The Shape of Desire (22 page)

He grins; his face is so near that I can see every crease that the expression folds into in his cheeks. “Not that I remember. It’s been a most boring transformation.”

“Good. Those are the kinds I like.”

“How about you? Any adventures?”

“Mmm, I went to Chicago with Beth. That was fun. Oh, and we had a Halloween party today at work.”

“That’s what you said. You were a cow.” He squeezes in closer to kiss me. “I hardly think that was the costume that best illustrates your real personality.”

The quality of our intimacy has instantly changed. He’s no longer huddling close to me to steal my body warmth; he’s suddenly eager for a different kind of contact. I wriggle a little closer.

“Oh yeah?” I whisper back. “What kind of costume do you think I
should
have worn? We all had to dress like some kind of animal.” I kiss him. “Would have been easy for
you
.”

That makes him snort in amusement. He’s tugging at my nightgown, trying to get it over my head without actually letting go of me. “Let’s see. I’d have dressed you as a peacock. Something beautiful. Or, no, maybe a koala bear. Something cute.”

I am choking back laughter. Both suggestions seem ridiculous and ill-suited for me. “No, no, I would be a beagle or a collie,” I say. “Faithful. Reliable. Willing to do anything for someone I loved.”

He pushes me away, yanks off the nightgown, and then pulls me close again. I can feel the urgent shape of his erection through the thin material of his pants. “Maybe a sheepdog,” he suggests, “all your hair always falling in your face—”

I swat him on the shoulder, then grab his ears and pull him close. “I don’t know how many girls you have lined up across Missouri, just waiting for the one night a month you come to their bedrooms in some kind of reasonable human shape,” I mutter against his mouth. “But assuming I’m the only one, you better say something awfully nice to me right now, or you might find yourself going back to your feral state without having your animal appetites satisfied.”

I am trying to deliver it in a low, sexy growl, but I can’t help giggling toward the end, and Dante is laughing outright. I am giddy with the euphoria of seeing him so unexpectedly; I don’t know what his excuse is. Perhaps the same as mine. He pulls me with him as he rolls to his back and wraps his arms around me, tightening his embrace so dramatically that all the air
whuffs
out of me in one noisy exhalation. “Oh, I do love you, Maria Devane,” he exclaims, covering my face with sloppy kisses. “I don’t know how I ever got so lucky as to find you.”

“God, I love you, Dante,” I say, my voice suddenly choked up, my heart suddenly seized up. “I wish I never had to spend a day apart from you.”

Those are the last words either of us speaks for the next twenty minutes. We have gone from playful to poignant in the space of a pulse, and our foreplay has turned purposeful. He slides himself free of the thin pants, slides himself into me; I press my body against his with utter abandon. I can’t explain the chaotic images that form in my head as I strain against him, as I clutch his hair, as I drop manic kisses on his face, his cheeks, his throat. It is like I am beating on the outside of a huge, metal-strapped door, trying to break through to whatever is inside. I am pounding on the timbers, flinging the full weight of my
body against the wood, gouging out splinters with my fingertips, and still I cannot get inside. What do I think is on the other side? How do I think the act of sex will crack the seal?

Why do I think there is anything hidden from me when Dante’s passion, Dante’s desperation, match my own?

We are scarcely finished, still lying against each other, still taking in great ragged breaths, when he says in a hoarse voice, “I have to go.”

I tighten my hands; my fingernails bite into the rounded muscles of his arms. “Not yet,” I beg.

“I have to. I can’t—I barely had time for this,” he says.

He shakes himself free of me, not cruelly but without negotiation, and swings out of the bed. In the room’s faint light, I can see the sheen of sweat on his chest. As he pulls on the running pants, I think idiotically,
He’ll really be cold now.
I suppose the condition won’t last for long. It’s been close to an hour since he called; there must be very little time left.

Feeling woozy as a drunk, I follow him into the living room. I’m so unsteady that I stumble and slam my hip against the table at the door. “Be careful,” I say, clinging to the door as he pulls it open. “Come back to me.”

“Always and always,” he says. He bends down to plant a rough kiss on my mouth, holding it for a second longer than I anticipated. He has not said so, but I am suddenly certain of it.
He does not want to go.
He is, for this brief moment, anyway, furious at the fates that have fashioned his strange existence. “You give me something to live for.”

And then he’s gone.

I
sleep so late the next day that what wakes me up is the postal carrier dropping mail through my door slot a few minutes before eleven. For a while I just lie in bed, feeling the blank disorientation that usually holds me in thrall any morning I’m not wrenched from sleep by the hateful buzzing of the alarm clock. It takes me a moment to remember
what day it is and reconstruct all the little details of the day before. Halloween party, Christina, trick-or-treaters…

Dante.

Smacked by revelation, I come fully awake, though I don’t leap up from bed or even sit up. Was he really here last night? Did I dream his presence? I glance around the portion of the room I can see while still lying flat on my back, but there are no physical reminders…no dropped pieces of clothing, no extra glasses of water on the nightstand, no exotic gifts left where my eyes will see them first thing in the morning. I roll to one side and grope for the phone, but since the Caller ID is on the fritz, I can’t even reassure myself that he called.

Surely he did. I pull the covers to my chin and imagine I can catch his scent in the cotton fibers of the sheet. My body remembers the lovemaking. I stroke my hand down the corrugated slope of my rib cage, the curved saucer of my hip. When I step out of bed, when I examine myself in the mirror, will there be marks on my skin—bruises the size of a thumb on the inside of my wrist, the faint indentation of a bite at the join of my throat and shoulder? Will there be any proof of his visit except my conviction of his existence?

I curl into a tight ball, still clutching the covers beneath my chin. Is there ever any more proof than that? Isn’t my unreasoning faith in him the only reason he exists at all?

O
nce I manage to pull myself out of bed, I discover that the first day of November is as beautiful as the last day of October was miserable; it is the Cinderella to Halloween’s ugly stepsister. It is replete with sunshine, generous with blue skies, and it tempts me not to stay inside and clean the house as I ought to. So, when Beth calls ten minutes later and proposes that we go to St. Charles for the day, I gladly agree. I barely have time to shower and dress before she and Clara arrive in a big blue SUV, but I’m out the door before she’s cut the motor. I hear the house phone ringing, but I don’t even look back. It won’t be Dante calling; anyone else can wait.

“Sunshine!”
I exclaim breathlessly as I climb into the front seat. “Who knew such a thing existed?”

“I want a hot dog,” Clara says from the backseat.

“Coming right up,” Beth tells her. “Well, in about thirty minutes.”

We head for the historic district of St. Charles, an old community right on the banks of the Missouri River, and spend a couple of hours
strolling up and down Main Street. Most of the stores have already started putting out their holiday decorations and merchandise, though the full-scale Christmas programming won’t start until closer to Thanksgiving. Main Street is paved with uneven red brick and lined with two- and three-story buildings, most of them well-preserved examples of the town’s eighteenth-century roots. I love the ambiance of the place, though I rarely purchase any of the candles, dolls, crystal light-catchers, and other tchotchkes for sale; they don’t really fit my stripped-down decor. Beth buys a pattern in Patches, the quilt shop, and I pick up a novel at Main Street Books.

“Big spenders,” Beth comments as we head back to the SUV. Clara has gotten tired and cranky, so Beth is carrying her while I push the stroller, empty except for our purses and our two small packages.

“We’ll have to come back before Christmas and see the carolers,” I say.

“I mean, I can’t believe it’s less than two months away,” she replies.

Clara stops whining long enough to say, “I want an American Girl doll for Christmas.”

Beth smiles at me over her daughter’s head. “And so it begins.”

It has just now occurred to me that I can buy presents for Lizzie. That will make the upcoming holiday season even more fun. Maybe I’ll buy some on Dante’s behalf, too, so I can get twice as much stuff. “Next thing you know she’ll want cell phones and navel rings.”

“What’s a navel ring?” Clara asks.

Beth gives me a mock scowl.
See what you’ve done?
“Something you won’t have any knowledge of until you turn eighteen.”

Clara turns her head on her mother’s shoulder so she can look at me. “What’s a navel ring?”

I reach over to flick her little nose. “Jewelry for your belly button. Doesn’t that sound cute?”

“I want one,” she says instantly.

“We’ll get you one when we go for your tattoo,” I say.

“Maria!”
Beth exclaims.

I shrug. “Hey, aunts are supposed to be bad influences.”

We’ve reached the car by this time, and Beth hands me Clara so she can unlock the door. “I never heard that before. Sydney’s not a bad influence.”

“She’s just sneakier than I am. She’s bad when you’re not around to see her.”

As Beth snaps the seat belt in place, Clara announces, “Aunt Sydney lets me drink champagne.”

“What?”
Beth demands, while I succumb to uncontrollable laughter.

“I like soda better,” Clara adds.

I’m still laughing as Beth and I climb into the front seat and she pulls out of the parking lot. “This is why you were lucky you never had a sister,” Beth says.

“Oh no,” I say. “This is why I’m lucky I had
you
.”

I
t’s close to three before I’m back in the messy house and I begin a halfhearted cleaning effort. I have forgotten to check my answering machine for messages, and not until the phone rings thirty minutes later do I remember that it was also ringing when I left with Beth. The erratic Caller ID system decides to reveal that Ellen is on the line.

I have a sudden dark premonition that whatever reason she has for calling will not be good.

“Hey, Ellen,” I say as I pick up. “What’s going on?”

“Ritchie’s dead,” she says in a flat voice.

For a moment I am absolutely blank. “Ritchie?”

“Ritchie Hogan. Kathleen’s husband. He’s dead.”

I press my hand to my heart like an actress in a community theater production. “
What?
What happened? How did you find out?”

“I don’t know the details. She’s hysterical. She called Marquez and he called me. He’s with her now, but he says I shouldn’t come over, she doesn’t want more company.”

The phone cord is long enough for me to reach the living room and sink onto the couch. I’m still in shock, still not processing information. “But—what happened? Did he have a car accident?”

“I don’t think so. It might have been a heart attack. Apparently he was running in some park—he was training to be in a marathon—and that’s where he collapsed. Some park rangers found him.”

“A heart attack? But—he’s so young. And he was in really good shape.”

“Well, I’m just guessing about that. Maybe it was something else. I guess he could have had an aneurysm.”

“Or an allergy attack. Maybe he’s allergic to bees or something, and he got stung. She wasn’t specific?”

“Marquez said she wasn’t too coherent.”

“This is dreadful. What do you want me to do?”

Ellen sounds tired, she who has boundless stores of energy. “I don’t know. I don’t know what
I
can do. I hate feeling so fucking helpless. This was
not
the call I was expecting from Kathleen’s house, you know? I always figured she’d be the one who was dead.”

“Maybe she killed him,” I say, morbid humor forcing its way past my imperfect sentinels of compassion and decency. “Put poison in his coffee this morning and it didn’t take effect till he was out of the house.”

“I’d be okay with that,” Ellen says. “I mean,
I
don’t think it’s a terrible thing that he’s dead but, holy God, Kathleen does not seem entirely equipped to take care of herself.”

“Does she have family in the area?”

“I think the closest relative is a sister in Little Rock. Marquez said someone was on the way and he planned to stay there until this person arrived.”

“Well, we can take shifts—if she’s willing to have us there. I could go over tonight or tomorrow or—anytime, really.”