thanks you, I’m sure.”
With this, she dove in, an admirable, even elegant dive.
Even so, she splashed me some, doing it; but I didn’t mind. The flecks of water were quite warm, really, even inviting.
I dove in.
The pool was as warm as a bath, lulling—actually, I prefer it a little crisper, but this was nice. Very nice.
For a while we swam, doing a few laps together, sometimes underwater or on our backs, and splashed and clowned around, the kind of capering kids get in trouble for from the lifeguard, only there was no lifeguard present. We laughed and teased and talked, enjoying the usual pleasing swimming-chamber hollow effect.
We were treading water, facing each other, when I said, “Nice perk, for semi-housesitting.”
“Swimming’s the best.”
“Oh yeah,” I agreed sincerely.
A little out of breath, face droplet-pearled, she could hardly have looked more lovely, even though the long hair was matted down with moisture, the makeup mostly gone from her heart-shaped face, an indicator of just what a striking woman this was.
Paddling there, blinking the big brown eyes, she said, “Nothing quite relaxes you like a nice swim. Really takes you somewhere else.”
“Couldn’t agree more.”
Treading doggedly, maybe a little tired now and having to work at it some, she said, “I mean, I don’t envy Dave and Lisa much, but to have this handy, right in your own house? To be able to—de-stress any time you like, and just feel...really free...”
“You know,” I said, a tiny bit out of breath myself, “you shouldn’t swim here by yourself. Dangerous.”
She laughed, treading water, more and more an effort. “What? You think I’m gonna dive in and klunk my stupid head?”
I plunge her head under water, my hand gripping the top of her skull and shoving her down, and holding her there; she struggles but can’t get anywhere, arms and legs flailing with fading force.
Finally, she is limp, dead weight, and I release her, and let her float to the surface, arms spread, reaching for nothing, tendrils of hair spreading like seaweed.
“Hey!” she said, bobbing there. “Aren’t you listening? Where did you go?”
“Somewhere else,” I admitted. “For a second.”
“I was just saying, I can fix you something, if you like. Have you eaten?”
Soon we were in the Winters’ kitchen, sitting on stools at the counter in our respective robes (hers blue and fitting nice, mine white and, again, two sizes too small, my shoulders straining the seams), eating microwave dinners and drinking Diet Cokes. Nearby, the penned-up dog, although fully fed not forty-five minutes ago, was whining pitifully, as if it hadn’t had a meal since summer.
Janet, gnawing a leg of Swanson chicken, said, “Toss her a scrap, why don’t you?”
I speared a bite of Salisbury steak. “What, and spoil the bitch?”
“You’re evil.”
I didn’t feel like contradicting her.
We had cleaned up after ourselves, and were standing at the sink like an old married couple when I asked, “What do you have on under that robe?”
Her smile was pixie-ish. “Wouldn’t you like to know?...What do you have under yours?”
I opened mine and showed her. It was a good thing I wasn’t wearing David’s tiny trunks.
“You can get arrested in some states for that,” she said, but her eyes were big and pleased.
I opened the front of her robe and saw the creamy skin and lovely breasts and the wonderful Old School muff.
“That’s illegal in most states,” I said. “Pubic nakedness.”
“That’s public nakedness. And, anyway, this is private.”
I slipped the robe off her shoulders and let it slip down her narrow-waisted, full-hipped frame to puddle on the floor at her bare feet.
“Yeah,” I said. “Isn’t it?”
In the Winters Family Rec Room, I took the time to get a fire going in the big rough-stone fireplace while Janet waited, naked underneath an Indian blanket. Then I joined her and we necked a while, romantically. When I finally kissed her breasts, the nipples were erect, damn near an inch long and hard, so hard. I kissed her neck, she kissed mine. I put my hand between her legs and the moistness there wanted attention. I buried my head down there and licked and sucked; then her head was in my lap
and she licked and sucked. Things were getting serious.
“On top of me,” she whispered, her face looking up at me half-lidded, mouth open in terrible, exquisite pain. “On top....”
For all the moistness, she was tight—a little hand might have been gripping me down there—and she shuddered and cried in pain and delight as I entered her and slid myself slowly in and out. I cupped the full firm globes of her ass and nuzzled her breasts as she moved her hips in ways she hadn’t learned in the library, the inside of her sucking out the inside of me. The blanket had fallen away, and our flesh was reflecting the licking flames, one body with many limbs and so much skin, blushed orange, and after a while her eyes rolled up in her head so that barely anything but white showed as I plunged in and out of her with the blade of flesh.
We hadn’t talked about protection—we were just naked and together and the lust ran away with us and I’d been in her. And now my seed was in her, too. Some detached voice in my head said, She’s already dead, she doesn’t need protection....
Then we were on top of the blanket. The fire had dwindled to a nice comfort level, and we were wrapped up in a post-coital embrace, sleepy, at ease with each other, so much so that we could just laugh as we picked pubic hairs off our respective tongues. My efforts to cough one up off the back of my throat almost made her hysterical.
After while she had quieted down enough to ask, “Were you a soldier?”
“How did you know that? Surveillance?”
Her smile was sweet for a girl who’d just given me a royal fucking. She shook her head. “I just feel it, know it, somehow....My grandfather was in Korea. You remind me of him.”
“Well, that’s made my day.”
She laughed and her face crinkled apologetically. “No, no, no, I didn’t mean...that.”
She studied me; touched my face with a finger. Examining me. Like I was an old tree, cut in half, whose rings you could count.
Finally, over the sound of a crackling fireplace, she asked, “Vietnam? Are you that old? You couldn’t be that old.”
“But I am.”
“How is that possible?”
I shrugged. “I was a baby when I went in.”
She nodded wisely. “But not when you came out.”
“...I was stupid.”
Her brow tensed. “ ‘Stupid,’ how?”
I shook my head. “Real stupid. Married a girl on leave, in San Diego? When I got home, she was fucking this guy.”
“Oh dear,” she said, as if reacting to my harsh language, which in part maybe she was. Her fingertips came to her lips, a dainty gesture for a girl who’d had my cock in her mouth not long ago. “I’m so sorry....What did you do?”
I shrugged again. “I went over to talk to him. Just reason with him. He was working under his car.”
Her brow tightened further. “What did you do?”
“Kicked the jack out.”
She didn’t draw away or anything. Didn’t even blink. Just asked, “...You got in trouble?”
One more shrug. “I didn’t do much time. But I was a kid, and didn’t understand.”
Nodding, Janet said, “You mean, how your wife could do that to you?”
“I mean, why killing people I didn’t know, in some other country, people who didn’t deserve it particularly, was cool. But kill one jackass back home who earned it, and I get shit.”
Her look of compassion, of sympathy, was so sincere, I could barely stand it.
She said, “I’m so sorry....You don’t have to talk about it.”
Surprised, I said, “I almost never do.”
I had opened up to her as I had my Vietnam pal Gary, who was the only other human about whom that could be said; even my late wife, the second one—the nice, stupid one—I’d never shared it with. Why the fuck had I tonight? Couldn’t be the little head controlling me, because it was all tuckered out down there.
Or anyway I thought it was.
Because all of a sudden Janet was crawling up on top of me, kissing me on the chest and the neck and then on the face, and the view of her, all that pale flesh, those breasts hanging down so full and beautifully shaped and gently swaying with those long tips sticking out at me accusingly, well, it woke the little head up, all right.
This time, however, having climbed on top, she stayed there. She was ready to take a little control.
And I was ready for somebody to take it.
Ten
Having been up and dressed a while, I was in the kitchen, at the stove scrambling eggs (bacon already made), when she drifted in in the blue terrycloth robe, hair looking nicely tousled.
Sleepily sexy, she paused to lean in the doorway and sniff the cooking smells approvingly.
“Wow,” she said. “You’re a surprise.”
“Coffee’s ready,” I said.
She made her way over to the counter where the Cuisinart coffee-maker dripped and helped herself to a cup.
The dog was penned up, and—despite the cooking smells—sleeping in its bed.
“What did you do?” she asked, nodding toward the dog, the mug of coffee in both hands, blowing at it a little. “Drug the mutt?”
“No. Just fed it. All it wanted.”
She laughed and risked a sip.
“Been walked, too,” I said. “But I draw the line at that pooper-scooper crap.”
“Even so,” she said, “you definitely pass the audition.” She settled on a stool at the counter as I served her up eggs and bacon and toasted, buttered English muffins.
“Eggs are good,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said, serving myself, then joining her. “Everybody has to learn something from their mother.”
We ate a while, then between bites she asked, “How long you been awake?”
I shrugged. “Two, three hours.”
She blinked at me; her eyes were puffy—but on her, it looked good. “It’s only seven-something now.”
“Went for groceries. Had a swim.”
She gave me a sideways look. “You really like to swim....Helps you think?”
“Helps me not to think.”
We ate in silence for a while, and somehow it became a little awkward or maybe pregnant. Which served me right, not using a rubber last night....
Finally, she pushed her almost-cleaned plate away, and got up and got herself some more coffee and refilled my cup, saying, “I, uh...really don’t do this kind of thing.”
“Wait on men?”
She laughed a little. “No...you know.” She sat next to me again, sipped the coffee, raised an eyebrow. “I mean, I hardly know you. I just don’t usually...”
“Kiss on the first date?”
She smiled over the coffee cup’s lip. “Kiss on the first date.”
I pushed my plate away. Sipped coffee. Said, “I live alone, too.”
Her brow tensed. “Sorry. I...I don’t follow you.”
“Sometimes you just...need something.”
She thought about that, and nodded. It was a sort of admission.
“There really haven’t been a lot of ‘Ricks,’ ” she said. “Some. But mostly, the last eight, ten years...I’ve kept to myself.”
“Safer that way,” I said.
“You, too?”
“...It’s the easiest way to get hurt.”
“Also the most painful,” she said quickly. “When I was younger, I went with older guys...?”
I hiked an eyebrow. “And things have changed?”
“Well, you’re the first...‘older guy’...in some time. A shrink once told me I have some kind of ‘daddy’ complex.”
I shifted in my seat.
I shrugged. “Every little girl wants to fuck her daddy. And lots of daddies want to fuck their little girls. It only counts against you when you go through with it.”
She thought about that, then said, “You...scare me a little.”
I gave her half a smile. “Just a little?”
She studied me and something devilish got into her eyes.
“You might not be so scary, naked.”
“You’ve seen me naked.”
She shook her head. “Oh no, I haven’t....”
Soon we were seated on the edge of the pool in our borrowed swimsuits, the place muggy as hell, a virtual steamroom, and she was about to apply a straight razor to my well-lathered beard.
“Be gentle,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” she said, and kept her word, starting to shave me gently, tenderly, sliding, gliding the blade, taking whiskers, leaving smooth flesh. Occasionally she would dip the razor in the pool, getting rid of whiskery lather.
It took a while, my beard not terribly long but full, and it felt good, being the object of such care and attention; but when the blade pressed against my throat, I caught her wrist, stopping her.
For all the heat, we froze, my eyes locked with hers, and I wasn’t smiling as I stared at her—she seemed quietly amused, if a bit taken aback by the clutch of my hand.
“What’s wrong, Jack?” She seemed wholly serious, but for a pixie gleam in the eyes. “Don’t you trust me?”
Now I studied her, tried to look inside—did she know why I was here?—and her amusement faded to concern.
I said, “Little tender there. Let me.”
“Sure.”
She gave me the razor.
As I finished the shave, she sat next to me, slightly shaken, holding her arms to herself as if feeling a sudden chill.
We did not make love again. Janet had to work today—it was Sunday, but the Homewood Library was open from eleven till four—and she needed to go to her apartment to shower and change. I dropped her in front of the beauty shop she lived over, and—before she got out—she said, “I’ll never forget last night, Jack.”
“Good,” I said, and managed to smile.
Her eyes stayed on me a beat too long before she got out of the car. I thought I detected something hurt in the expression, but wasn’t sure.
Maybe I decided to take Sunday off. Maybe that was it. But that afternoon, as Janet no doubt did routine work at the library and maybe did her story-hour shtick with another third-grade audience, I wasn’t around to see it.
I was in my motel room, feeling bare with my freshly shaved face, on my back on the bed, elbows winged out, staring at the ceiling, lights off, sun filtering in a little through closed drapes. Janet’s picture on the nightstand, face down. Nine millimeter on the nightstand.
The Last Quarry Page 8
