6
‘Do you want vodka?’ she said.
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘Would you like a martini or straight from shot glasses?’
‘Shots are fine.’
She poured two and said, ‘Santé,’ and I said, ‘Na zdorovye,’ and we clinked the small glasses and drank back the freezing-cold vodka. She looked at me and smiled. I smiled back.
‘One more,’ she said, and I agreed.
It was getting late and we were drinking vodka so that maybe we’d sleep. We talked a bit, though about nothing of note. We smiled at each other and then drank another shot. After three, I put the bottle back in the freezer and poured us both large glasses of ice water. My hands were cold from the cold vodka bottle and the ice cubes. I went to give Elaine her water but instead I put it down on the counter and took her face in my cold hands and kissed her. She kissed back, so I kept kissing.
After a minute, she stopped and said, ‘Let’s go up to bed.’ I nodded and followed her up the staircase; for the first time I was upstairs, but I was distracted. The room was large, the sheets dark, and that was all I noted.
7
‘Your chest is hairy,’ she said, nuzzled up against me, her hand on my chest and her head on my shoulder. My eyes were closed as we lay in bed, still dazed — I was not yet ready to consider the implications of sleeping with my client, a client whose husband had been murdered approximately twenty-four hours prior to my sleeping with his widow. Elaine, too, seemed to possess a sort of post-coital obliviousness, for she seemed softer, warmer in general, and very trusting, I thought, more trusting than before.
‘You don’t like hairy chests?’
‘No, I like them. It’s comforting,’ she said. ‘When I was younger I never thought I’d like hair on men but now I do.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. In my early teens I liked effeminate men, or at least hairless ones, but eventually that changed.’
‘So you liked the kinds of guys who’d be in boy bands?’
‘Exactly,’ she said.
‘Newts.’
‘Right.’
‘And now you like the Magnum PI types.’
‘Not exactly,’ she said, laughing, and I said, ‘Good. I don’t like those types, either. I don’t even drive.’
Elaine then asked me about girlfriends, that is to say, if I had a girlfriend. Not anymore, I told her, the same response I’d given the night before. She asked me when we broke up. I told her we broke up about eight months ago or so, though I wasn’t sure. She asked me what happened and I told her that when we first met there was a series of misunderstandings, resulting from her blindness, that led her to believe I was a millionaire, and that at first things were blissful, like they’d never been before with anyone else, for either of us, ever in our lives, but then eventually, after our initial courtship, a surgeon claimed that he could cure blindness, or at least the type that she suffered, and he was performing free operations, so she contacted the surgeon and got the surgery, and then when she discovered that I’m not the man she’d imagined me to be, that I’m not the millionaire she’d imagined me to be, we both realized that things would never work out for us and that a life together would be impossible. ‘It was sad,’ I said, ‘for both of us.’
‘Uh-huh,’ she said. ‘So what really happened?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said, and must’ve sounded sincere, for she let me leave it at that. ‘There were girls before her, though.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How many?’
‘Girls have I slept with or had serious relationships with?’
‘Had serious relationships with.’
‘Not that many, though they seem to get more serious each time,’ I said, ‘but I suppose that’s how it goes.’
‘For a while,’ she said.
And we left the conversation at that. We were silent for a long time, though not sleeping, just lying in bed, in each other’s arms, without talking, thinking, perhaps, though it was hard to be sure. For a while, I wasn’t thinking, but then I began thinking about Gerald Andrews again and wondering if his killer was in my arms, though I didn’t really believe Elaine was the killer, or at least I didn’t want to believe that she could possibly do such a gruesome thing to someone she loved, or at least once loved, according to what she’d said. Could I ever kill someone that I once loved? I wondered. Of course, at times, I’ve thought that it’d be easier if someone I once loved were dead, rather than separated from me, but those kinds of thoughts are fleeting, at least in my experience, like all thoughts, though some turn into action. It’s sick what some people do to leave their mark on an indifferent universe. No, I thought, I can’t dismiss the possibility that Elaine killed Gerald — or had him killed — to avenge Adam’s death. We become cold and hard when we’re let down or angered, I thought, and we often lash out at those who we feel duped us. Elaine hadn’t spoken in a while, though her eyes were open and unmoving, save the odd blink. We stared into each other’s eyes as if into space. Then she opened her bedside drawer, produced a bottle of 222s, swallowed at least three, without any water, and again closed her eyes.
8
While Elaine slept I sat up awake trying to think what my next move would be. I really was at a loss: sleeping with her, not surprisingly, threw me for a loop. I knew I wanted to be around her, though, as much as I possibly could be, and that in fact was my plan, that is to say, to be around her as much as possible. I watched her sleep and felt a calm I hadn’t felt for a long time, even though she might’ve killed her husband not twenty-four hours earlier. Her eyelashes were incredible. The idea of eyelashes once again became incredible to me, while I watched her sleep, breathing softly, her mouth slightly opened. Her lips looked dry and her face younger than when awake. I closed my eyes and thought of the image of Elaine sleeping; feeling unburdened, I drifted off.
9
When I woke up I was alone. I knew I was alone immediately, before opening my eyes. I felt around nonetheless. Elaine wasn’t there. I sat up in bed. I looked around the room. I called out her name — ‘Elaine, Elaine, Elaine.’ I got out of bed and put on my pants and T-shirt and went downstairs, the whole time periodically calling out her name. She wasn’t in the kitchen or the den or the living room. I opened the front door. Her bmw was still in the laneway, exactly as she’d left it. Across the street sat an unmarked police car, a blue Ford, and the officer behind the wheel perked up when he saw me at the front door. I waved and shut the door. ‘Elaine!’ I yelled. No answer. The house was silent save for a low-level hum. I was worried, though not yet panicked. I checked every washroom in the house. There were five. I checked every bedroom. There were four. I checked the unfinished basement, which was full of boxes of books and cobwebs and bottles of wine and old sports equipment, like baseball gloves and lacrosse sticks and cross-country skis and an old-style football helmet, for example, and there was a chalk portrait of a woman, a brunette, though it definitely wasn’t Elaine Andrews. The woman in the portrait had light brown skin and brown eyes and wore a yellow dress from, I thought, the seventies. The background was light green. It was a nice portrait, actually, though obviously made by an amateur artist. There was an old microwave the size of a TV and there were boxes overflowing with old tableware. I went back to the main level. She wasn’t in the house. I checked every closet. There were thirteen. Soon, if she didn’t show up, I was going to have to notify the police. Nowhere in the house were there signs of forced entry, not in the living room or the den or the kitchen or anywhere else in the house. I checked the garage. There was nothing but firewood and motor oil and antifreeze and a snow blower and a lawn mower and two bicycles and rock salt and so on. I started panicking, my heart galloping, and as if a blinding white light exploded, charging through my mind and body, I thought: I’ll never see her again.