by Mary McBride
“So, what is it?” she asked between dainty but distinctly audible sips from her own long-neck bottle. “Your name?”
“Bobby.”
“Hi, Bobby. I'm Cyn. That's short for Cynthia and long on sin.” She laughed as if it were the first time she'd said it. “You're not from around here, are you?”
He shook his head, already weary of the boy-meets-girl banter that had only just begun. He used to be pretty good at this. Good? Hell, he used to be a legend when he worked the advance teams in thirty states during Riordan's first campaign. Right now that seemed about a million years ago, not to mention an incredible waste of time and energy.
“So, where are you from?” Cyn, having edged her barstool closer, now nudged his knee with hers.
“Washington.”
“No kidding? Are you one of those guys in town for Crazy Daisy? Like a Secret Service guy or something?”
Ah, Bobby. A million years ago this was your cue to reach for the old badge and in the process give the young lady a glimpse of your gun. Hadn't he come here in the first place with the intention of nursing his wounded ego, and in the process maybe starting a little liaison to make Angela sit up and take notice? The gander on the make for what the goose already had with Pretty Boy Floyd. Sure it was petty and immature, but what else was he supposed to do? Only now he didn't seem to be able to rise to the occasion. Literally. Where's your manly pride, son? What did you do, leave your balls at home on the night-stand right next to the remote?
“Are you?” Cyn asked again. “Like one of those Secret Service guys?”
“Not really,” he said. “I'm more like the electrician who tags along and fixes all their fancy gadgets.”
“That's cool,” she said, obviously disappointed, even though her face, at least the visible lower two-thirds, registered nothing except a sudden distaste for her gum, which she disposed of in a cocktail napkin. “So, you wanna dance, Bobby?”
“Absolutely.” He levered off his barstool and held out his hand.
The music was slow and achingly sad—one of those long-gone, she-done-me-wrong songs, a perfect fit for Bobby's mood—but the woman in his arms was all wrong. She was all bones and sharp edges instead of his wife's supple flesh and sleek curves. Her voice was a rasp compared to Angela's smooth tones.
When the music stopped, Cyn didn't let go of his hand. She turned it, blearily contemplating the gold band on his finger. “You married?” she asked.
“Not very,” Bobby said, pulling her thin body against him as a new, even sadder song started to play.
It was nearly two o'clock when Angela heard a car door slam and then the hushed conversation of agents outside. Bobby's voice, indignant, irritable, rose above the rest. A moment later the back door opened, then quietly closed again. She hadn't slept a single wink, but she closed her eyes now and breathed a silent sigh of relief as Bobby came into the bedroom.
In the unfamiliar dark, he took the change from his pocket, deposited it on the dresser, and swore softly when some of it jingled to the floor. Angela heard the leather slap of his holster on the dresser, then the muted unthreading of a belt and the unlacing of shoes. It had been a long time since she'd listened to him undressing in the dark, trying not to wake her when their schedules didn't mesh. Usually what came next was his naked body radiating warmth beside her in their bed, then a foot reaching out to find hers or a hand seeking her breast, and then, at last, the long, deep, comforting sigh as he surrendered to sleep.
It was different now. After fumbling with the buttons of his shirt and lobbing it into the corner where he'd tossed his slacks, Bobby didn't take off his briefs. He eased down onto his side of the bed without drawing back the covers, then muttered another curse as his head met the pillow. He smelled like beer and sweat and cheap perfume. Chantilly, as a matter of fact. Now that was really desperate.
Angela flopped on her side, facing away, wrenching the pillow under her chin and digging a hip into the mattress. No one knew better than she that Bobby Holland needed sex the way flowers needed sunlight. That had seemed obvious even from that first night they were together, when they'd had to keep nudging Mr. Whiskers off the bed. The poor cat had fallen into an exhausted sleep long before his new owners.
When she'd really thought about it, rather than purely reaping the benefits of their frequent lovemaking, Angela had concluded that her husband's intense sexual drive had something to do with his locked-down emotions, that for Bobby orgasm was just as much an emotional release as it was a physical one. After Billy died, she was even more convinced of her theory, because Bobby's need seemed to increase in direct proportion to his inability to grieve. For Angela, though, fucking one's brains out was not an acceptable alternative to tears. Sometimes, after they made love and Bobby fell asleep, she'd lie beside him feeling not satiated or complete, but used, as if he'd taken from her and given nothing in return.
She listened to his breathing now. Even and boozy and thoroughly sated, the rough catch in his throat threatening to blossom into a full-fledged snore.
All during their separation, she hadn't really questioned his fidelity because, according to the grapevine, her estranged husband had become a teeth-gnashing, curse-hurling, nearly impossible son of a bitch. That seemed a pretty good indicator to her that Bobby wasn't getting any. But now it was pretty obvious that wasn't the case anymore.
Angela tugged up the covers none too gently, not caring if she disturbed his postcoital relaxation, actually hoping she woke him up. God damn him.
When his even breathing didn't alter one little bit, she lashed a foot out in his direction. How dare he sleep with some cheap, Chantilly-drenched bimbo and then return to their shared bed?
Finally, furious, she jerked upright, grabbed her pillow, and smacked him as hard as she could.
His reflexes only slightly diminished by the recent tryst, Bobby jackknifed up. “Jesus, Angela. What do you think you're doing?”
“Get out of my bed.”
“What?”
“Get out of my bed, you son of a bitch.” She reached out a hand to turn on the lamp. She wanted to see his guilty face.
“Ange—” He blinked in the sudden, unexpected light
“How dare you come back here, back to this bed, after you slept with somebody else?”
“After—?” He rubbed his eyes. “After I what?”
“After you slept with … How should I know who?” She heard her own, normally well-modulated tones climb somewhere in the vicinity of a screech. “Some law enforcement groupie wearing a thong and dime-store perfume.”
“Jesus,” he muttered. “Is that what you think?”
“What am I supposed to think, Bobby? It's two o'clock in the morning and you sneak in here smelling like a—” She threw up her hands. “I don't know. Like a brewery with a French whorehouse next door.”
“Give me a break, will you?” he said angrily, then got up and stalked to the bathroom, slamming the door.
By the time he came out a few minutes later, Angela had snapped off the light and practically barricaded herself on her side of the bed. She felt the mattress cant when he lay down again on his side.
“I didn't sleep with anybody, Ange,” he said quietly. “I haven't slept with anybody since you left. Are you listening to me?”
“Yes.” And she believed him. Bobby was a lot of things, but a liar wasn't one of them.
“Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“I'm not saying I wasn't thinking about it tonight.” He tacked on a soft curse at the end of the confession. “But when the time came to close the deal, it wasn't what I wanted. I wanted you.”
On her side of the bed, Angela made herself stay absolutely still, even though her innate response to Bobby's words was to throw her arms around him and weep that she wanted him, too. She ached for him, but what good was being satisfied physically when he couldn't or wouldn't even try to satisfy her emotional needs? She didn't think he'd changed a bit in that
respect. Making love might be a comfort to him and an emotional as well as physical release, but it had turned into torment for her, being so close and so alone.
With her eyes tightly closed, she whispered, “I appreciate your honesty. We should probably get some sleep now.”
If he was disappointed—if she'd just dashed his hope for a sexual reunion and put an end to his every dream of reconciliation—he didn't let it show. This was Bobby, after all. The rock. The night she'd told him she was leaving him, taking the job in L.A. to think things over for a while, all he'd said was, “All right. If that's what you want.”
“Yeah,” he told her now. “I guess we should. G'night, Ange.”
7
Daisy Riordan scowled at the battery-operated clock on the table beside her chair, not trusting it completely. She much preferred winding a clock herself, but mechanical timepieces were difficult to find in this dreadful, digital, electronic day and age.
Assuming the clock was correct, the time was ten after eight. She'd been bathed and dressed since seven-fifteen, and she was decidedly hungry. The fact that she could have gone downstairs for her muffin and juice and coffee was beside the point. When she informed the Hollands that she wanted her breakfast tray at eight o'clock, that was by God what she meant. As much as the Itos had annoyed her, at least they had been punctual.
She didn't like starting her day on a sour note like this. It was difficult, once she committed herself to a mood, to talk herself out of it. She was liable to be cranky the rest of the day, she feared.
That was another reason she detested growing old. Along with hardening of the arteries, there seemed to come a certain hardening of the personality. She could see it in herself. Her levels of tolerance had never been high, but they'd declined dramatically, especially since Charles's death. Her ability to suffer fools was now practically nil.
She could see the same petrification in her friend, Muriel, who'd aged from a silly young twit into a silly old fool. One would have thought her recent cancer scare would have matured her somehow, but it hadn't.
Daisy sighed as a soft knock sounded on her door.
“Come in,” she muttered, then watched the knob turn, the door swing in, and a grim-looking Robert step into her room. Well, she hadn't really expected the young man to be all sunshine and smiles this morning. She didn't sleep much these days, and she'd been looking out the window at two this morning when he had extracted himself from a little vehicle in the driveway—a little blonde-propelled vehicle—then done a rather poor imitation of a sober person making his way toward the back door. At the moment he looked as if he had the headache he deserved.
“The clocks downstairs are all in working order, I presume,” she said as he put down the tray on the table beside her.
He gave her a look that more than confirmed the dull ache behind his finely shaped eyebrows, then said, “If you mean your breakfast is ten minutes late, Mrs. Riordan, you're absolutely right. There was a small dispute about the designation of duties, but it's been resolved.”
Daisy returned the look, minus the headache. “I see. What you're saying then is that Mrs. Holland didn't appreciate your condition last night or the hour you got in.”
Robert's frank, but forlorn, hazel eyes stayed fastened on her face as he quietly replied, “You could put it that way, ma'am.”
“So you lost the battle of the bran muffin and the tray, I take it.”
A woeful little smile touched his lips. “Something like that, ma'am.”
Daisy offered him a smug smile in return. “All right, then. That will be all, Robert.”
She liked him. He struck her as forthright and honest … well, as honest as he could be considering the damned subterfuge that William had instigated. She liked this young man quite well, as a matter of fact. As she felt her own sour mood sweeten a bit, she thought it a shame that Robert seemed so unhappy.
He was almost out the door when she summoned him back. “I'd like you to drive me into town at ten o'clock. I've agreed, against my better judgment, to host my bridge group again tomorrow, so I'll be needing refreshments. We'll take the Cadillac. I believe the keys are on a hook somewhere in the kitchen.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“If Angela would like to come along to do some shopping, that's perfectly fine with me. I'll be down at ten. Sharp.”
After she had prepared Mrs. Riordan's breakfast, which basically had amounted to pouring orange juice and coffee, then plopping a big bran muffin on a plate, and after she battled with Bobby over who would take it upstairs, Angela went outside, as much to get a breath of fresh air as to check out the rear exterior of the residence. She noticed that most of the yellow roses around the gazebo had dropped their petals overnight. Well, seemed like everybody had had a bad night.
She wondered how Rod's party with the studio execs had gone, and then decided she really didn't care. Sometimes his occupation struck her as frivolous beyond belief. Yes, she knew people yearned to be entertained, to take time off from the grind of daily business, to get their minds off their troubles, but still… She was probably prejudiced, but her admiration was reserved for the law enforcement people who made it possible for everybody else to safely play.
“Well, I'm off to keep the forces of evil at bay.” That's what Sergeant Angelo Callifano had said with a big smile every morning when he left for the station house. Bobby, on the other hand, was more succinct about his career in law enforcement. “Fucking up the bad guys” was the way he put it. Same difference.
She bent to pick up some of the fallen yellow rose petals, sniffed their lovely fragrance, then let them drift through her fingers.
“Mornin’, Mrs. Holland,” Doug Coulter called to her on his way to the trailer. “Everything all right this morning?”
She gave him a thumbs-up and a bright smile, behind which she was thinking, Everything's just peachy, Special Agent Coulter. Maybe you'd like trying to do the job while lashed to Mrs. Coulter's apron strings.
“By the way, that truck coming up the driveway has been cleared,” he called. “Same milkman who's been delivering for the past fifteen years.”
“Great,” she replied, turning toward the drive to see the big white step van with the black-and-white cow painted on its side and the word Smooooooth in a cartoon bubble above the cow's head. She should probably double up on Mrs. Riordan's regular order, she thought, walking to greet the man who jumped down from the driver's seat.
“Good morning,” she said in what she thought was the perfect maid-to-milkman tone. “I'm Angela, Mrs. Riordan's new housekeeper.”
She knew immediately that there was going to be trouble, judging from the grin on the guy's face. It was lascivious. Lurid. Like he'd been in lockdown at a federal penitentiary for the past fifteen years, and hers was the first female face he'd seen since getting out. Except he wasn't looking at her face. The creep.
He was in his early thirties, probably close to her own age, with a face only a mother ferret could love. He wore white pants held up by a skinny Elvis belt, a white shirt, and a black bow tie that Angela could have sworn was plastic. His Adam's apple poked out above it.
“I'm Eugene,” he said, accenting his name on the first syllable so it sounded like You-gene. “What happened to that little Jap couple?”
Oh, brother. Now she really didn't like him. “They quit,” she told him.
He didn't look surprised. “Hey, I would too if I had to work for Crazy Daisy. What a bitch. That old lady busts my chops every couple of months. Like it's my fault if the milk's no good. What am I? A cow?”
No, a jerk, Angela thought. The guy was still looking at her chest as if he considered that eye contact.
“So, you're new here, huh?”
She nodded.
“When's your day off, Angel? Maybe we could see a movie or go bowling or something. You like to bowl?”
“Not especially,” she said
Eugene looked disappointed, but undeterred. He moved a few steps closer, an
d she noticed he smelled like a sour dishrag. “You don't bowl, huh? Well, what do you like to do on dates, Angel?” He made a little guttural sound, somewhere between a growl and a grunt. “I'm up for anything.”
I'll just bet you are, bucko. Being in the Secret Service not only did wonders for a woman's self-esteem, it also gave her the confidence—the unmitigated balls, really— to take on bozos like Eugene. She could've had him spread-eagled on the ground in two seconds flat, but it was a lot more fun to bring him down verbally.
“What'll it be, baby?” he whispered, assaulting her with his terrible breath.
“Handcuffs,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“Handcuffs. I like to fool around with handcuffs.” She could almost see the illicit little thrill blaze down the guy's spine, so she smiled and said, “For starters, anyway.”
He blinked. “For … for starters?”
She winked. “No pain, no gain. I don't suppose there are any leather shops in town.”
“Leather? What? You mean like gloves?”
“I mean like whips.”
“Uh. Not that I know of.”
“Oh, well.” Angela shrugged, gratified to see that Eugene was staring in her eyes now rather than at her chest. He was starting to hyperventilate, too. “It doesn't matter. I've got plenty of paraphernalia. So which are you, Eugene? S or M?”
“I dunno,” he croaked.
“No problem. I can go either way.”
His Adam's apple did a triple Salkow above his stupid tie, and his face was rapidly draining of color. “Where are you from, anyway?”
“New York,” she said, then added, “Hell's Kitchen,” while trying not to cackle.
Eugene took a step back, so Angela held her breath— God, he smelled bad—and advanced on him.
“Did you ever do it with handcuffs, Eugene? Wearing leather?” she asked.