Eddie’s smile didn’t fade, didn’t change. It was grainy, like an old photograph, getting older every day. Smiling, charming, kidding her. I’m still here, Frannie. Can’t deny it forever. I’ll bet the kid winds up looking like me.
A tear fell on the glass that covered the picture.
The kid.
One hand held the frame. The other pressed itself-flat against her belly, somehow had worked its way under the sweatshirt.
God, Eddie, she thought. Come on, this isn’t fair.
What isn’t fair? he said. That I’m in you? That all this moving ahead and looking forward and getting together with Diz… that’s okay. I realize I’m gone… is just setting yourself up for the fall later. You’ve got to find a real place to put me. I was your husband. I’m the father of that little person in there. Don’t hide me. Don’t shut me out. I don’t deserve that. If it’s painful I’m sorry, but I miss you, too. Don’t you think I wish I could be there?
“Yes, I do.”
Well, then?
Hardy came and sat next to her where she lay on the top of the bed, the picture of Eddie Cochran face down on her stomach.
Her hair was spread out behind her on the pillow, the face slightly puffed.
“What?” he said.
“It’s just too soon.”
“I know it is. I’ve been thinking the same thing.”
She moved the picture of Eddie to the floor, put her hand on his thigh, curled onto her side against him. He rubbed her back inside the sweatshirt.
“You are the only male friend I have, Dismas.”
“I am that.”
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I’ve done with Eddie.”
Hardy patted her stomach. “Eddie’s here.”
“That’s what I mean. I’m not just lonely.” She revised that. “I’m not even lonely. I’m trying to find Eddie and that’s not fair. To you.”
“Move over,” Hardy said.
She lay, one leg over him, her head in the hollow of his arm, a hand between the buttons of his shirt.
“Because something in me loves you,” she said. “A lot.”
“But there’s the other stuff.”
“There is.”
He blew a breath out at the ceiling. “It’s pretty natural. You’re nesting. You want a man around. You trust me, and I show up needing a place to stay. It’s a neat little dream.”
“It’s more than that, too.”
Hardy turned onto his side and undid the button on her jeans, the zipper.
“They finally feel a little tight.”
She bit at his lower lip, flicked her tongue against the tip of his. His hand, down inside her pants, pressed against her.
“See, this is real too,” she said. “This part.”
The kiss, Frannie undoing his pants, freeing him. Another kiss, deep and slow, then more getting out of clothes and he was entering her, breathing her in, mouths together, bodies close and hard pressed, pushing but not moving, her legs wrapping him, holding him as far in as he could get.
The house was cold. Walking down the long hallway, he checked the thermostat and saw it was at 58 degrees. By the time he got to the kitchen, six steps later, he heard the creaks in the responding furnace. In his bedroom he realized he hadn’t fed the fish in several days. Bad. He shook some food over the surface and they didn’t wait for him to tap the glass.
“Sorry, guys.”
He raised the blackout curtain in front of the one window in his office and looked back toward downtown, out at the twinkling lights. He could see the very tip of what the previous week had seemed the evil Pyramid presiding, like the triangular cyclops eye on the dollar bill, over the shadowy line of Jackson Heights. Leaning out, off to his right, the once spectral Sutro Tower, now vaguely benign, thrust its fingers toward some high clouds. The moon was up, nearly full.
He wondered at the change in his perception of things. He listened to his house creaking as the warmth spread in the pipes. The sound wasn’t ominous.
After the coal fire was going well, after the heat had really kicked in, after he’d gone through all his mail (except for one postcard), sitting in the pool of light cast by the green-shaded brass lamp on his desk, he switched on the room’s main lights and grabbed his darts from the board next to the fireplace.
These were his office darts, the same type of custom 20-gram tungsten beauties he carried with him at almost all times. He hadn’t thrown since he’d left the house, but in his first round, shooting for the bull, he hit two and the last one thokked low in the “ 20.”
He picked up the postcard. Hong Kong by night.
His ex-wife.
Carrying the card with him, he went back out through his bedroom to the kitchen. He kept no hard liquor in the house, but there were four bottles of Anchor Steam in the rack on the refrigerator door. He found some frozen chicken breasts and in the cupboard a can of cream of mushroom soup and a can of green beans. He put the breasts in his heavy black all-purpose cast-iron pan, poured the green beans and soup over them, added a little beer, covered the whole thing and turned the heat on low. Jane was appalled at his home cooking.
Frannie had made him every meal at her house.
At the kitchen table, bottle of beer in hand, he read the back of the postcard. Where was he? Would he be home to get this? Well, she guessed she’d find out next week. It wasn’t exactly a game, but neither was it very serious.
That was Jane. Maybe it was serious, but she just wouldn’t acknowledge that anymore. Maybe, with her marriage to him and then the second one-the rebound-that had lasted less than two months, she could only let things get so serious and then pull back. When their son, Michael, had died, he had to remember, she’d gone through it too.
Sometimes it felt like it had only been him, but that hadn’t been because Jane wasn’t there. It was because he was blind to anything else.
Give her a break, Diz.
He was starting to smell the food. He got up and made sure it wasn’t burning, sticking on the bottom, and turned down the heat a little. He opened another beer.
Well, what was there to be so serious about, anyway? She was good at her job and liked it. She liked him, too. At least that. She knew who she was. He thought, with a pang, and though it had never come up, that she was still faithful to him.
It wasn’t just that he’d slept with Frannie. Frannie had told him tonight, before and after they’d made love, that she needed, she felt they both needed, more time. He ought to go home.
And he’d wanted to go home. Not to get away from Frannie. Not to figure anything out. Just to be home. What the hell did that mean? That he didn’t love Frannie? Or Jane?
The difference with Frannie was that she let him see she needed him. Maybe not for everything, maybe now only for some physical comfort, some familiar warmth, but the door was open. Jane might love him, but he didn’t feel like she needed anybody anymore.
So what was it with the Hardy monster? Did he just need to be needed? Well, if there wasn’t some need, how real could it be? Okay, but how badly would Frannie just need a father for her baby, not necessarily Dismas Hardy? It would be bad luck to get that part confused.
And when he and Jane had first gotten back together, there had been some serious voltage. Okay, there had always been the attraction-that was still there-but maybe Jane’s need at that time was to lay to rest the ghosts of their failed marriage, to prove that it really had been their son Michael’s death that had destroyed her man, Dismas, and not some failing in her.
Now, that done, the point made, it was time to coast.
The problem was that until a few months ago, until he’d gotten back with Jane, Hardy had coasted for the better part of a decade. He was coasted out. Now he was in gear, ready to roll.
He thought about having a third beer, decided what the hell, and filled a plate with the Chicken McHardy. It tasted great.