Lie Down with the Devil

by Linda Barnes

  “There’s a B and B on Mass. Ave. between Porter and Alewife,” I said to Moon after the speed of the car and the smoothness of the road told me we’d reached Route 6. “Or I could crash at the Marriott in Kendall Square.”

  “I don’t want to drive all the way to Cambridge. What if the old guy can talk in the morning?”

  “You can’t stay in Nausett. The feds told you to clear out.”

  I think I fell asleep again, because the next thing I remember we were pulling onto a gravelly lane in the darkness, up a steep incline, and the car was coming to a stop.

  “Where—?”

  “Am I? Welcome to the country estate of the Mooneys. Believe me, nobody will find us here.”

  “Where—?”

  “Are we? You know Marshfield? The Irish Riviera, tucked in between the Cape and Boston. Welcome to the Mooney family summer shack. And when I say shack, I mean shack. There are some fancy summer places around here, but this isn’t one of them.”

  “Beds?”

  “Beds, air mattresses, sleeping bags. I’m hoping for running water and heat, but I haven’t been here in years. I think I remember an outdoor shower.”

  “You’d have to break the icicles off.”

  “I’m hoping for indoor plumbing, too.”

  “You have a key?”

  “As I recall, on a hook to the left of the door.”

  “Trusting.”

  “Nope. Everybody owns a place down here is a cop.”

  The street was narrow and rutted. In dim yellow light from a distant porch, the shadowy houses looked small and worn. “Then we’ll probably get shot as trespassers.”

  “No, but within half an hour, if the grapevine holds, all my distant relatives will know I brought a woman here in the middle of the night. Smile for the cameras.”

  “Mooney—”

  “C’mon, let’s get that guitar out of the cold.”

  There were two main rooms, one up, one down, connected by a contraption that was more ladder than staircase. The room on the bottom level had a tiny bathroom in a curtained alcove. The top room had a galley kitchen against a narrow wall, a child-sized refrigerator, a two-burner stove.

  “I remember when they put in the ladder.” Mooney stood under a forty-watt bulb that had sprung to life when he tugged a string. “Before that, you had to go outside, run around the back, and come in again on the second floor. It’s on a slope. My uncle Tommy built the bottom level, and then another uncle—Cy, I think—came along and tacked on the second story.”

  “It’s like a dollhouse,” I said.

  “Don’t tell my uncles that.”

  We discovered sheets and towels in a cardboard box under a saggy bed. I sorted through the bedclothes while Mooney started the space heater rumbling; it was a gas-fueled metal box with small blue flames visible through the front grille. The room didn’t get much warmer. The sheets didn’t match.

  There were three cans of warm Michelob in the barren fridge. Mooney plugged the unit in and fiddled with dials till it whirred and chugged. The sole item in the cupboard was a bag of stale pretzels.

  “Up or down?” Moon asked. “Down will be warmer. Up gets the better bed.”

  “Down.”

  The bathroom was the draw.

  Of course, once I crawled into bed, once I could sleep, I couldn’t get to sleep. The hiss of the space heater and the whirr of the refrigerator combined in an oddly syncopated beat that seemed as loud as a jackhammer. I got out of the narrow cot, wrapped myself in the thin cotton blanket, and checked on the guitar, wondering whether it would ever sound the same after so much time in the cold. I had told Roz to loosen the strings, but old instruments are delicate, temperamental.

  Softly, using harmonics and muting the strings, I tuned it. Most of what I play is loud, driving country blues, and I didn’t want to wake Mooney, but I didn’t want to let go of the guitar either. It felt good in my hands, solid and sure. I started out sitting on a fat sprung armchair covered with a chenille throw and wound up on the wooden floor, huddled near the space heater, just holding Miss Gibson, and moving my fingers over the strings.

  I tried to remember the melody Paolina had played on the Andean pipes, but my fingers kept slipping into more familiar patterns. I didn’t sing it, but Rory Block’s “Lovin’ Whiskey” kept running through my head, first the opening riff, then the strong bass line, then the words, one particular line: “If wisdom says to let him go, well it’s hell, because you just don’t know, what it’s like to love a man who’s …”

  Block ends the line with “lovin’ whiskey.” I used to think of it as “lovin’ cocaine,” which was what Cal, my ex, did. Loved that stuff more than he loved me, for sure. I thought I’d have to write a whole new line for Sam; “Lovin’ other women,” didn’t scan.

  I was thinking about Sam, but it was Mooney who cleared his throat in the darkened room. I hadn’t heard his feet on the ladder or seen the door at its head open or close.

  “You can play louder if you want,” he said. “You look good, sitting there.”

  “It’s dark. You can’t see me.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Maybe he could, by the glow of the small blue flames.

  “You haven’t lost Paolina,” he said.

  “What?”

  “What you said to Alma Montero. That you had a child and you lost her.”

  I played a chord. Then another. The notes drifted away like smoke. “You weren’t paying attention, Moon. I didn’t give birth to Paolina. I wasn’t talking about Paolina.”

  Alma Montero’s confessed drunkenness lay heavy on my shoulders. Maybe it was because I was exhausted by the weight of her guilt in addition to my own. Or maybe it was because it was late at night after a long day, and so dark and quiet. I don’t know what made me do it or why, but I found myself telling Mooney what I had never told anyone, not my best friend, not my lover, and it helped somehow that I was holding the guitar. It seemed like I was alone in the dark, telling the story to an old guitar that already knew all the sad stories in the world. The small blue flames flickered.

  Here’s the secret: When I was fourteen years old I gave birth to a child. I gave up that child for adoption, but I keep her or him in my heart. I never saw that baby, never held that baby, but I grieve the separation both for the child and for myself, the self I once was. I divide my life that way, before and after. I hold it in my heart. I never tell anyone.

  “Does Sam know?” Mooney’s voice: gentle and far away.

  “No.”

  “The father?”

  “As far as my parents were concerned, it was an immaculate conception.”

  “You never told them?”

  “I never told anyone.” I shook my head no, but found my mouth moving again. “My high school basketball coach.”

  “Jesus,” Mooney said.

  “I never told.”

  “But you don’t play basketball. Sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”

  “But true. I don’t play anymore. When I went back— Well, the volleyball team had a woman coach.”

  “You went back to the same high school?”

  “No other choice.”

  The door at the top of the ladder opened and then closed. I heard it this time, and the refrigerator whirring and the heater hissing.

  “You want a beer? Still pretty warm?”

  “No.”

  I heard the snap and sigh of a pull-top.

  “I’m glad you told me.” Mooney must have been barefoot, because I didn’t hear steps, not even the creak of wood, but his voice was close.

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Did you ever try to find her?”

  “I don’t know that it’s a her. They wouldn’t tell me if it was a boy or a girl. They wouldn’t let me see her. Him. It was a different time, you know? Then, you had a kid out of wedlock, you were branded. They made all your decisions for you.”

  “You never tried to find
the baby?”

  “No.”

  “You could do it.”

  “Break up a family? Why would I do that?”

  “You don’t know, Carlotta. Maybe the baby wants to find you. You could wind up making a family, not breaking it. Anybody would want to know who their mother is.”

  “I don’t know, Moon.”

  “I’m glad you told me,” he repeated.

  “I’m sorry. Like I said, I didn’t mean to. Don’t think you understand me now, okay? Do me that favor.” I didn’t understand myself, I wanted to tell him. “I’m just tired.”

  “Cold?”

  I nodded.

  “If we had a fireplace instead of this damn space heater, we could toss another log on the fire. Scooch over.” He took the chenille throw off the armchair, draped it around my shoulders, sat cross-legged next to me on the floor. “Sip of a Michelob? It’s not bad for flat stale beer.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Know what I think?” he said. “I think you meant to tell me. I think you wanted to.”

  “Why? Why would I do that?”

  “You want me to know what a terrible, sinful person you are. So I’ll pull away from you and feel good about not loving you anymore.”

  “Really?” The chenille wrap smelled like dust.

  “Didn’t work. If you want to prove how terrible you are, you’ll have to do better than that.” He leaned over and kissed me, the kind of long slow kiss that leads to other kisses. Nothing remotely like kissing a sister.

  Nothing sisterly about my response.

  Maybe I went to bed with Mooney so I could prove to him how unworthy I was. Maybe I did it to pay Sam back for his betrayal. I don’t know or care to contemplate the reason, but in the end there was no reason. It seemed inescapable, inevitable, the fitting end to a day that had begun with a rocky airplane flight. Might as well crash and burn, I thought, as I squeezed him close and tasted his long-forbidden mouth. Crash and burn.

  Then there was no sound but the harsh intake of breaths, the long slow exhalations. There was darkness and satisfaction and sleep.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I could see my breath. The puff of steamy fog joined the dust motes hanging in a shaft of light from a high window. I could feel Mooney heavy on my left shoulder. When I turned my head, my cheek brushed against a tangle of dark hair. I should have felt terrible and guilty, and I didn’t. I felt comfortable and inexplicably happy, as though I had come home after a reckless, way-too-long journey, and that made me wonder what the hell I thought I was doing.

  “Don’t move,” Mooney murmured. “Good morning.”

  “Jesus, Moon, I’m sorry I—”

  “No,” he said. “Take it back.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to hear it. No sorry or guilty or sad songs this morning—not unless you really mean them.”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. After my divorce, after Cal left me, I went through a stretch of bad times and one-night stands. I was careful then, to drive my own car, to carry cab fare, to leave myself an escape hatch. There was nothing careful or planned or safe about what I’d just done. What we’d just done.

  “Carlotta Carlyle, listen to me. If we never ever do this again, it will make me very sad, but I will live with it. I’m all grown up. I’m here because I want to be here. I can’t think of anyplace else I’d rather be. You are not the sole mover in this. You don’t get to be sorry for my supposed ruin.”

  “Moon—”

  “You want me to apologize, I will. I’ll take full responsibility. I’ll say I’m sorry. I took advantage of you. You were exhausted. I took you here to my frigid little love nest. I got you drunk on champagne and caviar—”

  “I’m starving,” I said.

  “God, so am I.”

  “There’s no food.”

  “Cans,” he said. “There always used to be cans. In a cardboard box somewhere. I hope there’s an opener.”

  “I’ll use my teeth.”

  “Oh, no, don’t waste them on the cans.” He shifted and squeezed in close in the narrow bed. “Jesus, you know, I’m eight years older than you.”

  “How do you even know how old I am?”

  “I read your file, child.”

  “Sam’s ten years older than me.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Sam.”

  Neither did I.

  “God, you’re beautiful.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not,” I said. “I know what beautiful is and I don’t like lies, so it makes me uncomfortable.”

  “What’s beautiful?”

  “If movie actresses and models are beautiful, then—”

  “They’re not. You’re wrong. I’ll never lie to you. It’s my personal opinion that you are beautiful, and I have a right to it. I have a right to my own opinion. For example, in my personal opinion, it’s too damn cold to get out of this bed unless we get some exercise first. That’s just my opinion, what’s yours?”

  His opinion coincided exactly with my preferences. After we’d made love, we lay close together, breathing too quickly, his arm cradling my shoulders.

  “Mooney—”

  “What?”

  “I’m not good at this.”

  “Oh, yes, you are.”

  “I don’t mean sex; I mean love. I mean happily ever after—all that stuff. When you make a lot of mistakes, you lose faith.”

  “I don’t make those kind of mistakes. I used to but I’ve changed.”

  “Hah. What kind of mistakes do you make now?”

  “Mistakes of cowardice.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “The purest truth. I have wanted to do this since the day I met you, but I was afraid, and even if you’re doing this to get even with Sam or to show me what a bad girl you are, or because you were too tired not to, I don’t care.”

  For a moment I wondered whether I could possibly have told him those things, blurted them out loud in a fit of indiscretion. Certainly my tongue had run away with itself last night. But he kept on talking, so I didn’t have to ask.

  “I just want you to stay with me.”

  “You deserve someone better.”

  “It’s not that easy to get rid of me, Carlotta, and I don’t want to argue with you on an empty stomach, okay? Let’s find something to eat instead.” Wrapped in a blanket, feet stuffed into overlarge sweat socks, I joined him in a quest for provisions. Under the same bed that had hidden the box of bedclothes, we struck gold in the form of tin. Canned spaghetti and meatballs. Spaghetti-O’s. Ravioli-O’s. The entire Chef Boyardee bonanza.

  “What do you like for breakfast?” Moon said. “I don’t know what you like, except ice cream and Chinese food that burns your tonsils.”

  “No ice cream. I’ve got frostbite.”

  “I’m not sure anybody filled the oil tank. We could go out.”

  “I’m not fussy.”

  “Saying no to breakfast ravioli does not make you fussy, Carlotta. What do you like?”

  “Honestly? Eggs.”

  “I’ll get some.”

  He was dressed and gone almost before I could protest.

  I went about getting ready for the day more slowly. If I hadn’t, I might have banged my elbow harder in the cramped shower stall. By the time I got out of the shower, the hot water was a memory and it felt like my toes were encased in ice. I dressed by layering just about everything I owned.

  Then I shamelessly snooped. Photos of long-ago summers crowded one paneled wall, making me feel like I’d stepped into a family album. I tried to find Mooney as a kid, spotted two possibles, so alike, I couldn’t be sure which one was him. I knew so much about my ex-boss and so little. Some of what I knew I’d forgotten and some of it I’d ignored, and now I wanted to know everything.

  After a while I climbed the ladder to see whether there was a likely frying pan near the stove. Mooney had left in such a hurry that he hadn’t
loaded his pockets with the things he’d removed last night. His nail clipper was on a bench near the bed. I unfolded two sheets of paper, one yellow, one salmon colored, and read about why I should and should not support Proposition 6.

  Wait a minute.

  The frying pan forgotten, I clambered down the ladder, the flyers clenched between my teeth. Where had I put Roz’s file? In my bag? In the guitar case for extra padding? I opened the case and there it was, the report on the Cambridge office building. I shuffled papers, ran my hand down the list of firms till I found the political consulting firm she’d marked with an asterisk.

  My cell phone had little charge, not much service. “Roz? Can you hear me?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Why were you suspicious of the Consortium Guidance Consulting Group?”

  “What? You want me to call you back? On another line?”

  “Just tell me about the consulting group.”

  “The cops are still hanging around. And Eddie Nardo—”

  “It was one of the companies in the Cambridge building.”

  “Oh, okay. Consortium Guidance Consulting, right. They didn’t want to talk politics. You ever meet any political wonks don’t want to talk or flirt or show off how clever they are?”

  “You sure they’re political? ‘Consortium Guidance’ is pretty vague. They could guide investors or corporations or—”

  “Desk man said they did political polling.”

  “Did they seem like a front?”

  “There was work going on. It wasn’t a maildrop or anything.”

  “Any reaction to the pictures?”

  “That was the thing. One guy, like, he opened his mouth to say something, but another guy shut him up, overrode what he was going to say with how busy they were and how I’d have to go now. I mean, he could have just been a prick, but I didn’t like the vibe.”

  The vibe. How much could I trust Roz’s intuition?

  She said, “And I think they knew about the bag.”