Pittsburgh Noir

by Kathleen George

“He has a good lawyer, he’ll probably get a short sentence. A jury will be sympathetic that he was acting by some code he thought was right.”

  “What a mess. For all of us.”

  Tolson couldn’t let up. He wanted to hear her talk. “You might have some hard times. The money won’t flow in if your pop is in jail.”

  She smiled. “Pop. It’s such a funny word. I’m not worried about that. My mother pretty much does everything anyway.”

  “Oh?”

  “So you’ll be free for a while,” Paulson said. He sounded sad and mad.

  “And so we have to do what we have to do,” Tolson said. “Where’s your father now? Back at the house?”

  She smiled. “He’s in Iran.”

  “Huh?”

  “He left yesterday.” She looked at them straight on. “Of course. What did you think?”

  “He can’t just do that.”

  “He can. Believe me.”

  Tolson tried to think what he wanted to ask her. He wanted her to be different, to say something different.

  She got out of the car and started walking toward home. She walked smoothly and confidently. They saw her pull out a cell phone. It seemed she punched in a lot of numbers before she started speaking.

  They just kept looking until she was out of sight.

  LOADED

  BY REBECCA DRAKE

  Fox Chapel

  It rained on moving day, quarter-size drops splashing like bloodstains on the stone walkway. The movers cursed under their breaths and one of them slipped as they were carrying in an antique sideboard. The heavy end left his blunt hands, landing with a crash that chipped the mahogany veneer.

  Andrew watched from the doorway of the house, relieved that the damage was on the left side. Given its placement in the dining room, Christine would be unlikely to notice.

  She had a tendency to overreact and he imagined if she’d been the one to see the accident she would have yelled at the movers and they might have abandoned the job half-done, a trail of possessions left on the front lawn to soak up the rain.

  Luckily, she’d been out of earshot, down the hall in what was to be the boys’ bedroom, picking paint colors with her mother.

  It was their first house. She made him lift her over the threshold in full view of her parents and the movers. He’d done the same thing in their apartment six years earlier, just a week after their wedding, tired and tanned from their honeymoon in Aruba, both of them laughing as he’d hoisted her into his arms and swung her through the narrow doorway.

  Six years later he felt embarrassed and a little annoyed. Things were different between them. Christine was noticeably heavier, for starters, carrying twenty extra pounds of baby weight, which no one was supposed to mention even though their younger son was six months old. “You look so good!” all her friends said, as if there was some unwritten female rule to lie about physical appearance.

  She’d giggled as he hoisted her into his arms and he’d forced a smile. Out of the corner of his eye he’d seen one of the movers, a young man with heavily tattooed arms, staring at him with a hardened expression while smoking a cigarette. Andrew had flushed and looked away, but not before seeing the man toss the cigarette onto the lawn. His lawn.

  He hadn’t wanted to buy a house. They’d spent six years in a duplex in the East End and he’d been happy there, able to walk to the university or stop for milk on his way home, just a few blocks to meet friends for a drink in the evening. It met all his needs, until the convenience store got robbed in broad daylight, and a neighbor was mugged, and the lawn chairs disappeared. Christine started saying that she didn’t feel safe. She talked about moving out of the city and said it was better for kids. When she got pregnant with their second son, Andrew knew his days in the city were numbered.

  Fox Chapel was too expensive for them, but Christine refused to look farther out, arguing that it had good schools and they’d be close to her parents. Not an incentive for Andrew, but after six years of marriage he’d learned when to shut up.

  In their price bracket, they were stuck looking at fixeruppers, which meant 1960s-era ranches or early-’70s faux colonials, with avocado kitchens and baths, and basement rec rooms. The house they settled on—a four-bedroom with potential—had a red Naugahyde bar in the basement. Andrew pictured himself standing behind it and offering his friends martinis. It was so retro it was almost hip. Almost. He felt panicky.

  Their realtor, an older brittle blonde with orangish skin named Tippy Cooperman, looked right at home sidling up to the bar. “You’ll have lots of fun down here!” she brayed, smacking the black Formica counter.

  She turned every criticism of the house into something positive. So when Andrew noticed that it needed new windows, Tippy said, “Look at all that natural light!” As for the overgrown, bushy two-acre lot, she said, “Such an excellent deal for all this land!” She pushed them to make an offer, saying it was a great investment.

  The only investment Andrew could focus on was the time it would take to get the house and yard into shape. Christine looked at the larger homes surrounding them and agreed with Tippy. Apparently, her father agreed too, because the next day, after they’d been out to see it with their daughter, his in-laws offered to give them the down payment and cover the closing costs.

  “It’s a good starter home,” Donald Wallace declared after he’d walked through it. He was a large, ruddy-cheeked businessman with a full head of silvery white hair, who’d amassed a fortune by tripling the size of his grandfather’s plumbing supply company. Semiretired, he spent his days staring at a flat screen in his enormous home or playing endless rounds of golf at the country club. He was the sort of man who distrusted academia and thought even less of scientists. When Andrew couldn’t easily sum up his research in physics, it was immediately suspect.

  Donald’s small, plump wife, Joyce, bustled about on moving day, watching over the grandkids and helping Christine direct the placement of furniture. Smiling, she told Andrew that “of course” she and Donald would ensure they got invited to join the country club.

  That night, their first in the new house, they lay in bed in their master bedroom suite, which was painted a bilious shade of blue. Christine whispered, “Can you believe it? We’re homeowners!” She sounded elated. He felt only panic: his life was over; he was thirty-two years old.

  Startled awake at three by Sam’s high-pitched crying, Andrew shot up in bed and didn’t recognize the room. Christine didn’t stir, a lump under the sheets, her dark hair falling in lank, sweaty strands across the pillow.

  He let her sleep, stumbling from their room and padding along the dark, unfamiliar hallway to the boys’ bedroom. Three-year-old Henry slept in his new bed, looking smaller than he had in the crib that was now Sam’s, oblivious to his younger brother’s wailing. A nightlight in the shape of a cartoon dinosaur cast a soft yellow glow.

  Sam stopped crying for a few seconds when he saw his father looming above him and then started up again. It reminded Andrew of an air raid siren. “Hush now, little guy,” he whispered, scooping him up and heading into the kitchen.

  Christine pumped so that Andrew wouldn’t “miss out” on feedings. He took one of the bottles from the fridge and warmed it, letting his son gnaw rodent-like on one of his fingers while they waited.

  Sam nursed voraciously, cupping the bottle with small hands and sucking down the milk like the final beer at last call.

  The night was stifling. Andrew carried Sam and the bottle out onto the back deck, quietly sliding open the screen door. The weathered wood felt cool under his feet. The air throbbed with locusts and crickets. The leafy branches of looming oak and maple trees formed a canopy over their heads, and beyond them, luminous and large, the stars. Movement caught his eye and he turned to see a woman standing on the back deck of the house closest to theirs, which wasn’t close, not by city standards. She was naked, her skin glowing white in the moonlight. Her long, straight hair looked like liquid silver. As he watched she raised
her hands above her head, pressing them together and arching her long, lean body back. Yoga at three in the morning.

  He stood in the shadows and watched, wondering if she knew he was there. A few minutes of stretching and a man suddenly appeared behind her. It was too far away to hear anything, but Andrew clearly saw the guy wrap his hand in that long silver hair and pull. She moved with her hair, a single cry of pain loud enough to echo through the trees. It could have been a cat or a bird; no one would investigate. Sam paused in his guzzling, the bottle popping free of his milky lips, and stirred in his father’s arms.

  Andrew stood still, afraid to move, unable to turn away. The couple tussled silently for a minute, the man letting go of her hair, but only to move his hand to her upper arm. He dragged her into their house. Andrew stood there a moment longer on shaky legs, his breathing rough and fast in his ears. The clatter of the bottle falling onto the deck startled him— Sam had fallen asleep in his arms.

  On the following Friday, they invited friends from the city out to visit their new house. Christine’s idea. They would grill, and everyone could sit on the back deck and admire the view.

  “Hey, Soccer Dad,” Jason teased, accepting the beer that Andrew pulled from the fridge. “When are you getting the minivan and the golden retriever?”

  “Ha fucking ha.” Andrew pulled the marinating steaks from the fridge and carried them past the group huddled in the living room cooing at the baby, and stepped out onto the deck. Hot air fell like a blanket on his face and he heard Jason exclaim behind him. It was dusk and the dark trunks of oak trees shimmered slightly in a golden sunset.

  “So you like it out here?” Jason said, pulling on his beer and watching Andrew transfer steaks to the massive gas grill that had been his in-laws’ house-warming gift.

  “Sure, it’s okay.”

  “I guess there are some benefits to this whole home-buying thing,” Jason muttered a few minutes later.

  Andrew glanced up and noticed the woman he’d seen before leaning against the rail of her deck, twirling a wine glass in her hand. Her hair was pale blond, he saw in the daylight, not silver. She was dressed this time, a white fitted blouse and turquoise trousers. She turned and peered at him, lifting the glass slowly to her lips and taking a long swallow.

  The grill hissed and Andrew looked down in time to save the steak from being engulfed in flames. When he looked up a minute later the woman was gone.

  On Monday, Christine left for work with both boys strapped into car seats in the back of her Volvo. She would drop them off at her mother’s, where they spent their days being spoiled by Nana and an elderly housekeeper named Winnie, before driving to her downtown law practice.

  Usually, Andrew left for work at the same time, but this summer was different. The move had delayed the writing of a paper he had to present at a conference in late summer, and he’d set up a home office to work on it without interruption.

  Except he couldn’t seem to concentrate. In their apartment, his desk had been in an alcove near the front window where he’d watched city life passing by and had gotten used to the noise—sirens and delivery trucks, children laughing, neighbors bickering. It was so quiet in his new neighborhood that he jumped at the screeching of a bird in the woods behind the house. The only regular noises were the sounds of lawns being mowed by the landscape crews that arrived regularly to tend to all the larger, expensive houses. They came next door every Tuesday—Henry called it the castle house because it was a large stone Tudor with a turret. Andrew thought of it as the naked yoga house, but he’d never told Christine. Every morning he saw the man zoom away in a silver Porsche, but he had not seen the woman again.

  That afternoon, fed up with his inability to produce anything coherent, he decided to go for a run. He often used the treadmills at the university gym, but it didn’t seem worth it to drive that far. There were plenty of paths throughout the vast swaths of borough parkland. He drove a quarter-mile to a small horseshoe of unpaved parking where he left his car next to others and headed off on a trail. He ran hard for two miles.

  On his way back he ran into his neighbor. She was running along the path toward him, wearing a green singlet and thin black running shorts, her hair pulled back severely in a ponytail which swayed side-to-side as her legs and arms moved like pistons. On one arm she had a silver bracelet that chimed faintly as she ran.

  She was a faster runner and focused. She stared straight ahead and Andrew thought she would pass without speaking. He spoke instead. “Hello.”

  “Hi.” She barely glanced at him.

  Already she’d moved two paces past him. Afterward, when he dreamed of her, it would begin with this moment when he could have let her go, pretended he didn’t know her. He turned and called out, “I think we’re neighbors. I’m Andrew Durbin.”

  She looked back and surveyed him, standing in the path with her hands on her hips, panting. Her expression wasn’t promising. After a moment she replied, “I’m Elsa.” Then she said, surprising him, “Do you want to run together?”

  He felt a jolt of pleasure in having been invited, like he was back in middle school and the popular girl had asked him to dance. He tried to play it cool, glancing at his watch as if time somehow factored into his decision though Christine wouldn’t be home for hours. “Sure.”

  He had to work to keep up with her; he could feel his chest heaving, hear his labored breaths. Her own breathing seemed effortless. She ran like the deer he’d seen from the back window of his house, thin-legged and nimble, darting fluidly around trees and missing stray branches that seemed to reach out and whack him in the face.

  When the path narrowed, he followed blindly, feeling damp spreading at the neck and under the arms of his T-shirt. Finally, they were back at their cars. He leaned against the hood of his Honda, sucking air, while she walked calmly over to her car, a sleek black BMW, raising a key tag to open it with a little beep. She slid into the seat and turned over the engine before poking her head out to ask, “You want to meet again on Wednesday? How about one-thirty?”

  That was how it started, but he couldn’t say it was ever innocent. When he got home he went straight to the shower and, leaning against the tiled wall, masturbated like a teenager, while imagining peeling the clothes off her sweating body.

  She didn’t talk while they ran, it wasn’t her style, but she did linger sometimes afterward, once offering him some water when he’d forgotten his, and another time telling him that his stride was improving. Never once did she ask him about his life and she didn’t volunteer anything. He wanted to ask about the man he’d seen on the deck, the man he assumed was her husband, judging by the thin gold-and-diamond ring set on her left hand, but he always chickened out.

  Instead, he searched his garage for the free weights he’d bought at a yard sale years earlier, which had been gathering dust ever since. “What are you doing?” Christine asked when he hauled them up to their bedroom.

  “Just getting back into shape.”

  She wrinkled her brow. “Are you trying to drop a hint?”

  He looked at her standing there in a spit up–stained blouse with a dish towel slung over one shoulder. She’d taken off her jacket, but was still wearing her suit skirt, her stomach bulging over the waistline. She frowned, her round face puffy and sweaty. “Well? Because I don’t appreciate the pressure.”

  “No, it’s not for you. It’s for me.” He wanted to add, You could use them too, but he didn’t.

  They’d been running together for three weeks when Elsa said, “Do you want to come over for a drink?”

  He’d fantasized about this moment many times, but strived to sound casual. “Why not?”

  He followed her back up the hill to their quiet street, struggling to maintain the same speed, while looking out for cops, because she went seventy the whole way, the Beemer flashing along narrow roads, hardly slowing for dangerous curves.

  He pulled into his own driveway and stopped outside the car for a moment, wondering if he sho
uld shower first.

  “Aren’t you coming?” she called, and he immediately walked across the wide expanse of emerald lawn that divided their properties.

  The house was cool inside, dark after the sunshine. “This is nice,” he said, admiring the midcentury modern furniture, the entire living room done in shades of black, white, and steel. She’d vanished into another room, returned with two tall glasses of ice water.

  “Do you think so?” She handed a glass to him and drank her own in one long, soundless swallow, wiping the back of a delicate hand across her mouth when she finished.

  “How long have you lived here?”

  She smiled. “Long enough.” She was standing close enough that he could see her perfectly manicured nails.

  He tried to look into her eyes, but his gaze was drawn down to the erect nipples poking out of her shirt.

  “Do you want to kiss me?” she said, surprising him. He felt hotter, suddenly, his vision blurred for a moment.

  “I’m married.”

  She laughed and put her glass down on a side table, advancing toward him. “So am I.”

  Afterward he would think about the improbability of it, but at that moment all he thought about was the taste of her mouth and the smell and feel of her skin. It had been a long time since he’d taken time with sex, since he’d had to tell himself to slow down, enjoy it, since he’d been young enough to come immediately instead of waiting, and knowing to wait for his partner.

  She didn’t talk during sex either, but she made a soft little humming sound in her throat, and at the end, when they were finished, she sighed in a pleased way.

  It became a pattern. They ran together three days a week, and after running they went back to her house and fucked. Once they did it in her car. Once he caught her in the woods and had her up against a tree.

  He had never been this adventurous before. The closest he’d come was a night at the beach when he’d slipped his hand down Christine’s blouse and would have taken her on the dunes except they heard people coming and she’d pulled away. Elsa never pulled away. She tried different sexual positions the way other women tried new shoes. The only constant was the light, rhythmic tinkling of the dozens of tiny silver bells on her bracelet.