The Shape of Desire (18 page)

“Well,” I say. “His name is Dante.”

She makes a face. “I can already tell this isn’t going to end well.”

I give her an indignant look. “It’s a great name!”

“For a cat, maybe. Go on.”

“His name is Dante, I’ve known him since college, we’ve been involved off and on for years. But he’s—mysterious.”

She knows how old I am, so she does the math. “You’ve known him for about fifteen years and he’s still mysterious? Honey, any man I’ve known longer than six months is so predictable I can tell you when he’s going to fart and when he’s going to shit.”

“Well, Dante’s different.”

She rests her chin in her hand. “How so?”

I give her essentially the story I gave Matt all those years ago. “He travels a lot. When he’s gone, I can’t really get in touch with him. He’s not particularly forthcoming about his job or his circumstances. I only know about him what he wants me to know.”

Ellen’s eyes are huge. “Well, now, you could hardly have opened up a cookbook and come up with a better recipe for disaster!” she exclaims. “Next you’re going to tell me you’ve allowed him to invest all your money for you and put his name on the title to your house.”

I can’t help a chuckle. “Nope. In fact, I have access to
his
bank accounts when he’s gone, and he trusts me to handle bills and various transactions for him.”

This crinkles her forehead. “Have you ever met his parents?”

“They’re dead, but I know his brother and sister. I babysat for his niece the other day, in fact.”

Her frown deepens. Clearly this description doesn’t fit her notion of a con man or felon. “Do
they
seem normal?”

I have to laugh again. “Define ‘normal.’”

“Do they have jobs and houses and stuff?”

“Christina does. William—I don’t know.”

“Do you think they’re gunrunners? Drug dealers?
Slavers?
”

“God, no. I think they’re—eccentric.” I can’t say,
I think they’re harmless
, because I remember Dante beating the shit out of Ritchie, and I know the word doesn’t apply. “I’m pretty sure I don’t have anything to fear from them,” I say lamely.

She tilts her head to one side. “There’s more to this story than you’re telling,” she says with conviction.

“A little.”

“But you’re not afraid. You don’t think you’re in danger.”

“Right. I’m really not.”

“And the sex is good?”

Again, she’s caught me taking a sip of coffee, and again I nearly choke. “Ellen!”

“Well, it would almost have to be to put up with this—mystery crap.”

“The sex is good.” I shrug and set the coffee down. “I love him. I’ve loved him for a long time. I’ve adjusted to his lifestyle.”

She’s regarding me shrewdly still. “You realize that anytime someone has secrets, there’s usually a cold day of reckoning when those secrets are revealed. You could find yourself in love with a terrible man.”

I nod. “I could. I don’t think so, but I could.”

“Well.” She drums her fingers on the table. “It’s no worse than I thought.”

I laugh at her. “Don’t worry about
me
,” I say. “You’ve got enough on your plate trying to fix Kathleen and Grant.”

She sighs. “Neither of whom, I would guess, can be fixed.” She glances at her watch and pushes to her feet. “Shit, we’re going to be late. Come on. Let’s go see how Kathleen’s doing.”

I
am convinced Kathleen doesn’t want to lay eyes on me, so I send Ellen to reconnoiter while I go straight to my office. Ellen appears in my doorway about ten minutes later.

“She looks okay,” she reports. “Tense, you know, but not like she’s been hit in the face recently. I asked her how her weekend was and she just said fine.”

“Should I go talk to her?”

“Sure, why not?”

But I don’t have the courage to try until late in the day. At noon, I avoid both the lunchroom and the group outing so I don’t accidentally run into Kathleen. Whenever I have to use the bathroom, I skulk around in the hallway first, trying to determine if she’s already in the ladies’
room. It’s no surprise the day drags on as if it is sixteen instead of eight hours long.

Finally, about ten minutes before closing time, I slink to her corner of the building. I’ve already seen our boss leave early, and I know there are no other desks within hearing range. Unless Ellen is lurking somewhere nearby—a real possibility—we should be able to talk in privacy.

She is hunched over her desk, a pencil in hand as she scans a document. Maybe a piece of correspondence she is editing before typing a clean copy; our boss is a notoriously bad speller.

“Kathleen,” I say.

She looks up. Her face is somber, her expression is closed, but at least she meets my eyes. “What,” she says, no invitation in her inflection.

I step a little closer. I’ve gotten over my aversion to apologizing. “Look—I’m not sure what to say. I’m sorry. I wish—I’m just so sorry.”

She nods. “I’m sorry, too.”

That’s more than I expected. “I wouldn’t blame Ritchie for telling you that you should never speak to me again, but I hope you won’t be mad at
me
for what happened,” I say. I think Ritchie’s an asshole, but I think she’s more likely to talk to me if I take a different approach. “I know Dante overreacted. But he—”

“Do you think so?” she interrupts, wholly surprising me. “A strange man comes into your house and starts calling you names and shoves you and looks like he might punch you—and you think your boyfriend overreacted? I think he did what any man should have done. He protected the woman he loves.”

I file that away under
statements I don’t necessarily agree with
. Generally speaking, I don’t think I need to be protected, but I have to admit I was glad Dante was in the house that morning. “Still, it got out of hand. I hope—I hope Ritchie’s feeling okay today.”

She shakes her head. “I took him to the doctor. Had a cast put on
his arm. He won’t be able to work for a couple of weeks, so he’s mad about that.”

Now I examine her face a little fearfully. As Ellen said, there are no new bruises—visible ones, anyway. “I hope he didn’t take his frustration out on
you
.”

She shakes her head again. “He didn’t feel well enough. He’s still got a terrible headache and he’s kind of dizzy. Doctor said it was a mild concussion. So he’s been pretty sweet to me, actually. Letting me take care of him.”

I’m not sure if the appropriate response is
That’s nice
or
Run while you can
. So I answer indirectly. “Listen, I know it’s awkward, but I hope you and I can still be friends. It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t your fault—”

She lifts her eyes and gives me a long sad look. There is so much heartache in her expression that for a moment I just stare. Who could carry such grief and devastation around inside, all the time, and not be ground down to dust and ashes? “I don’t know, Maria,” she says in her soft voice. “I’m not sure I’m meant to have friends.”

“
Kathleen!
Don’t say that! Everyone is meant to have friends. You’re—I get the impression Ritchie is kind of possessive”—
there’s an understatement
—“but it’s not good for anyone to be too isolated, too dependent on one other human being. You have to have friends. People to help you through the rough times.” I take a deep breath. “And I think recently there have been a lot of rough times.”

She shrugs and glances down at her document again. “Yeah. Well, who doesn’t have it hard?” she says. “I have to finish this before I go, Maria. See you tomorrow.”

Slowly, reluctantly, I walk away, glancing back twice before I’m around the corner and she’s out of sight. The conversation has unsettled me, even though it went better than I had expected. Maybe because I was braced for anger—hoped for anger—because anger showed a flash
of fighting spirit, a certain will. I had not prepared myself for the blank despair of someone who feels completely and utterly trapped.

I remember something my mother said years ago when one of our neighbors woke up one morning and found her husband dead in his car, a suicide note beside him on the seat. It turned out he’d been embezzling from his company and he knew he was about to be exposed, and he didn’t know how to fix his mistake or how to face the consequences.
People always find a way out, when there’s no way out
, my mother had said.
They run away. They kill somebody. They kill themselves. People always find a way to leave an untenable situation.

The implication, of course, was that those desperate measures are always drastic. Effective, but disastrous. Even those who come out alive are horribly scarred.

I know Kathleen is in an untenable situation. How will she get out?

I
’m so depressed by my conversation with Kathleen that I can’t bring myself to whip through traffic to speed home before Dante leaves. Sunday was haunted by the air of good-bye that usually hangs over us the day before he vanishes, and I know chances are good that the house will be empty when I get home. That knowledge adds to my general sense of misery, but my limbs are too leaden, my mind too numb, to allow me to careen down the roads with my usual missing-Dante mania.

So I am both shocked and dumbly grateful when I arrive at the house and see the door standing open, a light on through the window. Hope lends me strength and I jump out of the car and rush inside.

“Dante?” I call.

He sweeps around the corner from the kitchen, catching me up in a ferocious hug, kissing me till I’m breathless. “I have about an hour, I think,” he mutters into my hair. “Then I’ve got to go.”

That’s cutting it close for him; he likes to be far outside the city
limits before he feels the changes working their way through his body. But oh God, he is kissing me with a hungry desperation; his hands are fumbling at my clothes, trying to push them out of his way. There is something wild in the flavor of his mouth, different in the touch of his fingers. It is like his skin has already roughened, his blood has already heated up. He has not transformed yet, his body is all human, but some internal essence has recalibrated, some element in his body has already alchemized.

I feel my own blood transform, my own cells react. I am as wild as he is. I kick off my shoes, rip the fabric of my blouse as I impatiently discard it. I cannot get naked soon enough, cannot wait to feel his hard, sleek body against mine. We do not make it to the bedroom or even bother dropping to the floor. We clutch and claw at each other, grunting with an animalistic pleasure as we join together and frantically couple. He is gripping my shoulders so tightly that I feel his nails break my skin; I don’t want to look, in case those nails have already lengthened into talons or claws. But I am holding him just as close, grinding against him, my open mouth gasping against his skin as if it is
him
I need to breathe in, and not unsatisfactory air. He cries out as he climaxes inside me, and I squeeze him more tightly between my legs, not willing to allow him to slip away from me just yet. He pumps a few more times and my own orgasm shakes me, though I muffle my reaction with my lips pressed against his chest. We are both panting, gulping for air; I can feel the trembling of my legs as my body remembers what the rest of its parts are for.

Suddenly the air around me feels cold, and I cling to Dante for warmth. His embrace has gentled, though he is holding me just as closely. He kisses the top of my head over and over.

“I have to go,” he says. “But I couldn’t leave yet. Without seeing you again. Without—” He kisses me again.

Now it’s not just my legs that are shaking. I’m shivering so much that
I’m practically palsied. “I know,” I say, the words chattering out of my mouth. “I’m so glad you waited—I’m so glad you were here—but go. Go. I don’t want you to be anywhere near civilization when the transformation comes.”

“I love you, Maria,” he says, his voice more guttural than I am used to, and kisses me hard on the mouth. He breaks free and scoops up a pair of running pants that he must have left at the edge of the kitchen floor. Apparently that’s all he plans to wear; he must expect the change to occur too quickly for him to need shoes or a shirt. His pack is at the door and, of course, his key is already around his neck. “I really do. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

He kisses me and then he is out the door. I snatch up a coat and run after him, but, as if my lawn has been protected by some invisible electric fence that will incinerate me if I touch it, I stutter to a halt right before the grass gives way to asphalt. Dante is already loping down the street, bent over, as if at any moment he expects to drop into a crouch or go to all fours. It’s at least an hour until full dark, but shadows are already bunching up along the road, thrown by houses and garages and old-growth oaks. For a few moments I can make out the pale texture of his bare torso as he flits in and out of those dark patches, and then he disappears. I don’t know if he’s merely gone too far for my eyes to follow him, or if he has that suddenly transmogrified to another shape, another creature. I do know that, for the first time since I’ve met him, I absolutely and unquestioningly believe that he has always told me the truth about who and what he is.

I stand there, staring at the empty roadway until night falls, until I am so cold that I can’t feel anything, not my frozen feet, not my wet cheeks, not my broken heart.