If the porch area was the equivalent of a living room, the larger, single room beyond was all the other rooms: kitchen in the near right corner, off in a cubbyhole separate but unenclosed from the rest of the room, and off of which was the john; a double bed in the far right corner, next to a window; wood-burning stove (for heating purposes only) in the middle of the room, with stovepipe rising through the low tiled ceiling; an informal office area in the near left corner, just an old battered oak desk with an equally battered wooden swivel chair; and a dark pine trunk and several tall storage cabinets filling the rest of the space along the walls, which were the same light pine as the porch.
She put the groceries away while I built a fire. It was cold in there, and we were both damp from our walk in the mist, and I didn’t figure a little chimney smoke was going to attract any attention, in fog this dense.
So I sat feeding wood into the mouth of the stove, and she came and sat on the floor next to me, getting close to the warmth, watching the flames move. For a long time her face was expressionless, blank, a mask the glow of the fire began to play upon, making attitudes and emotions and expressions seem to be there and then flicker away.
Maybe she was waiting to see if I’d brought her here to kill her. Maybe I was thinking the same thing about her. I did see her glance now and then at the guns, the Ruger on the floor between us, the. 38 in my belt, but the meaning of her glance was elusive. She also looked at me, occasionally. Studied my face like she did the fire.
Then, suddenly, impulsively, she pulled her sweater over her head. She was wearing a skimpy, translucent bra, which she undid and let drop, and the shadows and colors of the fire reflecting off her flesh gave her an almost mystical look, like a textured photograph. She covered her breasts with her hands. She shook her head and the shoulder-length white-blond hair shimmered and caught glints of yellow and orange and copper, tossing them around like sparks. A grin glimmered across her no-longer mask of a face, and she opened her mouth and touched her tongue to her upper lip, then her lower, and then she grinned again, mouth still open, spreading her fingers over her breasts to let the nipples peek through. I reached out and touched her face, and her expression changed again, the smile disappearing, and something like pain crossed her features. She was cupping her breasts, now, offering them to me. I accepted.
We made love. We’d fucked in the pool, and screwed in bed, but this time we made love, on the cold tile floor, bathing in the heat and color of the fire, moving slowly together, slowly together, and after a long while warmth flooded into warmth, and then we were holding onto each other another long while afterward, the fire crackling and warning us it would die down completely if left unattended.
21
The broker had his arm around her. She was wearing a bikini, the same white bikini she’d worn for-me, last night. Broker was in a blue sport shirt and tan pants and looked happier than I’d ever seen him, smiling so broadly the ends of his wispy mustache were sticking straight up. Carrie was smiling, too. They didn’t look as wrong together as you might think. Broker never did look his age, despite his stark white hair and politician’s bearing. And while Carrie was in her twenties, she could have been taken for older; it’s difficult to pin down a woman’s age, which is how they want it, I suppose.
Seeing them in the photograph together was a shock, somehow, and an involuntary twinge of resentment wormed its way through me, at the sight of this thick hand on her soft tanned shoulder. I’d accepted the fact that she’d been married to him, but an image of them together had never formed in my mind. And I’d instinctively chalked the marriage up as an arrangement, a marriage of convenience, and the obvious love between them shook me a little.
What got me wasn’t Carrie, really. I already knew she was a sensitive type, able to feel loving toward just about anybody. But the Broker loving her, the Broker loving anybody, that was the surprise. I’d always assumed that behind his empty eloquence and stuffed-shirt demeanor there lurked something twisted and wrong. He was, after all, a man who fancied himself just another (very) successful businessman, and seemed bothered not a bit that his business was murder. Especially as long as people like me were around to carry it out for him.
No, it didn’t seem right, the look of devotion, affection, and happiness on that self-important old bastard’s face. Not right at all. I’d have been much less surprised to discover a photograph of him being whipped by some broad in black leather, or getting sucked off by one of the succession of young male bodyguards I saw him go through. I mean, surely the Broker was into something more kinky than just a younger woman. It was like finding the Boston Strangler shacked up with Miss America… the very wholesomeness of it was disgusting.
So was the idyllic atmosphere they were basking in. They were on a boat, a cabin cruiser apparently, fishing gear evident in the background of the color photograph, and lots of sun and blue sky.
“That was taken a year ago,” she said. “In the Bahamas.”
The picture was on the wall, with a number of other framed pictures of the Broker and Carrie, and of the Broker and various men and women I didn’t recognize. I was sitting at the big scarred-top desk, flashing a high-intensity lamp on the wall of pictures, and had centered in on this one.
“You know,” I said, “I saw you together once. I’d forgotten about it, just remembered. You were at a restaurant together, a fancy one, in the Quad Cities.”
“When?”
“I don’t remember exactly. Not too long ago.” I did remember exactly, but didn’t want to say; it was just days before the Broker died trying to have me killed.
“Did my husband introduce us?”
“No. I spoke to him, but not in front of you.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“Wasn’t hard. We met in the toilet We talked in toilets a lot, your husband and me. It was that kind of relationship.”
“Jack, I… I’d rather you didn’t go into any of that. I… there are some things I’d really rather not know, Jack. I don’t think I could handle knowing some things, you know?”
“Sure. Forget it. I didn’t mean to bring any of that up, anyway.”
“Listen, why… why don’t I get us something to drink?” She was standing there in bra and panties with a plaid woolen blanket she’d got from somewhere shrugged around her shoulders.
Her eyes were big and clear and blue, and she looked like a kid. Funny, in that restaurant that time, I’d thought she was in her mid-thirties, thought she looked cold, the frigid bitch type, figured her for a wealthy, worldly, well-educated pain in the ass. Now, I knew she was in her late twenties and young for that, and anything but cold or a bitch, and no matter how many times she may have been to Europe or the Bahamas, worldly she wasn’t, and no matter how many private schools for girls she’d suffered through, there was a lot this girl had yet to learn.
“I have bourbon in the cabinet,” she said.
“Just put some Coke in a glass,” I said. “Nothing hard for me.”
She touched my leg and grinned in a way I hadn’t seen since last night. “Maybe I’m in the mood for something hard.”
“Maybe you better let me catch my breath,” I grinned back. “For now, just some Coke and ice, okay?”
She went over to the kitchen area, dragging her blanket, and I flashed the little lamp across a few more pictures. Many of them were of the Broker and Carrie in shots similar to that one I’d lingered over, some of the photos taken here at the cottage and on the river, others sunny vacation pictures, the Bahamas, Florida, what-have-you. I skimmed right over one picture, thinking it was the Broker and Carrie with some unknown fellow vacationer, then something clicked in my head and I went back to it, lifted it in its frame off the wall, and gave it a close look.