I let her undress me, not helping. When we were both naked, she pulled me down onto the bunk and twined herself around me, her hand moving expertly between my legs. Into my ear she breathed, "I've missed you, oh God, I've missed you so much, I've missed being with you like this."
Hot, moist, whispered lies.
Her caresses grew more insistent. Always before, the touch of her hands and the sweetness of her mouth and the feel of her bare flesh had fired my blood. No more. I felt nothing for her. Numb below the waist. Dead soldier down there. None of the manipulations of fingers, mouth, tongue produced so much as a twitch.
I'd found out what I wanted to know about myself.
After a while she sighed and gave up. Lay with her head on my belly, still stroking me but in a different way now. Absently, as if she were offering distracted comfort to a sick pet.
"Poor Richard," she said. "Did I do this to you?"
I said, "You broke my heart and my pecker both."
She laughed.
She thought I was making a joke. She thought it was funny.
Funny!
I found out something else then.
I found out just how much I hated her.
A short time later, before she went away, she said, "You can reach me at JoEllen's. I left her address and phone number in the bathroom."
"Head," I said.
"Or I'll come see you again, if that's all right. Tomorrow or the next day, after you've had time to think it over."
I didn't say anything.
"If you let me come back, you'll never regret it. I promise I'll fix what I did to your pecker, too. It'll be just like it was before."
I didn't say anything.
"Think hard, Richard. One more chance."
She sounded so sincere. She was sincere, because she was fighting for her free ride. But the sincerity wouldn't last. She didn't love me, she didn't give a damn about me. The only thing she was sorry for was that her life hadn't worked out the way she wanted it to, the only thing she was ashamed of was that she'd had to come begging to me, the only person she cared about was herself.
If I took her back I knew exactly what would happen. For a while she would make an effort to live up to her promises. She'd be attentive, loving, deferential. She wouldn't argue or complain or make demands of any kind. She would curtail her drinking and her pill-popping. She would pretend to like living on a thirty-four-foot yawl, go out on cruises with me and pretend to enjoy herself. But in six months or so, boredom and restlessness would set in and she would regress—gradually at first, then not so gradually—into all her old habits and excesses. The bitch would take over. And the bitch was always hungry.
Oh, I knew her so well.
I knew myself so well, too. Knew that if I turned her away, gave her cause to hate me as much as I hated her, to run away again or, worse, to take up with another Fred Cotler, I would never feel safe again. I'd never be safe again. So I didn't have to think about her proposal. I knew all along what my answer would be.
I was going to give Annalise her one last chance. Not for her sake, but for mine.
I kept her squirming on the hook for nearly a week. Didn't call her or go to see her at JoEllen's; forced her to keep coming to me. The next two times she showed up, I put her off. The third time she was tearful and pathetic, ready to get down on her knees—to blow me right there in public, if that was what it took. JoEllen wasn't going to let her freeload much longer, she was almost out of money, the only jobs she could get on the island were shitty ones—clerking and waitressing—and they didn't pay much, so how was she going to live? I pretended to take pity on her. AU right, I said, she could move in with me on Windrunner on a trial basis. She threw her arms around me, kissed me. Cried a little, too—the second and last time I'd seen her cry. They might even have been real tears.
During that week I saw Bone and told him Annalise was back on the island and most of what she'd said to me. I could see the disapproval in his eyes when I said I was going to let her move in with me. He wasn't a man to butt into another's personal business, but he couldn't quite contain himself in this case. He disliked Annalise not only because of what she'd done to me, but because of her treatment of him in their few brief encounters. I think he knew she was prejudiced before I even suspected it. Blacks are much more sensitive in that regard than whites, with good cause.
"What you want to do that for, Richard?" he asked. "Take her back?"
"Everybody deserves a second chance."
"No, mon. Not everybody."
"You wouldn't give your second wife another chance if she showed up?"
He barked a humorless laugh. "Kick her ass straight into the harbor, she ever come round me again."
"Maybe she hurt you worse than Annalise hurt me," I said.
"Maybe so. But a woman treats a mon bad once, her gonna do it again."
"I have to take the risk, Bone. She's in a bad way. She knows what a mess she made of things and she's sorry and she wants to make amends."
"That what she say now."
"She seems to mean it."
"You still love her?"
"No. Not anymore, not ever again."
"Sex, mon? Plenty of women around for that."
"It's not sex, either. Call it pity. There's all the history between us, too, the good years we had. You know what I mean."
"Only history that matters is what you learn from it," Bone said.
"Meaning don't make the same mistake twice."
"You're my friend, Cap'n. I don't like to see you hurt again."
"I won't be," I said. "I'm going into this with my eyes wide open. If she pulls any of the same shit as before, she's gone for good. I told her that and she knows I'm dead serious."
He shrugged and picked up the length of 5/8-inch nylon line he'd been splicing. "Your business, mon. But from now on, don't make it Bone's."
His meaning was plain. I was welcome to stop by any time, but I'd better not bring Annalise. As long as she was living on Windrunner, he wouldn't come calling. If I wanted to go sailing with him, it would be just the two of us, and preferably on Conch Out. All of which was fine with me. I had no intention of inflicting Annalise on Bone, or on anyone other than myself.
* * *
She came on board with one suitcase and a small cosmetic case. The sum total of her worldly possessions, she said. She made herself right at home, commingling her stuff with mine as if there hadn't been a two-day, much less a two-year, gap in our relationship. Took over the shopping and the cooking, did any other chores I asked her to. Even made an effort to learn nautical terms and how Windrunner functioned. When I said I was taking the yawl out on an overnight cruise and asked her to go along, she agreed without argument. And as I'd expected, she pretended to enjoy herself—easy enough for her, since the trades were gentle and the seas calm both days.
For the first three weeks, she spent as much time with me as I would allow. Then one day she said she'd like to go to Magens Bay to work on her tan and would I mind if she took the Mini. I told her to go ahead, I didn't expect her to be my shadow. After that, she went to the beach whenever I didn't need the car. But she was always back by early evening, in time for supper, and she was always sober. The only serious drinking she did was with me in the evenings, matching me glass for glass but not exceeding my limit. During the day she kept herself lightly sedated with Valium; I saw her popping tablets a couple of times when she thought I wasn't looking. She had a fairly large supply in her cosmetic case. I knew that because I checked one day when she was out. Either she'd brought the drug with her from New York, or she'd found an island source through JoEllen Hall.
It was not easy for me to get used to being with her again. Sometimes, when I looked at her, the dark feelings would roil up and I'd have to stifle the urge to reach for her throat. Mostly I was able to ignore her. To think of her as just another piece of equipment, like the chemical toilet or the bilge pump.
Nights were the worst, sleeping next to her, havi
ng her persist in trying to cure my impotence. She kept making the effort—for her sake, not for mine; Annalise wasn't capable of going without sexual gratification for long, and I had no desire to do what was necessary to satisfy her in any other than the usual way. She wouldn't take no for an answer; my failure and my indifference presented a personal challenge to her, and frustration and determination resulted in methods straight out of the Kama Sutra. Most of the time, her touch made my skin crawl. But the flesh never totally forgets, and eventually it responded even as my mind cringed. The first time it happened, she uttered a cry that was more triumph than desire and climbed on top and moaned and thrashed around ecstatically, though the coupling couldn't have done much for her because it did nothing for me. I lasted no longer and felt no more pleasure than I had with Pearl.
How do I think she felt about living with me again? I can tell you exactly how she felt. The close quarters and the lack of sex bothered her more than she let on; so did the fact that I refused to alter my usual routine for her in any signifcant way. Now and then I took her out for a meal at Harry's Dockside Cafe, and twice I let her come along on drives up to Crown Mountain. Otherwise we did nothing together except eat, drink, sleep, and, on the one other occasion she managed to resurrect the dead soldier, have unsatisfying sex. In spite of all that, she was relieved to be back on her free ride. And she viewed the status quo as temporary. Given enough time, she thought she could manipulate me into providing another house for her to live in and more money, more possessions, more freedom. She had no real insight into the man I had become since her dual betrayals, and so she underestimated me completely. Sly and calculating but not very bright, that was Annalise.
The second time we went sailing, the weather conditions weren't quite as favorable. She had no sea legs at all, spent most of the voyage lying sick in the cabin. The next time I went out, she begged me to let her stay ashore with JoEllen. I could have punished her by insisting, but I didn't. I'm not sadistic, and cold hate doesn't need to be fed.
I saw Bone regularly. On Conch Out, at Marsten Marine, at the Bar or one of the Frenchtown watering holes. Twice I went sailing with him, once for four days among the islands off the coast of Puerto Rico. With Bone I could relax, be myself. With Annalise I was always on guard, always conscious of waiting for the bitch to appear.
The arrangement with her lasted without incident until after the holidays. She gave me a Christmas present, a small native woodcarving; I gave her nothing at all. Maybe that was what triggered her reversion to type, I don't know. Not that it happened all of a sudden. She'd been losing patience with me and the way we lived for some time before she quit trying to hide it.
It started with little complaints, little prodding suggestions. Why don't we take the ferry to St. John or over to Tortola for the day? Why don't we go to a good downtown restaurant for dinner, or to Bam-boushay or one of the other dance clubs? She liked living on the yawl, she really did, but the cabin was so confining, couldn't we maybe think about getting a small apartment? The more I said no, the more frustrated she became and the more the bitch began to show through. She stayed out later and later on her beach days, returning more or less sober but with liquor on her breath. Lay around on Windrunner other days, stoned on Valium. Began drinking more than I did in the evenings. Stopped making an effort to cook decent meals, serving cold makeshift lunches and suppers instead. Passed a snide remark about Bone when I came back from a two-day cruise with him. Came in after nine one evening, half in the bag, with the half-hearted excuse that it was JoEllen's birthday and besides, why couldn't she have a little fun once in a while?
The second time she came back late, the night before Bone and I were scheduled for another sail, she had a different excuse. She'd met a couple from Dallas, really interesting people, the man was a doctor and his wife wrote children's books, and they'd invited her to dinner at Blackbeard's Castle, and she didn't see why she shouldn't go, we never went out anywhere, she was practically a prisoner on this boat—I said, "What's that on your neck?"
". . . What?"
"On the left side of your neck there, that mark."
She clapped her hand to the spot. A flush crawled up into her cheeks. She dragged a pocket mirror out of her purse, held it up, and tilted her head so she could see her neck.
"Oh, that," she said. "That's just a scrape. The door to the stall in the ladies' room stuck, and when I jerked it open the edge of it cought me."
"Doesn't look like a scrape to me."
"Well, that's what it is."
"More like a hickey."
"For God's sake, Richard! Would you like it better if I told you I was bitten by a vampire?"
"You've got the look, too," I said.
"What look?"
"The well-screwed look."
Her gaze flicked away from mine, just for an instant. "You think I was with a man, is that it? Some other man?"
"Were you?"
"No! I wish I had been well screwed today, but I wasn't, and haven't been in so long I've forgotten what it's like. Why are you so suspicious? I told you how I got the scrape and that's the truth."
No, it wasn't.
She'd been with a man, all right.
Bone and I went on our sail, a five-day trip up through the Mona Passage between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. When we got back, Annalise pretended to be glad to see me. But it was obvious what she'd been doing while I was gone. No more love bites—she must have read the riot act to her lover about marking her—but she still wore that look of smug sexual satisfaction that few men or women can quite hide. And she didn't come near me in bed that night.
That was the final straw.
My estimate of how long it would take for Annalise to blow her last chance had been six months. I was too generous. It took her exactly five months to reach my breaking point.
You remember what I said earlier about love? That it's an individual experience and you don't really have any idea of what it is or what its effect will be until it happens to you? Well, the same is true of hate.
Hate isn't just the flip side of love, or a crossing of that thin Une everybody keeps yapping about. It's more, much more.
Hate is dry ice held close to raw nerve ends, so that you never stop feeling its burning cold.
Hate is a succubus that whispers and moans in your sleep.
Hate is a disease that burrows through the dark side, like a slow-moving, flesh-eating bacterium.
Hate is another word for death.
I think I knew all along that Annalise would have to die.
It was never a conscious consideration, yet it must have been there in my subconscious all along. Bone was wrong. You can't run away from a poisonous viper that has bitten you twice before; sooner or later you have to kill it before it sinks its poisonous fangs into you again. If you don't, then you'll be the one to die. As simple, as elemental as that.
What I had to do is murder in the eyes of the law, yes, but not in my eyes. To me it was not even an act of aggression. It was justifiable self-defense, the same as Coder's death; the only difference is that with Annalise it was necessarily premeditated. There was no real malice involved. The decision, the final act were as cold as the hate. A cold equation, but not a cold-blooded one. The distinction is important.
I am not a murderer.
The blame for Annalise's death was entirely hers. You can see that, can't you? There was no hate in me until she put it there. If she had stayed with me from the beginning, stayed faithful to me, she would still be alive today. If she hadn't betrayed me to Cotler and helped him try to blackmail me, she'd be alive today. If she'd remained on Long Island instead of crawling back to St. Thomas, she'd be alive today. If she'd kept her promises after I gave her her one last chance, it would've amounted to the viper emptying its own poison sac and my hate would have lain dormant and I'd have gone on living with her. And she'd be alive today.
I didn't kill her, when you look at it in that perspective. I didn't kill Cotler, ei
ther. I was merely the instrument, like a gun or knife or cut-glass decanter, by which they died.
Fred Cotler killed himself.
And so did Annalise.
It's one thing to devise a boldly audacious scheme to steal a large sum of money and then carry it out with systematic precision. It's another to destroy a person in a moment of irresistible impulse and blind rage, and then to improvise a method of covering up the mess. And it's a third thing entirely, so much more than just problem-solving, to carefully plot someone's death. You can't design a method strictly by using the principles of mathematics, as an intellectual exercise; you can't approach it with emotional detachment, or hurry up and put it into action. There's a hell of a difference between executing an abstract equation and executing a human viper.
The Crimes of Jordan Wise Page 19
