Paris Trout

by Pete Dexter

  He stood up and walked to a chair that was closer to hers. “There was a moment today,” he said, “when I felt a remorse as strong as if I had shot her myself.”

  She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand, her elbow on her knee, and drank from her glass. He saw that she was not going to answer.

  “I remembered today that you warned me.”

  “I warned you about my husband,” she said.

  Seagraves nodded. “He was in today, shortly after I spoke to you.”

  She reached out at that moment and touched his hand, the one holding his drink. She ran her fingers along the side of the glass and then, cool and wet, across the back of his wrist. Her fingers stopped there and settled.

  “Does it affect you that way?” he said. “Do you think of her too?”

  She shook her head no. He noticed her neck, the tiny wrinkles at the bottom, the smooth rise to her chin. “Not like that,” she said. “I saw her alive, in the store. She’d been bitten by a fox, and I took her to the clinic. It’s not the same.”

  It was quiet.

  “During the course of the trial,” he said, “Buster Devonne asked for a payment for his testimony. We gave him a thousand dollars—I gave him a thousand dollars—for what he said.”

  She thought a minute. “It didn’t help Paris.”

  “No,” he said, “it went against him as hard as it could.” Seagraves sighed. “He was convicted, and punishment was handed down, and that ought to be it. But the child is on my mind. The law dealt with this and moved on, and I’m still tied to it.”

  “Cut it loose,” she said.

  “I don’t know how.”

  “My husband is the connection,” she said.

  He thought for a moment, and she absently began to follow the line of his watch with her fingers, teasing the skin next to it. “I can’t drop a client in the middle of appeals,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s unethical.” He brought the glass to his mouth and took a drink this time, not a sip. “You can’t just get rid of a client because you don’t like what he did. Not after a guilty verdict. The time for that is before you take the case.”

  “I got rid of him,” she said.

  “That’s personal, this is business.”

  She moved her fingers off his arm and sat back in her chair. “We’re all only one person,” she said. “You can’t separate what you do one place from another.”

  “I have to,” he said. “I’m a lawyer.”

  THE NEXT TIME SHE went into the kitchen, he followed her. There was a clock in the wall, seven-fifteen. He was already late for the Kiwanis meeting. He leaned against the sink and watched her make the drinks. The wind was picking up outside and seemed to be coming from the south.

  “Is it different now?” he said. “Living alone?”

  She smiled at him from the sink. “Do I miss being half drowned in my own bathtub, you mean?”

  “I mean, are you still afraid of him?”

  “I have more time now,” she said. “I think about him.”

  “Has he been back?”

  She shook her head. “Not once since he moved out …” Then: “He’s afraid, too.”

  She handed him the glass, and at the same moment he noticed the first feelings of intoxication. It felt like his brain was waking up happy. “Of what?” he said.

  She shrugged. “That he’s poisoned.”

  “He thinks you did it?”

  “That,” she said, “but it’s more than that.”

  “How long has he been believing he was poisoned?”

  “I don’t know when it started. You don’t notice everything at once.”

  He thought of her new in this house, beginning to notice her husband’s peculiarities. He reached out and touched her arm, about the same way she had touched his. She looked at his hand, and for a moment nothing moved. Then she drank from her glass, then she led him into the small room just off the kitchen and sat down on the daybed against the wall. The shoes dropped off her feet. She brought her knees up under her chin and hugged her legs. She took another drink.

  He sat down with her, kicking off his own shoes. The only light in the room came from the kitchen and lay in a rectangle across the floor. “I was glad to see you tonight, Mr. Seagraves,” she said. “You have a kind nature.”

  He did not answer for a moment. He heard her drink, the ice cubes falling back into the bottom of the glass. She moved her legs, and the skirt of her dress fell into her lap. She did not seem to notice.

  “Somehow,” he said, framing the words, “there is a connection. You and I and Rosie Sayers are tied into each other’s secrets.”

  “I told you my secrets,” she said. “You haven’t told me yours.”

  “I paid Buster Devonne,” he said. “That’s a secret.” It was quiet a long time. They drank and stared out the window into the branches of a black tree. The wind was blowing harder now, everything outside trembled.

  “I told you about the girl,” he said.

  He sat farther back until he was resting against the wall. She had not moved, and from his new position he saw the outline of her legs against the light from the open kitchen door. The straight line across the top of her thighs, the roundness underneath, where the muscle lay. He thought of touching her there, underneath.

  “My darkest secret,” he said.

  She turned then and took the glass out of his hand. She put it on the reading table beside the bed, along with her own.

  “The thing he did with the bottle …”

  She waited.

  “I cannot get that out of my mind.”

  Still there was no answer.

  “It aroused me,” he said, and so it was all out.

  He could see her eyes now, the rest of her features were lost in the dark. “That was hardly a secret, Mr. Seagraves,” she said finally.

  “Are you disappointed?”

  He thought he saw her smile. Then her hand was touching his arm and then his cheek. Her face came close, and he felt the heat off her skin a moment before she pressed herself into his neck. He thought she might be crying.

  He began to rock her, as you might rock a child. “I didn’t mean I wanted to do that myself,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t inflict that on a person.…” He moved back and forth, smelling alcohol and shampoo, and she moved with him. For a moment they seemed to be synchronized with the tree branches outside the window, but then the wind suddenly died and the branches stopped, and Seagraves kept rocking.

  In the sudden calm his voice seemed louder. “There are things like that buried in everybody,” he said. “That doesn’t mean you want to act on it, just that it’s there. We are all flawed people.”

  She tugged at a button of his shirt then and laid her hand on his stomach. Her face moved against his neck and she kissed him once, softly, along the line of his jaw. His head slid against the wall, and she followed it, kissing him again, moving herself over him until his head was stopped by the bed itself. There was a sudden coolness, and he realized she had unbuttoned his shirt, top to bottom, and pulled it away from his chest.

  She sat up, watching him. Her features were distinct now, his eyes were more used to the dark. Her hand moved from his stomach to his belt. There was another tug, and that was loose too. She looked up from her work without a trace of a smile. She unzipped his trousers, as practiced at it as he was himself. He began to sit up, to help her, but she put her hand against his chest and pushed him back.

  Then she was not touching him at all. She reached for something out of his view. Her drink.

  She brought the glass to her lips for a long minute, and then put it back on the table. She leaned toward him again and kissed the corner of his mouth. Her lips were icy at first, and he tasted the liquor, and then they moved, slippery and cold and opening, until her tongue was touching his teeth, and it was cold too. Her fingers traced the line of his jaw, following the places she had kissed, and settled behind his neck, pulling him up i
nto her mouth.

  He felt his penis pushing against the opening in his boxer shorts, and he moved a few inches against the bed, trying to realign it. The vision of his penis coming through the opening struck him as childlike and embarrassed him. And at that movement the head found the crack and poked through, perhaps half an inch.

  He tried to move again, but she wouldn’t let him. A hand on his stomach. She pulled back and stared at the opening in his shorts. She put the tip of her finger in her mouth and turned it as it came out, as if she were carrying something, carrying it down and out of his sight, and then her finger was circling the ridge of his penis, so softly he could not say exactly when it stopped.

  She watched him growing and then touched him again, at the mouth. “It’s leaking,” she said. He lay absolutely still. She pulled away again, unbuttoning her dress. He did not try to help. She leaned forward, and it fell away from her shoulders. She pushed it over her hips and lifted her legs, without effort, and it was gone.

  Seagraves was struck at her acrobatics.

  He noticed then that her underwear was gone too, if she had been wearing any. There was no brassiere. He felt her breasts against his chest. He reached behind and touched the back of her leg, feeling the round muscle, and followed it up until he reached her bottom. The edge of his finger lay against pubic hair, and it was wet and cool too.

  He whispered, “Let me out of my pants.”

  For a moment she did not move, and then she brought her knees up and lifted herself off him while her hands followed his ribs to his hips, and then his pants and shorts were coming off and down. His penis felt like it was caught outside the elevator door on the way to the top floor.

  He whispered, “Oh,” but she didn’t stop, and a moment later his shorts and trousers were down around his knees. He tried to push them further, but she straddled him, holding him still. Pay attention. Her face began to drop toward him again, and a moment after he felt the press of her cheek, he felt her fingers around his scrotum. She used it to guide him inside her. A soft, insistent pressure that would not let him move.

  She held him in that way and slowly lowered and raised herself, pulling back to watch his expression. Little bits of light from the doorway caught in her eyes—the spark—and then lightning lit the room, turning her white. The thunder that followed shook the house. He jumped at the noise, and she squeezed him sharply, stopping him, her own lowering and rising progressed without change, unattached.

  “Don’t move,” she said. “Not even when it’s time.”

  He started to answer, but she shook her head. There was another roll of thunder, farther off, then more lightning. Shadows danced over the walls and ceiling. A few minutes later she closed her eyes and seemed to shake inside, a long time. And in her shaking he began a shaking of his own. She held him, though—the only still thing in the room—and he spent himself without the distraction of movement, tracking its course as it came and passed, the clearest the feeling had ever been.

  When it was over, she pulled his pants the rest of the way off, and his socks, and lay with him on the bed. The storm came in waves, with quiet moments in between.

  “I never paid enough attention to the feeling before,” he said.

  She did not answer right away. Then: “What is it like?”

  “It moves,” he said. “It goes through you.”

  She reached for her glass and drank. The lightning lit her up, and he saw the muscles of her stomach. When she finished, she brought the lip of the glass to his lips, and he drank too. The ice had melted, and the drink was weaker and somehow oily in his mouth.

  “Where does it begin?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Somewhere inside.”

  “Show me.”

  He smiled and shook his head. She took his scrotum again, softly now, and looked at his face. “Here?”

  “No, further inside.”

  Her fingers moved behind the scrotum, perhaps an inch, and she pressed up into him. “Here?”

  “It’s closer there,” he said. “I can’t say.…”

  Her fingers moved again, separating his cheeks, and then she put one finger directly in the middle. “Does it begin in there?” When he did not answer, she pushed her finger into him until she found a place where it seemed to him that the feeling in fact began.

  He nodded, and she watched him closely, as if he were somehow remarkable or different. “And where does it go?” she said.

  “You aren’t going to try to follow it the rest of the way,” he said.

  She smiled at him and removed her finger. When it was out of him, he noticed that his penis was half erect. “Where does it go?” she said again.

  He thought for a moment, trying to remember. “Somewhere,” he said, “it touches a nerve that runs a message all the way to my toes. The feeling stays in the lower parts, though. There is no direct connection going up.”

  She did not seem to understand. “The feeling itself, I’m talking about,” he said. “The actual release.”

  She nodded.

  “The titillations that build it come from all over, but you know that.”

  “Yes.”

  He thought again. “I don’t think it’s a straight course,” he said finally. “I think there is a little track in there like a roller coaster that it follows on the way out.… Little drops and then a big one at the end. That’s the killer, the last drop.”

  She kissed him suddenly in the dark. “Is it the same for everyone?” she said. “You think it’s the same?”

  “It sounds the same when they talk about it,” he said.

  They lay still a long time. The rain and thunder stopped, the wind almost quit too. “There’ll be stars out before the night’s over,” he said.

  She put her head into the space between his shoulder and his neck, and he thought again that she might be crying.

  He held her quietly, thinking of the things they had said. In the calm he saw there was something in it beyond the questions and answers, but he could not see the purpose. As he thought, he noticed the weight of her hand against his leg. It seemed to be the spot they were connected, although she was pressed against him up and down.

  Her hand moved—the smallest movement—and settled again, perhaps a quarter inch closer to his groin. His penis crawled toward it, moving on its own across the distance, and touched one of her fingers. He thought she might be asleep—the steady rise and fall of her back where he held her—but then, unmistakably, he felt her finger. It moved to the underside, touching a spot just behind the head, and then slowly traced the route backwards, following it into his body at the junction of his penis and scrotum.

  Once again she would not let him move. “Is this spot close to where it starts?” she said, pushing into him.

  “I think so,” he said.

  “Closer than before?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She pushed into him further, her finger finding what felt like the drop at the end of the track, and moved against it, up and down. He tried to kiss her, she pulled herself back. “Let it come by itself,” she said.

  And he waited, and then the feeling came. Clearly defined, a beginning and an end. And afterward there was a deep sting in the place she had found.

  She was staring at him.

  He moved in the bed, feeling the cool places on his legs where he was wet. “What time is it?” he said.

  “I can look.” But she didn’t move.

  He was suddenly uncomfortable, pressed between her and the wall, and sat halfway up. “Must be after midnight,” he said.

  She stood up and walked to the kitchen. He heard the refrigerator door open and close, the sound of ice cubes dropping into a glass. She came back and sat on the bed, her breasts were small without being narrow. She held herself in the same way naked as she did when she was wearing clothes.

  She offered him a drink from the glass, which he took. It was fresh and strong and sent a shiver through his body, as spasmodic as the othe
r. “It’s one-thirty,” she said.

  The liquor settled in his stomach and warmed him. He drank again, returned the glass. She swallowed as much as he had and then put it away on the table. “I was surprised you drank,” he said.

  “It helps me sleep. The house is full of noises.”

  He sat still and listened, but there was no sound at all. “You’re afraid he’ll come back?”

  When she didn’t answer, he said, “It’s funny, I am affected the same way. I wake up, every morning since the trial ended, and wonder if Paris Trout is going to come into the office. I dread to see him, without knowing why.”

  He saw that she was feeling quiet, and it made him want to reassure her. “It’s not connected to anything he might do,” he said. “Paris Trout lived fifty-nine years without killing anybody, there’s no reason to think he’s going to go out right away and do it again. But there is a quality about him that reminds a person of something else.”

  It was quiet again, and he realized that he had missed what he was trying to say. Something depended on getting it right. “I hate to lose,” he said. “I should never have lost that case, and your husband knows it.”

  “Yes,” she said, “you should.”

  “I’m not speaking now of what’s right,” he said. “Just the legal issue. I’m embarrassed to have lost, and I don’t know exactly how it happened. He reminds me of that whenever he comes in.”

  “That’s not it,” she said.

  He reconsidered, but it came back to the same place. “Professional embarrassment,” he said. “I take pleasure in the work I do, and I do it better than most.”

  She reached over the side of the bed for her things. She got into the dress without bothering with underclothes, then ran her fingers through her hair. He sat on the bed, watching. Presently she handed him his pants.

  “All right,” he said, “if it isn’t professional, what is it? Not this, because I dreaded to see him before this happened.”

  She moved to the window and looked outside. He dressed himself quickly, the sound of his zipper filled the room. He saw that she had taken the glass with her. “Hanna?” The first time he had called her that.