Slob dje-1

by Rex Miller

  "Okay," she said.

  "And no putting up bearicades, either. It's too em-bear-using, if you know what I mean." Lee Anne was laughing at the routine and he kept it up. So she had to show him George and Eichord had a long talk with the panda, and finally ended up back downstairs. Edie had been listening to every word of it and suddenly realized she'd been grinning from ear to ear for the last few minutes. They came back into the kitchen hand in hand, Lee leading him quite contentedly, both utterly charmed by the other.

  "That was very nice of you to take so much ti— "

  "Mom, I asked Mr. Eye-cord to stay for dinner is that okay?"

  "I really can't," he said before she could have a chance to be totally flustered by it, "but that's very sweet of you, Lee Anne. Thanks." He seemed nice. He seemed different now too.

  "I have to get back downtown," he said, and so very obviously didn't that before she could catch herself she said, "We'd like for you to stay and have a bite with us. We're only having hot dogs. How about it?"

  She smiled at him and he felt so warm all of a sudden it kind of stunned him and the usually glib Jack Eichord just stood there like a schmuck and went, "Uh—" Brilliant, he thought. "No. I appreciate it. That is very nice." He was heading for the door. He felt like he was slogging through wet cement.

  "Please," she said, with sufficient sincerity that he turned. She was finally snapping out of her anger enough to have sensed what it was he had been going for and she realized that he was probably a pretty decent cop, trying to do what amounted to an impossible task. And she saw herself as having been a little bitchy, whether justified or not, and she decided she'd make amends.

  "If you don't have to be somewhere for supper right away, please stay. We'd enjoy having your company. Just hot dogs. Nothing fancy and no trouble." She told him with her eyes that she wasn't being polite and he stood there saying yes and felt a small hand pluck the hat out of his hand and the suffusion of warmth from a family start reaching out and touching him unexpectedly.

  And something funny happened. Suddenly they were looking at each other and seeing a man and woman instead of the adversaries they'd been looking at before. And everything tilted a little, and Edie felt so funny as she was putting little slivers of cheese inside the split franks and putting them inside the microwave, and she was so dumbfounded at what she was suddenly thinking as she looked at this detective, this perfect stranger, thinking to herself the oddest damn thing, wondering what he'd be like, and she took a deep breath and couldn't make the thought go away.

  And he looked at the back of her standing there in front of the oven with an apron over her dress and all tall and slim on those long, great-looking legs, and the look of her just came out of nowhere and destroyed him. He knew it was only because it had been so long since he had been in a situation like this, a real home, when it wasn't the home of one of his colleagues, and with an eligible young woman cooking him dinner, a lovely woman in fact, and not some one-night stand he'd picked up somewhere or the other way around. And the sight of her in heels, all that leg, and the little apron, with her back turned, just demolished him. And inside he went, Jesus, man, get a hold of yourself, are you nuts or what?

  And inside Edie Was thinking with her back turned, What am I letting myself in for here? And sensing that he was looking at her and not really minding it so much but just wondering what was going on and then thinking she'd been imagining the whole thing. It was ridiculous. Shape up. And with a tilt of her head and a feeling of relief she turned and their eyes locked, and hell the old cliches like "chemistry" have been so abused you can't even say them with a straight face but that's what it was, a chemical thing between them happening in spite of their best intentions, happening for no reason, coming out of nowhere, a thing that worked its way out of the secret heart of a person somehow and warms on its way up and then comes out of the eyes all hot and hungry.

  This didn't even make a lick of sense she told herself and what are you doing and hold on and whoa and oh it's too late now, she thinks, sinking down into something that is pulling her like the current of a river of mighty whirlpools, and she tries not to let it show and feels the hot red flush of her cheeks and almost laughs at it out loud.

  And he goes, Now wait you've got to be kidding here I'm not believing this, you go to somebody's house to ask some questions and you're looking at this woman like some love-starved teenage kid and this is some lady who lost her husband a couple of years ago and just what in hell do you think you're doing and they'll laugh you right out of the place if you and oh my God I'm failing and that wonderful awful feeling as he senses what is happening between them, wonderful if it's real, awful if it's onesided and then the chemistry is just so strong that neither of them are trying to hide it.

  And the dinner is cold and they're still there at the table just talking, talking about nothing, who remembers what, who knows what, just watching each other's mouths move, carrying on a conversation. Christ, he thinks, even the word conversation means sexual union, and he bites the insides of his lips raw to keep from laughing and telling her and yet knowing she'd understand. And now he knows that something is going to happen between them because it already is starting and she isn't saying yes or no but she is aware of something and he's going to make it happen.

  It is very important to him now not to blow it. Not to do anything stupid or oafish or frighten her in any way. This is something special. Different. He feels something and he can't really analyze it because of the hot, flooding rush of desire that flows through his loins as he looks at her and he wants this woman and aware as they both are of the incongruities he can't stop himself.

  Somehow they manage to part company that night, and of course he can't go out that door without leaving a connection, something, how the hell can he leave it so he can ask for a date, ask her out somehow, and he mumbles something about paying her back and he'd like to take her and her daughter to dinner next time mumble mumble, and now Christ almighty he's blushing like a little kid this is just unbelievable and she wants a man for the first time since she lost Ed and neither of them has said anything more provocative than the most mundane conversational things and yet—and oh and yet—they finally manage to part, leaving each other as happy if confused, very friendly strangers.

  Winslow Charles Maitland II

  W. Charles Maitland of Symington, Maitland, Eaves, and Cox turned the page and scowled. Nobody called him Charlie anymore. He had outlived his only cronies, the one or two in the firm and at the club who had enjoyed that particular distinction. The article in a decidedly left-wing newspaper was a bit of blather on the Op Ed page and it was causing W. Charles Maitland to scowl and giving him just a touch of gas. Maitland scowling was a fearsome thing. Maitland scowling in court had been enough to send more than one young legal eagle nearly into a state of cardiac arrest.

  The gist of the article was that the United States system of jurisprudence had become a sort of ultimate parasite, and the author of the piece was not the first to observe that the legal system seemed to view society as simply a food supply to keep the parasite alive. It was just this sort of irresponsible, crapulous—enough! He flung the paper as far from him as he could, which was about four and a half feet.

  He tasted the claret and set the glass down, blotting his lips on his bedsheet. He had barely touched a swallow of the wine. Even that tasted bitter to him now. He removed his glasses and rubbed his sore, reddened eyes. He put his glasses back on and reached for the volume on the bedside table.

  The old man held the rare book in his gnarled, arthritic fingers, caressing the raised gold binding and the beautifully embossed leather cover. He knew the volume the way you know your own children and he ran his hand across the smooth leather lovingly and quoted, "Where the bee sucks, there suck I. In a cowslip's bell I lie." And nothing. After something. On something. He felt a sharp pang of sorrow. An ineffable sadness of loss, mostly from losing his memory, which he had always prized, and from the impending loss of his
life, which had become of surprisingly little consequence.

  He trusted only one doctor, and the man was now near senile and at death's door himself. So he had gone to other, younger doctors whom he didn't like or respect and he learned nothing from the tiring tests that he couldn't have guessed in the first place. He was dying. It was a matter of time. A month. Two months. He was tired so much of the time now. The sickness did that to you.

  These were only his reading books, the books he kept in his apartment in the penthouse the firm kept on Lake Shore Drive. His own main library was now a museum in another city. He had cased sets of every major rarity. He touched the book as you would stroke the hand of an old friend, thinking of the book in the manner of an antiquarian bookseller: Complete set. Bound in 22.24mo, full crimson, straight-grain morocco, gilt floral borders, back gilt with fleurons, leather label, inner dentelles gilt. A nothing little book, he thought, as he caressed its spine with his gnarled fingers. He opened the cover and read.

  "Cum novo commentario ad mondu—" And his eyes ached with the effort. A nothing little book. With a great effort he managed to get out of bed and stand. He shrugged his expensive dressing gown off, letting it fall to the rich carpet, and hobbled over to the closet and got a black, cashmere coat. After some not inconsiderable struggles he got into the thing and padded across the room, out into the large penthouse apartment and over to the glass wall. One entire wall of the living-room area was floor-to-ceiling glass and it was a breathtaking view of the lake and the vista of Chicago after dark.

  Seeing it wasn't raining or snowing or doing anything wretched, he padded back across the big room and went out his front door to the elevator. He liked to go for short walks and breathe the nice, nasty smell of the taxi fumes and the downtown as they came wafting through the high-rises of the lakefront's most prestigious executive residential neighborhood. In the elevator he placed an illegal cigar in his mouth and sighed.

  His memory had slipped badly in these last years. He could no longer remember anything from one moment to the next, quite literally. The elevator purred to a stop and the door slid open almost soundlessly. He stepped out and walked through the lobby, exchanging nods with the moron doorman, and realizing as he was nearly run over by a woman walking her preposterous poodle that he was still in his bedroom slippers.

  What the fuck is the difference? he thought to himself and began walking down the street, hobbling along with his walking stick, a rich, dying old man headed nowhere. And he was still walking five minutes later when he had the little feeling. He was not one to ignore feelings. He had parlayed hunches into a fortune. And he had the feeling that someone or something was following him, stalking him. It was just a feeling he had. He hadn't seen or heard anything.

  The street was no more or less deserted than it usually was at this hour and he walked like this almost every night. He could no longer take more than four hours or so in bed each night. But something was different tonight. He detected a presence of something nearby and he couldn't quite place it but the feeling was unsettling.

  His own nature had been predatory, and he himself had been a very dangerous man. If you are dangerous and you make enemies, you will often make very dangerous enemies. There were others like himself, powerful predators, who might still wish to do him ill. It was mildly upsetting but he was too far gone to be alarmed at anything.

  Still and all, wouldn't that be the last straw? To be mugged out here on the street during his constitutional. Dying of goddamn cancer and get mugged. More than a body could stand. He decided he'd head back to the apartment and about that time a bright silver thing sliced out at him slashing out of nowhere and the phrase "nuncupative will and testament" darted past his consciousness as he tried to curse this thing but the blood from his severed throat stopped this last obloquy of thought in a bright red, surprisingly hot spurt as his heart pumped valiantly pumping his life force out into the darkened street.

  The first time together

  She had forgotten what it was like to wait for the phone to ring. Just as he'd forgotten what it was like to have to build up your nerve to do something. Two more unlikely people never waited to make a date. Both of them long beyond the dating stage. Marriages. Children. Whole histories and lives that the other one couldn't possibly fit into. Just insanity, she thought. And she wondered, for the third or fourth time, when he was going to call her.

  He was so damn excited getting ready to go see them that it started irritating him and for a few moments he almost considered calling the whole thing off. He was rushing around trying to get dressed here like it was for a night on the town with a movie star and he was taking some housewife and her kid to some burger joint or whatever. Get a hold of yourself. He took a final look at himself in the, mirror, said to hell with it, and tried to keep from running to the car.

  No matter how much he told himself that it was purely comical, he couldn't dampen the excitement he felt and the warmth that spread through him at the thought of seeing this woman again. Unordinary was the word that kept coming to mind. This was some unordinary woman he was having dinner with tonight. He caught himself humming with the radio and shook his head at the rearview mirror as he sped through all the lawbreakers hurrying home after a hard day at the office.

  He seemed to get there a lot faster than he remembered, and his heart was pounding when he pulled up in front of the suburban Lynch home and got out of the car. She and Lee Anne both heard the car door and Lee yelled out,

  "Somebody's coming," as her mother went to the door.

  She opened the door and smiled as he came up the walkway and said, "Hi."

  "Hello." His heart was in his throat. "Hungry?"

  "Always." She was completely staggered by the look of him and he was poleaxed right out of his shoes at the sight of her. Neither of them had anything to say and they just stood there dumbly in the doorway as a little face peered around her mother's skirt and said, "Hi."

  "Hi, Lee Anne. You hungry?"

  "Sure."

  "We're ready unless you'd like to come in for a drink first."

  "No thanks. I'm set if you guys are." And they headed for the car.

  "Where are we gonna go?"

  "Anywhere you say, Lee Anne. What sounds good to you?"

  "Show Biz."

  "What's that?"

  "You get pizza. You know. And there's these—uh, mechanical animals, uh—and— "

  "Maybe Jack doesn't like pizza. Maybe he'd like to go somewhere else."

  "Show Biz sounds good." Lee Anne was obviously pleased at the prospect.

  In the car he and Lee Anne had a long conversation, Lee leaning over the seat with her head between them as she answered all of his questions up to a point. He was trying to be conversational but it had been a long time since he'd spent much time in the company of a little child. He was inadvertently doing his cop thing as he rapped with her and for a short while she was polite and tried to respond to the mini-interrogation.

  "So. You sound like you've been busy since I saw you last. What do you do besides go to school?"

  "Do?"

  "You know, where do you go, like, at night after school. Do you have meetings? Do you go to church?"

  "Yeah."

  "Lee," Edie prodded, "tell Jack what you do on Monday night."

  "Monday night I go to piano and Wednesday is GA, and—"

  "GA?"

  "Girls in Action. You know—church?"

  "Um-hmm. Good. And what else?" he asked absentmindedly.

  "Thursday is Brownies. That's enough!" Edie sank down into the seat. But Eichord only laughed.

  "Yeah. You're right. That's plenty," he said smoothly, calmly, and guiding the conversation as he did so easily, and they were talking about something else.

  By the time they'd scarfed up the pizza and some of the atmosphere and Lee Anne was already getting anxious to go visit her friend, the child of Edie's best friend at whose home she'd be baby-sat this evening, Lee and Eichord were really hitting it off
. Jack thought she had to be one of the friendliest kids and the brightest youngsters he'd ever met and they were both pretty impressed with the other. Edie thought that's the way it is with eight-year-olds they either love ya' or they don't and this one was thataway about this cop. When they headed for the car, the little girl reached for Jack's hand and so it was only natural that he also took Edie's hand and they walked down the sidewalk that way all holding hands.

  The first touch of the fingers and then holding each other's hand was like plugging their fingers into a light socket. They wanted each other but there was no sense of pressure, it was something each of them knew was coming and they knew it was going to be good, and it was just a question of the right moment. One of those times when it's not in question at all, really, even though neither one of them had made any kind of a thing about it.

  The electricity between them was a living thing that flowed down through their arms and into each other's bodies and it was so beautiful that Eichord loved the moment and tried to will it to just go on and on with the three of them walking like that toward a rented car, him holding hands with this lady he barely knew and her little girl, all plugged into some inexplicable, surging electric current and inanely he thought about the old gal who told him she had electricity flowing through her and he felt like saying, "Doesn't everybody?" And inside his head he let out a silent whoop of pleasure, stopping it before it could get out around his grin, and he looked over at Edie and she was smiling too as they walked to the car touching.

  This rush of energy was setting both of them on fire and it was, probably a good thing the kid was in the backseat, Eichord thought, or I'd be all over this woman like some kid in a goddamn drive-in. That thought was enough to calm him down a little bit and she could see him visibly withdraw just a notch when they got in the car and she sat very still and tried to think about anything. What did she think about normally? For just that moment she felt like someone else had invaded her skin. She wasn't used to any of this and she wasn't sure that she liked it. And that's the way it went for the next fifteen minutes or so until they got Lee tucked away at Sandi and Mike's.