She pulled away, drew a breath. She gave him a smile and shucked off the chemise. Her body always surprised him. It seemed too lean to support the weight of her breasts. Thin arms with such strength. Stronger than any woman he'd known. Hardly any hips at all. Dancer's legs and delicate feet.
Thorn stripped out of his cutoffs, his T-shirt, reached out for her and they sank back into the kiss. Her fingertips tracked down his arm, left a trail, her hand finding his, taking hold, lifting it. Breaking off the kiss, so she could bring his hand to her mouth. She pressed her lips to his fingers one by one like a mother kissing away her child's hurt. Then drew each finger into her mouth and washed it clean. Took special care with his thumb.
With her eyes on his, she guided his damp hand across her mouth, down her chin, her throat, pressed it flush against her chest. Held it there until he could feel the agitation of her heart.
She eased his hand down her stomach, brushed his palm across the fine dusting of hair around her navel. Touched his pointing finger to the wrinkled depression, then lower and lower, until finally his fingers were snarled in her dense pubic hair.
She released him and on his own he moved to the warm slush between her legs, lingered there, explored, then drifted lower to her thighs, slick as silk, and came back to the dampness. Driving the breath from her lungs, driving it from his own.
It was quicker tonight. The prelude hurried, the unspoken hunger greater. Across the room a breeze bellied out the lace curtains, and Rochelle was suddenly on top of him, steering him inside. Then they were folded together, notch to notch, the flawless match of seasoned partners. The waltz, the tango, there seemed to be no step they couldn't do. Nothing unique about the method, nothing new, but still it was different. The grind of her hips, their heated kiss, their bodies flush. A frantic need. So easy, so uncomplicated, so comfortable.
***
Irma Slater had been lying there for an hour, maybe two, immobilized on top of the bedspread, eyes closed, taking deep breaths, trying to evaluate, digest. A whole new set of conditions. A paradigm shift, they called it. The old laws faulty, finally crumbled under their own erroneous weight. Turns out the universe was not at all how we thought it was. Sorry. All bets off. Shore leaves canceled till further notice. At least until we come up with an entire new set of natural laws.
She listened to Sweetcakes out in the lagoon. Heard the dolphin's hard clicks, blats of breath, water surging. Familiar sounds, but nothing felt familiar anymore. All of it was cockeyed, skewed, sliding away from her, the ground tilting as if the subterranean plates had buckled. A new slant. Lying there, gripping the bedspread with both hands, trying to hang on, ride this out. The bed sailing through the dark.
Her muscles shuddered, an eerie purr working in her blood, as though somewhere nearby a colossal tuning fork set on her personal wavelength had been struck a powerful blow.
She knew she should rise. Throw her clothes in a bag. Dizzy or not, she should get the bloody hell out of this room. Her cover blown. She should flee. She should damn well grab her four hundred eighty-seven from the Tampax box where it was hidden and fly into the night. And this time do a better job of disappearing.
Sugarloaf Retreat, three years. All a lie. A flimsy stage set. Jesse whispering into her father's ear, her father whispering back. If this is what she wants, let her have it. Let her play. Money passing. Now she was certain Morton had visited, spied on her from afar. Yes, that's her, that's my daughter. And for whatever reason, he'd let her carry on her pathetic charade. Not free. Never. Not for a second. The same puppet, same puppeteer.
She stared around at the darkened cell where she'd spent these last three years. In all that time she'd not personalized the room in any way. It was exactly as it had been the morning she'd checked in. Over her headboard hung a gloomy oil painting of a New England beach in winter. In the bathroom was a calendar turned to some January ten years ago. The only other decoration a framed photograph of a family of beavers constructing a dam.
On the wobbly bedside table was a green ceramic lamp and copper ashtray she'd never used. Crammed in on the other side of the bed was a deal desk whose drawers contained a Gideon Bible and some faded postcards showing Sugarloaf Retreat seven years ago. Not much had changed since then.
By the door sat a Danish modern chair with torn red cushions. And the carpet was so ancient that years of tracked-in sand had turned its bright gold to the color of wet cement. The walls were sickly green. An orange water stain on the ceiling directly above her bed shaped like Kentucky. Same stain she'd looked up at seven years ago.
For this was the room where she and her mother had slept side by side. A girls' getaway before Monica left for college. Her mother so different during those two weeks in the Keys. Relaxed, alert. Chatting breezily with a motel worker as she and Monica fed schools of snappers from the dock. A groundskeeper with dark hair and a perpetual cigarette between his lips. In the evening he started bringing her mother cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and the three of them lounged on the lawn beside the bay, watched the sun set fire to the water and clouds, watched the stars. He knew the names of the constellations. Had stories to tell. It came as a shock for Monica to realize she had never heard her mother laugh until then. Never seen her tipsy. Monica going back to the room to sleep. Her mother coming in later, stumbling, laughing to herself.
One night not making it back till dawn. Monica remembered sitting up in bed.
"Mother, is this why we came? Did you know Al was going to be here?"
"Sweetheart," she said. "I knew somebody like Al was going to be here."
Monica fantasized that the three of them ran off together. A gardener, smelling of cut grass and whiskey and tobacco. A man with strong hands, a shifty smile, and a blatant appreciation for her mother's slender body. A man who made her mother grin.
At the end of the second week, Morton Sampson made a surprise appearance. Claimed he missed his two girls. But his big smile was skewed. He moved in. Monica was banished to an adjoining room. For hours she kept her ear pressed to the connecting door, but heard nothing. Absolutely nothing.
The next morning her father took them fishing in the motel's rental boat. He anchored only a few feet offshore, cast his baited hook to the same fish that Monica and her mother had been feeding for two weeks, their pets.
Her mother did not speak. Hid behind her sunglasses. Morton caught a dozen fish, made a production of cutting them open and cleaning them on the boat, throwing their guts overboard. Hands covered with slime, the knife flashing. Her mother looked everywhere else.
When he decided he'd made his point, her father drew the anchor, puttered them back to the dock. Monica stepped over the pool of fish blood to climb from the boat but stopped short. There was too much blood on the deck, far too much. She swung around and saw the glint of the fillet knife at her mother's feet, the slick of red spreading across the white deck, the gaping slit. She screamed.
As her mother was lifted into the ambulance, Morton took Monica by the elbow and drew her roughly aside. "While we're at the hospital you have a job to do."
"What?"
"The boat," he said. "It was delivered to us unsoiled, we'll return it in the same condition. In this family we clean up our own messes."
"No way," Monica said. "I won't do it."
He looked into her eyes and for the first and only time he let her see that part of him which must have provoked her mother's vicious headaches.
"You were her accomplice, Monica; this is your reward."
A moment later his smile returned, the savage mist cleared. He gave her his sweet daddy look.
Morton spoke to the owner of the hotel. Left Monica in the man's charge. He provided brushes, hoses, sponge, detergent.
Monica climbed into the boat and went down to her knees, staring at her mother's blood. The manager's wife came out, stood for a moment watching her.
"Get out of there, child. We'll take care of that."
But Monica took hold of a brush, bent to
her work, scrubbed at the streaks. The manager's wife staying for a while then going back inside. As she worked Monica scuffed her bare knees against the rough deck, tore them ragged. Scrubbing for hours, her mother's blood mingling with her own, hosing it away. The fish scales, the slime. Down on her knees in the brutal afternoon sun, the smell of her mother's blood, the stickiness.
When she was finished, Monica located the manager's wife and asked the woman where she could find Al. Thinking he should know, imagining that he would confront her father, stand up to him, whisk her mother away.
"Al's clipping somebody else's hedges now," the wife told her. "Don't worry about him, honey, the Als always make out."
That evening they drove home in her father's Cadillac. Her mother bandaged and detached. A man was hired to bring her mother's car back to Miami. The headaches resumed immediately.
***
Now Irma lay on the bed and listened to Sweetcakes splash. And seconds later the dolphin splashed again. Worked up. Showing off. Very peculiar for this time of night. Another splash. A dozen hard clicks. Begging for food.
She rose, padded to the window, nudged a corner of the curtain aside. And saw them. Two men down by the lagoon, the dolphin performing for their benefit. One man tall and heavy. Moonlight glistening on his bald head. She recognized the shape of that skull, the slump of his shoulders.
The other shadow was Jesse, the gray ponytail, the shlubby body. The bastard hadn't given her a day's head start. Hadn't let ten seconds go by. Or else Butler Jack was right. He had come for her, to pluck her out of her life, take her back with him, have her fucking head examined.
Jesse and her father were huddled. Didn't look like an argument. Her father never argued, never had to. Got his way with charm and happy faces. Not a mean bone, as far as the public knew. Slid people where he wanted them to go, made them love going there, think it was their own idea. Smothered them with good, good, I like that. Very good. Got his way. Always, every single time, he got his goddamn way. A nice man. Everyone said so. Amazing that such a nice man had built such an empire. Simply amazing.
Two men of business in the moonlight twenty yards away, having a talk as if Irma Slater didn't exist, as if they weren't the least concerned she might walk out, shotgun them both in the back. If only she had a shotgun.
She let the drapes settle.
She opened her drawer, scooped out her clothes, dumped them in her college knapsack. Went to the bathroom, got the Tampax box. Shook it. Took a long, disbelieving breath. Opened the flaps. The box was empty. Her nest egg gone. Saved dollar by dollar for these three years. She dug her fingers inside it, then bent back to the lavatory cabinet. In a panic now, peering under there, but no, there was only that one Tampax box.
She turned and slung it back into the bedroom.
There was a double-hung window in the bathroom. She pried it open, pushed out the screen, wriggled through, stepped into the parking lot. A transfer truck blew past on the overseas highway. Someone was playing a radio nearby. Boom chucka. Silver clouds had muffled the moon. What breeze there was smelled like deep fried grease, air that could clog an artery.
She sifted down a row of rental cars, found the white Winnebago parked at the edge of the lot near a stand of Australian pines. There was no light on inside, no movement.
Hesitating there, outside the Winnebago. She hated the idea of throwing herself on the mercy of some guy. But she had to consider the practicalities. For all she knew there'd be a manhunt, roadblocks, helicopters with spotlights. Morton milking this for its market potential. With only one narrow road out of there, the sea on both sides, there was nowhere to duck. And no way in hell she was going to hitchhike in the dark, face into random headlights and hope.
Across the parking lot, she heard Jesse's voice. Saw him coming around the west wing of the motel.
And Irma Slater rapped on the door of the Winnebago.
Maybe Butler Jack would have a shotgun, or know where to get one.
CHAPTER 8
The Winnebago was dark, Irma bumping her shoulder, her shins, hands out like a sleepwalker, cursing. Heavy curtains blocking all but a trickle of light from the parking lot. She had no idea of the layout, never been in one of these before. Very cramped, with an odor like motor oil, something metallic.
Butler Jack stood at the curtains, staring out. She joined him and saw the lights blazing in her room. Someone in the bathroom window, examining the broken screen. She saw his bald head, the fringe of white. Her father craning out, looking left and right. Morton Sampson.
"I'm gonna kill him," she said. "I want to kill that bastard. It's the only way I'm ever going to get away."
"Slow down," Butler said. "Maybe we can find something worse than that."
She stepped away from him, stared warily at his profile for a moment. But she was no judge of lunatics. For all she knew she might be one herself. She went back to the window. They watched for a while longer. The lights in her room switched off. Irma hoped her father remembered that room. Hoped it made his heart squirm. Remembering Al. The man who could make Morton Sampson's wife smile.
They waited. No helicopters came. No police with their bloodhounds. Another quiet night in Sugarloaf. They waited at the window, watched the empty lot. It unnerved her. Surely Morton Sampson wasn't going to lose his precious Monica again so easily. Give up without a good struggle.
At midnight, they saw him duck into the rear seat of a white Lincoln, Jesse bending low to have a word or two, then the car slid out of the parking lot, headed up the road toward Miami.
"Well, that's that," Butler said. "So now it begins. We move on to number seven."
"What?"
"I have a list," Butler said. "We're at number six, moving on to seven."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"With a list, you can't get sidetracked. You know where you are. Moving down the list. There are so many distractions, so many ways to get lost. But with a list, you always know. Like the ten commandments. All written down. Very clear."
She peered at him through the dark but couldn't see his face. It sounded like some kind of put-on, but she wasn't sure. Not sure about anything at that moment.
She let him steer her to the bunk bed, and he told her she had the top. She climbed up. A simple cot, thick canvas stretched between two boards, a mattress pad. She patted the area to get her bearings, felt something silky spread on the top sheet.
"Lingerie," Butler said. "A nightie. I guessed the size."
She groaned and lay down on the top sheet, arms stiff at her sides. Ready to claw out his eyes if he tried anything. Irma pissed. But going along for the moment.
Butler rustled around in the dark, then got into the bunk below her. He sighed, then a few moments later sighed again. She could feel him lying there, awake in the dark. Deepening the silence. Reminding her of pajama parties from her youth. Hours of aimless chatter and giggles that suddenly dissolve into quiet. Everyone still awake, eyes open, listening.
She stiffened. She thought she felt him touch her back through the canvas, follow the shape of her body, his lingers trailing across her butt. But the touch was so light she wasn't sure. She said nothing.
She held the lingerie, rubbed it against her cheek, as slick as oil. Hadn't touched any satin in years, not since Irma Slater took over things.
"Fornication," he said. "It's from Latin fornix. Which is an architectural term that means arched or vaulted."
She was silent, eyes open in the dark.
"Combined with forno, which means oven. Which is where the word furnace comes from. The Romans at the time of Christ used arched brickwork in the underground parts of buildings, and because that's where prostitutes worked, in the basements, the word gradually was associated with illicit sex. But it's interesting, isn't it, all those other words floating around in there, furnace, underground, vaulted. Heat, excitement, basements, tombs, the shape of female anatomy. Death and sex, heat and hell. It's all there."
She leane
d over the edge of the cot, stared down. "I'm no prostitute."
"I know that."
"I'm not that little girl either. The one in the swing."
"Now there you're wrong," he said. "People are the same as words. They have all those things floating inside of them. Their histories. Nothing disappears. The ice sculptures melt, but they're always there. The little girl in the swing. You can try to escape, but you can't."
She lay back against the cot, looked up into the dark. "No sex, Butler. End of debate."
He was quiet for a moment. She could hear him breathing. "Well, we're talking about it," he said. "At least the subject is broached. It's important to talk. Put things into words, that's important, don't you think? Giving voice to the hidden world."
She lay still, eyes open, waiting. He was silent beneath her. The parking lot was quiet. Just a breeze sifting through the Australian pines, that ghostly moan. It wasn't right. Not like her father, the man who'd put up a million-dollar reward. She lay for a long time, listening. Hours. She heard Butler's breath slow and begin to flutter. Still she lay awake. Hours.
And then she was dreaming and her dream was filled with eyes. Human eyes, unblinking. They were watching her. Watching Monica sleep. Haunted eyes, sad and hungry, those ludicrous oversized eyes from roadside black velvet paintings. Her black velvet father watching her every moment. Morton Sampson, and her mother Irene, black velvet Irene, and Butler Jack, his milky blue eyes, others she couldn't name. Everyone watching her, seeing her. Feeling their eyes, floating out there in dream space. She did not wake, knowing somehow that they were not dangerous, but still she felt their eyes like breath against her skin. Felt them every moment of the night, eyes through the dark, those eyes, those sad eyes.
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