Shadow Woman jw-3

by Thomas Perry

  He knew that the two of them must have started hiking at least four or five hours ago, but that did not bother him. They would walk for a few hours, until the moon was high and the wind up here started to howl, and then they would take their own exhaustion as an assurance that Earl would be too tired to follow. They would camp, make a shelter and a fire, and curl up. Maybe they would be cautious enough to tramp a distance off the main trail first, but they wouldn’t risk going too far.

  They didn’t know what was after them. Earl could just discern the black barrel torsos of Rusty and T-Bone ahead of him in the dark—beasts with as much mass and muscle as small men, that could hear a twig the size of a toothpick snap under a boot, smell a fire in the woods for miles, and see with a predator’s vision that didn’t bother much with subtle gradations of tone and color but had evolved to pick out unerringly whatever was alive so they could sink their teeth into it.

  As Earl ran, he could feel the strange, triangular field between him and Rusty and T-Bone, the dogs’ attentiveness to his sound and scent holding them in position. They were as alert to any change in his will as to the sights and sounds ahead of them. The dogs were part of him now. He was a creature with three heads and sharp teeth and a rifle and a man’s brain, galloping through the forest sniffing the wind for the smell of live meat.

  Carey had finished his hospital rounds at seven, but he had found over the past ten days that each night he went home a little later. The old, comfortable house where he had grown up now seemed cavernous and empty because Jane wasn’t there waiting for him. Tonight he had gone back to his office and spent two hours making notations in the files of his patients, signing forms and letters that Joy had typed and left on his desk, then looking over the latest pile of medical journals for articles that he needed to study. At nine he walked back to the hospital lot, climbed into the BMW, and remembered that he still had not stopped to fill up the tank. In the midst of that Susan Haynes business last night, he had forgotten, and then in the morning she had managed to delay him long enough so that he had not had time.

  He turned the key carefully with dread in his heart and listened intently. The engine turned over, and the car violated Carey’s sense of the laws of physics by starting, then taking him to the gas station without running dry.

  As Carey drove up to the big old house in Amherst he was thinking about food. It was nearly ten o’clock, and he had not had dinner yet. Maybe he would just make himself a sandwich and go to bed. He saw that there were lights on in a couple of the downstairs windows. Susan Haynes had obviously forgotten to turn off any switches before she had locked the door this morning … if she had remembered to do that much. He pulled into the long driveway toward the garage. As he reached the place where the drive turned the corner of the house, his headlights lit up the bright-red tail reflectors of the car parked by the back door. It was the big black Mercedes that Susan Haynes had leased.

  Carey stopped his car, pulled it forward around the big Mercedes to keep from blocking it in, and killed the engine. He glanced at his watch again. It was nine fifty-six. This woman was in his house at nine fifty-six waiting for him to come home. He closed his eyes and felt a constriction in the muscles of his throat.

  His mind surveyed his mistakes leading backward in time like stepping stones. He should never have given her his key. He should never have invited an unattached woman to stay the night, never have given her a ride, never even have let on that her car had been towed to clear his parking space. He batted away the excuses that his mind automatically fabricated and spit out for him, like a machine that had short-circuited: no, he had not done it because she had really needed his help. He had done it because she was beautiful and he had not wanted to stop looking at her; because she was smart and distracting and he was tired of being alone. He had liked her. The nervously clinical words of an old study of physiological responses came back to him. Affection—even the most innocent kind—was found to prompt a “slight tumescence of the genitals.” And that, in turn, would probably prompt a rationalization.

  He knew that he could not start his engine again, back out of the driveway, and abandon his house until this woman got tired of waiting and went away. The only other option he had was to go inside and find out what she thought she was doing. It took him a moment to identify the source of his reluctance to face her. It was the instinctive alarm that made animals shy away from one of their kind that was behaving strangely. It had probably kept a lot of epidemics from spreading to healthy animals and wiping out entire species. This time the instinct was serving no purpose. Neuroses weren’t contagious.

  He walked around to the front door, found it unlocked, and stepped inside. The smell of food cooking overwhelmed him and reminded him how hungry he was. Susan had sneaked into his house and cooked something for him. He was relieved. It was unwelcome, but at least it was comprehensible, possibly even within the boundaries of normal behavior. He tried to analyze his lingering irritation at her. What had she actually done? He supposed that what had annoyed him most was that she had playfully set off a sexual longing that he was not entitled to feel. As soon as he had admitted it, he felt ridiculous for resenting her for it: blaming women for stimulating impure thoughts had gone out with witch trials. Or it should have.

  He detected that he was also straining against some primitive territorial reaction she had triggered by coming into his lair without permission. The hostility was misplaced—just another legacy from earlier primates that had begun to get in the way. She wasn’t trying to harm him. She was trying to be kind, after all. A lot of people believed that the rules should be abrogated for surprises. Carey was not one of those people, but he had to live in the world. “Hello?” he called. “Anybody here?”

  When he heard no answer, he ventured into the living room. He moved into the dining room, and saw her. She was facing away from him, wearing a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt that he recognized as Jane’s. If it had not been for the long, golden hair he might almost have convinced himself that she was Jane. She was pouring champagne into two glasses. The table was elaborately set with the best silver, and the candles were lit. She turned and held out a glass. “Hi,” she said. The reserved, distant smile was on her lips. “Have you eaten dinner?”

  “No,” he admitted. “To what do I owe all this?” He realized that his jaw was tight, the muscles working. He smiled to cover the tension.

  She shrugged, and he wished that it had not made him aware of the movement of her breasts under the fabric. “I’m showing you my gratitude. You’ve been very nice to me.”

  “I thought you had your heart set on a big dinner party.” He looked around the corner toward the living room. “Should I expect the Rotherbergs and Bortonis to leap out from behind the curtains?”

  She grinned and shook her head. “No, it’s not a surprise party. It’s just a surprise.” She sipped her champagne and looked into his eyes. “For you.”

  “Why?” He tried to seem casual. “I mean, I guess I should just say, ‘Thanks.’ ” Unexpectedly, the rest of it came out. “But, to be honest with you, coming in and finding someone inside my house is not my favorite experience. I suppose that for a lot of people, it must be an accepted custom: it seems to turn up in television plots almost as often as the Evil Twin or the Long-Lost Father, and nobody else seems shocked. But I am. If I want somebody to come, I invite them.”

  The suddenness of her smile staggered him. It seemed to come from absolutely nowhere, and to be immune to anything he had said. She shrugged. “I gave you every opportunity, but you don’t seem to let yourself think about anything personal until after work, and that would have been too late, wouldn’t it? If I’d known it would bother you, I would have done it another way.” She turned away and began fiddling with the objects on the table again.

  He was positive that he was right, but he began to regret having said the words. When she spun around to face him, she seemed to have forgotten he had spoken at all: the smile seemed more radiant. “Th
is doesn’t get you out of my party, by the way. When your wife comes home, I’m still going to have a bunch of the local gentry over for dinner. That pays you back officially for helping me last night.”

  He waved his hand at the table. “Isn’t this enough?”

  She cocked her head at him. “This isn’t the official thanks, which will be completely insincere and self-serving, and which Jane and I will like more than you do. This is something I thought of after I called you today. You’re all alone and you don’t know when your wife is coming back, and you sounded unhappy. Now is the time when a woman can offer something that will actually do you some good. So I decided to cook you a meal. Big deal.”

  She pointedly set her champagne glass beside the nearest plate and pulled out the chair at the head of the table. “I’ve done enough explaining and I’m hungry. So sit while I serve you.”

  Carey sat in the chair and she reached over his shoulder, then ceremoniously placed the linen napkin on his lap. “This is really something,” he conceded. He turned his head as he said it, and found her still leaning over him, her face much closer than he had anticipated. He could smell the subtle scent of her hair, see the big liquid green eyes glinting in the candlelight.

  “It’s meant to be,” she said. “No empty promises.”

  He was relieved when she brought out the big pot and began to serve the food. She had made bouillabaisse, and it had certainly not gotten worse during the hours after she had expected him to arrive. He tasted it.

  “A small, neatly inscribed thank-you note would have been more than sufficient, but the food is wonderful,” he said.

  She tasted it too. “It turned out okay. I gave myself a tour of the house while you were out. When I got a good look at the kitchen, I figured I’d have to take this seriously if I was going to give you what you were used to.”

  “Well, thank you. You really know how to cook. You must like to.”

  She shook her head. “I hate it. I learned because men like to eat, and I like men.”

  He hurried to change the subject. “I just remembered that I saw your car in the driveway. Did everything go all right?”

  She shrugged. “It was pretty much what you said in the morning. They were there all the time. The man I paid the ransom for my car said they don’t always hear the phone ringing from outside.”

  “How much was it?”

  “Three hundred. Isn’t that outrageous? A hundred for towing the car down there, and two hundred for the fine. And they don’t take credit cards.”

  Carey said, “I feel terrible. It was partly my fault. I’d like to pay for it.” He had a strong impulse to make all accounts even, so the give-and-take would stop.

  Her amused look returned. “That’s very chivalrous. But it’s not the money, it’s the effrontery.” She seemed to realize something that hadn’t occurred to her before. “And anyway, the whole point of the evening was to get out and meet people, and I guess it served its purpose. I met a lot of people, and made one friend.”

  He gave a noncommittal smile and a little nod. He tried to decide why the idea made him so uncomfortable. Maybe living in a small city all his life had made him conservative and timid about meeting new people, but he had known Susan Haynes little more than twenty-four hours. The word “friend” sounded premature, almost presumptuous.

  There was also an element of danger in it that he did not find appealing. She was enormously attractive, and her conversation always had a sexual edge to it that seemed uncalculated but that his common sense told him could not be. It wasn’t entirely clear whether she was overtly tempting him or treating him as though he were asexual. Maybe she was just behaving with a kind of adult openness that he had become entitled to as a married man, and he wasn’t used to it yet. Maybe when you were happily married, women simply accepted you as safely ineligible for sexual relationships and became less guarded. But it was difficult to imagine a friendship with Susan Haynes extending into the future. Conversations would be full of tension and ambiguity. He suspected that Jane would take one look at her, listen to about three sentences, and announce that she hated her.

  Carey realized that the silence had gone on for too long. “Did you make more progress in getting settled today, or just slave over a hot stove?”

  “Not much progress. I spent most of the day thinking about you.”

  “Oh?” Trouble.

  “Oh?” she mocked. “As if you weren’t thinking about me.”

  He decided he had better not evade that one. “To be honest with you, over the years I’ve gotten to be pretty good at keeping my mind focused on my work during the day. I find I lose fewer patients that way.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She shook her head and stared down at her lap. “I’m doing it again. It’s like a reflex. I guess that’s why I couldn’t get you out of my mind—you’re the witness to my gaffe. I made such a mess of things last night. It was completely unfair.”

  He noticed that Susan had stopped eating some time ago, and he had eaten as much as he wanted. “What was unfair?”

  She smiled apologetically and shrugged, then looked at him from behind a strand of blond hair. “Sometimes when you meet somebody—even though you like them, or maybe because you like them—you start off wrong, and just keep going that way. You know it isn’t the way you want to be with them, but somehow you can’t figure out how to stop and start all over again. What I should have done last night was have a pleasant dinner with you, then call a cab and go home.”

  He silently agreed with her. He fervently wished he had made some excuse and called her a cab. “I really didn’t mind giving you a ride,” Carey lied. “None of this was any trouble at all.”

  “Of course you minded,” said Susan. “I was being childish last night. Teasing you, instead of being honest and direct. So now I’m trying to start all over again.”

  “I don’t even know what you mean,” said Carey.

  Her smile was beautiful, a little embarrassed. “Let’s just say that I didn’t really need your help undressing last night.”

  Carey felt his collar tighten as the blood rushed up to his head. He nodded. “I see.” He had to find a way to end this. “Forget it,” he said. “I admire your sensitivity very much. And I’m in awe of your honesty. Now we’re more than even. And I really appreciate the wonderful dinner. I had almost forgotten how hungry I was until I was here. Thanks a lot.”

  Susan stood up and stepped toward the door of the dining room, carrying her glass. She stopped and looked back at him. “Is it time for a new start?”

  “Absolutely,” he answered. Anything to get past this. He picked up his glass and followed her into the living room.

  She sat down on the couch by the fireplace. He hesitated, then chose the easy chair on the opposite side, ten feet from her. He took a sip of his drink and glanced back at the dining room.

  “Don’t worry about the dishes,” she said. She stood up and slipped the sweatshirt over her head and off. “I’ll do them in the morning.” She was wearing a black lace bra that made her white skin look somehow more bare than it should have.

  He suddenly realized that he was gaping. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “That isn’t what I meant.”

  “We’re being honest now, Carey,” she said. “You wanted me last night. If you hadn’t, then nothing I did would have made the slightest difference.”

  “I think you misunderstood,” he said. “Or maybe I did.”

  She unbuttoned the jeans, slipped them down, and stepped out of them. More black lace, more smooth, milky skin. “I’m making up for teasing you last night. I’m not teasing now.”

  “Hold it,” he said. “Could you please stop taking your clothes off for a minute and let me talk?” He took a deep breath. “I’m married.”

  “So am I.” The full lips formed themselves into the reserved smile he had seen when he met her. “You’re looking, though, aren’t you?”

  “It’s hard not to.”

  She seemed t
o take this as permission to continue. She unhooked the black bra and slipped it off. Her breasts were round and full, whiter even than the rest of her, and the nipples were like rosebuds. She saw the alarm in his eyes and her voice went lower, almost a whisper. “It’s okay. It’s perfectly okay.”

  “No,” said Carey. “It isn’t okay.” He resolutely kept his eyes on hers, but her eyes were teasing him now. “This isn’t what I want. This could wreck my life.”

  She smirked, confidently aware that her nudity was power, and words were only a way of keeping him faced in her direction. “No, it couldn’t. I’m married too, and that’s what makes it perfect. You don’t have to remember my birthday, and I don’t have to entertain your poker buddies. My husband and your wife are thousands of miles away. Tonight, we can do anything, and it’s free. There are no possible consequences.”

  “Your marriage may be ending, but mine’s just beginning. I love my wife.”

  She smiled at him again. Her hands had moved to the waistband of the panties, and as she spoke, her thumbs hooked over it and began to slide slowly along the inner side of the elastic, toward her hips. “Good for you,” she said. “I’m sure she’ll be panting for you when she’s here—just as I am—but tonight she’s not. So this doesn’t take away anything of hers. This is just for fun. To be alone together in this house and not do it would be unnatural.” Her smile disappeared. Her eyes lowered, she bent toward him slightly to slip the panties down past her hips, then stepped out of them, naked.

  Carey was gripped with self-loathing. He did not belong here, listening to this nonsense and watching this woman strip. He stood up abruptly, then moved to the couch. He saw her smile return and the lids of her eyes go down like the eyes of a purring cat. “You’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said. “You’re funny, clever, and very persuasive. If I were ever going to cheat on my wife, this would have been the time.” He snatched the pile of clothes off the cushion of the couch and tossed them to her. “Now get dressed and go home.”