“Radio,” she said, unprepared for his company, which she had never encouraged. He was a repeat, a rerun of too many other men she had known in the business.
“That a step down?”
His voice was resonant in her ear. He’d be splendid reading news. She gave him a dig. “When are you getting a job?”
He motioned to the bartender. He decided to have a drink after all, a martini, two olives. “I’m allergic to hard work, makes me break out in a sweat.”
He had no money, but his wife did. “How’s Germaine?” she asked.
“In New York for a few days. Theater, museums, that sort of thing. Did you hear that stuff about Phoebe Yar — ”
“I don’t believe any of it,” she said swiftly. He was full of gossip, another thing she didn’t like about him.
“Have you seen the Gunners?”
“Not lately,” she said.
“Something’s happening between them,” he said mysteriously.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“I thought Harley might.” He had his martini. He lifted up an olive. “One’s for you.”
“I’ll pass.” His attention was stifling, his knee touched hers. This was what she despised about him, his drive to reduce a woman to her cunt.
“How is it between you and Harley?” he asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“Things I’ve heard.”
“Something I should tell you, Dick.” She finished off her drink, a small Chablis. “I’m not looking for action. Nor am I one of those women who can’t bear to be alone. What I want is a companion who’ll spring for dinner at a good restaurant, a sensitive and undemanding fellow who can lighten a mood, knows when to hold my hand, and can lie quiet when a presence is all I need.”
He was quiet for a dramatic moment. “I could be that.”
“You’re full of shit,” she said. “Besides, I have a true love.”
“Don’t tell me it’s Harley.”
She slid off the chair. “Our police chief,” she said.
• • •
May Hutchins and Fred Fossey were in the sheets, tearing at each other as if Death were at the door. Their bodies ran with sweat and at times slipped away from each other. “It came out,” she said. He thrust it back in, but she pulled away. “Did you hear that?” He heard nothing. She pushed him, and he went up on his knees, his head bent back. They each listened hard. “Christ, he’s home!” she gasped.
In the instant she was on her feet. She didn’t bother with underwear, simply threw her dress on, dug her toes into flat shoes, and gave short shrift to the state of her hair. The state of Fossey enraged her. He had a foot in the wrong leg of his pants.
“Hide!” she said. “Not here, another room!”
For the first time in her life she was frightened of her husband. Frantic but not out of control, she descended the stairs and remembered entering puberty with her eyes averted. Look at her now. Between the dining room and the kitchen, she faced her husband, her smile grotesquely bright.
“You’re home.” What a silly, stupid thing to say, but she repeated it. “You’re home, I said.”
Roland stood motionless. Penguin-shaped in his coveralls, a battery of ballpoint pens bulging the breast pocket, he looked tired, understated, played out, like an improbable soldier with too many campaign ribbons. “Yes, May. I’m home.”
“Come on,” she said shrilly. “I’ll make you something to eat.”
She forced him into the kitchen and hurled open the refrigerator door. “How about a sandwich? Cream cheese and olive.” She already had the bowl out and skinned the Handi-Wrap off it. He was still on his feet. “Sit down, Roland. Aren’t you feeling well?”
He sat down. “I need an oil change, that’s all.”
Busying herself at the butcher’s block, her breasts flopping as if unhinged, she said, “After you eat, you can take a nice nap on the sofa.” She kept her back to him. “I’m giving you rye bread, that all right?”
“That’s fine, May.”
She served him the sandwich on a transparent plate, potato chips sprinkled on the side. “How’s that for fast work?”
She waited for him to eat.
“May,” he said. “Is someone upstairs?”
• • •
Myles Yarbrough looked at his watch. Reservations for dinner at the country club were for seven o’clock. He climbed the stairs with a buoyancy lately returned to his step. At present his financial situation was satisfactory, and he was confident that in an emergency he could depend on Paul Gunner for more help.
“You dressed yet?” he called out.
“Getting there,” Phoebe called back.
Humming, he approached the bedroom and glimpsed her through the partly open door. She wore nothing. He stood still. He remembered the first night he’d had her company, the absolute precision of her movements multiplied in the wings of a full-length triple mirror. To hell with reservations. He barged in.
Expecting him, she turned on him. “It’s not yours.”
The quality of her voice affected him physically. He had not heard it before. Viewing her reverently, he stepped closer. “Phoebe, what is it?”
“Don’t touch the merchandise.”
He didn’t understand. What was sailing over his head? When he reached out, she pushed him back.
“You want it, you pay for it.”
• • •
“I was scared to death I wouldn’t see you again,” Harley Bodine said, stroking her hair, touching her face, reaffirming she was there, which let her know he didn’t want to do without her, ever. She was in his car under pines near Paget’s Pond, in the deepening dusk of evening. Her car, needles on the roof, was parked nearby. Bodine was happy, overwhelmed. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
Her head turned. “Anyone could come.”
“No one will,” he said, a guarantee in his tone. “I don’t know how you feel about me, Regina, but I love you. That’s the way it plays.”
“Play it slow,” she said. Handling him, she could not help comparing. Her first husband’s dark thing, she remembered, was bent at the top like a farm implement. Ira’s, like Bodine’s, ran straight to the knob. What did it matter which man she had?
“What brought us together?” he murmured. “I can’t remember.”
“Cats smell each other out. Maybe we did that.”
“You never gave me a look before.”
“Now it’s different,” she said, peering into the shadows of a man who could not believe his good fortune. What irked her was that of the men in her life memory gave her first husband pride of place. It softened his lies and even excused some. Concentrating her gaze, she pleased Bodine with her fist and no doubt would have pleased him more had she not made it seem like labor. Tossing a tissue out the window, she let his head fall against her. When he looked up, a smugness squatted on his face.
“Have you noticed? I don’t smoke anymore.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed.”
“Kate’s leaving me.”
Idly she touched his sleeve. “Does that distress you?”
“Not in the least,” he said from a contentment she was sure she had never known. “She won’t get anything out of me, not a penny. I’m the aggrieved party.”
“Smart, Harley. Very smart.”
“Do you know what she asked when the police chief was bothering me? She asked how much I loved my son. I told her it was none of her business.”
“How much did you love him?”
“More than enough to do what was best for him.”
“What was that?”
He sat up, smoothing his hair, then reaching for her hand to hold. “Let’s not talk about Glen. He’s gone.”
“He’s at peace.”
“Yes.” Loose and relaxed, he was sinking toward her again. Then he was telling her things she doubted he had told anyone else, events in his childhood, times he had been left standing with his face out, incidents when money would hav
e made a difference. He spoke of his mother. “She wasn’t a whore, but she acted like one.”
That was nothing she wanted to hear, and she said sharply, “It’s easy to blame things on our mothers.”
“I don’t blame her. I think I understand her now.”
The separation between the seats made his weight against her awkward, and she eased him away. Darkness scaled the pines. A drawn breath increased her chest. When he spoke, she scarcely heard him, her face vague with inattention. He spoke again, with concern.
“What’s wrong, Regina?”
She expelled her breath. “Everything’s right for you, nothing is for me.”
“Regina. It can’t be that bad.”
“You’re telling me it can’t? I’m telling you it can. My stepson has poisoned the air in my own house. He’s turned Patricia against me. You want to hear more? He’s holding you over my head.”
“Yes, I was afraid of that,” Bodine said. “But he’ll be back in school soon. So will Patricia — Connecticut, isn’t it?”
“That won’t stop him.” She shuddered. “I can’t stand the sight of him.”
Bodine wanted to comfort her but was hesitant to touch her. “Then it’s that bad.”
“Worse,” she said. “I wish he was dead.”
A car passed on the road, but the headlights failed to reach them. “You don’t mean that,” he said.
“Then you don’t know how much I hate him.”
The darkness had patched out the day’s heat. The air actually had a chill. Bodine raised his window. “I could help,” he said, “but I don’t want to shock you.”
“Shock me,” she demanded.
• • •
Kate Bodine, wearing a light jacket over her tennis whites, sat waiting on Chief Morgan’s front steps in the evening’s diffuse light. A neighbor peered from a window. Coming up the walk, Morgan smiled through a squint of surprise and said, “How did you know I needed a shoulder?”
“A problem, James?”
“Nothing that won’t work itself out.”
“A positive attitude is what counts.” She rose slowly, some of the gallop gone from her sturdy legs. She swept the hair from her eyes. “How about giving a gal a kiss?”
“Mrs. Winkler’s looking.”
“Mrs. Winkler? Oh yes, Mrs. Winkler.” They converged, embraced, and then stepped to the door, a key not needed. “Don’t you ever lock up?”
“Never.”
He made coffee. He poked about in a cupboard for doughnuts he thought he had. From the table she said, “Don’t worry about it. Coffee’s enough.” For a while her face was free of meaning. It echoed that of a former screen star he could not place a name to. She said, “I’ve found a place. In Brookline. The irony is that it’s a block from the first Mrs. Bodine. Perhaps we’ll become friends, though I doubt it.”
Morgan said, “Maybe I could come in and see you sometime.”
“It’s a thought, James.”
He had an uncomfortable feeling of being left out, excluded. He sipped coffee. Her voice skimmed to him as if on ice.
“Harley and I have agreed to a no-fault divorce. I want nothing from him, but of course he doesn’t believe that. I worry he has something up his sleeve, though I can’t imagine what it could be.”
“I’ve tried to quit suspecting things.”
She sighed. “My first love was in college, a very charming poli-sci major. First love is forever special, for your eyes are closed. Ever after, they’re open. That’s what I can’t understand. When I met Harley, what didn’t I see?”
“You probably weren’t looking.”
“What makes me so sad? I don’t love him.”
Morgan got up and poured more coffee. The pot was shiny, and his reflected face reared up like evidence against him. He reseated himself across from her.
“What was your first love like, James?”
“It wasn’t special, but my wife was. Later there was someone else, but she did what you’re doing. She moved out of town.”
“You’re not blaming me for something, are you?”
“No, not at all. I’ve learned to take what comes, and I’ve learned to wave good-bye. That should earn me some sort of diploma.”
“That’s a doctorate.”
They finished their coffee. She wanted to know the time. Her watch was fast, his was true. He didn’t want her to leave, nor did she want to, but she was tired. She had a headache, she said. She was shedding private blood, which in adolescence had been like sopping up some old shame.
“You telling me you have your friend?”
“Sorry, old pal.”
He managed a rueful smile. “I knew it would be something.”
“You must have a sofa somewhere. Let’s stretch out on it like two old farts and watch TV.”
They left the table, and he slung an arm around her as they entered the living room. “Actually, except for the other,” he said, “I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do.”
• • •
Harley Bodine returned to a dark house and was clicking on lights when the telephone rang. It was Paul Gunner’s doctor. Gunner had had a stroke. It didn’t surprise him. It almost didn’t interest him. His thoughts clustered on a woman the likes of whom he’d never encountered before, a woman with steel and purpose that matched his own, a woman who exceeded his expectations.
“How bad?” he asked.
“Bad enough,” the doctor said. “The problem is, he won’t let me move him to a hospital.”
“Then he can talk.”
“He can make himself understood.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I have problems here, Bodine. That gun of his. He wants me to shoot him.”
“A man has a right to choose. Ask the nurse to do it.”
The doctor exploded. “Are you serious?”
“Just joking. I’ll be over in a while.”
He washed up in the small bathroom off the kitchen. In the glass, his face was keener than he’d ever seen it, as close to the bone as it could get. His eyes overran the sockets. A towel slung around his neck, he returned to the telephone and tapped out a number he felt was his own.
• • •
Regina Smith made herself a cup of tea. Patricia was up in her room, the door closed. Anthony was dining with his father at the Andover Inn, Ira’s invitation, Ira’s grope for a compromise that would mollify everyone, no longer a concern to her. She sat over her tea with an elbow on the table and her chin in her hand, her head clearer and calmer than it had been in months. Her assessment of Harley Bodine had risen, and she had to give him his due. Only diamond can cut diamond. Then the phone on the wall rang, jarring her mood. She knew who it was. She grabbed the receiver and spoke curtly.
“What is it, Harley?”
“Are you sure? Absolutely sure?”
“Please don’t ask me that again,” she said and hung up on him.
She was exercising her mind and her memory with a crossword puzzle when her husband and stepson arrived home. Anthony went straight up to his room. Ira, looking at once weary and relieved behind his horn-rims, sat near her, crossed his legs, and swayed a well-shod foot.
“We’ve worked something out,” he said.
She shrugged. His words were mere breath as far as she was concerned. His time to act had passed, and now it was hers.
“He’s going back to school early. It’s all arranged.”
“It’s too late,” she said.
“Regina, what more can I do?” He leaned out of his chair as if snared between two uncertainties, wife and son. Her arm jerked.
“Don’t touch me.”
• • •
It was a stunted hour of the morning when the telephone shrilling from the kitchen woke Morgan. He was still on the sofa, the television murmuring. Kate Bodine was gone. The only evidence she’d been there was the scent on his arm from her hair. The phone rang five or six times before he reached it, his mind groggy, the
n instantly alert. He recognized the voice, a woman’s, right away.
“Thank God you’ve called.”
“I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“It’s all right.”
“I’m not sleeping well. The nurse gave me a pill, but she says my body fights it.”
“Where are you?”
“I’ve forgotten, but I’ll think of it in a minute. Will you answer something truthfully, James? Quite truthfully?”
“Yes.”
“Is he dead?”
“No.”
“A pity,” she said.
15
IT WAS THAT TIME IN AUGUST WHEN A BREATH OF AUTUMN sneaks into the soul of summer, the summer never a long enough response to the winter, which is never short enough. From the window over the sink, May Hutchins noted that the lilies near the gazebo were past their prime, the once glorious blossoms now hanging like long teardrops. Beyond the bird bath were sprays of goldenrod, among which Queen Anne’s lace sought space. For a moment she thought the bird bath had caught fire, but it was only a cardinal splashing about.
Stepping from the sink, she was overly conscious of her own presence and that of Roland’s, who was watching morning television in the den. He was spending too much time at home, neglecting his business, leaving too many jobs for his assistant, who was slipshod unless watched. She moved into the doorway of the den. Sitting there in a coat sweater and trousers that had seen better days, he was watching the Disney Channel. Family fare, which irked her. He was rubbing it in.
“Look,” she said, “I’m not going to spend the rest of my life feeling guilty.”
He glanced up. “No, May, I wouldn’t want you to.”
Punishing her with too much forgiveness. That was it in a nutshell. “I know what you’re doing,” she said with acrimony.
“I’m not doing anything, May.”
“Fred means nothing to me. It just happened.” Her foot stamped the floor. “Why am I explaining?”
“You don’t have to.”
His eyes didn’t reach out, they gathered in. She wanted to scream. She wanted him out of the house. “Why aren’t you working?”
“Just not myself,” he said, offering a smile. “I think my oil pressure’s down. My bearings might be gone.”
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