Void in Hearts (13 page)

She fell silent. After a moment she turned and hugged me. There was a panicky, violent quality to her embrace. I could feel her nails dig into my shoulders. “Hey, Becca,” I whispered.

“I’m okay,” she said. “Just let me hold on to you.”

It was a minute before I realized she was crying. I caressed her ineffectually, rubbing my hand in circles on her back.

“I was thinking,” she said, sniffing. “If it hadn’t been for that void in hearts, everything would be different. I mean, if Les had been wrong, he’d probably still be a bridge pro. Writing columns. Winning master points for LOL’s. He’d probably still be alive. And I never would have met him. And I wouldn’t have met you. And—but that’s dumb, huh?”

I stroked her hair. “Kinda dumb.”

She snuffled and then laughed softly. “Anyway, there wasn’t that much work for a detective who specialized in bridge cheats. But Les really liked snooping around, I guess. Oh, he was a sweet man, in his way. But he had this funny part of him. He used to say about those card cheats, he’d say, ‘Nothing I hate worse than cheats.’ I mean, that’s ironic as hell, since he used to cheat on me regularly. He cheated on me sexually, and he cheated on me emotionally. But he was very up front about it, which to him meant he wasn’t cheating at all. Anyway, he thought cheating at cards was the worst.”

Her hand began to rub my chest. She squirmed around and kissed my throat. “I’m sorry to talk about Les,” she mumbled.

“It’s okay.” I touched her chin and she tilted her face up. Her eyes glittered in the darkness, and although I knew it was only tears, there was a feral, predator look on her face that made me hesitate before I kissed her. Then she moved against me and groaned, and I pulled her on top of me so she could follow me down the dark tunnel into brief but blessed oblivion.

Becca slept fetally, with her knees drawn up toward her chest and her hands squeezed between them. Her velvet-smooth rump was thrust back against the curve of my body. My face was in her hair. It smelled like the breeze after a spring rainstorm. Her head lay across my upper arm, which had gone tingly while I dozed.

I gently drew my body back from hers. She stirred and wiggled against me. I slid my arm free, stroked her shoulder, and eased myself out of her bed. I dressed in the darkness and felt my way into the living room, where I had left my shoes.

When I was ready to leave, I went back into the bedroom. I bent to kiss her. Her eyes were wide open. “You have to go?”

I kissed her forehead. “Yes.”

The light that entered from the bedroom windows allowed me to see her smile. “What time is it?” she said.

“A little after four.”

Her bare arm snaked out from under the covers, touched my jaw, then hooked around my neck, drawing my face down to hers. Her mouth opened under mine. It was she who broke away from the kiss. I straightened up. “I know,” she said. “You’re not available.”

“Becca—”

“Shh,” she said. “It’s okay. It’s just right. Keep in touch, Brady.”

I touched her hair. “I will. I promise.”

A pale line had begun to show on the ocean’s horizon as I stood by the sliding glass doors of my apartment. I watched the line expand as the earth resolutely rotated to face the sun. Pale swatches of yellow brushed themselves onto the underside of the bank of cumulus clouds over the horizon, transforming them as I watched into gold, then to orange. The promise of a fair winter’s day.

The appearance of the arc of the sun was sudden, heralded by a startling flash of light. Daybreak happened literally—an instantaneous break from dark to light, from night to day.

I had dozed only fitfully for a few hours with Becca Katz. Our lovemaking had agitated my system, so that while she slumped easily into deep, peaceful sleep, I fidgeted and squirmed, my mind darting and twisting through mazes of half-real images and concepts that seemed at once brilliant and outrageous. Now I stood at the instant of a new Sunday, too exhausted to pursue any ambition but too wakeful to go to bed.

So I did the logical things: I fed Mr. Coffee and switched him on, and then I took a shower.

By the time I emerged, the coffee was ready. I sat with a big mug at the table by the windows. The lower curve of the sun had cleared the Atlantic. The sky was brilliant blue, the ocean a cold, angry gray-green. I checked my watch. Quarter of seven. Still too early to call Gloria. So I made some toast, plastered it with peanut butter, and consumed it between sips of coffee.

Another culinary triumph from the kitchen of Brady L. Coyne.

Finally, at seven-thirty, I dialed Gloria’s number. She answered on the third ring with a mumbled, “Hmmm?”

“I thought you’d be awake. It’s a gorgeous day. Crisp, bright, gorgeous. The sunrise was spectacular.”

“Oh. It’s you.”

“Cock-a-doodle-doo.”

“Brady, for Christ’s sake, what time is it?”

“Seven-thirty, Gloria. Already you’ve missed the best part of the day.”

“So what the hell are you so cheerful about?”

Becca Katz, I thought. She knows how to cook lamb chops. She loves me a little. But not too much. She hums in her sleep. There’s a gentle, vulnerable roundness of stomach, a soft, inviting slope of hip. “Don’t accuse me of being cheerful,” I said sternly.

She sighed. “So much for sleeping in. Joey’s off on a ski weekend, hellbent on getting drunk and knocking up Ruthie McAllister, probably. So I thought I’d just do a lazy Sunday morning for myself.” She hesitated, then said quietly, “Like we used to.”

“When we were much younger,” I said. “The Sunday
Times
, croissants, and fresh-squeezed orange juice. Gallons of coffee.”

“And a little hanky-panky under the sheets.”

“That was all before we had kids.”

“That,” said Gloria, “was all before we got married.”

I felt my joie de vivre draining away, as if someone had yanked out a plug in the bottom of my stomach. “The reason I called—”

“The weather report, I assumed. To annoy me.”

“No, I’ve got another roll of film that needs developing. Any chance…?”

“Today, you mean?”

“The sooner the better. It’s kind of urgent.”

“You still playing detective?”

“Sort of. What do you say?”

She sighed. “There’s no one here to bring me croissants anyway. It’s not the same if you have to go downstairs and get them yourself. I might as well get up. Come on over. I’ll put the coffee on.”

“Thanks, hon.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say that.”

“Say what?”

“Hon. It’s not fair.”

I was halfway to Wellesley when I remembered Les Katz’s suitcase-size attaché crammed with the documents I would need to settle his estate. It was still in Becca’s living room, on the floor beside the soft chair where I left it when I slipped away in the dark.

Forgetting it, I supposed, was one of those purposeful accidents Freud loved to analyze. I’d just have to go back and retrieve it someday soon.

“
ARE YOU GOING TO
church?” I said to Gloria when she came to the door. She was wearing a calf-length wool skirt, a white blouse with a good deal of lace and frill at the throat, a maroon jacket, and high leather boots.

She looked smashing.

“I don’t go to church anymore,” she said with a smile. “You cured me of that a long time ago.”

“A business meeting, then,” I said as I followed her into the house. “I’m interfering.”

“You’re not interfering.” She took my parka and tossed it on a chair. We went downstairs.

I fished the roll of film out of my pocket and handed it to her. She looked at it. “Twelve-hundred. There won’t be much quality to this,” she observed.

“I’m not interested in quality. I just want to know what’s on it.”

“Well, let’s find out, then.”

She took off her jacket and slipped into an apron that was hanging on a hook beside the door to her darkroom. Then she went in, leaving me with her photography magazines. I riffled absentmindedly through them, first sitting, and then adjusting myself so that I was lying on the sofa. After a few minutes, I dropped the magazine onto the floor and allowed my eyes to close.

I realized that Gloria had never answered my question. Was it a business meeting? Or did she get all dressed up for me?

Was it any of my business?

“Hey, there.” Her voice came from far away. Her hand was on my cheek, first stroking and then gently slapping. “Come on, big guy. Rise and shine.”

She was seated on the sofa, her rump against my hip, looking down at me.

“Must’ve dozed off,” I mumbled.

“The neighbors have been complaining about your snoring,” she said, smiling.

I craned my neck, then put my hand on it. “I shouldn’t have slept that way,” I said. “Got a stiff neck.”

“Sit up,” she said. I did. She went around behind me and placed both of her hands on my neck. She poked and probed, working at the hard muscles and tendons, from just behind my ears down to my shoulders, her thumbs strong and insistent. I arched against her massage.

“Mmm,” I said with a groan. “You should’ve been a masseuse. Preferably topless. Nobody can do that like you.”

“Nobody can do lots of things like me.”

I reached behind me, got my arm around her neck, and pulled her onto my lap. “Hey,” she said softly. But she allowed herself to be drawn down so that she sat on me. She ducked down and burrowed her face into my shoulder. I touched her chin with my forefinger, urging her to look at me. When she did, she was frowning.

“You must’ve had a late night, to conk off like that.”

“I didn’t sleep well.”

“I understand.” She twisted her face away.

I put my fingers in her hair and made her face me. “Gloria,” I said.

“Please don’t.”

Her lips were unyielding, her eyes wide open and staring myopically into mine. I pulled back from the one-sided kiss. “Sorry,” I said.

“I wish you’d make up your mind.”

I nodded. “Me, too.”

“You can’t have it all, you know.”

“I guess I don’t know that.”

She smiled. “You’re impossible.”

“I’m difficult. I’m improbable. But I’m not impossible. I’m very possible.”

She shook her head slowly. She moved her face close to mine. She hesitated, then, abruptly, she stood up. She smoothed her skirt against the fronts of her thighs. “Jesus!” she breathed.

“I’m sorry, hon.”

“This is a recording.”

“Ever notice how we do so much better by phone?”

She nodded. Her look was solemn. “Brady, I’ve got a date this afternoon.”

“A date.”

“Yes. A real live date. And guess what? He’s—ready?—he’s a lawyer.”

“Anyone I know?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll tell you his name. If you know him, you’ll just tell me why he’s wrong for me.”

“Would I do that?”

“You bet your ass you would.”

“Is he married?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Well, I’m not going to tell you that, either.” She turned away from me and bent to pick up the magazine I had dropped onto the floor. She put the magazine on the table and made a show of arranging the stack into neat, chronological order. Without turning back to face me, she said, “Do you love all the ladies you date?”

“In some ways I do. It’s all sort of relative.”

“I’m just starting to learn that. For a long time I thought there’s no sense in risking a relationship with someone you’re not sure you’re going to love. So I found myself saying no thank you to men I liked well enough. And then it began to occur to me that just because I didn’t love them the way—you know—the way I used to, the way I know I can, it didn’t mean I couldn’t—couldn’t go out with them.”

“Go out with them,” I repeated. “A euphemism, huh?”

She turned to face me. She nodded. “Yes. A euphemism.”

I cleared my throat. “I see.”

“Brady, for God’s sake. It was you who told me I was so stuck in the old double standard that I had lost my identity. I mean, that was what our divorce was all about, if I remember correctly. But the thing is, it’s you who’s got the double-standard problem.”

“I just don’t want you to be hurt.”

“You don’t want me to get laid.”

“Jesus, Gloria.”

“Hey,” she said, laughing now. “If you don’t want me to be hurt, don’t come on to me. Don’t tease me. And for Christ’s sake, don’t judge me. You think after eight years I shouldn’t go out with men?”

“I don’t know. None of my business anyway. Forget it. Be happy, if you can.”

“I’m trying.”

I stood up and went to her. I opened my arms and she came to me. I hugged her and kissed her hair. “I
am
sorry,” I said. “Can we be friends?”

She leaned back so she could look up at me. “I seriously doubt it,” she said. She stepped back. “Do you want to see those pictures?”

I nodded. She led me to her darkroom. “I made a contact sheet first,” she said. “There were twenty-four exposures. The first twelve of them were so badly underexposed that you couldn’t see a thing. Then there were five where you can make something out. Whoever took them was playing with f-stops and shutter speeds. The five that came out at all are still pretty bad. Wide-open lens, maybe a sixtieth of a second, maybe even slower. Very shallow focus, lots of tremor. Using a long lens, I’d guess. And film that fast just doesn’t get you much quality under the best of conditions. Anyhow, I made enlargements of the five that showed something.”

The five prints were laid out side by side. “Are they in order?” I asked Gloria.

She nodded. “He was bracketing them. There were some in between these that didn’t come out. But this is the sequence in which he took them, left to right.”

They were all taken at night outside somewhere on a roadside. In the background were the blurry lights of what appeared to be a storefront. All of the pictures were of a man and an automobile. Most of the light came from the storefront, so that the figures in the picture appeared almost as silhouettes. The car’s lights were on. In the first three frames, the man was leaning over to peer in through the passenger’s window, evidently talking with whoever was inside the car. Although his face was a shadow, and even realizing that I might be imagining it, the figure appeared to be Derek Hayden.