In the kitchen he poured himself a glass of orange juice. He looked down at his bare feet and wiggled his toes. The linoleum was cool. Sunlight streamed in through the kitchen window. He hadn’t spent much time in the apartment since the last time the housekeeper cleaned it. The appliances gleamed, and he bent his knees to catch a glimpse of his unsteady reflection in the Inox refrigerator door. I’m all there, but I’m only half with it, he told himself. He got hard just thinking of Angela.
He took the glass of orange juice with him to the mirror in the hallway. There were bags under his eyes. He wasn’t used to seeing himself like this. After only one night the thing with Angela was already taking its toll.
When he’d finished his coffee, Burnett shaved and showered and dressed himself in another expensive suit. In the study, he telephoned a real estate consultant and asked her for detailed sheets on lots for sale and vacant buildings and remodeling jobs. He gave her a general idea which parts of the city interested him. The consultant promised that the information would be delivered to him by courier at noon.
Burnett wanted to push Angela’s plan forward in a hurry. He put the phone down, thought about the prize for finding the right location for her, the place she wanted for whatever reason she wanted it. He shut his eyes. He saw Angela taking off her panties, sliding them down her legs and handing them to him. The scent of her sex was in his nose and he felt the slippery soft fabric against his face. It made him shiver.
[ 10 ]
Burt Pohl sat in front of the telephone without moving. He was like a statue, his face something carved from rock, a profile of hardened whiteness that hadn’t changed since he saw Angela on her hands and knees with a vibrator inside her. The hardship of it had turned his hair half-white and deepened the lines in his face. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but it’s killing me. Maybe I want it with her. His eyes were tightly shut and his fingers pressed against his temples. He wanted to talk to her, but he’d choked up when he heard her voice. He lifted the receiver again, punched the numbers. He listened to the ringing at the other end of the line. She didn’t answer.
He let the phone ring for a long time, then hung up. He wasn’t in a hurry to find out anything that might hurt him more than the hurt he felt from wanting her. He shook his head and got up, started toward the bathroom, shuffling his feet, and the telephone rang. He jerked backward, nearly tripped over the chair. Pohl lifted the receiver.
“Don’t you think it’s about time you put your clothes on?”
He knew the voice, but he couldn’t put a finger on it because his mind was so far away the voice just didn’t register until it went on with a few more words that made him smile.
“Or haven’t you got anything better to do than waltz around in your pajamas?”
Pohl laughed. It was Shimura, his friend and a detective with the Kawamura Agency.
“Waltzing? Do you know what time it is? It’s nine o’clock. Why shouldn’t I waltz?” he said, grinning and passing his hand over his head.
“Listen, I’m not working until tomorrow night,” Shimura said. “Let’s have a drink and something to eat.”
Pohl’s mind suddenly went blank. He was staring at a picture of Angela that stood in a frame on the table next to him. A tear dribbled out of the corner of his eye. His heart was pounding. He made an effort to pull himself together.
He was glad to hear Shimura’s voice, but he was looking and couldn’t find anything to say. Pohl let out a sigh.
“Maybe you want to talk about something,” Shimura said with a reassuring tone in his voice. “Whatever it is, you haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Why say that?”
“I can hear it in your voice. It’s just plain misery, that’s all.”
Pohl heaved a great sigh, then found it difficult to catch his breath. At last he said: “Tonight. Eight o’clock. At the Casino Club.” He paused. “You’re right, I want to talk to you.”
“Eight o’clock,” Shimura repeated. “We’ll figure it out. See you tonight.”
“Right.”
Shimura hung up.
The receiver buzzed in Pohl’s hand, he winced, then blinked several times because he was worn out. He put the phone down, wiped his tear-stained face with the back of his hand, made his way to the bathroom where he turned on the faucet to run a bath, took off his pajamas and folded them neatly, putting them on a shelf. He got into the bathtub with his socks on.
[ 11 ]
Angela folded her arms across her chest and looked up at the ceiling. A fan spun almost silently in the flower shop, the air barely stirred. Outside, the pale blue spring sky teemed with soft clouds that reached out far above the lake. Cars traveled up and down Prospect Avenue on the Eastside. The leaves of the trees lining the street fluttered in an unseasonably warm, gentle breeze.
There was a coffeehouse next door to the florist. A group of students from the nearby university walked along the sidewalk in front of it, each in turn looking through the plate-glass window at Angela as they trailed sluggishly one after the other into the coffeehouse.
Angela picked out two orchid plants. She waited for the florist and his assistant to finish wrapping the one she was sending to Pohl. She gave them Pohl’s address, paid, took the other plant in her arms, and marched out of the shop. A red Dodge pickup slowed down and the driver stared at Angela walking with the orchid in her arms. She raised her eyebrows at the driver. Her distrust of men alternated with her need for them. She gave the driver a smile, but she was thinking of Pohl. She wasn’t finished with him. She turned left on Second Street, crossed Lafayette Avenue, turned left on Lake Street, walked to the corner of Birch and Lake.
At five o’clock in the afternoon she got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around herself because the intercom didn’t stop buzzing. She’d been on the verge of making herself come as the tide of buzzing knocked her off course. She stuck a slender finger out and pushed the button next to the speaker. It was Burnett.
[ 12 ]
Burnett left Angela’s apartment forty minutes after the meeting he’d sprung on her at five o’clock in the afternoon. He even shook his head at his own stupidity. He wasn’t in control of anything with Angela unless she offered the control to him, and most of the time when he thought he had control over anything at all, he was kidding himself. He couldn’t get it out of his head. It was the same thing with every woman he had sex with because dominating somebody else amounted to letting himself be dominated. There wasn’t any difference. A woman in a tied-up situation was stuck in the same position he was stuck in since his life was permanently bound up in his desires. In spite of that, it was a one-sided exchange with the weight of things leaning heavily in his favor. He might’ve given her something, let her have a piece of the intimacy, but right from the start he had the door wide open and waiting for him to walk through it, leaving every woman behind.
He walked along the sidewalk past his car trying to put the pieces together and found that the puzzle was already assembled there in front of him. It was the personality he was born with and he’d known for a long time now that he had to go with the current and not try to swim upstream. He felt in his pockets for his cigarettes, put one between his lips and lit it. He took several rapid puffs as his frustration climbed to high gear. When it reached that point he turned around and headed back to the car, threw the cigarette away, got in without switching on the ignition, shut his eyes and rested his head on his wrists with his hands crossed at ten and two on the steering wheel.