Moving Targets

by William J. Reynolds

The smile broadened. “Not exactly.” She stepped over to a Scandinavian-looking wall unit across from the sofa and folded open a cabinet. Behind the doors were a television set and, on a second shelf beneath it, a small, streamlined VCR. Koosje started both machines, found a tape from among a row of plastic boxes elsewhere in the unit, and eased the black cassette into the front of the machine. A violent snowstorm took over the TV screen, replaced after a few seconds with the image of a large fireplace, blazing away.

  “Astounding,” I said. “And more plot than most television programs, too.”

  “Someone gave it to me about a year ago. It plays for an hour, but I’ve only looked at it for five minutes or so. The problem is, you can’t have a fire going and watch television at the same time.” She made an adjustment to the color, then came and sat beside me on the couch. It was made of some corduroyish material, and there seemed too much of it for the amount of stuffing in the cushings. The result was that you didn’t so much sit on it as sink into it. And so we did.

  Then again there was a distinct, and distinctly familiar, awkwardness. Koosje reached for her fluted glass, resting on the coffee table at our knees, but I put a hand on her wrist and stopped her, pulled her toward me, and kissed her, first lightly, experimentally, then with increased boldness. It ended and she lay back against the cushions, the barest innuendo of a smile at her pale lips. I picked up her glass and offered it to her “Champagne?”

  She took it, tasted it, and rested the smooth rim against her lower lip. “What made you call me tonight?”

  “I don’t know, Doctor. Could it be that I was attracted to you this morning and I wanted to get to know you better?”

  “Mm. Could be. Is it?”

  Time for a smooth line, boy; don’t want to say it was because of another love gone wrong, as the songs have it. Time for a nice white little half-or one-quarter-truth to spare her feelings and save the night. I looked into the video hearth, looked back at Koosje. Ah, what the hell. Like they say, honesty is one of the better policies. “Partly,” I confessed. “The other part is I’ve got this on-again off-again marriage that is off again, for good, I think, and I didn’t want to be alone. Hell of a note for a first date, isn’t it?”

  She shrugged delicately. “Loneliness isn’t the worst reason for men and women to get together, so long as it’s not the only reason. I just had the feeling you were distracted, and I wondered if there was anything I could do.”

  “There is. You’re doing it.” I kissed her. “You’re very perceptive.”

  “I’m a good shrink,” she said easily. “Well—pretty good.”

  “Amy?”

  She leaned forward and placed her glass on the table, tracing her fingers along its stem. “Mm,” she repeated. It was a habit of hers, I had noticed during dinner, that half purr, half growl originating deep in her throat and meaning yes, or no, or nothing at all. Now, evidently, it meant yes. She released the fluted glass and reclined. “She won’t let me in.” Frustration tightened her voice, emphasizing her faint Dutch accent. “She holds back. She lets me come so close”—she held her left thumb and forefinger an inch apart—“and then she pulls away again, into herself.”

  I said, “It’s been only a couple of days. Based on what I saw yesterday morning, you’ve made fantastic progress. Give it time.”

  She said, “I feel there is no time; I feel as if I have her suspended between two worlds and if I don’t move quickly to pull her firmly and completely into our world, then I lose her to … her world. The world you saw her in yesterday morning.”

  “Jesus,” I breathed into my glass.

  “Mm. Oh, I shouldn’t make it sound so dramatic. There will be ups and downs, there will be setbacks, and, you’re right, these things take time. But these two sessions have been extremely intensive, and we’ve covered so much ground … It’s frustrating, so damned frustrating, to feel that Amy is teetering on the brink of allowing me to know what really is troubling her—and only when I know can I truly begin to help her—but is always catching herself and pulling back at the very last instant. I want to give her the confidence to let herself go over the edge, to know that I won’t let her fall. I want to begin treating the real problem, and I want to do it quickly. Until then, we’re just dog-paddling.”

  “What is the real problem, do you think?”

  She sat forward and again toyed with her glass. “I haven’t the vaguest idea,” she said bitterly. “Oh, that’s not true; I have the vaguest idea. To keep it in layman’s terms—”

  “Bless you.”

  “—her father’s death has triggered in Amy a monumental guilt reaction. Why, I don’t know exactly. You know, sometimes a person will feel responsible for the death of a loved one—they feel that if they had been there they could have prevented it, for instance; or even that they caused it because they had felt anger toward that person after a recent argument. But I don’t think that’s what we have here. Amy doesn’t blame herself for her father’s death—not to any significant extent—but I do think there was some unfinished business between them, the weight of which is now squarely on Amy’s shoulders, dragging her down. If only I knew what …”

  “What about Emily, or Vince? Can they help you out?”

  The corners of her mouth angled downward. “They’re more in the dark than I am. Mrs. Castelar, as I am sure you’ve noticed, lives her life in a haze of alcohol and tranquilizers. Amy—any of the children—could turn the place into a dance hall and she wouldn’t notice. Would you believe she had no idea of what went on out there last night? She slept right through it. And Vince—Vince isn’t much less self-obsessed, I’m afraid.”

  “He strikes me as being very concerned about Kate.”

  “I’m sure he is; it doesn’t do Amy much good. But I wish Kate were around; it seems that she and Amy were thick as thieves. Kate and her father occupy Amy’s thoughts. Obviously, the father can’t help; but perhaps Kate would be able to provide a clue, if she were found.”

  “We workin’ on it.” I looked at my watch. “In fact, in four short hours I have another date, this one with an interesting thing called the Fat Lady—not much to look at, but a lousy personality—who will, I hope, have something for me in the way of finding Walt Jennings.”

  We fell silent then and sat closely, gazing into the television set. It flickered and crackled at us for perhaps half a minute or longer; then Koosje abruptly asked, “Are you staying there again tonight?”

  My mind had wandered, down the obvious path—whether Koosje could be wrong, and Amy was feeling responsible for her father’s death because she was responsible—but I gave it up rather quickly. It didn’t explain Kate, it didn’t explain Jennings, it didn’t explain Christina, or the Fat Lady, or Frank Kirby’s bullyboys in the blue T-bird, or the vandalism to my car, or …

  “Castelars’?” I said, quickly tracing my mental steps to where they’d left the main road. “I suppose so. I haven’t been too good about touching base with Kennerly today—as you put it, I’ve been distracted—but I assume that until I hear otherwise I’m still on baby-sitting detail, and I packed accordingly. Why? Does it upset Amy to have a stranger around?”

  Koosje shook her head and her dark hair shone in the glow of our electronic fireplace. “On the contrary, she seemed to respond to you very well this morning. I took her approaching you to be a positive sign. She seems to trust you, she seems to be comfortable with you. Maybe you can make her feel secure enough to lower her defenses just enough …”

  “I wouldn’t know what to say or do—”

  “I don’t mean you should say or do anything; just being around may have an effect, if only a small one.”

  “Oh, well, hell, that’s easy; I’ve been around all my life.” I slipped my hand across her stomach and we kissed again, more thoroughly than before. Then she held me very tightly.

  “What are you thinking about?” I said after a while.

  “Amy, of course. Why it had to be she who found her father yester
day. Why things like this always happen to the ones least equipped to deal with them.” She adjusted herself so that her dark head, still resting against my shoulder, was angled toward my face. Her blue eyes were earnest; the set of her small mouth was serious. “What is it about some people that makes them victims? Is it true what they say, that some people send out the wrong vibrations or have the wrong aura or something? Why does life zero in on some and let others glide through unscathed?”

  “I don’t think life is that selective,” I said, and in that moment it was coming from very deep within. “I think it’s a more of a scattergun, hitting whoever it happens to hit. We’re all potential victims, potential targets; some of us perhaps do get hit more often than others, some of us like to think so, and some of us just recover more quickly. But we’re all on the line. Probably the best thing you can do is simply keep going and hope you don’t get hit.”

  “Moving targets,” Koosje said drearily. “What kind of way is that to live?”

  “The only way, maybe. On the brighter side, life is equally blind when it comes to doling out euphoria. At any given moment it’s a fifty-fifty chance, pain or pleasure …”

  Her lips were on mine, and as the kiss lasted, the embrace grew warmer, even feverish. I slid my hand slowly up her side, along her ribs, over one small breast. She did not withdraw; she responded, pushing against my hand, my mouth, pushing me back onto and into the plush couch. I trailed my fingers down the smooth back of her sweater dress and then up beneath it where it had ridden high on her hips. The skin of her bare legs was warm and smooth; so too was her small, round behind as I fondled it, gently at first but with increasing force.

  Her pelvis had been working against mine; now it stopped and she pushed back away from me, straddling me, balancing on her haunches. She reached and found the hem of her dress, wound it up and over her head, and dropped it on the carpet next to the couch. I raised my hands to the white straps on her shoulders, but she stopped me, took my wrists, and gently pulled me up off the couch as she rose and stepped back.

  She stood before me in the flickering light of the “fire” and slowly shed the rest of her clothing; then, naked but for her high-heeled shoes and the brass bracelet she wore, she slowly undressed me, starting with my jacket and working down to my shirt, my belt, eventually everything. When she had set aside the last article she remained on her knees, her breath soft on my belly, her moist tongue slowly tracing downward, her warm mouth engulfing me.

  And then she was moving away again, lowering herself slowly to the floor, gently pulling me down with her, onto her, into her. We stayed like that awhile. I began a rhythm, but she stopped me, so we simply lay for a time. I kissed her, kissed her eyes, her throat, the pink distended tips of her small rounded breasts. I nipped at them delicately with my eyeteeth and she moaned. I dragged my whiskery chin across them and she gasped; her hips began to undulate, slowly, then more definitely.

  And then, just as quickly as it had begun, it ended.

  There was no lack of willingness on my part, certainly no lack of desire, but a sudden and complete lack of means that no amount of activity or positive thinking could remedy. Eventually I took myself off of her and lay back on the soft yet scratchy carpeting. “Sorry,” I said curtly. “Not enough starch in the old diet, maybe.”

  She moved to rest her head against my chest, her left arm below my rib cage. “Don’t apologize. I know how hard you’ve been working, how badly you want to find Kate, how worried you are for her safety. I know that you haven’t been getting much sleep. And I think I know that you’re very unhappy about your domestic life.”

  I tugged at her long hair to make her look into my face. “Think you’re smart, huh?”

  “I told you, I’m a good therapist. So good, in fact …” She pulled her head away from my hand and again took up her tracings down my chest, down my stomach, which fluttered involuntarily under her tongue. Then in one easy, graceful move, she brought her right leg over my right shoulder, her knees planted firmly on either side of me.

  At some point the video fire went out, and the only sound was of the tape automatically rewinding itself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Her hair was still damp from the shower as I stroked along the back of her neck, feeling the silkiness of her hair and the smoothness of her skin. I stood close behind her, my face in her hair, my hands reaching around to massage her breasts.

  She elbowed me in the stomach, lightly, playfully. “You made me lose count,” she complained facetiously.

  “Four,” I said.

  She looked over her shoulder at me, the teaspoon poised in her hand. “Really?”

  I shrugged. “Close enough. Four is a good number. Forty percent is good; I use forty percent a lot. Also thirds—thirds are better than halves or quarters. People ask how the new book’s coming along, I tell them I’m about a third done.” I had, of course, wowed her during dinner with tales of my literary exploits.

  “Psychologically speaking,” Koosje said seriously, “you’re nuts.” She poured four more portions into the filter and poured through the boiling water. We watched it drip. “It looks awfully dark,” she said critically. “I think I was up to six.”

  “What’s the difference, the way you water it down with milk? Can you water something down with milk? Anyhow, I always thought they took their coffee black and very strong in Scandinavia.”

  “Holland isn’t Scandinavia. And this isn’t Holland.” She turned and rested her back against the counter, linking her hands behind me. “When I was a little girl and I wanted to drink coffee because it was a grown-up thing to do, my father would give me, oh, about a thimbleful in a cup of milk. I just never got used to drinking it much stronger.”

  As she spoke I had slipped my hands slowly down her back; now I brought them up under the hem of the flannel nightshirt she wore and cupped her derrière. She gave me a look and her blue eyes were sly. “You don’t have time for any more of that; you have another date, remember?” I looked over her shoulder at the clock on the stove. It was not quite ten-thirty. I sighed and returned my hands to the middle of her back, holding her closely.

  “You’re right. You should throw me out in about an hour. Maybe sooner; I may have scraping to do downstairs. Besides, it was just an idle threat, as you well know.”

  Koosje pushed away from me. “Will you cut it out? There’s nothing to apologize for; even if there were, you’ve already done it. So stop punishing yourself. You don’t hear me complaining, do you?” She paused at the avocado-colored refrigerator and smiled gently over her shoulder. “I have nothing to complain about.” She opened the refrigerator and I admired the movement of muscle in the backs of her legs as she retrieved a gallon of milk. After our slow, warm, candlelit shower I had dressed again but Koosje had, as they say, slipped into something more comfortable: a soft, thigh-length nightshirt in a red Stewart plaid, with great billowy sleeves that she rolled back to her elbows. Contact lenses had come out before the shower—not too romantic, that, but what’s a girl to do?—and were now replaced by a pair of large-lensed designer eyeglasses. Sophia Loren, I guessed by the small gold-plated initials on the bows. Unless, of course, Shari Lewis had begun a designer-eyeware line. The Lamb Chop Collection.

  Koosje turned to hand me a filled cup. “What are you staring at?” she asked with mock sternness.

  “Your glasses,” I admitted. “They make you look very studious, very scholarly.”

  “They make me look like Mickey Mouse, but without them I’m like Mister Magoo, tripping over little things like shoes, steps, cars …” I watched her dilute her coffee. “And contacts are only good so long; then they start to feel like they’re made out of wood.”

  “Luckily, red’s your color.”

  “Charmer.” She kissed me lightly and I followed her back into the living room, where we again took up our station on the couch. “Want me to start the fire again?”

  “Nah, give the playback heads a rest. I’ve seen those
things advertised—video fireplaces, video aquariums, I forget what all else—but I never thought anyone’d go out and spend real money on them.”

  “Nobody does. That is, nobody buys them for himself; it’s one of those things that get bought only as gifts for somebody else. That’s how I got mine; do you think I’d be crazy enough to spend money on something like that? Well? Do you? All right, that’s it, get out!”

  I laughed and kissed her briefly and copped a glance at my wristwatch. She saw me. “I wish you didn’t have to leave.”

  “Me too. But I’d have to go anyway, even if I weren’t seeing the Fat Lady, and spend the night at the Castelars’, for what it’s worth. I just hope this isn’t another dry well. These midnight capers get to be enervating in a big way—especially when there are better ways for a guy to spend his time.” I put my arms around her and breathed the fresh, berryish scent of her hair.

  We were silent like that a few moments, then Koosje said, “Where do you think Kate is now?”

  It was a question I had considered—a lot—and even though I gave it a few seconds before answering, I could produce only the same result as always: “I don’t know. I wish I did, believe me. There’s so much going on that I can’t get a handle on, and yet I have the distinct feeling that none of it pertains to what I’m after—finding the girl. I get buzzed by two sleazoids working for a guy who thinks I’m bringing the heat on him because I was at Castelar’s bank asking questions about Kate the same day he was there arranging a loan. I get sent on a merry romp across the countryside because some old cow’s got a fat finger in every mud pie in town and she doesn’t want me poking into her business. I get my car redecorated by I-don’t-know-whom for I-don’t-know-why. Not to mention a baker’s dozen of mind-your-own-businesses and get-out-and-stay-outs. All of which would be far more tolerable if they were germaine to my inquiry. But I’m going around asking question A, and people are getting their underwear in a wad because they’re afraid I’ll find out about X, Y, and Z—none of which is of any interest to me at all. I’m to the point where, if Jennings walked through that door right now, all I’d want to do is ask him about Kate. I don’t care if he killed Castelar, I don’t care if he killed Christina, I don’t care if he wants to kill the rest of the clan and the entire Vienna Boys Choir on top of it. I just want the girl.”