Apadravya sat quiet, corpse capable of miracles, danger hair-triggered beneath calm.
Travis followed Laura to the aisle, stupidly ducking as if to render his leaving invisible. When they had made their way to the vestibule, he asked her—buttoning up his coat as she hers—what the problem was.
“He’s good,” she said, hitting the doorbar and moving out onto Bishop, “he’s very good.”
“The swami?”
“He always was a mindfucker, but this is too much.”
“What? The boy wasn’t—?”
“It’s why I lasted such a short time at the ashram.” He did his best to keep up with her. Crossing Sherbrooke, he had to pull her back from stepping into the path of an advancing car.
“He always seems so deeply holy, and never more so than tonight, even beneath that ridiculous makeup. But there’s always trickery lurking. Aysha—or Sherri as she was known before he arrived—wasn’t the only one. So wise, so warm, the man’s a snake. Even now, he’s a lure. I can see why I was drawn back tonight.”
“Almost. He almost had me. Bra undone. Exposed to him.
But he let slip a look he thought I wouldn’t see, a hunger. It was enough. I gathered up my things and left. Packed without telling anybody and knocked on my sister’s door in the middle of the night.”
Sirens whipped through the winter chill, but the bare night-time streets were magical and calm. “But Laura, I’m sure that kid was dead. How could a three-year-old—?”
“I don’t know. Apadravya’s hypnotic sometimes.”
Travis recalled his mind wandering into fantasies of one sort or another as he listened. Maybe she was right.
“And dead is dead. It’s not simply breathing, skin tone, the outward signs. There’s brain damage involved. Organ damage.
That child stood up there normal as could be. No, we were set up and I’m upset enough about it to cal the cops. They could probably deport him on charges of drugging that lit le boy.”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“He has that effect on people.” Drummond at last. “Ah, home,” she said. “Lovely Jenny. Lovely Marcie.”
Brief surge of Marcie’s face and form. “I love them too.
You don’t suppose that tonight we might… ?”
“Might what?”
“You know,” he said. “What we talked about.”
“Dirty old man. Now who’s the Svengali?”
“Just say maybe, that’s all, maybe.”
The look Laura gave him was the type he wanted to pry off, it promised such sweets beneath the lidded tin of her eyes.
“Maybe,” she said coyly, and they were on their way up the walkway to the front door.
Wet thing cooled as Marcie munched, what she craved from it escaping through her teeth. Lost interest. She let the bunched bone-loose residue floop floorward.
Hint of sound back where she’d come from re-roused a need, same urgency, her bewilderment at the moist thing’s inability to satisfy displaced by the monotonic pounding of I-want in her brain. She retraced her lurch out into brightness, hallway, food photos, crimson twin in mirror, key-jiggle at the door, turn, snick of deadbolt. Caught the slippery knob, crimped it, instinctual twist and tug, quick swing open: the meat, corpus animus, bi-fold. She hooked at heads, her hands thrilling to the warm vibrancy of neckmeat; but her grip held fast and the roaring faces came closer as her neck went sideways like a lover coming in for a kiss and she shoved them, despite a bonetooth of resistance, deep inside her mouth—two ripe breasts vying for the same insistent D-cup.
“Home early, I see.” That smile. It made Travis’s heart do backflips.
“You know how it goes,” he said, following Laura’s terse uh-huh inside. “A certain lovely lady got fed up with a certain guru’s sleight of hand and—”
“And here we are,” said Laura, paused with a hanger.
“How was the little one?”
“Fine, fine. Slept all this time, not a whimper. I checked on her maybe half an hour ago. Dry as a bone.”
Inside, he was feathers in wind. “How about a glass of wine and some conversation before you go?”
“Why not?”
“Let me get it,” Laura offered, giving him a look he wished he could read. “White okay?” she asked, moving to the kitchen door, passing through it at their yeses.
Now, he thought, now. He considered coming up behind her, surprising her with a waistwrap. But she turned from the kitchen and there were those warm inviting eyes again. He held their gaze, opening to her as he approached, needs there yes, but also his naked integrity and his generosity toward her, his longing to comfort and embrace and incite her, to foment riots in her, to bubble her over and watch her glow and explode under his touch.
“What are you doing?” asked Marcie, and then her lips were there full and warm under his, and her amazingly lush body welled up beneath the press of textile. Peeling back off the kiss, he drifted to her ear, whispering there.
“You want me to?” she asked.
“She’s ready.”
“You’re sure.”
“Go on, you’ll see.”
She stepped away, stopped. “You’d better be right or you’re dead meat,” she said, then moved off.
“Don’t I know it.” Travis watched her go through the kitchen door. All he had, riding on this. Would she have the nerve to try? Or would they spar about one another as they pretended otherwise, chicken out, watch the evening’s possibilities fade? It was awfully quiet in there. Corks not popping, no plash of wine on glass, no murmur of small talk, nothing. Outside, the window-dimmed keen of sirens; inside, the beating of his heart.
He closed on the kitchen door, went in, turning right around the leather-tan shine of the fridge. His chest was thick with dread and wonder. And there they stood, corked bottle forgotten on the counter, Laura’s tight blond frame lovingly enfolded in Marcie’s embrace. Familiar kisses in murmur there before him, his wife’s yum-give-me-more under lips that still tingled at his.
Travis went to them, nice unhurried drift into female warmth that opened up to triangulate him. He kissed Laura long and deep, mirrored and modified it on Marcie’s mouth; cupped buttocks—flank of filly and mare—as the two women shared the moist secrets he’d pressed into their lips.
“Let’s go to the bedroom,” he suggested, voice husky as heated flannel.
“Honey? Shouldn’t we check on the baby?” Still shy, even now; and not a little woozy, as if the wine had found its way out of the bottle to her head.
“Not now,” he assured. “Time enough later.”
Then they moved off, riding the dream.
Aysha glowed, uncertain if she were awake or asleep. Rajib had concluded satsang quickly and she supposed she ought to feel guilt, but there was the fact of her living son, once dead and meatlike, now quick and warm, and Vish made all the rest of it inconsequential.
In the car, Rajib’s young countryman driving, she had reached past Vish’s thumbsuck to touch Rajib’s hand. Ooze of warm unguent, tingling as if irradiated. “Stay with us tonight,”
she said, “with me and Vish.” Rajib’s awareness flitted over his eyes like a long-legged fly over stagnant pond-water. Then he spoke to his driver and Aysha offered directions.
She made tea, carrying the tray in to where Vish sat, thumb in mouth, staring at his father and nodding his head to any question. The tea lay untouched in its pot, steam from the thick spout dying down. Aysha walked Vish to his bed, tucked him in, kissed him, tore herself away with the greatest reluctance.
Rajib sat precisely where she’d left him. She took his hand, clasped it palm to palm, pressing the dark back of it against her cheek—a faint sweet smel and a hint of foul. Four years rol ed back. His goodness seemed ever daunting, but he had never stopped her—and he didn’t do so now—from initiating intimacy. Aysha’s knees dimpled the sofa cushion beside him.