"C'mon, baby," he said, trying to force her up and off him, but the steering wheel kept her in place. "We agreed. That has to wait until everything is perfect. A beautiful hotel suite, you in a silk gown. Candles, music. It won't be long now. Be patient."
"I don't want to wait anymore. If you insist on perfect, you're never going to have anything. Nothing is ever perfect. Besides, what's the difference between being in my mouth and being in my—" She paused, not wanting to ruin the mood by saying something too crude. "Between my mouth and between me!"
He was ready, more than ready. She felt the telltale twitch where she held him, as if Zeke's body were arguing with his head. Natalie began kissing him lightly—mouth, eyelids, ears. When he spoke again, his voice was faint, unconvinced.
"The kids—mere's always a chance Isaac will try to make a run for it if we stay out too long. He's always looking for a chance to get away."
"His eyes won't open tonight. I put a little vodka in their cocoa."
"Really?" He put his hand up to her mouth, trying to push her back. She sucked his fingers, but he snatched his hand away and grabbed her chin so she had to look at him. "Where'd you get vodka?"
"At the shopping center, where I bought the cocoa and the pull-ups."
"So you had this all planned."
"I need you, Zeke."
"You have me. Don't you remember anything? Back at Jessup, visiting me? We held hands on the top of the table, not underneath. We held hands and we made our plans, and wasn't that a thousand times better than anything you ever felt before?"
"Yes, but… we're together now. There's no reason to wait anymore." She started to weep. "You don't love me. If you loved me, you would make love to me."
"I love you more than anyone has loved you or ever will. I love you so much that I won't let you treat me like one of the men you used to be with, back when you turned tricks in parking lots just so you'd have enough money to buy makeup and go to the movies."
"You always said you didn't mind, that you wouldn't hold that against me."
"I don't. But what we have has to be different."
"It's different, all right. Are you sure you're not a fag? Is that what happened to you in Terre Haute? You decided you like boys?"
He slapped her, and her tears were heavy enough to make her choke. She tried to get out of the car, but he seized her wrist. She wanted to rake her nails down his face, draw blood, show him that she would never again allow such treatment. Yet she was almost grateful for his hold on her because she honestly didn't know what would happen if he let her go. Her arms might go anywhere, strike anything, and there was no doubt in her mind that she could shatter the windows, the windshield, Zeke's face. Her own rages frightened her and she had tried hard, since the children were born, to control them. Zeke had brought them back. She could never be completely in control when Zeke was around.
"Just like my father," she said between hiccups. "Just like my father, the one thing you said you'd never do."
"You mustn't speak to me like that, ever," he said, holding tight to her wrist. "I can't allow that. Look, you're stressed out, it's understandable. You've been a trouper. All I ask is that you be patient for a few more weeks."
"Weeks? How many weeks? What is it that we have to wait for?"
"Just for some details to be worked out. Trust me. Have I ever lied to you?"
The fact was, he had not. Once, just once, he had withheld something from her, but even that had been from love, for love. Zeke had not trusted her with the information about his federal time at first, fearing that Natalie wouldn't allow herself to love him if she knew. But that wasn't really a lie.
"Have I ever wavered in my love for you? Did I ever give up?"
His voice was pitched low now, husky. This was the voice that had come to her in hundreds of arranged phone calls over the years, collect calls made to Lana's number. The complicated plans and timetables that these conversations had required had been as thrilling as a spy movie to Natalie. It got to the point where her blood would race just looking at a phone.
"When we met, you'd already had sex with dozens and dozens of men. Did those men love you?"
Natalie shook her head.
"For the past ten years, you've been married to a man who thinks he loves you, but he loves a person we made up, you and I. Would Mark Rubin love you as you are, if he knew everything about you? Would he forgive what I've forgiven?"
She rubbed her face against his shirt front, saying no and drying her tears at the same time.
"Who loves you?"
"You do."
"Who will always love you?"
"You, Zeke, you."
"Who do you love?" Almost singing it now. "Who do you love?"
"You, Zeke, you."
It was an old refrain, one repeated in letters and telephone calls.
"Did your mother love you?"
"No."
"Your father?"
"No."
"Does anyone else love you as much as I do?"
She broke the ritual. "The children."
Zeke paused. "Yes, the children. The ones you drugged tonight, so you could come out here and crawl all over me. The children love you, Natalie. But do you love them? Really, truly?"
"Of course I do."
"Don't be so quick. Think about what I'm asking. If you had to choose between me and them, who would you choose, Natalie?"
"Don't ask me that. I could never make that choice."
"I won't, Natalie. But Mark will. He'll never let them be with you and me. And he has all that money, which he'll use to hire lawyers and grind you down. In the end you won't have your children, but you and I will be out whatever cash we've managed to put away. Did that even occur to you?"
"They're mine," she said. "They would be lost without me."
"Well, then, I guess you've made your choice. Them over me."
"I didn't say that."
"Natalie—I'm going to be honest. I'm not sure I can love Mark's children like a father. I think they'd be better off with him, with their real father."
"They like you," she said. And she believed they would, one day, when they were settled. Isaac would come to see how extraordinary Zeke was, and Penina would stop wetting herself, and the twins would give up the gibberish they now spoke most of the time.
"But I'm not their father, and they're not my children. I want my own children. Did you know that? I want my own babies with you." He reached under her skirt, began moving his hand back and forth. She tried to resist it, but their routine was so perfected, so efficient, that it took no more than a minute for him to finish her.
"Okay," he said, signaling that it was her turn to do the same for him. She bent down, her tears still fresh in her mouth, a pulse pounding in her temple. He needed her.
* * *
WEDNESDAY
* * *
Chapter Twenty-six
TESS MOVED HER ALDEN ACROSS THE WATER WITH Swift, sure strokes, but rowing could not soothe her this morning. Even as her body found peace in the automatic rhythms, her brain revved, like an engine in overdrive, stuck on one thought. She had promised not to reveal to Rubin anything that Boris Petrovich told her. But she had made no such promises about the men in the group. So where did Larry Kirsch's confidences fit in? Her shell skimmed across the water, and the morning sounds all seemed to coalesce into a refrain of advice: Call him. Call him. Call him. Tell him. Tell him. Tell him.
She did the first part, reaching him on his cell when she got off the water at seven, but her resolve crumbled when she heard the eagerness in his voice, the optimism.
"Did you find out anything?"
"Not much," she said. "But the men all spoke so fondly of you, I can't help thinking that Amos would open up more if you came with me to Grantsville." Open up and tell you that your wife was sort of a whore before she met you, which would keep me from having to inform you of same.
"Really?" His voice seemed to brighten. "The men liked the group?"
"Really. And this may be a key interview. The one person who keeps coming up, wherever I go, is Lana Wishnia—she was even on your father-in-law's visiting list—and she was married to Amos briefly. Plus, Mickey Harvey said Amos was tight with your father-in-law as well. So I think it's worth the three-hour drive, if you can afford a day away from work."
"I have to make a trip to our storage facility, which is out near Finksburg but sort of en route. Could you be there within an hour?"
"I'll meet you there," Tess promised.
What would she do if Amos didn't conveniently drop the bombshell she needed him to drop? What were the ethics of withholding information from a client, in hopes that someone else would be the bearer of bad news? Tess thought about asking the SnoopSisters, then decided against it. The only problem with the Sisters was that they tended to say what they really thought.
The Robbins & Sons warehouse stood on a frontage road along I-795, just inside Carroll County. The area had probably been farmland as recently as a decade ago, and there were still cornfields to three sides of the plain rectangular building. There was nothing to identify the unmarked structure as the furrier's storage facility, a prudent decision in Tess's opinion. Why advertise the off-season home of hundreds of fur coats? But Tess wondered if she had come to the right place when she noticed that the only car in the lot was a pale green Jaguar, a sporty two-seater. Rubin usually drove a dark blue Cadillac Seville. Yet it was Rubin who emerged from the building, locking a series of dead bolts behind him, then testing the door to make sure the warehouse was secure.
"A Jaguar?" she asked.
"It was my fortieth-birthday gift to myself." He had the good sense to look a little sheepish. "I don't drive it as much as I thought I would, so I figured it could use a nice long spell of highway driving. Sorry to get you up so early, but if we get there by noon, we could be back by four or five—give me a chance to check on the store before closing."
"I've been up since six, putting in an hour on the water." Tess ran her fingers through her hair, still damp and curly from her quick shower.
"On the water?"
"I rowed in college, and I still work out in a single, although I don't compete anymore."
"College crew, very preppy. Have you heard about the crew team at Yeshiva University?"
"I didn't even know they had one."
"Oh, yes, but they were terrible for years. So they finally decided to send their captain to Cambridge, see how the Ivy League schools do it, and it changed everything for them."
"How so?"
"The captain came back and said"—Rubin smacked his forehead with his palm, in the style of a man having an epiphany—" 'It's supposed to be eight people rowing and one person yelling'."
Tess was so unaccustomed to Rubin's making jokes that it took her a bewildered moment to laugh. But he was clearly pleased by her guffaw, belated though it might be.
"A crew-Jew joke! You're in a good mood this morning."
"It's a pretty day, got that nice crisp autumn feel. And it feels good to be doing something. I was wrong not to tell you about Natalie's father, I see that now. I was so wrapped up in the idea that it was a shanda, something I must never speak of outside the family. But he didn't tell you anything, did he?"
"No, he didn't."
"So I was crazy, all those years, worrying about nothing. What a waste."
Burdened with the information she was keeping from Rubin, Tess could only nod noncommittally.
The Jaguar drove the way that Tess's greyhound sometimes ran when seized by memories of the track—smooth and fast, with a kind of carefree rhapsody.
"My midlife-crisis car," Rubin said, almost apologetic. "And, of course, I couldn't buy German."
"Of course? Oh, of course. I get to thinking that all cars are the same, mere modes of transportation. But this really is a different ride from my fourteen-year-old Toyota."
"Do you want to try it?"
"No, I'd be too nervous behind the wheel of something whose value exceeds my net worth."
"It's not that dear."
"And my net worth isn't that high."
They had already covered over ninety miles, reaching the point where the roads, shaped by the demands of the Appalachians, started to climb and curve. Mark Rubin was relishing the drive as much as the car. In sunglasses, his usual dark suit and tie—shirt immaculate, thick hair gleaming—he had an almost James Bond-like savoir faire, Tess thought. Assuming one could imagine James Bond wearing a yarmulke.
"I have to ask you something," she said.
" 'Have to'—that construction actually means a person wants to ask something but knows it's rude."
"Not rude, but naive perhaps. Anyway, the yarmulke—what's the point?"
"It reminds me that God is always above me."
"You could wear a hat. Besides, if you need a piece of cloth to remind you where God is, how sturdy is your faith?"
"At some point rituals cannot be deconstructed. The acceptance of ritual is part of faith. Why take communion? Why bow to the east in prayer?"
"I don't do any of those things, but at least they can be done in private. A yarmulke—it announces you're a Jew."
"So?"
"So did six-pointed stars pinned to jackets, and everyone agrees those were a bad idea."
"One is a choice, the other an attempt to stigmatize."
"But having made the choice, you single yourself out, which can lead people to stigmatize you anyway."
"Single myself out? There are more than a hundred thousand Jews in the Baltimore area. I'm far from alone."
"I mean—the yarmulke tells everyone you're Jewish, which invites everything you do to be viewed through the prism of all sorts of prejudices and judgments." Tess was thinking about how tough he had been in negotiation, the day she had overheard him on the phone. His contact in Montreal probably ascribed Rubin's behavior to his religion—assuming the Montreal supplier wasn't a Jew himself. "Don't you ever want to pass through the world anonymously, responsible for only yourself?"
"Look, Tess, I can take my yarmulke off, but what will that gain me? Do you think that Mark Rubin—seller of furs, resident of Pikesville, owner of a striking yet prominent nose"—he thrummed the tip of said nose with an index finger—"is going to pass? I've never wanted to be anyone but who I am. No offense, but your views on religion are a little warped."
"Warped?"
"Maybe that's too strong a word. But—you'll forgive me a little dime-store psychology—just because you like to have it both ways doesn't mean everyone else wants to play the same game."
"What do you mean?" He had, however accidentally, echoed an accusation made against Tess not long ago, although in a different context.
"You like this game you play, shifting between identities, confusing people. With me, you act like a shiksa naif. But I bet when it suits you, when you're around more unambiguously goyish types, you play the Jew."
He had scored a bull's-eye, but Tess didn't see any reason to concede his point.
"I'm not playing anything. I'm legitimately stranded between two religions."
"Do you believe in God?"
"That's awfully personal."
Rubin laughed. It was the first time Tess had heard his laugh, and it was full-bodied, extremely appealing, the kind of laugh that made her want to keep saying funny things.
"Tess, you've asked me about my marriage, my sex life, my wife's convict father, and my finances. I think I'm entitled to ask whether you believe in God."
"Okay, okay. I… do."
"Why?"
"I'm not sure I could explain it."
"Maybe there's your yarmulke."
"I don't get it."
"Think about it."
Tess might have said something more, but as they crossed the next summit, the horizon turned gray-green and the air changed perceptibly. A sudden drenching rainstorm began moments later, a downpour so complete that visibility was reduced to virtually nothing. The scenario happened t
o match one of Tess's recurring nightmares, one in which she was driving but could not see—because of weather or simply because her eyes refused to open.
"Pull over," she urged Rubin in a tight, dry voice.
"It's safer to keep going, as long as I can see the taillights of the car ahead."
"Yeah, assuming he's still on the road. You could follow him right off the side of the mountain, too."
Rubin did not bother to reply, just drove in grim silence. The freak storm lasted no more than a minute or two, but Tess spent every endless second awaiting a plunge over the side of the highway or the sudden jolt of a runaway truck on the Jaguar's bumper. She would have felt so much better if she were behind the wheel.
The rain ended as abruptly as it began, stopping completely instead of tapering off. Over the next few miles, Tess and Mark passed dozens of cars on the shoulder—cars with crumpled fronts or crushed backs, surrounded by dazed-looking people. At least no one appeared to have been badly injured.
"See?" Mark said.
"See what?"
"They pulled over and ended up having accidents."
"You don't know that. They could have pulled over after the collisions."
"Do you always insist on having the last word?"
Tess opened her mouth, saw the trap he had set for her, and shut it, shaking her head emphatically instead. Rubin's laugh boomed out again, but she could not quite recapture the pleasant mood. The rain had seemed prophetic, a reminder that they had crossed some unseen boundary and all natural laws were now suspended.
Amos Greif lived outside Grantsville on a large farm, a place of several hundred acres judging by the long expanse of barbed-wire fence that fronted the roadway, no trespassing signs were posted every few feet, and when the Jaguar turned into the long, dirt driveway, two mutts raced it for much of the way, dropping out only because the distance was so great, almost two miles by the odometer.
Tess hummed a few lines from the old Deliverance banjo duet.
By a Spider's Thread Page 19
