His tone of voice softened; suddenly he was a different person. “Did I tell you I didn’t sleep last night?”
“Me either,” she admitted.
“It’s weird to feel this way.”
“Yes.” She spoke so softly even she could barely hear it.
“We’re supposed to be adults.”
“I know.”
“Are we supposed to feel guilty?”
“No.”
“I shouldn’t have had a beer with lunch. I ramble when I drink beer,” he said.
“Then have another. I love it when you ramble. My life has been a little shy of rambling these days.”
“You’re very beautiful.”
“So are you.”
He reached over and touched her cheek with his warm fingers.
She placed her hand on his, closed her eyes, and sighed. “That feels nice….”
“Umm,” he said, drawing his hand slowly away. “I want to take you for a drive.” He raised his hands. “I promise, nothing like that. Are you game?”
“Nothing like what? I didn’t say anything. Let’s take a drive.”
***
He was quiet for the first ten minutes. “Where are we going?” Laura finally asked.
“Just for a drive,” he replied, concealing something. His mood, all-consuming to Laura, seemed to flicker like a candle left too close to an open window. It struggled to hold on. She felt him slipping from her.
“Where are you?”
“Not far.”
“We’re adults, Sam.” She reached over and placed her hand on his shoulder. He drew her closer to him by clasping her hand, although the bucket seats prevented them from touching further.
He glanced at her briefly, one eye tracking the road. They were well out of town and had climbed a small hill; he swung the car left at an intersection and continued on until a cemetery appeared on their left. He squeezed her hand, and she saw him swallow; his Adam’s apple bobbed on his strong neck. He pulled the car over and shut it off, bringing the songs of birds and the rustle of leaves in the afternoon wind. He said, “You asked to meet her….”
The sight of the graveyard triggered painful emotions in Laura. She could remember the day so clearly. The men from the company. The children, so good, but not fully comprehending the situation. Her parents with their warmth and comforting support. Out in another cemetery, not far away, Tim lay still and cold, dressed in his favorite suit—his only suit—a wilted red rose pinned to his lapel. “I’m sorry,” she said, pushing her own memories out and concentrating on Sam. In the past year this was one thing she had learned to do well.
He forced a smile, opened her door for her, and led her past the flags and flowers, the names and dates, toward a plot near the back. As they walked he explained, “This is something I would prefer we keep between us, Laura. I hope you understand. I don’t mean to be dramatic or morbid—I suppose I’m being both. Why is it we always end up being what we try not to be?” he asked himself. “It’s just that if you’re to understand me… if you’re to know me… then you should see the full picture. And—well, this is part of that picture. This is part of me.” She squeezed his hand. They stopped in front of a gravestone. Newly seeded grass attempted to cover the dark slice of earth laid before it like a welcoming mat. “I couldn’t even tell you about this the other day. I still have trouble with it.” He knelt on one knee. “She killed herself. That’s not what the doctors said, but that’s what happened. After Tan left me, Judy went into a shell. She blamed herself for the separation. That much was obvious. I tried my best to explain that it was just as well that Tan was gone. She wouldn’t have it. She stopped eating.
“I didn’t notice it at first. I was caught up in the divorce and the store; it was easy for her to fool me. She’d been overly thin since the stroke anyway, so I didn’t see it. She was dumping her food. I didn’t notice. She was starving herself, and I didn’t notice.” Laura moved over and stood behind him, placing her soft hands on his shoulders. She didn’t want him to see her tears. He was obviously fighting to hold on himself, and she knew how important that was to the future. Whatever that might hold in store. “She grew weak and nature intervened,” he said. He pointed to the stone. “A little over seven months ago she had the second stroke. Then she went into a coma. After four weeks the doctor left the decision up to me. She was technically brain-dead—I loathe that term.” He shuddered. Laura felt him sob, and she sobbed along with him. “It took me another week of soul-searching to make the decision. I’d been living with it for a month—the doctor had warned me—but it took a few dozen walks, a talk with my minister. At six-fifteen—sunrise—February twenty-seventh, we stopped all life support, and Judith Mary Shole left this earth for points unknown—” He dropped his head.
She hugged him from behind for a full fifteen minutes, her warmth pressed against his, her tears running into his shirt. He had brought back all her feelings about Tim’s death. She relived it from a distance for the first time, seeing it through Sam’s eyes as she had just witnessed Sam’s tragedy through her own. He stroked the back of her hand where she held him around his chest, thankful that they weren’t facing each other, thankful he didn’t have to show her his tear-streaked face.
This was closer than he had been to any person in months. This one rather awkward moment drew them together, bonded them to one another, and instilled him with the feeling of true friendship. After a while he said in a clear voice, “The president of the Retailers’ Association and his wife came to the funeral. They didn’t have to, but that’s the kind of people they are. He took me aside after the service and held my hands; he’s a small Greek man, he lost an arm in the war, short little guy with white hair and a big gut. His left hand is strong as steel. He held my hands together and put what remains of his right arm around me in a gesture of affection, and he whispered real ragged… he said, ‘We Greeks have an expression’—he has a saying for everything—‘He whom the gods love dies young.’ That was all he said. He tapped me on the back with that stump of his and kissed me on the cheek. I’ll never forget that as long as I live: ‘He whom the Gods love dies young.’ It’s beautiful, really.”
“Yes, it is.” Laura bent over his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek too. He reached back, touched her cheek, and then turned, kissing her lightly on the lips. “When do you have to be back?” she asked. He shrugged. “I have an idea. I’ll drive,” she announced enthusiastically. “Come on.” She pulled him to his feet and began to run toward the car. “The keys,” she demanded, hand outstretched; as he handed them to her she kissed him again. “Get in.”
She drove quickly, more quickly than she had driven in ages.
After a few minutes of silence he said, “I think I know where we’re going.”
“Yes, I suppose you do,” she agreed, unable to look at him.
The car hurried down the back roads tunneled beneath branches full with wide maple leaves, past cow fields bittersweet with dung, an old red barn leaning into the wind, a roofless silo alongside. Stone walls blurred on either side of the road, carefully stacked and seemingly endless, bordering field after field. It seemed impossible that so many stones could have come from each field and that people long ago had had the energy and time to use the unwanted stones to wall their property. But on and on they went, as if they had been part of the landscape for a thousand years: dark square walls, low to the ground and snaking along mile after mile.
She pulled the car over at a break in one of the walls. “Quickly,” she pleaded, “before I lose my nerve.” She flew from the car, through the gap in the wall, Sam close on her heels, down the verdant footpath lined with bramble and wild raspberry. They passed a section that smelled of skunk and Laura let out a shriek of a laugh. “Get away, skunk,” she yelled. “Get away!”
The leaves overhead, the saplings; she rounded a bend in the path, still running, still laughing; now Sam was laughing too, as he saw the blue-green water of the pond before them. She unbutton
ed her blouse on the run. As it came off, she tossed it into the air; it lifted and flew in a flutter, then floated in loops and tumbles to the moss-covered rocks. She chortled to herself, coming to a stop by the pond’s edge, shedding her clothes furiously, unabashed at his expression as he struggled to keep up with her, giggling nervously, childishly, and saying wide-eyed, chest heaving from the run, “Remember? Remember?” And then she was naked. Naked and giggling, her cheeks blushed scarlet, hands pressed against her cheeks as she waited for him to finish disrobing. With him still in his socks she said, “Oh, Sam!” grabbed his hand, and counted, “One, two…”
“Three,” he said, and they leaped from high atop a sunbaked rock into the cool, crisp water below. Both shouting as they fell away, down, down, down, into a triumphant splash that echoed off the far edge of the quarry and put two startled ducks to wing.
***
“They’re cute, aren’t they?”
The two ducks had returned. Sam and Laura, now dry and clothed in underwear, sat on the hot slate absorbing the strong August sun, she with her arms clasped about her knees, he, leaning back on his elbows, cushioned by his folded shirt. A warm wind drew lines on the pond and worked at drying her hair. She sighed happily.
“It feels good, doesn’t it?” she said.
“Wow… that’s all I can say; oh, wow… have I needed this!”
“I’m about ready to go in again.”
“Me too.”
They looked at each other and smiled. She said, “Did I surprise you?”
“Only for a second. Your blouse nearly hit me in the face.”
“Speaking of which…” She let go of her knees and turned to look into the woods.
“It’s back there somewhere,” he assured her.
She too lay back on her elbows, immodest and lovely. He tossed her his pants and she used them as a pad.
“You’re beautiful,” he announced heartily. “And I don’t mean just your body, though that, too. No, I mean you. You. You haven’t changed a bit.”
“Oh, yes, I have.”
“Not to me.” He closed his eyes. “If I shut my eyes and smell the smells and hear you speak, it feels as if we’ve never left here.”
She shut her eyes and inhaled. “Umm.”
“We’re so lucky. Some people would say how unfortunate we both are, wouldn’t they? But we’re so damn lucky, you and I. We have our health, we have our lives, we have a warm August afternoon with the Corwin pond all to ourselves. Yes, we’re very lucky.” After a minute of silence he asked, “You okay?”
“I’m saying my last farewells to Tim, I think”—eyes closed, face pointing to the brilliant sun—“I knew this day would come. I’ve thought about it so often.” She looked over at him, blinded by white orbs dancing in front of her. “We crossed a line back there, you and I—a very necessary line, mind you—it never happens the way you imagine it will.”
“It’s not the last time for Tim.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You’ll never lose him. That’s the ghost we both have to learn to live with. That’s the penalty for giving your heart, soul, and body so totally to another person. They never leave you.”
A trout rose in the pond. The breeze died down and the sun baked even hotter. In the distance was the sound of a tractor starting up.
“You and I won’t forget. The people we truly loved are still alive inside of us. We see them in us in our own actions, our expressions. We can’t escape them. Nor should we try to. We learn to coexist. We learn not to let them interfere. There’s no going back. We only have the future to deal with.”
“I keep telling myself that. Easier said than done.”
“It’s easier when you’re facing it with someone.”
She rolled up on one elbow and looked over at him. His eyes remained closed, his strong body spread out to the sun. She studied the contours of his muscles, the hard line of his chin, his tight-set eyes and strong Roman nose. She thought him handsome.
“I’d like to meet your children,” he told the sky.
“Really?”
“Absolutely. Right away. I have a plan. Here’s what we do. I have inventory to do tomorrow. It’ll take all day. So why don’t we make a date for Saturday lunch. We’ll meet at the mall. I’ll knock off at noon. We’ll take the kids for a bite at McDonald’s or something and then go to the opening of the new pavilion. Fun-World. The kids’ll love it. Tons of rides and things. How about it?” He looked over and caught her staring.
“It sounds wonderful,” she told him, wishing she had the nerve to go throw herself on him, thankful that Georgine had coaxed her into seeking Sam out, thankful for Yankee Green and its few hundred stores, thankful Sam Shole had not left Hillsdale years before as she was sure he would have had the Green not existed. She stood up, her shadow covering his face, and, somewhat embarrassed this time, removed her small bits of underclothing, revealing herself fully to him. “Ready?” she asked, confusing him. He stood up and slipped out of his shorts. She reached out and took his hand.
“One, two—”
“Three,” he said.
And they jumped.
12
In Dispatch, sixteen nine-inch television monitors kept the various pavilions under constant camera surveillance. This one room reduced the security force by some one hundred employees.
Two guards, responsible for keeping watch on all the screens, sent messages to the dozens of uniformed and plainclothes guards on the floor, manipulating them like chess pieces to fill the security needs of the entire complex.
The room’s ceiling lights, recessed in white Armstrong panels, were kept low to facilitate viewing. The room was small and well air-conditioned. Three of its four walls were occupied by counter space. The counter to the right of the video monitors held the Chubb computer, Security’s nerve center; above it, mounted to the wall, was the large electronic map capable of showing any floor plan. Two attendants—usually the stocky Dicky Brock and the lanky Ralph Perkins—sat in chairs facing the bank of television monitors. Both wore small headsets with earpieces and wire microphones.
Some of the cameras operated from fixed locations, the corresponding monitors showing a specific framed image as shoppers passed below it. Other cameras pivoted automatically, tracking back and forth, sweeping the vast expanses of parking lots, service hallways, and large, open concourses. Any of these movable cameras could be interrupted by the dispatcher and controlled from the booth independently. Many of the fixed cameras had zoom lenses, enabling tighter shots.
Jacobs loved this room. From here, one had control of foot traffic for the entire complex. From here one could monitor arriving car traffic or action in the men’s room. It didn’t bother Jacobs that this whole thing smacked of Big Brother. Even though most of the mall’s patrons had no idea their actions were being continuously watched, their privacy invaded, it was for their own protection. The system, if used properly, protected the innocent and helped to identify the guilty. And it was his job to see that it was used properly. That’s why Dicky Brock and Ralph Perkins ran Dispatch. They were two of his best men.
Brock said, “I’m glad you hurried. I’ve got a woman who matches the description of the pickpocket you spotted yesterday. She’s carrying a Harvey’s shopping bag. The bag alerted me. Not many people will carry a Harvey’s bag when Harvey’s isn’t located here.”
“Good eyes. Bring it on the big screen, would you please?” Jacobs dropped into a padded chair and studied the screen.
“I’ve got it now, thanks,” said Jacobs confidently, taking the controls and manually directing the camera to stay with the woman.
“She seems to be following the bald guy with the camera,” Brock added.
Jacobs switched cameras, zoomed in, and recognized her, “Okay. That’s her. Let’s get a hard copy and put someone on her.”
Perkins barked instructions into the headset’s microphone. Brock interrupted the video recorder, freeze-framed a shot of her, and sen
t it to the printer. A moment later a dot-matrix image of the pickpocket’s face whirred out of the printer, catching even the subtle shading. Jacobs continued watching the various screens. He asked Ralph, “Which monitors have tape running?”
Jacobs saw her reach up and unbutton her blouse. “That’s it. Here she goes. Damn!” The camera angle was blocked by a pillar.
He switched cameras, but too late. She was already walking away from her mark, the robbery completed.
“Damn!” he shouted. “Okay, let’s pick her up before she dumps.”
Perkins snapped orders across the radio.
Jacobs suddenly said, “Christ! Where the hell did he come from?” He watched as an older street hood ran toward the woman. “No!” Although the monitors showed only black-and-white, he knew the man’s neckerchief was bright green. The pickpocket dumped the man’s billfold in a planter. “We lost the drop,” Brock announced. “I didn’t have the tape running.”
Jacobs cued the monitor back onto the large screen as the neckerchiefed man reached the pickpocket. He watched as she leaned her head back and evidently screamed. She broke into a run. The man chased after her. A uniformed guard collared the neckerchiefed man. “The woman,” Jacobs yelled at the screen. “Get the woman!”
Jacobs tracked her on the monitor as she hurried down the stairs. Perkins kept the guards informed of the woman’s position and direction.
Perkins said to Jacobs, “Robinson’s made visual contact.”
“Have him cover the exit to the parking lot,” Jacobs ordered. “We don’t want her getting outside.”
“That’ll have to be Robinson.”
“Do it!”
Brock said, “She’s headed for fifty and fifty-one, T.J. Those are the two that’re out.”
“Out?” inquired Jacobs.
“We lost a few cameras the other day. Something to do with the new construction.”
“Why wasn’t I notified?”
“I sent out a memo.”
“A memo?” Jacobs recalled the pile of unread memos on his desk. “Oh, Christ. Call Robinson back.” The pickpocket ran off one of the lower monitors, now unseen.
Hidden Charges Page 21
