He came into the room with his shirt unbuttoned to the waist, ready for anything. She was there, just as he'd pictured her, the pillows fluffed, the silk clinging to her breasts, her eyes moist with desire as she lifted them from the page. “How was the meeting?” she whispered.
He watched, transfixed, as she swung her smooth tanned legs over the side of the bed, set her book down on the night table and snapped off the reading light, leaving only the sensual flicker of a scented candle to guide them. “The meeting?” he echoed, and he was whispering too, he couldn't help himself. “It was nothing. The usual.”
And now she was on her feet, her arms encircling his shoulders, her body straining against his. “I thought”-her voice cracked and tiny-“I thought they were… debating the… gate and all?”
Her mouth was warm. He pressed himself to her like a teenager at a dance, oblivious of gates, coyotes, dogs and Mexicans. She moved against him, and then she pulled away to perch again at the edge of the bed, her fingers busy at his zipper. After a long pause, he whispered, “That's right… and you know how I feel about it, but-” And though his pants were down around his ankles and they were kissing again and he was caressing her through the black liquid silk, he couldn't help thinking about that car and the low rumbling menace of it and how that modified his views vis-à-vis gated communities, public spaces and democratic access… He lifted the silk from her thighs. “I guess I'm not sure anymore-”
She was wet. He sank into her. The candle sent distorted shadows floating up and down the walls. “Poor Sacheverell,” she breathed, and then suddenly she froze. Her eyes, inches from his, flashed open. “He's dead, isn't he?”
There'd been movement, warmth, a slow delicious friction, but now all movement ceased. What could he say? He tried to kiss her, but she fought his mouth away. He let out a sigh. “Yes.”
“For sure?”
“For sure.”
“You found him, didn't you? Tell me. Quick.”
She was clutching him still, but there was no passion in it-at least not the sort of passion he'd anticipated. Another sigh. “A piece of him. His foreleg, actually. The left.”
She drew in a sudden sharp breath-it was as if she'd burned herself or been pricked with a pin-and then she pushed him aside and rolled out from under him. Before he knew what was happening she was on her feet, rigid with anger. “I knew it! You lied to me!”
“I didn't lie, I just-”
“Where is it?”
The question took him by surprise. “What do you mean?”
“The”-her voice broke-“what's left of him.”
He'd done all he could. He would have had to tell her in the morning anyway. “In the freezer,” he said.
And then he was standing naked in the kitchen, watching his wife peer into the palely glowing depths of the freezer, her negligee derealized in the light of a single frigid bulb. He tried to nuzzle up against her but she pushed him impatiently away. “Where?” she demanded. “I don't see anything.”
Miserable, his voice pitched low: “Third shelf down, behind the peas. It's wrapped up in a Baggie.”
He watched her poke tentatively through the bright plastic sacks of vegetables until she found it, a nondescript lump of hair, bone, gristle and meat wrapped like a chicken leg in its transparent shroud. She held it in the palm of her hand, her eyes swollen with emotion, the heavy breath of the freezer swirling ghostlike round her bare legs. Delaney didn't know what to say. He felt guilty somehow, culpable, as if he'd killed the dog himself, as if the whole thing were bound up in venality, lust, the shirking of responsibility and duty, and yet at the same time the scene was irresistibly erotic. Despite himself, he began to stiffen. But then, as Kyra stood there in a daze and the freezer breathed in and out and the pale wedge of light from the open door pressed their trembling shadows to the wall, there came a clacking of canine nails on the polished floorboards, and Osbert, the survivor, poked his head in the door, looking hopeful.
It was apparently too much for Kyra. The relic disappeared into the depths of the freezer amid the peas and niblet corn and potato puffs, and the door slammed shut, taking all the light with it.
You didn't move property with a long face and you didn't put deals together if you could barely drag yourself out of bed in the morning-especially in this market. Nobody had to tell Kyra. She was the consummate closer-psychic, cheerleader, seductress and psychoanalyst all rolled in one-and she never let her enthusiasm flag no matter how small the transaction or how many times she'd been through the same tired motions. Somehow, though, she just couldn't seem to muster the energy. Not today. Not after what had happened to Sacheverell. It was only eleven in the morning and she felt as worn and depleted as she'd ever been in her life. All she could think about was that grisly paw in the freezer, and she wished now that she'd let Delaney go ahead with his deception. He would have buried the evidence in the morning and she'd never have been the wiser-but no, she had to see for herself, and that little foreleg with its perfectly aligned little toenails was a shock that kept her up half the night.
When she did finally manage to drift off, her dreams were haunted by wolfish shapes and images of the hunt, by bared fangs and flashing limbs and the circle of canny snouts raised to the sky in primordial triumph. She awoke to the whimpering of Osbert, and the first emotion that seized her was anger. Anger at her loss, at the vicissitudes of nature, at the Department of Fish and Game or Animal Control or whatever they were called, at the grinning stupid potbellied clown who'd put up the fence for them-why stop at six feet? Why not eight? Ten? When the anger had passed, she lay there in the washed-out light of dawn and stroked the soft familiar fluff behind the dog's ears and let the hurt overwhelm her, and it was cleansing, cathartic, a moment of release that would strengthen and sustain her. Or so she thought.
At eleven-fifteen she pulled up in front of the house she was showing-the Matzoob place, big and airy, with a marble entrance hall, six bedrooms, pool, maid's room and guesthouse, worth one-point-one two years ago and listed at eight now and lucky to move for six and a half-and the first thing she noticed was the puddle of water on the front porch. Puddle? It was a pond, a lake, and the depth of it showed all too plainly how uneven the tiles were. She silently cursed the gardener. There had to be a broken sprinkler head somewhere in the shrubbery-yes, there it was-and when the automatic timer switched on, it must have been like Niagara out here. Well, she'd have to dig around in the garage and see if she could find a broom somewhere-she couldn't very well have the buyers wading through a pond to get in the house, not to mention noticing that the tiles were coming up and the porch listing into the shrubbery. And then she'd call the gardener. What was his name-she had it in her book somewhere, not the service she usually used, some independent the Matzoobs had been big on before they moved to San Bernardino-Gutiérrez? González? Something like that.
Kyra had no patience with incompetence, and here it was, staring her in the face. How the gardener could come back week after week and not notice something as obvious as an inch and a half of water on the front porch was beyond her, and the pure immediate unalloyed aggravation of it allowed her to forget Sacheverell for the moment and focus on the matter at hand, on business, on the moving of property. Nothing escaped her. Not a crack in the plaster, a spot of mold on the wall behind the potted palm or an odor that wasn't exactly what it was supposed to be.