Normally, she would have rushed outside to greet Rob with a hug.
This time, some inexplicable something held her back. She returned to her
sinkful of dishes as the trio on the lawn moved out of sight around the corner
of the house. Outside her open window, a fat bumblebee buzzed, and in back
where the black-eyed Susans grew, Mikey and a friend shouted back and forth.
Inside the cool quiet of the house, the kitchen clock ticked, and then the door
to the shed opened and footsteps approached the kitchen, footsteps she would
have recognized anywhere. They stopped in the doorway. “Holy mother of God,
woman,” he said. “You’ve been scalped.”
One soapy hand went to her hair. She stepped away from the sink,
wondering what he thought, hoping he’d like it, wondering why it mattered. He
was looking at her as though she’d just landed from another planet, and she
tried to read past the disbelief in those familiar green eyes to whatever else
was there. “Turn around,” he said softly. “Let’s see.”
Like an obedient child, she made a slow, 360-degree turn. “This
is scary,” he said, “but I think I could pass you on the street and not
recognize you.”
“You hate it,” she said.
“No! No, really, I love it. It does something to your face.
It’s like—” He paused, still looking stunned. “Remember those paintings of
the puppies and the kittens with the great big eyes?”
“So what you’re saying, MacKenzie, is that I look like an animal.”
“Come on, Fiore, you know damn well you could put on war paint and
a football helmet and you’d still be gorgeous. You just look so different.
I—wow.”
“So where’s my hug?”
He opened his arms and she embraced him fiercely. He felt lean
and wiry, his heartbeat strong and steady against her chest. “Oh, I’ve missed
you so much,” she said. He placed a hand on the back of her neck, just beneath
what was left of her hair. His skin was warm against hers. Outside the
window, Danny was telling the blonde about the claw-footed bathtub upstairs.
“You smell so good,” Casey whispered.
“Me?” he said in mock astonishment.
“Yes,” she said, wondering why it was that she felt so right when
she was with him. “You.”
“Geez, Fiore, it must be the sexy new cologne I’m wearing.”
“You’re not wearing cologne.” Confused by the jumble of emotions
she was feeling, she realized it was time to disengage. She took a step
backward and he released her immediately. “So,” she said briskly, “who’s your
lady friend?”
“Her name’s Christine. She’s a lawyer with the L. A. County
D.A.’s office.”
She raised both eyebrows. “I’m impressed, MacKenzie. You’ve
moved up to the big leagues.”
He shrugged. “She’s a good kid,” he said dismissively.
“So what are you doing in this neck of the woods?”
“She has a cousin who’s getting married in Camden the day after
tomorrow. I figured since we were coming to Maine anyway....” He ran out of
words, stood there staring at her. “Jesus,” he said, “I still can’t believe
how different you look.”
She held out a hand. “Come on. I’ll show you around.”
She gave him the deluxe tour, cellar to attic. “The place is a
disaster right now,” she said as they ascended the stairs to the second floor.
“Even worse than usual, because I just got home from a week in Boston.”
He reached out a finger and wiped plaster dust from the banister.
“I know,” he said absently. “Mom said you stopped by.”
“Your mother’s a sweetheart,” she said.
“That’s what she says about you.” He looked around the upstairs
hall. “So you and the Italian stallion did all this?”
“With a little help from our friends. I sanded and refinished all
the hardwood floors.” She grimaced. “What a job that was. And I painted the
ceilings and the woodwork and the doors. Come see the bedroom. You’ll love
the paper.”
***
After dinner, while Danny and Christine Hamilton matched wits
against each other with a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit, Casey and Rob
wandered off to the living room with a bottle of wine and two jelly glasses.
The hours flew by as they caught each other up on the last few months of their
lives. The house grew dark and quiet, and they still hadn’t run out of things
to say when Danny finally came downstairs to drag his wife off to bed.
“Casey?”
They both looked up in surprise at the sound of his voice. He was
standing in semi-darkness at the foot of the stairs, wearing nothing but his
Calvins. “Hello, darling,” Casey said, and smothered a yawn.
“It’s almost one-thirty.” Danny rubbed a hand across his bare
chest. “Aren’t you coming to bed tonight?”
Casey looked at the mantel clock. “So it is,” she said. “I had
no idea it was so late.”
“It’s my fault,” Rob said. “We were shooting the bull and we lost
track of time.”
“I’ll be right up. Just let me get things taken care of down
here—”
“Go,” Rob said. “I’ll clean up and turn out the lights.”
When she reached the foot of the stairs, Danny wrapped an arm
around his wife’s shoulders. “See you in the morning,” he said to Rob.
Rob saluted with his glass. “G’night,” he said, and watched them
climb the stairs together.
Directly above his head, he could hear their footsteps, Casey’s
light, Danny’s heavier, as they got ready for bed. He poured himself another
glass of Chablis. The footsteps stilled, and Rob took a long, slow swallow.
The house was old, the walls thin. He sat one floor below them, jelly glass in
hand and a hollow, empty feeling in his gut, and listened to the unmistakable
sound of them making love.
He knew he should get up, leave the room, go outdoors if that was
what it took, but he was rooted to the spot, nailed in place by some
masochistic need to torture himself. They were being quiet, but he could still
hear every soft, breathy cry, every hushed moan. He pictured her face,
transformed into blurred softness by passion, and something knotted up in his
belly. Above his head, the bedsprings began to creak with a steady,
unmistakable rhythm. His fingers tightened on the jelly glass as the sounds
coming from upstairs grew louder, seeming to go on forever before they finally
reached a crescendo, and the creaking of the bedsprings slowed. Silenced. Rob
drained the rest of his Chablis in a single gulp.
He put away the bottle of wine, left the jelly glasses, hers and
his, in the sink. Turned off the lights and shut the guest room door, stripped
off his clothes and crawled into bed with Chris. He pressed himself up against
her backside, kissed her awake, and without speaking, rolled her onto her back.
It didn’t take long. Chris fell asleep again almost immediately,
but he lay awake, still unsatisfied, the world’s biggest hypocrite.
Stay
away from her
, he told himself.
She’s Danny’s wife. Get the hell out
and don’t come back.
There was only one sensible thing to do: pack his
belongings the first thing tomorrow morning and head directly to Camden and
Chris’s cousin’s house, putting as many miles as possible between himself and
both of the Fiores.
But in the morning, he was sitting on the back steps, lacing up
his Nikes, when Casey came out for her morning run. “Good morning!” she said.
“What are you doing up so early?”
He gave her that little-boy grin, the one that always seemed to
melt women right where they stood. “Waiting for you,” he said.
She rocked from one foot to the other, wearing a beatific smile
and that pixie haircut that made her look about twelve years old. “Up for a
long run this morning?” she said.
“Are you kidding, Fiore? I can outdistance you any day.”
“Oh, really? We’ll see about that.”
It was a spectacular morning, ripe with birdsong and deep shadows,
dew weighing heavy on the grass. He matched his pace and his breathing to
hers.
Sublimation.
Running was hard, sweaty, physical activity that
made the lungs ache and the heart hammer and left the body in a state of
satiation. Running was something they shared with each other and nobody else.
It didn’t take a Freudian scholar to figure out the connection.
He couldn’t remember when he’d seen her looking this good. Strong
and tanned and muscular. Exotic, her entire face changed with the new
haircut. The same woman, only different. Healthier. Stronger. Better.
Casey Fiore had always been a pretty woman. Now, in her thirties, she’d
matured beyond pretty into a full-blown ripeness that had never been there
before, and he couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
They took a route that was unfamiliar to him, winding among hills
and valleys and pastures, across brooks and bridges and past a primeval bog
with blackened tree stumps poking out of murky water. Past cattle that stared
at them with vacant brown eyes, past a covey of wild ducks who arose as one
from their watery nest, wings thrashing as they honked a protest at the
disturbance. He was used to running on flat land, and even at a moderate pace,
he had to push himself to keep up with her in these western Maine hills.
She threw him a knowing glance. “Ready to quit?” she said.
He grinned. “Are you?”
They’d always pushed each other this way, prodded each other to
excel. “Let’s take a break,” she said, and dropped onto the grassy shoulder of
the road. He flopped down beside her, flat on his back, staring up into the
cloudless blue heavens. “Woman,” he said, arching his back and stretching like
a cat, “you’re a killer.”
She broke off a long blade of grass and ran the tip of it
playfully across the two inches of bare belly his stretching had revealed.
“Don’t,” he said. “It tickles.”
“That’s the idea.”
“You’re asking for trouble,” he said lazily.
“Are you kidding, Flash? I make trouble happen.”
“Hey, cool it, woman! I’m ticklish there!”
She grinned. “And here?”
“Cut it out, Fiore.”
The grin widened. “Why?”
“Because you’ll be sorry if you don’t.”
“Hah! You talk so big, MacKenzie. Put your money where your mouth
is.”
He grabbed her wrist and yanked her, giggling and protesting, to
the ground beside him. They rolled in the grass like a pair of five-year-olds
as he tickled her without mercy, until she was laughing and crying and begging
him to stop. “Who’s in charge now?” he said.
“Stop,” she said weakly, letting out a burst of laughter that
ended on a groan. “Oh, stop, please, it hurts.” Still laughing, she struggled
in a halfhearted attempt to fight him off. “MacKenzie,” she sputtered, “if you
don’t stop—right this minute—”
“Yeah?”
“—I’ll pee my pants.”
He grinned. “That wouldn’t be a pretty sight, would it, Fiore?”
“You win,” she cried. “You win!”
“That’s more like it,” he said. “I like to see a little humility
in a woman.”
They lay on their sides, his hand resting on her ribcage as it
rose and fell with her labored breathing. In the melee, her tee shirt had
ridden up, exposing a vast amount of skin. Their eyes met, green probing
deeply into green, and the playfulness melted away. He could see her pulse
beating steady and strong at the base of her throat. Beneath his fingers, her
skin was hot and sticky, and of their own volition, his knuckles brushed
against her satin smoothness, raising goose bumps on her flesh and sending a
searing pain through his chest.
Then a car passed, and the spell was broken. Casey blinked her
eyes, yanked her shirt back into place, and rolled to a sitting position beside
him. While he struggled to get his breathing back under control, he busied
himself brushing grass and debris from his clothes and retying sneaker laces
that didn’t need tying. When he thought he could speak again, he cleared his
throat. “If we don’t get back pretty soon,” he said, his voice sounding odd to
his own ears, “they’ll send out the bloodhounds.”
“Insufferable ass,” she said, but without conviction.
“That’s me, kiddo,” he said. “Let’s roll.”
They finished their run in a heavy silence. He had planned to
stay for another day, but directly after breakfast, he packed his bags and
headed out. All the way to Camden, Chris kept sending him speculative glances,
but she didn’t ask, and he wasn’t about to volunteer any information.
He just got the hell out and didn’t look back.
***
That fall, the air turned crisp, the leaves wore their best and
brightest colors, and with the bulk of the work on the house completed, for the
first time in years she and Danny had time to spend together, away from the
prying eyes of the world. When they’d reconciled, he had promised to take a
year off, and so far he’d held to his promise. She had expected that idleness
would be difficult for him, but he found other avenues of expression. They
attended weekly counseling together, and they were slowly working through the
problems in their marriage, working through their grief and their anger and a
myriad of other emotional booby-traps.