“No.”
“Then she can’t know, that’s all. She can never know.”
“No.”
“That’s the best we can do. No one gets hurt.”
No one gets hurt. Was it possible? Francie didn’t know. But how could it go on, now that she knew Anne, played tennis with her, had started to become a friend, knew her daughter? It couldn’t. There was no future for her and Ned. But tonight? Just one night? No one would get hurt tonight.
She turned toward the stairs. He followed her up, his hand trailing down her back like a charging device.
Having caught an afternoon flight from Lauderdale, having found Francie not at home, and having left a clever little bit of misdirection on the answering machine just because it felt like the kind of nifty move he would be making from here on in, Roger lay dozing on the couch in his basement room. The phone woke him. He ignored it, preferring to let his mind return to what it had been dwelling on during the plane ride, the details of the post-Francie stage of his life. At first, he’d imagined living alone, staying in the house, soldiering on. But why rule out female companionship? He thought of Brenda, Francie’s friend in Rome, thought of how she’d sounded on the phone. He remembered how attractive she was—rich, too, which was important because even with the insurance settlement he would never be able to see to the needs of a woman even more high-maintenance than Francie. Brenda: wasn’t there some story of a party she’d once been at where Pavarotti and Sutherland had sung Beatles songs around an upright piano? He could see himself building a life out of things like that. What was the name of that tailor’s shop near the Trevi fountain where he’d had that gray suit made, the one with the subtle navy flecks? He could picture the facade perfectly, but the name eluded him, was still eluding him when he thought he heard a voice upstairs—not a voice, but two voices, female and male.
Roger removed his shoes, left his basement room, crept up the stairs in stocking feet. The door to the kitchen hung open a few inches, admitting a yellow wedge of light. He hovered in the darkness, listening. He heard a man say something about divorce. A man with the sickening voice of a pleaser: radio boy. Then Francie said something he didn’t catch. And Roger wanted to hear, wanted to hear everything. He stuck his head in the kitchen, saw no one, nipped around the corner into the unlit back hall, and from there along the corridor, also unlit, that led to the front of the house. He hung in the shadows beside the stairs leading to the second floor. And there they were, in a foul embrace.
Whitey, I need you now.
Francie said, “No.”
Radio boy said, “That’s the best we can do. No one gets hurt.”
They were still for a few moments; then Francie turned, turned so that she was looking right at Roger, right at him, and he thought,
Now you’re dead
. But her eyes were wet and he was in the darkness, and she didn’t see him. Up the stairs she went—what had she meant by
no
?—and radio boy followed, up and out of sight, but not before Roger got his first good look at him, the image predictable. Roger listened to their withdrawing footsteps with all the concentration at his command, but it wasn’t necessary. He knew where they were going: into her bedroom, their bedroom, in fact, their marital bedroom. After a few minutes, he went up, too, silent as a big cat in his stocking feet.
The marital door was closed and no light leaked out from under. But Roger didn’t have to see; he heard the sounds of their lust, those cries of Francie’s that she’d never made for him, and the passionate noise of radio boy, and bullshit words of love. Simple death was too good for her. But if he was honest with himself, Roger had known as soon as he had researched the Sue Savard case that there was nothing simple about the kind of death that Whitey handed out, hadn’t been anything simple then, and after all those cooped-up years would be even less simple now. Fair enough. After tonight, he wouldn’t feel bad about it anymore, would cast off any future guilt. She was violating him in every way; it was a form of rape. This was a rape crisis and there was nothing to feel guilty about. His conscience was clear.
And what of radio boy? He was in the marital bed, raping him, too. Roger thought again of searching out some weapon, knife or poker, then bursting in to bludgeon and stab. Again he asked himself, would any jury convict him? And again the answer: in this rotting, leveled-out, lazy-minded country, yes, any jury could. No matter. He had Whitey. How complicated would it be to troll radio boy in Whitey’s path? Complicated, perhaps, he conceded when no immediate solution presented itself, but he’d been born to solve puzzles. This was his métier. The stakes were higher, that was all. He was coming into his own.
On the other side of the door, Francie made some vulgar sound of culmination.
Come, bitch
. Roger imagined her in an open coffin at the funeral home, her face expressionless.
17
“W
here were you?” Anne said.
She was sitting at the kitchen table, foot resting on a chair, ice pack on her ankle. Ned set the milk down in front of her, a half gallon of nonfat and a pint of 2 percent for her coffee, the cartons still cold although they’d been sitting in the car for almost two hours; it was a cold night. “I had a flat,” he said. But two hours!
“A flat?”
“A flat tire.”
“But you know how to change a flat, Ned.”
“The spare was flat, too. And all the gas stations around were those self-service-only kind. I had to walk for miles.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Just one of those things.”
“I was starting to worry.”
“About what?”
“That you’d had an accident or something.”
“I’m fine.”
Anne took off the ice pack, set it on the table. As she leaned forward, an idea came to her; he saw it coming in her eyes. “Why didn’t you call AAA?” she asked.
The unexpected. “Are we still members?”
“I think so. Doesn’t the fee show up on the Visa?”
“Damn. I forgot all about it.”
“Or I could have come and got you.”
“Not with that ankle.”
Wasn’t that the whole point of all this, that you couldn’t drive, for Christ’s sake?
“You’re sweet,” Anne said. She held out her hand. He helped her up. “It’s late,” she said. “Let’s go to bed.” She led him from the room. They were in the doorway, almost out, when she stopped and said, “The milk.” Ned turned back, picked up the cartons, took them to the fridge. Em had posted a new watercolor on the door: two big women, almost filling the frame, holding up a golden trophy. It gleamed. The quivering Keith Haring lines radiating from it showed that. At the bottom was written,
Go for it, Mom and Francie!
Anne saw him looking at it. “Isn’t she great?”
“She’s got real talent, in my opinion.”
Anne looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve always loved her art. You know that.”
Anne laughed. “I meant Francie,” she explained.
“Oh.”
“What did you think of her?”
He shrugged, and thought at once of Judas. “She seemed nice enough,” he said.
“She’s more than that. She’s so . . . together. They live on Beacon Hill.”
How disappointing she could be. He nodded.
“I haven’t met her husband yet, but we will after the match. We’re going out to dinner, the four of us.”
That had slipped his mind. Unable to counteract it, he said nothing.
“That’s all right, isn’t it?”
“Oh, sure.”
They went upstairs. Anne used the bathroom first, went to bed, kissing her fingers and pressing them to his lips as they passed in the doorway, blushing only a little. Ned showered, flossed and brushed his teeth, stimulated his gums with the rubber-tipped brass stick, sprayed deodorant under his arms, took as much time as he could, then followed. The bedside light was off. He quietly got in at his side, lay down near the edge, his back to her, hoping she was asleep by now.
But she was not. He knew that, knew her, knew even before her hand lightly stroked the side of his ass, moved around to his stomach, down. At the same time, he felt her nipples pressing into his back, importunate.
Her nipples were hard, but he was not. It took an uncharacteristic amount of effort to make him so; finally she did it with her mouth. That was unusual, too. Then she slid on top of him, cocked her hips over him, settled down with him inside her.
“Your ankle,” he said.
“Hush.”
Anne started moving. Did uncharacteristic events come in threes, like plane crashes? This time they did. He began to go softer, softer and softer by stages—like a goddamned flat tire—with each grinding of her hips. Not a development that lent itself to secrecy, and Anne soon felt the change. She arched back, fondled his balls, and when that didn’t work reached farther, got a fingertip between his buttocks: an insinuating first. What had she been reading? But it did no good. Nothing did, nothing could, not with the image of Em’s triumphant trophy-raising painting so fresh in his mind. Anne and Francie, going for it. His penis slipped out of her and nestled down at its base. DNF, wasn’t that what they said in horse racing? Did not finish.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s all right.”
But it had never happened before. If there was a God, one of the old-fashioned, narrow-minded, judgmental sort, he would now of course be in the process of sabotaging his erectile capacity for life. But Ned didn’t believe in any god like that and, worse, was also psychologist enough to know that such sabotage could be easily accomplished by, and against, the self.
Anne rolled off him, lay on her back. He knew those sensitive eyes of hers were open, staring into the darkness. Had she been close to an orgasm? Yes, of course, and what modern husband could leave her there? Not him. Ned crept down in the bed, began running his tongue down her stomach, lightly and teasingly, he hoped.
“Don’t,” she said, and turned away from him, drawing her knees toward her chest.
Lightly, teasingly:
all wrong. This wasn’t about seducing her, for Christ’s sake; the job was to make her come. He should have been direct: licked her like it was the last night on earth, the way he’d just been doing to Francie. He’d been false, pro forma, more like a bad date than a husband, and Anne didn’t miss things like that.
Time passed. Ned heard a siren far away, the furnace firing up in the basement, Anne’s breathing, growing steady and even. He closed his eyes, but sleep wouldn’t be fooled that easily.
Another siren; the furnace switched off; and Anne spoke. Startling him: so sure he’d been that she was asleep.
“Did Kira Chang get hold of you?”
“What?”
“You know. Kira Chang. From syndication, or whatever it is. She called while you were taking Francie back to the tennis club. I gave her the cell phone number.”
“Thanks. She did.” Silence, the kind that had to be filled. “Some minor screwup—I’ll take care of it in the morning.”
The furnace switched back on, ran for a while, went silent. Anne was silent, too. The headache started behind Ned’s right eye, where it always did, but this time spread deeper than ever before. Deeper and sharper.
What the
fuck am I doing?
he thought.
What the fuck am I doing?
“Ned?” Anne said quietly, and then a little louder, “Ned?”
He was asleep.
Anne slipped out of bed. Having gone to bed naked in preparation for sex with Ned, she put on the long sweatshirt she usually slept in and went downstairs. She didn’t turn on any lights, didn’t need them, knew her own house. Through the kitchen, through the door that led to the garage, a single-car garage where Ned’s car, the later model, had precedence over hers. Anne switched on the garage light, and there was his car. She walked around it, saw just that: his car. All the tires seemed the same, none noticeably flat. What was she looking for? She didn’t know.
Anne opened the driver’s-side door, popped the trunk, where the spare was. She looked inside, saw his roof rack, kayak paddle, a bag of rock salt, a bouquet of flowers—irises, still fresh. The spare lay under the floor mat. She unsnapped the snaps, rolled it back. On top lay the tools—jack, crank, lug wrench—all still sealed in factory plastic. Beneath the tools she found the instructions, also sealed in plastic, and under them was the spare. It had never touched pavement: the manufacturer’s label was still stuck to the treads. That didn’t mean it wasn’t flat, or hadn’t been flat earlier that night. Anne moved to lift it off but couldn’t. It was bolted in place. The bolt had to be loosened first, and the wrench had never been used. So no one had ever removed the tire to try it out.
Anne ran her hand over the spare, prodded it, punched it softly with her fist. It seemed as rounded and firm as the others, but she really couldn’t tell. She stood over the trunk, gazing down inside, gazing at the roof rack, the kayak paddle, the rock salt, the irises, the tools, the spare. Anne had never been good at solving puzzles, had hated math, didn’t like crosswords, was always nervous when people started playing games like Botticelli. She knew what she was seeing had to add up to something, but she couldn’t make it happen. Then she noticed a road map wedged between the spare tire and the wheel well. She tugged it out.
A road map of New Hampshire. So? She unfolded it. Just a New Hampshire road map, territory very familiar to her. She ran her eye over some of the spots—Tuckerman’s Ravine, Franconia Notch, Wildcat, Waterville Valley, Lake Winnipesaukee. Some time passed before she spotted the little red
X
on a tiny island in the middle of the Merrimack River.
A red
X
. Meaning? Anne had no idea. But her next thought gave it some: Kira Chang. She closed the trunk, leaving the irises to die.
18
A
pretty girl got on the bus in Bridgeport, just after dawn. The only empty seat was on the aisle beside Whitey, so she took that, might have taken it anyway, he thought, catching the way she checked out his leather jacket from the corner of her eye. It was a cool jacket, no doubt about that, the coolest article of clothing he’d ever owned. He’d also bought himself a pair of cowboy boots from his first week’s salary, made in Korea, but very cool as well, black with silver stitching and thick heels that must have made him at least six-four. And he still had two hundred dollars and change left over, plus what remained of his gate money.
Yeah, babe,
he thought, giving her another look,
check me out
.
A pretty girl, but kind of cheap-looking: spiky hair, lots of earrings, and—as she shrugged herself out of her coat—a little snake tattoo coiling up from her cleavage. Whitey got hard right away. There was a bathroom at the back of the bus. Was it possible to get her behind that door and fuck her brains out? Things like that happened. He remembered that exact scene from one of Rey’s videos, except it took place on a plane, not a bus. The girl on the plane had made the first move, dangling her long red fingernails in the guy’s lap.
This girl didn’t do that. Neither did she have long red fingernails; hers were unpainted and bitten to the quick. Whitey made himself interesting by staring out the window for a while, like a guy having deep thoughts, then sat back and glanced at her as if noticing her for the first time, and if she happened to glance back and see how built he was under the leather jacket or even better the bulge in his pants, they’d be on their way. But she didn’t.
“Where you headed?” he said at last.
“Providence.”
He nodded. “Rhode Island,” he said. Nothing else came to mind. A few miles went by. “Just passing through?” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Providence. Just passing through?”
“I go to Brown.”
Brown—what the hell was that? He thought back, all the way back to his high school days on the ice.
“The college?” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Brown. The college.”
“Yes.”
Now they were getting somewhere. He noticed that her neck wasn’t completely clean. Necks—where had he heard that if you squeezed a woman’s neck while she was coming she had a better orgasm? Why not just say to her: Hey, ever hear about this neck thing? And then they’d be in the bathroom at the back of the bus, trying it out. He licked his lips a couple of times, getting ready to say it.
The girl took out a book, some kind of art book. She opened it to a picture, one of those pictures any kid could do, just a bunch of rectangles, and stared at it. He squinted at the title,
Entrance to Green
. There wasn’t even any green in it, for Christ’s sake. She took out a pencil and wrote in the margin,
Anuszkiewicz: geometric recession counterbalanced by tonal shift—cool
?
warm
. His hard-on went away.
She studied the art book the rest of the way, gazing at one bullshit picture after another. Whitey stole sidelong peeks at the coiled snake rising and falling in its soft, springy lair as she breathed. Only as the bus was pulling into Providence station did Whitey get an idea.
It’s the recovery of stolen objects. Paintings, for example
. Why hadn’t he thought of that earlier? The girl gathered her things and started up the aisle. “I’m in the art business myself,” he called after her. She didn’t seem to hear. He thought of the steel-tipped pole he’d left behind, and that snake, rising and falling on her breast.
Whitey got off the bus in Boston. He’d been there once before to play in a tournament at the Garden, but all he remembered was eating oysters, the first and only time he’d ever tasted them, horrible slimy things that were supposed to make you horny but hadn’t; he’d puked in the locker room that evening, and they’d lost to one of the big Catholic schools, the way they always did. So he had to ask some loser on the street, “Hey. Where’s the Garden?”
“Ain’t no more Garden, pal. Where you been? It’s the Fleet.”
“Huh?”
“Fleet Center, now. But the same location. What you do, you—”
“The Public Garden,” said Whitey, realizing his mistake. The man looked at him funny but gave him the directions. The Garden, gone. For a few blocks that pissed Whitey off, more than pissed him off, reminding him of the big percentage they’d cut out of his life. But after a while he began to see the bright side. If Gardens could come and go, then anything was possible, and that included a big score.
Whitey followed the directions, soon found himself walking on a street lined with fancy shops, their windows full of Christmas displays. He saw a leather jacket, a lot like his, went closer: identical to his, right down to those little
V
-shaped upturns on the chest seams. He checked the name of the shop—Newbury Leather—then took off his own jacket to examine the label. It had been cut out. He stood there wondering about that until he felt the cold, noticed that snow was falling. He hadn’t seen snow since they’d sent him down south. Whitey gazed straight up into the sky. From that angle the snowflakes were black against the cloud cover. He’d grown up in snow and never seen that effect before. Change was possible. He was changing, getting smarter. Black snow was an interesting idea, for example, the kind of interesting idea someone in the art business might have, someone like him.
Someone like me, you bitch,
he thought to himself, meaning the girl on the bus. He crossed a street and entered the Public Garden.
Roger was waiting under the statue of George Washington, just as he’d said he’d be. Snow clung to the brim of George Washington’s bronze hat, and to Roger’s hat, too, a black fedora, or some other hat with a name. Roger even looked a little like Washington, except he was smiling. He held out his hand, gloved in black suede. Whitey shook it, squeezing harder than normal because his own hand was bare,
so it was a bit of an insult,
like Roger was a prince and he was a peon or something.
“Ever play any tennis, Whitey?”
“Tennis?”
“You’d have been good.”
Whitey wasn’t sure how to take that: tennis was for fags. “Well, here I am,” he said.
“I never doubted you.” Roger handed him an envelope. “A week’s salary, plus an advance I hope you’ll find suitable.”
Whitey took it. Was he supposed to open the envelope and count the money? Only an asshole would take money without counting it. But the envelope stopped him, although he didn’t know why. Whitey stuck it unopened in his pocket.
“Familiar with the city, Whitey?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why don’t you take the day to get situated? Saturdays are difficult for me, this one especially.”
“Okay,” said Whitey, who would have bet anything it was Friday.
“Come here tomorrow, same time. If it’s convenient. I may have something for you by then.”
Something? Convenient? Whitey was a little lost, but he said, “Sure, I can make it.”
Roger’s smile faded. “Tomorrow, then,” he said, and walked away.
Whitey watched him go. Roger followed the path around a frozen pond and headed across the park. He wore a long black coat that matched his hat and gloves, looked rich, untouchable; and was almost out of sight, obscured by distant trees and thickening snowfall, when Whitey’s mind finally processed what his eyes had seen at once: Roger had been wearing slippers, plaid ones lined with sheepskin. What did that mean? That Roger couldn’t be trusted? Whitey ripped open the envelope, found ten fifties. What had Roger called it? An advance? What did that mean? Five Cs for something he didn’t even understand: that bought a lot of trust. But slippers? Whitey tapped the bills against his palm: slippers. And then he thought of the cut-out label from the leather jacket and realized this had to be Roger’s neighborhood—he was close to home. And where would that be, exactly? Whitey went after him.
Roger came to a street that bordered the park, crossed it. Whitey closed the distance between them until he could distinguish the red of Roger’s slippers. Too close, probably. If Roger glanced back he would certainly recognize him. But Roger didn’t glance back. Whitey knew why: because he was a prince and Whitey was who he was. Roger kept to a steady pace, up a hill lined with big brick houses, all with fancy grillwork, fancy doors, fancy knockers. He turned left on a street that mounted still higher, stopped at a door, took out his keys, opened it, and went inside. Whitey walked past, noted the number and street name, kept going.
He’d accomplished something; what, he wasn’t sure, but it gave him a good feeling. He walked to the top of the hill, down the other side—stepping carefully, because his cowboy boots were slippery on the snowy bricks—found a bar at the bottom. Money in his pocket and a day to kill. Whitey went inside and ordered breakfast: a draft and a large fries. Same again. Then another draft. He was free, and feeling good.
The bar began to fill up. Someone next to him ordered oysters. Whitey eyed them, glistening on crushed ice, felt a little funny. He started thinking about Sue Savard. Strange, how the mind worked: he hadn’t thought about her in years, would have supposed he’d completely forgotten what she looked like, but now that he was back up north, back up north and free, he could picture her, especially her eyes the moment he’d gotten himself inside her. The truth was that he’d never had sex like the sex he’d had with Sue Savard. And he hadn’t meant to hurt her at all—that business with the glass cutter had been mostly just to tickle her, give her a little added pleasure. Women had an enormous capacity for pleasure, according to Rey, and his amateur housewife videos proved it; real housewives, even the social worker said so, real housewives with video cameras. Someone—a mustached man with thick lips—slurped down one of those oysters. Whitey paid his bill and left.
Money in his pocket. A day to kill. Whitey returned to the bus station, got on the bus to Nashua, took a taxi to Lawton Ferry, 97 Carp Road.
A dump, as he knew it would be. He knocked on the door five or six times, called, “Ma,” then walked around the side, peering in the windows. He saw dirty dishes, dirty clothes, pictures of Jesus, but no one was home. Fine. He didn’t really want to see her anyway. What he wanted was the pickup.
He found it in the rotting barn behind the house. His old pickup, but painted white now, with
LITTLE WHITE CHURCH OF THE REDEEMER
stenciled on the side. That, and the fact she’d never mentioned it, pissed him off, so much that he started kicking with his new cowboy boot, kicking a hole right through the wall of the barn. What gave her the right to do that? He calmed down when he realized that if the pickup hadn’t been used he’d never have gotten it started after all these years. Besides, he’d soon be able to afford something much better. Whitey opened the door, saw a cat curled up inside. He yanked it out, found the keys under the seat, fired up his old car.
Whitey drove east to Little Joe Lake, took the rutted road that led to the far end. Nothing had changed, or if it had, the snow was hiding all the signs, but everything seemed strange. He had changed: he was bigger, stronger, smarter, and that made all the difference.
Whitey parked by the footbridge to the little cabin on the island. He sat there for a long time. Square one, and he was back. If only Sue Savard was inside now, everything would be different. This bigger, stronger, smarter him would make sure of that, would know how to stop the screaming in some harmless way.
Not that it had been his fault, all that screaming. Why hadn’t she realized what it would lead to? Why hadn’t she been able to stop it herself, to keep her own goddamn mouth shut and not force him to do it for her? Her fault, but still Whitey was filled with regret—he’d blown his chance with Sue Savard, the sexiest woman he’d ever known. What would Sue Savard have been like now?