When he came out she was sauntering down the hall, a low-slung walk that rolled her hips naturally and was nearly impossible not to look at. She held a bottle of Dixie Double Hex and two of her many straps had drooped off her left shoulder. "Thank you, stranger," she said with a brilliant smile. "I'll be out in a bit." When she shut the bathroom door, Art heard her lock it.
Battened on guilt, Art quickly eliminated the beer bottles from the table and cleaned up. Suzanne had left damp footprints on the carpet near the hearth. He picked up her saturated sweater. So far this seemed real-world enough. This visitor left traces of her passage. Blitz had instantly flipped out into intruder mode, another proof. But no circumstance had ever before delivered strangers to Art's door, and he was in danger of getting lost in trying to figure out what every little clue meant, like the guy who can't hear the music over all the noise made by the orchestra.
He had bolted Excedrin and hydrocodone; the caffeine in the first was abetted by the buffering wave of the latter, and his skull began to relax its grip on his brain. Suzanne was oval-faced and attractive, with an almost Asian aspect to the set of her eyes. A bright intelligence danced in that gaze. His desktop schedule/planner was agreeably blank, his dance card clean, and he had no overwhelming desire to puzzle out his latest assignment or dip into another doorstop-thick, beach-read paperback. What else did he have to do tonight?
The utility cubby did double duty as a dog den. The home of the washer/dryer setup, it was equipped with a drop-down ironing board and a clothesline beyond Blitz's reach. Upper shelves were laden with canned goods overstock from the pantry. The main power panels for the house were found here, upgraded for better amperage, along with indoor meters for utilities. Some basic gardening tools were also kept here; Art disliked leaving such stuff outside, where it might reclassify as potential hardware for a break-and-enter. When it was cold like this, Blitz enjoyed lazing about the room when the dryer was running. Right now the dog sourly regarded his master from the far end of the room. I was just doing my dog job. What if she had been a monster?
"You can come out if you promise not to be an asshole."
Blitz livened up and sniffed the wet sweater in Art's hands. Some kind of aroma clung remotely to it. Perfume or body oil, more like a spice than a commercial scent. It helped add salacious thoughts to the shopping list already self-compiling in Art's imagination. Stop it, he remonstrated with himself. Be nice.
He heard the shower running in the guest bath. That made sense. Pound the chill out with hot water. Suzanne knew how to avoid catching cold even if she couldn't stay out of the rain.
Evidence of Derek's passage was so scarce that Art remained unnerved and off balance. The stack of dinnerware they'd used-for two-counted for nothing if he was delusional. He could have watched the movie by himself.
Or he could, more simply, have been so lonely that he was using any human contact as an excuse to doubt his equilibrium. The haughty Suzanne certainly classified as a surprise shock.
Blitz had heard that remark about the vomit smell. Sure, somebody farts, somebody pukes, blame it on the dog. It's what we're for, you smug biped.
"That's a great shower," Suzanne said. Her return was fanfared by a roll of steam from the half-cracked bathroom door. Art could hear the heat lamp and exhaust fans running. "You've got one of those rainfall showerheads." She peeked out, a face amid a burly cocoon of towels. "Clothes?"
"Oh." Art kept a whole row of variously logoed sweatshirts on the top rack of the linen closet. He pulled down a set in navy blue and added a T-shirt and thick socks. Suzanne was pink and radiantly warm from a brisk scrub with a back brush.
"I don't suppose you can spare some underwear?" It did not seem like such an oddball request.
"I think I can scare something up. Momentito." As he turned he saw her in the partially fogged bathroom mirror, towel drooping, nothing X- or even R-rated, just… interesting.
Art's waist had acquired several inches since age thirty-five, but nothing that rendered his belt line grotesque. He rummaged up some size-thirty shorts worn almost as soft as flannel, so old the tags had faded to complete blankness. They smelled not soiled, but old, unused. Dusty, like antique clothing. When Suzanne reached out for them, the towel tucked across her breasts unfurled, and Art snatched his gaze away so quickly and automatically that now he felt like a genuine fool.
He hadn't seen a thing, anyway.
He wondered where he'd left the party flyer he'd discovered in the mailbox yesterday morning. That made him recall Derek's cryptic postcard, which also proved that Derek had merely mailed a card, not shown up for an evening of hail-fellow-well-met drinking, dining, drinking, man talk, and drinking. Which led, inexorably, to the message in a bottle, with all its unnerving portent and signposts hinting at Art's potential for "diminished capacity.'' The day, the vague madness, had begun when he found the bottle. It was empty now, perched on the mantel, having spent a month in the sand and a year in the surf, or more, only to find its way here.
"You know Price?'' Suzanne had selected a spot close to the fire, and drifted directly to it, the sweats too big on her, but therefore warmer. She resembled a kid in jammies, feet and all.
"Price." Information scrolled in Art's head. No matches found.
"Price. I forget his last name. That's his house, down the beach from yours, past the place that looks haunted."
"The party house," said Art. "Does he know somebody named Michelle?"
"They're supposed to be married but I don't think they really are," said Suzanne. "God, Michelle is like… gorgeous. She's perfect. She's smart. She deserves better." Suzanne bugged her eyes slightly whenever referencing Michelle's bottomless list of attributes, every single one of which, apparently, was designed to make lesser beings give up in humiliation.
"She some kind of actress or model?"
"I don't think so." Suzanne genuinely did not know. "I think she's the sort of chick who turns down movies and modeling." She assumed a lotus position on the couch and planted the beer bottle between her heels. "Michelle is that rare and scary woman who always wins, and Price is the guy everybody wants to know. He's this big guy, used to be a biker, used to be a bodyguard, knows all the right numbers-who to call for the best drugs, who to call if you need a bullet pulled out of you with no hospital, that kind of borderline underworld shit."
"Friend of yours?"
"Not really. I mean, he was never like my boyfriend or anything. I went to his party because Dina went. Dina's my bud; I think she's sweet on Price, but fuck that, it's like: Get in line."
"What's the party for?"
"Bastille Day? Full moon? Cinco de Mayo? Who knows. Enough time passes, Price throws a party."
"Not around here."
"No, it's usually in a different place every time, and it's usually a lot closer to the city. I think he did this one to test who would actually make the drive. Weed out the hangers-on." She disappeared into introspection, just for a second, then ruefully added, "Yeah, that worked out like a dog turd in the champagne. Not you sweetie."
Blitz approached, head low, willing to sniff, probably doomed to make friends with dismaying speed.
The only-virtually sole-party Art had hosted in this house had been long ago. He and Lorelle had finagled nearly thirty-five friends into "making the drive" on Halloween, a workweek night, or "school night," as Lorelle liked to call them. Most had shown up in costume; fully half had lingered until dawn. They'd organized a huge Big Chill breakfast outside on the deck and turned the kitchen into a free-for-all. One guy (either Grant Chastain or Ernie Lawlor, from Art's old design firm) drove halfway back to the city just to score more beverages from a friend of his who ran a liquor store. The friend even came back with him, bigheartedly playing the Santa of liquid refreshment. He was greeted with applause. He'd had an impressive, basso laugh, an opera singer's laugh, but Art could never remember his name. There had been life in this house once, and an excellent time had been had by all. Now it seemed like so
meone else's old story.
"So I get there with Dina and it's barely sundown yet and there's like twelve guys all over her, and she only has eyes for Price, and Price is… polite. Almost like she's a kid or something, I mean, not a minor, but a kid, a little kid. She disappears. There's this whole row of rooms on the second floor, and most of them have beds, because at Price's parties… you know." She shrugged.
"A lot of mating going on upstairs?"
"What are parties really for? You meet people, you drink too much, you fool around, and then the next day you talk about what you wouldn't have done if you hadn't been 50000 drunk."
That urged a laugh out of Art. It was true. Between All Hallows toasts and dawn, there'd been a bit of mating going on between his guests at his long-ago soiree, in whatever rooms became available on a rotating basis. Stacey McMullen and Bernard Whitt had booted Blitz out of the dog den so they could hump on top of the dryer.
"So I find Dina in one of these rooms, alone, thank god, except for the cheeseball trying to shove coke up his ass in the bathroom, but he closes the door and we don't see him again for the rest of the night. Dina's crying her face off. Her makeup has run down into her lap. She's crying over Price, and I go, what the fuck is this bullshit, I mean, it's not like you guys had a thing or he's your lover or something."
"Did something happen?"
"That's the whole thing. Nothing happened. And she's acting like she wants to commit suicide all of a sudden. Fucking weird. Too weird. So weird it's kinda scary."
"Was she wasted?"
"Well, everybody was pretty jolly already. Lot of booze, lot of coke, some old-timers still into 'ludes. Price generally doesn't like junkies, so there was only a couple. But the weird thing is Dina, the way she's acting. She's normally tough as nails. She's a city kid, she has pavement smarts, and even though she shows up dressed to kill, she never has any problem keeping the dogs from slobbering on her. Not you. sweetie." She began scratching Blitz's ruff, the one way guaranteed to immobilize canines. She took a long draw off her Dixie Double Hex. "Dina's pretty tall and she's got super-long legs, and great eyes, and she wore these really soft leather pants. All her jewelry is really sharp, and she's got this choker thing with an amethyst in it, and she's even got one of those belt buckles that has a little knife in it? Totally superior hair. And she's just crying and crying, like somebody died."
"Did something happen?" Art was at sea.
Suzanne began scratching Blitz's nose with her index finger, playing dodgem while he tried to catch a sniff. "That's it. Nothing happened. We said hi to Price at the door, and an hour later she's ready to leap off a building. So I hugged her and got her a tissue, and finally she swallows hard a couple of times in a row and asks to be by herself, for just a moment-you know, kind of letting me off the hook.
"So I go back downstairs, and lo and behold, the Asshole is slapping Price on the back like they did Vietnam together or something."
"Which asshole?"
" Bryan. Bryan Simonsen. The Bry-Guy. Used to be my boyfriend. Occupation: total phallus." Suzanne rolled her eyes and Art could see this was not the first time she had recounted this particular life mistake. "He's this rich computer guy, but it's all Daddy's money, y'know? He's got a Porsche and a stock portfolio and no human feelings whatsoever. Testosterone to burn; he's always spoiling for a fight, always ready to hear something the wrong way."
"You mean he's reactive. Which most people call 'intense.' A big, blustery kind of guy? Thinks being turned up too high is some kind of virtue?"
"Sometimes being turned up too high just means you're loud," said Suzanne. "Loud enough, for long enough, gets-''
"Strident?"
"Irritating. And Dina, my bud, is always giving me shit about my asshole boyfriends, but she's always around when they dump me, which is why I got worried about her. But now I've been dismissed, and what do you know, Bry-Guy the Asshole has arrived to party."
"Is he that hostile? I mean, do you definitely not want to be in the room with him?"
"I definitely don't want to share the planet with him. He's like my five worst boyfriends of all time, rolled into one humongous Asshole. He liked to start hitting when he didn't get his way; he broke my nose once." She indicated the imperfection in her profile, offhandedly, almost as though it had been a bargain price for her escape from him. "Any ex-girlfriend of his automatically joins a secret club called Those Bitches. If he lives past thirty, I wouldn't put a murder or two past him. I know he'll start shit the minute he sees me, so I snuck out onto the deck. It's raining and crappy, and I forgot my shoes, but I've had just enough drinks to be mad, and not care. But it's not particularly cold."
That would be the storm front, switching channels every five minutes and playing hob with the barometer. First warm and moist, then chilly; now blowy, now not.
"I get ahold of somebody's umbrella and start walking on the beach, pretty far up because the tide line starts looking nasty in the dark. About the time I get to the haunted house, down there-''
"That's the Spilsbury house. Private property."
"Whatever. About the time I got there, it starts pissing down rain like a motherfucker, and the wind kicks up to like fifty miles an hour, and all I can think is, I am not going back in there. Not yet. It's like being angry was keeping me warm. So I march on and march on, and see this place, and the lights are on, and about then the rain starts blowing off the ocean, like knives or razors with salt on the edges? Ow, ow, ow. The umbrella flips inside out and becomes completely useless. I threw it toward the ocean and it blew back, like twenty feet over my head. What a joke. I realized how far away I was from Price's because I couldn't see it. I didn't even know which direction it was, y'know, like those guys in the Arctic who get lost ten feet away from their door in a blizzard?"
"I can drive you back if you need it."
"Nah, not yet. It's nicer right here. All that techno dance shit Price likes starts to rattle your teeth, and I kinda wanted to give the Asshole time to get really wasted, or get knifed in a fight, or maybe drown. I was thinking maybe I could call Price's, from here, I mean, to make sure Dina's okay… if she hasn't split without me already. That's another reason I went outside; she was my ride, so it wasn't like I could just get in the car and run away.'' She looked around the living room as though it was just coming into focus. "So, do you live here all by yourself?''
"Yeah. For now." Art could not bear the thought of recounting the Lorelle narrative one more time in the same twenty-four-hour span, so he let it go.
"No significant other, no spouse, no kids, no live-in relatives?"
"Just me and that critter over there."
''You're not, like, one of those hermits who makes belts out of human nipples and lamp shades of skin, while sinking ever deeper into his delusional architecture?"
She knew psychological terms, and had even heard of serial killers like Ed Gein. Her use of architecture threw him. He had to laugh. "I'm afraid it's a lot more mundane than that. I just live alone now; my significant other-" he took care to repeat the words she'd just said "-my spouse died a few years ago."
"Were you in love?" It was obviously a goal of hers.
"Yes."
"That sucks," Suzanne said, nodding with what, for her, passed for sympathy. "So many fuckheads are walking around in the world, breathing air, and the people you love die. It's so unfair."
Yes, it was. Art resisted the riptide pull toward his own past history recap, though. "Listen," he said. "If you want to call down to the other house, that's okay, too. I got an invitation to that party, sort of. It was signed by Michelle."
"Yeah, Michelle's like that. I figured I could call for her and she'd take care of the whole situation. But I'm liking this for right now, Art, if you don't mind. I mean, I don't want to use up a lot of time, or-"
"Please," said Art with a deferential wave of his hand.
"You got a nice house and a nice dog-aren't you?-and I promise I'm not a lunatic on crack, and I'm not g
onna steal anything." Blitz had already more or less cast his vote in the yes column.
"Tell him he's a guter Hund." said Art. She did and Blitz brightened up. "I wasn't worried about you."
"Well, you should be, letting strangers in like that. I would be."
"It's a little different out here in the middle of nowhere."
"That's for sure. Are you some kind of artist?" She was looking at the framed, signed prints hung here and there.
"I'm a specific kind of artist-the kind no one thinks of as an artist, in the way some people think painting is art, but photography isn't." He was aware of trying too hard to be glib. "I'm an architect; I'm sort of holed up here working on a project I don't like very much."
"Did it for the money, huh?"
Art shrugged helplessly, a prisoner of commerce.
"It's a great house." She knew when it was politic to change the subject.
"Hard line's in the kitchen when you want it," he said. "Forget trying to use a cell in this weather."
"I still want to wait a little bit. I mean, do you mind?" She was too comfy where she was, and Art was a safe distance away on the facing couch. He was not circling her, ravenous and predatory, and he sensed she kind of enjoyed that, as though it was rare. "The fire's way too nice. You can just sit and watch it and it calms you down; it's better than TV."
Art decided to jump directly to what he was already thinking, without camouflaging preamble. "Crash here. There's a guest room and you already know where the fridge is."
Of many potential reactions to such a solicitation, which some might consider forward, he never expected her to flash livid and slam both fists uselessly into the cushions, "Oh, goddammit all to fucking hell…!"
That's it, he thought. You blew it. She thinks you're coming on to her already, a total stranger, and it's grossing her out.
"Fuck!" Blitz scrambled to an alert stance at the strident sound of an angry human voice.
Suzanne looked at Art, her eyes now quite white in the dim light, almost as if he had walked into his own living room and caught her relaxing inside his workout clothes, taking advantage of his fireplace, petting his dog, all without permission.
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