Deadly Kiss

by Bob Bickford

I leaned back in the booth, interested. She brushed a strand of dark hair back from her cheek. The restaurant murmured around us.

  “It was transcendent, Mike. I think I fell a little in love with him.”

  Her smile was dazzling. “Do you get it?” she asked. “He really did have the weight of the world on him, a thousand times my problems, but he got it. He understood the moment, and it was enough. Enough. ‘Belly full, no worries.’ It changed me. I would have followed him anywhere. You need a little of that, mister.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes.” She nodded slowly. “Yes, you do. I never forgot it.” She reached across and took my hand. Her fingers were warm, and she rubbed the web of my thumb as she spoke. “I’m trying to think of the last time I heard you laugh, really laugh, or smile with more than your mouth. When I met you, you had just lost your daughter--your wife was gone, your home, everything. There was still something sweet about you. But what happened last year has made you, I don’t know...just haunted.”

  I wanted to take my hand back and stopped myself.

  “I know it’s hard, and probably kind of stupid when you’ve just lost your dad, but, Mike, you have to see the moments that are there. You have to see the good when it’s in front of you. There has to be enough just in the moment sometimes. Does that make any kind of sense?”

  Our waitress hurried past the table, slim and dark. I caught her eye, signaling for the check. She nodded without pausing.

  “I don’t know how else to say it,” Molly said. “I want you back. I want my friend back. Will you think about it?”

  Her reference to me as a friend stabbed me, and I gathered myself to go. “I’ll think about it,” I said. “I really will think about it.” I paused at the edge of my seat. “Before we go, I need to tell you something, and I don’t even know why I’m telling you or if I should.”

  She reached across and put her hand back on mine. “So serious, Michael?” she teased.

  I told her about the impulsive night I had spent with Angela. As I spoke, her smile faltered, and she returned her hands to her lap. When I was done, we sat in silence. From across the room, the waitress caught my eye and raised her eyebrows, Did we need something else? I shook my head.

  “You didn’t have to tell me that, no,” Molly said. “It isn’t really any of my business what goes on between you and your wife.”

  “Ex-wife,” I corrected.

  “Sure, whatever. Let’s go, okay?”

  She walked out in front of me. As I held the door for her, I saw that her cheeks were colored. I felt like an ass. I had intended to absolve myself, and I had only broken things further.

  Back at my father’s house, she asked where the clean sheets were kept. I didn’t know, and we hunted closets until we found them.

  “They’re clean,” I said, “but it might have been twenty years or so since they were last taken out of this closet.”

  She shrugged and gave a tiny smile. She didn’t hold my look. She kissed my cheek and headed off to one of the spare bedrooms. I looked at the door when it was closed behind her and figured I should have kept my mouth shut. I turned and went to my own room at the other end of the hall.

  It was the bedroom of my childhood and my youth, but there were no objects or mementos inside that reminded me of the years I had slept there. I lay down and was surprised to find that the contours of the walls and ceiling were as familiar to me as if they were an ancient map of a country I had once lived in.

  I wasn’t sleepy and reached over to the table beside the bed to get a book. I paused, thinking I had heard music from outside my room. I swung my feet off of the bed, padded over to the door, and quietly opened it. The hallway was dim, illuminated only by a light that had been left on in the bathroom. I went to the top of the stairs and looked down into the darkened space below, listening. There was only silence.

  At the far end of the hall, Molly’s door was cracked open and she was looking out at me. I started to speak, but she shook her head almost imperceptibly and gently closed it.

  CHAPTER 14

  Sam and Jenny Latta,

  West Berlin, Germany, Monday, May 20, 1957:

  “You sound American,” he said.

  “Really?” she asked. “What exactly is that, anyway?”

  “Do you have menus?”

  “I do,” she said, “but I have a better idea. Let me tell you what you’re going to have.”

  She told him what his dinner was going to be. None of it meant anything to him. He had come in here by accident, looking for somewhere else.

  The restaurant was a single room of mismatched tables and chairs with an open kitchen at one end. There was a clock that said it was four-thirty in the afternoon. The place was nearly empty, but five or six people bustled around the kitchen. The air was full of excitement; the place vibrated with the evening that was coming.

  He had wandered to the counter that marked off the kitchen when he came in. There was a stool beside it, and he pulled it up to sit down. He wanted to talk to the woman some more. She had dark hair and clear eyes, and he thought that he had never been around anyone as beautiful.

  “My place can be expensive,” she said, smiling. “Are you sure you can pay?”

  He thought about it and nodded. He had cash in his pocket. He didn’t much worry about money one way or the other.

  “If you don’t have enough, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “You’ll run a tab anyway.”

  “I haven’t tried anything yet. You think I’ll be back?”

  She nodded. Her eyes were luminous.

  “This is your place?” he asked. “You’re awfully young.”

  “I’m not young at all,” she said. “I’ve always been here.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jenny.”

  “I’m Sam,” he said, and she nodded as if she already knew.

  Over her shoulder, and behind the concentrated activity of the kitchen, windows opened onto the ruined city. Anything that pretended permanence here had been erased by the bombers.

  “What do you call your place?” he asked.

  “This is the Blue Moon,” she said.

  She gestured to a piece of artwork hanging on the wall near her, as if to explain. She moved back into the kitchen to resume her supervision. The cooks seemed to move in orbit around her, conscious of her and, in the most casual way, eager to please her.

  Behind him, a group of people came in, and he turned on his stool to look at them. Tables had been pushed together, as if by magic, of their own accord, not having needed anyone to actually touch them. While they were seating themselves, a man detached himself from them and came to the counter.

  He wore the roughest work clothes, but called out instructions to the kitchen. The diner was very particular about the preparation of their food, but his manner was friendly and familiar, and he spoke as one connoisseur to another. The chef at last approved, and the woman nodded. Much of it seemed to have been for her benefit.

  Finished, the man turned and spoke to Sam. “You’re going to love it here.”

  Sam shrugged. He wished that he wasn’t wearing a military uniform, but decided it wasn’t important. He looked at the picture on the wall. It was a painting of a blue moon shining down on a scene below it. He squinted. The details were hard to discern, but he had a feeling it was a place that he knew. Across the room, the woman looked at him and smiled faintly.

  His heart moved, and he thought that he would follow her always.

  ***

  Present Day:

  There was no one at the funeral, really. We aim to live long, I thought, and sometimes the reward for it at the end is that everyone we know has already left. I knew that my father didn’t care, but the empty seats made me acutely aware of my own loneliness. I sat on the aisle, a few rows from the front. Molly was quiet beside me, her hand resting on the back of mine.

  The dim church echoed softly, emptily, with rustles from unseen movements that such spaces always have.
A rack of small devotional candles flickered behind their colored glasses. We were early, and I closed my eyes and waited. When I opened them, there was a woman in the front row, kneeling with her back to us. The moment I spotted her, she rose and turned around. She looked back at me steadily through her veil and then went into the aisle.

  She was in dark blue. Her calves and ankles were elegant in silk stockings. On her feet, she wore matching pumps with stiletto heels. Her face was largely obscured by the old-fashioned mantilla draped over her head and shoulders, but I knew who she was. I sat frozen and watched my mother approach.

  She inclined her head toward me, and I saw the barest trace of a smile behind black lace. She reached out and grazed the back of my hand with her fingertips as she went by. Her touch was imperceptible, a tingle, the tiniest shiver. The sun from her caress hurt my eyes. I smelled grass, leaves, and plants. I heard running water and faint music.

  Then as quickly as it came, it was gone, and so was she. I was back in the empty church. Candles flared and guttered as though all of the stained glass windows in the place had been thrown open to let in the wind. It was the only small sign of herself that she left behind.

  I glanced at Molly beside me. I saw the startled look on her face and realized I was squeezing her hand, too hard. “Did you see her?” I murmured. My voice felt like I hadn’t spoken in hours.

  She nodded and then cast her eyes across the church, indicating that I should look at something there.

  Another woman was being handed into a pew across the aisle from us. Heavy and stooped, she impatiently shook off the man who was helping her. Her hair was a bright shade of blonde, and her striped dress and heavy makeup were far too young for her. When she was seated, she looked fixedly at the front of the church.

  “I think that’s Wanda,” Molly whispered. “Has to be. That’s her son. What’s she doing here?”

  I shrugged. I felt a flash of rage. I had no idea of what her role was in this, only that she had hated my father and scared him badly. I was baffled as to why she was paying her respects at his funeral.

  The man who had helped her turned and looked at me.

  His eyes were almost colorless, a startling pale that conveyed no hint of what was alive behind them. He was a light-skinned black, and the yellow cast of his features seemed to bleed into his hair and the whites of his eyes, making him appear curiously monochromatic. His shoulder muscles strained against the navy sport coat that he wore over his T-shirt in deference to the occasion. A blue tattoo crawled up from his collar, ending below his left ear. I watched him walk to the rear of the church and take a place against the back wall, arms crossed.

  “Are you going to talk to her?” Molly whispered.

  “Sooner or later. Not here.”

  There was noise as the coffin was wheeled in. The service was about to begin.

  An older man appeared beside me. He placed one hand on my shoulder and shook my hand with the other without saying anything. His eyes and face were kind. He was well-dressed and smelled like soap. His kinky hair had receded into a tonsure, and the white still had some black shot through it. He released me and squeezed Molly’s hand before turning away and taking a seat behind us.

  The box gleamed in front of the altar. I had picked it out, not really paying attention. Seeing it now, in a different place, and knowing that it contained what was left of my father filled me with a breathless feeling, not quite panic. The transition from a man sitting in the sun, sipping a rum and coke, to this box in a cold church was too much, too fast.

  “I forgot to ask you,” Molly murmured in my ear. “How do I know what to do?”

  “Do about what?”

  “I’m not Catholic. You guys are really active. Isn’t there some kind of program that says when to stand and kneel?”

  “You’re Irish. How can you not be Catholic? Does anyone know about this?”

  “Just because--oh, my God--” She cut her sentence short and shook her head.

  “Just sit there, Molly. It’s fine.”

  “It isn’t fine. It’s your dad. I want to be respectful, and I can’t just sit here. I’ll watch what you do. Give me a nudge when we’re about to do something so I can be ready.”

  Her face was intent and serious, and once again I was caught by how much I loved her, and how hard I worked to avoid the fact. My mood lifted a tiny bit.

  “Fine,” I said. “If you get it wrong, the ushers come take you by the elbow out to the parking lot. If that happens, wait for me, and I’ll find you after.”

  She colored slightly and looked straight ahead at the front of the church. A moment later, she leaned over and cupped my ear. “You’re an asshole, Mike,” she whispered.

  The laughter welled up, surprising me. I tried to choke it back and covered it with a cough. I had the fleeting that my father would approve of laughter at his funeral.

  The priest began to speak the familiar words, expelling my father from his place on earth. It was over with quickly. There was no graveside service, and afterward Molly and I stood at the edge of the parking lot and watched the silver hearse drive away. A cold wind, startling in the early summer warmth, suddenly whipped grit against us. We raised hands to shield our faces, but it died away as quickly as it had come.

  The older black man had come up beside me, and when the hearse had disappeared, he offered his hand again.

  “Roy Tull.”

  The name clicked. My father’s doctor. Eli’s brother; a boy from the story.

  “His doctor, yes--when he was older,” he said. “You folks had a different family doctor when you were a boy. More than that. I was his friend, on and off. We knew each other almost our whole lives.”

  “I don’t remember you,” I said.

  “This is still the South, son.” He laughed. His smile was gap-toothed and engaging. “Your dad might have been some kind of liberal school teacher, but we didn’t golf on weekends.”

  I smiled. He looked absently at the road where the funeral home cars had driven away.

  “We were more just aware of each other, I think, as years went by. It wasn’t until we both got old that we talked much. I looked in on him from time to time and sometimes stayed for a drink on the porch.”

  “I’m a little upset about the last few weeks of his life,” I said. “He came up to Canada to stay with me. He said he couldn’t come back here again. There was some kind of serious trouble in his life. Did he talk to you at all?”

  “Let’s have the doctor for coffee,” Molly interrupted. “Don’t make him stand in the parking lot.”

  He smiled at her, and answered me. “I understand you’re after some answers. I would be too. I might know a little bit. Follow me to my house, why don’t you? You shouldn’t have to make coffee for company on a day like this.”

  Molly looked around. “What about the other people? Not that there are many. Is that Wanda...what’s her name, Sutton? Do you know her?”

  “Yes, it is, and yes I do,” he said, looking at the church steps where the large man helped the older woman toward the parking lot. “Wanda Sutton and her son Arthur.”

  I decided to lie. “Any chance you could introduce us? My dad mentioned that she was a good friend of his.”

  He shook his head slightly. “I don’t know about friends. Maybe a kind of friends. She knew your dad as long as I did, since we were all kids. I don’t know that she’ll want an introduction from me, though.”

  “Well, I’ll do it,” Molly said. “Let’s invite them for coffee.”

  She started off and as quickly turned around and looked at the doctor. “I’m presumptuous, aren’t I? I shouldn’t ask them over to your house.”

  He laughed and waved her off. “Go ahead, by all means,” he called. “You might get your hand bit though.” More quietly he said to me, “Wanda Sutton’s not likely to have coffee in my house, trust me on that.”

  I watched Molly cross to the couple on the steps. They appeared to bristle when she approached and then to r
elax as she spoke to them. I could see Molly’s smile and her animation; she wrote on a scrap of paper and gave it to them. The older woman looked at it and put it in her purse. The group of them looked across at us. Beside me the doctor raised a hand in a greeting that was not returned.

  Molly walked back and joined us. “She said no. She’s not that bad, though.” We headed for our cars. “Her caretaker is a little protective.”

  “Her son,” Roy Tull said. “She’s probably more his caretaker than he is hers. He’s one of those men who are more comfortable in a jail than out. Sometimes if they go into the system early enough, the outside world is impossible for them.”

  We stopped beside his car, an elderly but immaculate Lincoln. He got in and spoke to us from his open window. “Follow me. It’s only a minute or two from here.”

  We followed his car as it made its stately way through the streets of Marietta’s old section. Every turn was signaled well in advance and executed carefully. The black paint gleamed.

  “I like him,” Molly said. “There’s something very...decent about him.”

  “The doctor? I do too. I never pictured my dad having any friends. Makes me glad.”

  A few blocks from the square in the middle of town, the doctor turned into a narrow brick driveway. I pulled the rental car to the curb, and Molly and I got out.

  “What a beautiful old house,” she said to me. “Something looks wrong with it, though, doesn’t it?”

  The building was terra cotta brick, with dark green shutters. It sat well back on a lawn of St. Augustine grass shaded by magnolias. The plantings were old and lush.

  “What is it?” I asked. “What do you see that’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s tilted, I think. It’s slanted over.”

  I looked at the house. It did appear to tilt slightly to the right. The effect was odd.

  “I think the lawn is just sloped, Molly, not the house. It is a bit weird when you notice it.”

  The old doctor crossed the lawn from the drive and met us at the front door. “Saw you looking.” He smiled. “House is crooked. One end is sinking. Started having a problem about five years ago.”