There was no light from the hallway, just moonlight from the window, so Martine could only see Reid’s silhouette. He didn’t answer, but she imagined he was smiling.
“And that whole crazy drama with the strawberries. What was that about, Reid?”
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow. It’s a very long story.”
“Get out, then,” Martine said, rolling away so that her back faced him. “If you’re through fucking me and you can’t at least be entertaining, then let me go back to sleep.”
He left, his footsteps so soft that she didn’t hear him leave. She knew she would not be able to sleep, at least not soon. The warm area between her thighs was still singing holy praises, but her conscience was flaying her. The middle of the night was always the worst time to be alone at Reid’s. She could never avoid the question: What the hell am I doing in this loony bin? Am I a visitor or a patient? That was one reason she was always glad when Reid stayed the night: fewer questions to keep her awake in the dark.
At the precise moment Martine began to doze, she felt her floorboards shake after a hard thud from across the house. She sat straight up, her heart jumping, wondering if the sound and sensation had been real or part of a dream. She heard distant footsteps, walking hurriedly. And a muffled woman’s voice. Another crash, but smaller and accompanied by the sound of shattering glass. It sounded like a lamp breaking.
Then, utter silence.
Martine’s thoughts were frozen. She couldn’t sort through her impulses. More out of fascination than fear, she was riveted to the spot.
This time she heard closer footsteps, approaching her room quickly from the hallway.
“Reid?” she tried to whisper, but her voice stayed locked in her throat.
As if in response, Reid’s bare arm appeared in her doorway, reaching for the doorknob to her half-open door. Standing in the hall, he did not peek inside her room. In a swift, silent motion, he pulled her door closed. He was so deft, she barely heard it click.
“Maybe you could start with that old cliché, ‘There are some things about me you don’t know,’ ” Martine suggested as she and Reid navigated through the sidewalk full of pedestrians on Ocean Drive. It was a sea of firm, sculpted men’s chests, ample bikini tops, and middle-aged South Americans and Europeans who understood the arresting power of color-coordination, fine shoes, and an unhurried walk. South Beach, Reid often said, was his favorite place in the world.
“To say that would be a lie, wouldn’t it? You know all about me.”
That was true. She’d been so amused the time she and Reid had both ended up in the audience at the NAACP Image Awards, when he’d been escorted by a six-foot blonde wearing a glittering dress so tight Martine was convinced it must be leaving skin indentations, and her friend Sheila, a music promoter, had leaned over to point them out: “Ain’t that your boy over there? Where’d he find his date, on the corner? Why can’t the brothers just leave these white women alone? I thought that status shit went out in the seventies.”
Martine had agreed, all the while suppressing a laugh because she recognized the blonde as Gary Diamond, a transvestite who’d had a mad crush on Reid for years, and who managed to keep company with him because of his access to exotic delicacies of all varieties. Martine knew Reid never touched men, or he would have gladly told her all about it—but he was willing to flirt with anyone to find new novelties to add to his collection. Diamond’s date with Reid to the Image Awards had been a reward, no doubt, for a suitable offering in return.
But explaining all that would have been a bit too deep to go into with Sheila that day. So Martine had said something appropriate like, “Well, you know how it is, that European standard of beauty,” and giggled to herself through the rest of the ceremony, most particularly as Reid stood up to give his acceptance speech and Diamond stared at the stage with adoring eyes.
“Yes, I do know all about you, whether I like it or not,” Martine answered him. “And evasiveness isn’t usually your style.”
He took a moment to answer. This time, his tone was less casual. “As long as you’re sure you know why you’re asking, Martine.”
“Why would I be asking except out of idle curiosity?”
“Maybe you have a lust for pain. Or something else less idle.”
“I think you have me mixed up with Maya.”
“I could never confuse you with Maya. You’re the blood in my veins.”
Gee, thanks, she thought, but she didn’t say it aloud. No matter how much she might crave it, she wasn’t going to turn this into a fight. A fight might mean release. Freedom. Suddenly, her chest was in a knot. “Tell me about her,” Martine said.
“Over coffee,” he said, and extended his arm to indicate an empty sidewalk table at the News Cafe. She reminded herself that this might have been the exact table where Gianni Versace had had breakfast the morning he was gunned down while walking back toward his home down the street. That thought felt like an omen.
“She was brought to me in November. I can’t say by whom. She’s a fugitive,” Reid said once their steaming cafes con leche had arrived.
“You’re harboring a fugitive?”
Again, a hint of a smile playing at his lips, self-satisfaction aching to burst out. “I wouldn’t say harboring, exactly. Her room has bars and a padlock. I’m more like a caretaker.”
“You mean a prison guard.”
“Oh, she doesn’t want to go anywhere. She’s very happy with me.”
“She didn’t sound too happy last night,” Martine said. Fugitive or no fugitive, she couldn’t ignore the possibility that Reid was physically abusing this little speck of a woman. Was that his game now? And, if so, what was he turning into?
“You’re so quick to judge. I’m disappointed,” Reid said, pretending to pout. Gazing at his slightly puckered lips, Martine despised how his expression endeared him to her even though she knew it was pure artifice. She ignored an urge to rub his knee under the table. Or, better yet, to raise her bare foot to his crotch.
“What’s she wanted for?”
Reid’s gaze became intense. This, apparently, was the part he was particularly proud of. “She’s a Black Widow. She’s wanted in three states. She’s killed four lovers, maybe five.”
“You’re joking.”
“Not at all. She poisoned three of them. And one, she choked to death with—”
“So that’s what that whole fuss was about at dinner? You thought she was trying to poison you?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time. I had to have my stomach pumped before she’d been here a week. She put something in the milk.” He said this, it seemed to her, with something like pride.
That was extreme, even for Reid. Now that she thought about it, she remembered he’d made a quick trip to the hospital last fall for what he’d explained was a stomach virus. She’d hardly given it any thought at all, since Reid had sounded so lively on the telephone.
“Let me understand this: you’re carrying on an affair with someone who hates you.”
“You’re oversimplifying. She has urges to kill me sometimes, yes, but she doesn’t hate me. She didn’t kill those other men out of hatred. It’s hard to explain, actually.”
“I don’t care about her psychological profile, Reid. But I have to admit, I’m very concerned about yours.” Suddenly, as she’d felt the day he called about the Thai prostitute, she felt that Reid had become a virtual stranger.
He waved his hand with dismissal. “Don’t worry. I know it can’t go on forever. But the delicacy of the situation fascinates me. And the sex is inspired. Not like it is with you—”
Martine barked an empty, sarcastic laugh. “Oh, Reid, please.”
“No, I’m being sincere. She doesn’t touch my core like you do. She’s not in my bloodstream. How can I describe it? She’s more like a bag of potato chips I can’t stop munching on. Sooner or later, you feel sick and you stop eating, that’s all.”
“Either that or you get killed.”
Reid sighed. “What can I say, Martine? I’m a daredevil. I keep expecting all my brazen risks to get me into horrible trouble one day, but instead they’ve won me an obscene bank account and a feast of female company. The only drawback seems to be that I can’t have you. But there’s a catch-22, you see. With you, I mean.”
“And what’s that?”
“You’re always waiting, my queen.” He shrugged, and she wanted to hit him, an impulse that had been foreign to her until today. Martine wondered if it had taken him a long time to glean that particular bit of insight, or if he’d known it all along.
“You think I’m waiting,” she said coldly.
“Well, unfortunately for us,” he said, “there’s no difference between truth and perception.”
Martine realized, with calm certainty instead of anger or grief, that this would be her last winter trip to Reid’s house. Role-playing exercises became invalid as soon as someone broke character and pointed out all the make-believe. She just wished she’d done it first, not Reid. She wished she had noticed how far from her he’d strayed while he was right under her nose. Was he purposely trying to chase her away? If he was, he’d created yet another masterpiece in Maya.
“This thing you’re doing with Maya, this game, is insane. I don’t know where you got this woman or why you have her, but it’s dangerous. And it’s insane. You know that, but I have to say it.”
For the first time, he averted his eyes. “I’m sure it looks that way.”
“That’s just the first thing. The second thing is, I’m not going to stay. You must think I’m crazy, too, if you expect me to spend another night—”
Suddenly, he took her hand and squeezed it warmly. “Martine, I promise you, last night was a fluke. Lourdes wasn’t watching her properly, which gave her access to the kitchen while I was gone, and then that commotion you heard later—”
“I don’t want to know.” As if she were a third-grader, she wanted to cover her ears.
“Just listen to me. I usually keep her very secure. She just had an episode, and it surprised me. But I’ll be much more careful. You can’t think I would ever place you in danger. Besides, no matter how crazy this may sound to you, it’s not you she’s after. She has no interest in you. And a pickaxe in the middle of the night is much too crude for her.”
“Are you listening to yourself, Reid? I hope so.”
“OK, yes, she fascinates me. I’m sorry. I would send her away if I could, since she bothers you so much, but I can’t arrange that on such short notice. I don’t want this to intrude on our time, Martine. You know how I look forward to this weekend all year, having you to myself. I pushed back my shoot in Morocco for this! We have so many more interesting things to talk about. You see now why I didn’t want to tell you? You’re so intent on taking a position.”
“Taking a position?”
“Why start casting judgment now? That’s all I’m saying to you. Is this honestly so outside your expectations of me? Why pretend it is? You know who I am. Sweetheart, I can’t bear to sit here fighting like an old married couple. It makes me want to cry when we argue.”
His hand, as it clasped hers, felt like it was pulsing with every word. She honestly thought she was feeling his heartbeat until she realized her wrist and arm were radiating from his touch.
She had no choice. She sobbed. Her chest was breaking open.
“Shit,” Reid said. He looked genuinely stunned. Even when Martine’s father had died two years before, she had not cried in front of him. The notion that she never cried was one of the fantasies that she enjoyed perpetuating about herself. Reid glanced around uncomfortably, as though other diners would consider her tears some indictment upon him. Furtively, he motioned to their passing waiter to bring the check.
He stared at her mournfully, his eyes threatening their own tears. “Did I do this to you, Martine? You’re my life, and I’ve hurt you, haven’t I?”
She shook her head. “I’ve done this to me,” she whispered from the thick wall of her throat. More than anything, she just wanted to be held. And when they got back to Reid’s house, she decided, she would allow him to hold her.
Because, after all, they both knew that was why she was here.
Reid gave her a joint to help her put everything in perspective, and even though Martine hadn’t smoked in years because dope made her lethargic for days afterward, she sat in his library and smoked the entire joint like a cigarette, skimming through Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman and thinking she understood it all at last. Sometimes the king has to commit suicide because ritual demands it, she thought, just like in the play. A king’s gotta do what a king’s gotta do. She felt like she’d gained enough perspective to last a year.
And when Reid came behind her, kneading her shoulders and asking if she’d care to join him and Maya in the pool, she couldn’t think of one reason why not.
The sky had gone dark while she wasn’t paying attention, and it was cooler outside than it had been the night before. Not New York by a long shot, but there was definitely a bite in the air. Bright lights illuminated the pool from under the water, and the rest of the patio was black. Martine tipped across the smooth, glistening pebbles of Reid’s patio tiles, enjoying the prickly sensation against her bare soles. When she noticed that Reid and Maya were naked, floating serenely with their arms resting against the pool’s edge, she climbed unselfconsciously out of her one-piece suit and tested the water. Yep, the heat was on. A heated pool in Miami had seemed almost beyond extravagance to her when Reid first had it built, but she was grateful now.
This is going to be a good night, she decided.
With a light streaming right beside Maya’s body, Martine could see that the areolas centered on her tiny breasts were a dark brown, nearly as dark as her own. She could also see a dime-sized birthmark near her navel.
“Where are you from?” Martine asked her.
“Half of me’s from Brazil, half from Lebanon. But I’ve lived between Georgia, Michigan, and California my whole life. Take your pick,” she said. She paused, as if to say You through with your questions now? Then, she went on blandly, as if continuing an earlier conversation: “I think most movies are just dumb. The people are so fake.”
Despite her mellow mood, her body melting in the warm pool, Martine didn’t feel inclined to try to explain to a serial killer how script deadlines and sophomoric formulas had made characters virtually inconsequential in Hollywood. Let Reid defend his own, she thought.
“Martine would agree with you on that,” Reid said.
“Like cute, happy little dreams,” Martine said with a yawn. She enjoyed the familiarity of this debate with Reid, which reminded her of college. Even then, measuring herself against Reid had provided her a sense of conviction. “Judas was an important film, Reid. You proved you could do it, and then you went back to helping people sleep.”
“I never saw Judas. I’m not really into the Bible and all that,” Maya said. “But I know what you’re saying, Martine, because I didn’t like that big movie Reid put out last year at all. I just thought it was silly. Sorry.”
“See that? You may be the only two people left who don’t tell me only what I want to hear,” Reid said, staring at Martine with such heavy-lidded eyes that she knew he was wishing he could broach the question of a threesome. He would never dare ask her, of course, but Martine wondered if this was the one time she might consent. They were all within a couple feet of each other, close enough to touch. The water lapping just below Martine’s chin was lulling her to a place where no questions need be asked, and no answers were required.
“You must be broke as hell, huh?” Maya said to Martine.
Martine smiled ruefully, closing her eyes. “Something like that.”
“Reid is a millionaire. He doesn’t even pay attention to how much money he’s got, ’cuz he’s got so much of it. And people come here and kiss his ass all the time. The actors who are supposed to be so hot themselves are the wo
rst ones. I’ve seen them.”
“Me, too,” Martine said. She liked Maya’s candor, and she felt the sudden hope that everything Reid had told her about Maya that day was complete horseshit. “Is any of it true?
“Is what true, babe?” Reid asked, invisible behind her eyelids.
“I’m talking to Maya. Is it true what Reid said you did?”
Martine heard a playful slap and splash in the water. “How come you had to go and shoot off your mouth?”
“So is it true or isn’t it?” Martine said.
Maya paused. “What did you say I did?”
“He said you killed four men.”
Maya’s voice grew slightly husky, sounding almost too big for her frame. “Well, then, he’s a damn liar. It was five. He knows it was five.”
Martine lay very still in the water, waiting to feel something. Instead, she wished she had her 16mm camera with her, that she was capturing the night on film. She couldn’t pretend she was still an observer, though; she had become one of her subjects.
“Why did you do it?” she asked. “Why do you kill men?”
“It’s just beyond my control,” Maya said, sounding bored. “There are no...what’s that word, Reid? That pretty one you use all the time?”
“Epiphanies,” he said.
“Yeah, no epiphanies. I do it because I feel like I have to. I guess love has to hurt, that’s all. Better them than me. But I’m going to stop, though.”
“Now who’s lying?” Reid said.
This time it was Maya’s turn to laugh, a very merry and girlish sound. After a short silence she said, “What are you gonna do with your money, Reid? Put me in your will.”
“You a crazy woman, girl, if you t’ink I’m going to do something fool-fool like dat.”
“Who are you giving it to, then? Martine?”
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