“Divorce him,” said Scott, “Marry me.”
She did not move.
“I know we’ve been through this before,” he said. “But isn’t it the answer?” He snatched up the letter and held it out to her back. “Isn’t it the only thing that will stop this?”
She said nothing.
He waited. She would stand a while longer, frozen, stone. Then her shoulders would start to quiver as she tried to squeeze the tears back in, and then he could cross the room and put his hands on those shoulders and turn her into him, and she would bury her face in his shirt and clutch at him and sob. “Oh, Scott,” she’d sob, “I can’t, I just can’t.” Then she’d take his face in her hands, slide her fingers into his hair, he’d feel the tapered nails along his scalp, then she would pull his lips to hers, crushing, insistent, always surprisingly urgent. “Love me, Scott,” she’d say. “Just love me.” Then they would go to the bedroom and make desperate love. It was the game they played. He waited.
She turned slowly, fist still at lips. She raised her face, backlit, her hair burning around her, looking young. “All right,” she said evenly. “I’ll marry you.” Scott felt his insides freeze solid. What had he done?
“You went too far,” Connie snapped, H pacing, hands slicing the air. Her voice was a blade. “You pushed her too hard.”
“We pushed her too hard,” Scott said. Even to himself, it sounded like a whine. “You’re the one who said go for fifty.”
Connie stopped pacing and squared off, finger pointing like a pistol at his heart. “You’re the one there. You’re the one who’s supposed to be in control. That was the whole point.”
“The point,” said Scott, bristling, “was to make sure she didn’t call the police and that she did pay up and that we knew what she was going to do.”
“Well, it worked. We know what she’s going to do. She’s going to marry us.”
He felt blood rushing to his face. He hated that, and he hated the way she could get to him. “What was I supposed to say? ‘You’ll raise the cash somehow? Don’t worry, darling, we’ll see this through together?’ ”
Connie gave exaggerated, sarcastic nods, eyes wide. “Better. That’s better than your little macho ‘Marry me.’ But you just love it. You love working her up and melting her down, love making love to a woman the age of your mother.”
Scott stood up. “My mother—”
“Oh, shut up, Scott.” She turned away, pacing again. “You had something to prove. It’s months down the drain.”
Sometimes he just wanted to hit her. Easy for her to criticize, she wasn’t the one out front. But when they argued, and she had all the right words and all the right answers and there was nothing he could say, all he wanted to do was to hit her and make her listen to him for once, make her just shut up. He clenched his fists and slowed his breathing as she stormed back and forth in her sky-blue teddy, bitching, thigh muscles tightening as she moved about with casual, unthinking grace, strength taut beneath the dewy skin, but maybe right, goddammit, maybe she was right, because he did like it when Lucinda rose hot at his command, when his touch traced fire across her skin, when he molded her under his fingertips.
Maybe he’d really screwed things up. Lucinda wasn’t like the others. The others were bored and rich and horny and didn’t mind being scammed for a few thousand, thought the sex was worth it. But this one, this one was the right combination of money, desire, and fear, had gotten hooked, addicted to the attention, the sex, to the love, finally, or what passed for love, what she thought was love. And then Connie had gotten the idea for blackmail.
Scott had shaken his head. He wanted to stick with scams. With a scam, you had a mark too embarrassed or ashamed or afraid to bring in the cops when they got burned, and with a scam you could always walk away if it wasn’t working out, and who’d ever know. But blackmail drew cops like flies and could go wrong in too many places. “Too dangerous,” he’d said.
“Not if you’re blackmailing yourself,” Connie had answered. “Not if you’re both victims. You’ll both be threatened. You’ll follow the instructions to the letter. You’ll raise the cash and make the payoff and console each other all night.”
“No,” Scott had said, but he had given in as he always did, because Connie was clever and Connie, well, Connie...
So a letter arrived at Lucinda’s condo, addressed to Lucinda, but demanding ten thousand dollars each from both her and her loverboy. Dear Lovebirds, it began. Enclosed please find several photographs...
And Lucinda had paid, had hocked jewels she hadn’t worn in years or sold what little stock she claimed she had listed in her name alone. And Scott and Connie had paid too, scraping up almost six thousand on their own, borrowing the rest from a shark named Bennie who knew them and gave them a deal, ten percent per week, one week minimum. And Scott had sat at Lucinda’s kitchen table and wrapped his ten grand and Lucinda’s ten grand in newspaper exactly as instructed and bagged it exactly as instructed and made the drop exactly as instructed, and he and Connie had cleared nearly nine thousand after expenses, including Bennie, and not including all Scott’s clothes and cigarette lighters and gold neck chains and such, presents from Lucinda, with love.
And they’d done it again, and again, three letters so far, and each one had worked fine, just as Connie planned.
But now...
Maybe Connie was right. Maybe he’d been stupid. Maybe he had gotten carried away with Lucinda, this woman whose face was in the newspaper with other wives of the important, who attended all the right functions with all the powerful people on the arm of her most right and powerful husband — this woman went limp over him, over him, for Christ’s sake. When she drove herself at him, when she needed him so clearly, like a junkie needed a fix, his limbs felt hot and light with power. Good for the ego. Bad for business.
And now business was blown. So as Connie said, now what?
“We pull out,” he offered. “We take what we’ve got and head for Miami.”
Connie slowed her pacing, stopped, hand on hip, hand rubbing forehead.
“What else can we do?” he persisted. “We got, what, twenty-five, thirty grand? Let’s get out of here.”
“Maybe we can salvage this.” She wasn’t talking to him. She wasn’t even thinking about him.
“We’ve got enough,” he said, which was not what he wanted to say. He didn’t know what he wanted to say exactly. He could say anything to Lucinda, he made beautiful speeches to Lucinda, but this was Connie, and he couldn’t string together things he didn’t mean and couldn’t say what he did mean, and even when he wanted to hit Connie, it was so that she’d respect him more, or love him more, or something. Things would be different, maybe, if they got married. He wasn’t sure exactly, but he thought that in Miami maybe he’d even ask her to marry him. She’d like that, he thought. They could go to Miami now, drop Lucinda and fly. “Bird in the hand, Connie. Let’s take what we’ve got.”
She was silent. She was mad. He’d really messed up this time, really made her mad. He hated it when she got mad at him.
He sank back onto the couch. “I’m sorry, Con,” he said. She stared at him and finally she smiled, and she crossed to him and sat in his lap.
“Not your fault,” she said, stroking his hair. “One of those things.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, “what now?”
Connie was silent again, staring off into middle distances.
She was beautiful, the smell, the warmth of her was beautiful. Scott felt himself shifting, making the transition from Lucinda to Connie. He was in a room with Connie now, his Connie, and with her he didn’t care about Lucinda or any more of Lucinda’s money or Lucinda’s driving, electric sexuality. He was with Connie.