“Nothing,” he said. She looked at him as if he were crazy. “Nothing. We’re not going to play any more. Game’s over.”
“Don’t patronize me,” she snapped. The cigarette shook, leaking zigzag columns of smoke. “What will they do?”
“What can they do?”
She stared blankly at the foot of the bed. “Will they hurt us?” The question sounded wrenched out of her, as if the act of naming were an act of invoking.
“That’s the last thing they want,” Scott said.
She was silent, staring beyond the room now, face locked in fear. Scott felt the deep electric jolt of power. She was still afraid. Better. She was scared to death.
“Look,” he said, soothing, calming. “Why should they hurt us? Blackmail only works if everybody plays. If we quit paying, they’ll go somewhere else. They won’t take chances. They won’t hurt us.”
She said nothing. She was a statue again, like at the window, as she was when she went deep somewhere to hide or to think. She sat, eyes fixed. Scott wanted to pinch her, slap her, just to see if he could get a reaction, or to reach for her and watch his touch transform the marble into warm and eager flesh again. The cigarette slipped from her fingers and rolled down the sheet and under the spread at her feet.
“Jesus,” Scott shouted, flinging back the spread and smacking at the cigarette with his bare hand. “Jesus, Lucinda, what the hell?” The orange coal exploded under his pounding and the sparks blasted away, fiery gnats that landed all over the sheets. “Jesus,” he said over and over again, beating at the tiny orange sparks eating holes in the fabric. He smelled satin burning.
“I can’t believe she told him,” Connie said. She sat on the couch. Scott stood holding out a can of beer to her. He waited. Connie looked up finally, realized he’d been standing there. “Sorry,” she said. “Thanks.”
Scott crossed the room and stood as if in thought. It was working better than he had hoped, better than he imagined, not that he had really planned this out, he admitted, he couldn’t claim that. It was just that he’d been tired when he stumbled back to the apartment after a long night with Lucinda, and Connie had been so cocky, so sure of herself, her scenarios all laid out. He hadn’t planned to lie, but it sure changed the weather when he said that Lucinda had told her husband and that her husband hadn’t objected to a quiet divorce. Connie, for the first time, was at a loss.
“I just can’t believe it,” she said again. “She’d never tell him.”
Scott shrugged. “I tried to tell you she was serious. I mean, we hooked her good, Con. She’s in love deep.”
“I mean, this wasn’t just I-don’t-want-a-scandal. She was afraid to tell him, scared to tell him.” She took a swallow of beer. She shook her head. “Now what?”
He smiled.
But she didn’t give him a chance to answer, making plans already. “Miami, I guess,” she said. “Sure wish I’d known this yesterday. Could’ve saved us another month’s rent on this dump. I guess we need to...”
“Let’s don’t quit just yet,” said Scott.
Connie gave him her tolerant smile. “Hon, it’s over. She’s not going to pay another dime.”
“Well, just let me...”
“Thought you wanted to go to Miami.”
“Just let me try something out here, all right? Is that okay?”
“There’s nothing to try.”
“There’s more to be had.”
“Anything you get now’ll be chump change. ‘Here, darlin’, go buy yourself a suit, a new car, another...’ ”
She mimicked what she thought was Lucinda. It made Scott mad.
“Is a hundred grand chump change?” he snapped. That shut her up. “I think we still have a shot at a big score here, if you’ll just give it a chance.”
She pulled at her beer again, watching him over the top of the can.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m listening.”
Scott stood at Lucinda’s window, the traffic stories beneath him. He imagined holding a brick over the street. How much damage would it do, he wondered, just from opening his fingers.
Far below a cab pulled to the curb. He wasn’t surprised that he recognized Lucinda getting out, even from this height. All part of feeling in control.
He turned back to the room, waiting. She’d be glad to see him, of course. It had been two days, so she’d be more than glad. She’d be hungry. And for the last two days, Connie had been... well, more like Lucinda, more like she needed him, too. But still his Connie.
If he had a choice, he wondered, who would he pick? Just as Lucinda’s key hit the lock, he realized he did have a choice. Both were his for the plucking. He had only to reach out and take.
He didn’t need to paste on the smile for Lucinda. It was already there.
Lucinda swept into the room, kissed him violently, the plastic bag on her arm banging his ribs as she spun away and swirled toward the kitchen. “I’ve got a surpri-ise,” she sang.
“What?” he called.
“You just sit down,” she called back. “I’ll be out in a jif.”
He heard the cork pop. Champagne. That’s what had hit his ribs. Launching their freedom, maybe. “Champagne,” he called.
“Oh, you,” she said in mock exasperation. “And caviar. And news.”
“What news?” he called, but she was there handing him the long-stemmed glass.
She clinked hers to his. “To us,” she said, raising her glass.
“To us,” he echoed, and drank. “What news?”
She turned and snuggled her back into his chest and wrapped his arms around her waist. “I can keep you.”
He laughed and leaned to her ear. She tucked her head and laughed and lifted her face and kissed him. “I talked to my husband,” she said, “and he didn’t kill me. He said I could not have a divorce, but that I could keep you.”
Late that night, sitting in bed next to Lucinda’s sleeping shape, drinking bourbon neat and lighting one cigarette from another, Scott tried to think of the word floating just out of reach in his mind.
What the hell did it mean, I can keep you. Kept man... access to bank accounts maybe... living in style... but it also meant a stud farm role, it meant losing Connie, or worse, it meant that Connie would see the chance to extend the scam so that he drained Lucinda slowly. He’d be kept by both.
He watched the smoke rise in a solid column and disintegrate into chaos and cloud.
Or, he thought, Lucinda was lying. Which was worse. Or better. Better because she was afraid to tell her husband after all. Worse because now she was running a scam, and he couldn’t exactly call the old hubby up and ask if she’d told him about her hot affair.
He stared at the curve of her hip, remembering her lips fastening on him, and the word floated into view, as if forming out of the smoke. Succubus.
He decided on Connie. Things were better there, now, and they could run the last scam on Lucinda and collect the hundred grand and go go go. If he stayed with Lucinda, she’d smother him.
“I can’t believe you mean this,” said Connie.
“If it’s going to work,” said Scott, “she’s got to believe the threat is real.”
“We can slash her tires or something.”
“Fine, that too.”
She picked at her blouse. “I just don’t want you hurt.”
He smiled and shrugged. “I haven’t been in a good barroom brawl since the army. Kind of looking forward to it, to tell you the truth. You go on. Give me fifteen minutes.”