by Toby Devens
Scott lay down next to me, and we began operating entirely by braille. The smooth coolness of the sheet under my skin. The roughness of midnight shadow on his cheek. The sinewy, sinuous probing of tongues. Our breathing was hushed, the space between us thick and steamy. I slid my hand over his chest, his taut nipples, then rode the muscles of his belly to his hardness. He broke the silence with a groan, then a baritone laugh when he found me soft and wet.
All was going well. Then accidently, while stroking him, my hand strayed to the flesh of his left thigh where it joined the prosthesis. His startle reflex rocked the mattress.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “Pain?”
“Not at all.” He shifted toward me.
Ah, I thought, he was sensitive there. Heightened nerve response, probably stimulating for him, and traced my finger downward. A mistake I discovered when he grabbed my hand and moved it to his right side. “Better,” he said.
But it wasn’t. For a while he was all over me. Hands and tongue, attentive, inventive, and incredibly exciting, but when I wanted to touch him, pleasure him, he deflected me and distracted me with overwhelming sensation. His practiced trigger finger found a ready target. When he allowed me to find him again, he was soft.
I did everything I could think of to arouse him. Another mistake. He was a sharp guy and he must have sensed I was working (not good) frantically (even worse). Finally, he tugged me up, drew me close, and cupped my chin in his hand. “Enough. Don’t knock yourself out. It’s useless. I am. Useless.” Such a sad, sad word.
“Scott.”
“Listen—” He cut me off and rolled to face me. I felt his breath on my cheek. “You know I’m attracted to you, Nora. Frankly, attracted doesn’t begin to describe what I feel. And if you have any doubts about that because of”—he groped for the word—“because of tonight, don’t. Please. It’s just that I get going, and at some point, a switch in me turns off.”
So I wasn’t the first. Had there been previous dates? Or just his wife?
After a sigh that drilled through the darkness, he said, “I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe I’m not ready yet. Maybe I never will be because I’m terminally screwed up. I don’t know. Right now all I know is . . . I’m sorry.”
I answered too quickly, too chirpily, “No need. And no big deal. First date. Well, first real date. Both of us overanxious. Plus the champagne. That can interfere. Look, this happens.” I continued to blurt, clumsily trying to make things better, making them worse. “If you want, we can take a break. I’m not Cinderella tonight. It’s not like I have a curfew.”
He didn’t answer that either. Or he did, but not with words.
He flicked on the bedside lamp, and before my eyes could adjust to the light, he was off like a shot to the bathroom. After a few minutes he emerged tying the belt of a terry robe.
“Let’s get ourselves dressed and get you home,” he said.
He drove with the radio on. No music. Nothing that would evoke love, consummated or un. He tuned in the shore’s all-news station, but when the report changed from a flood in Mississippi to the latest casualties in the Middle East, he switched to ESPN’s local outlet. The night game between the archrival Orioles and Yankees had ended with a spectacular catch by a rookie, a Cuban kid, all of nineteen. Jack’s age. The announcer crowed, “What we saw tonight in Camden Yards was the best second baseman in the Orioles’ lineup since Pete Manolis. Castillo hasn’t got the Greek Icon’s power at the plate yet, but he’s on his way.”
Pete was out of town and Margo was probably sleeping soundly, storing up strength to interrogate me about the après-party party. I’d duck her tomorrow and be out of town on Monday, which would give me time to invent something to satisfy her. She’d never get the truth from me.
When we pulled up to the spot in front of my house, Scott fixed his gaze on the windshield and said, “I really appreciate your accompanying me to the reception tonight.” The tone was dress-uniform, white-glove formal, as if his bare fingers hadn’t been billeted in the most private part of me less than an hour before.
“I had a good time,” I answered.
“Right. Me too.” His tone was unconvincing.
He didn’t mention seeing me Tuesday. Or ever again.
The sky through the window was cloudless. Inside the car, the barometer was high. I could feel the pressure of Scott’s desire to get me out of my seat and out of his sight as soon as possible. We traded good-byes on a handshake-turned-squeeze that I initiated.
Ever the officer and the gentleman, he waited while I walked up the path lit by the garden lamp. That’s when it really hit me, hard, that we were over, because that was a path we’d once danced so hopefully and should be dancing together and I was trudging it slowly and alone.
At the door, my fingers trembling as I inserted my key in the lock, I heard him gun the motor. By the time I turned for a final, futile glance, he was gone.
chapter twenty-five
After a sleepless night, I pulled myself together and left for Washington at nine Monday morning for my lunch meeting with Lon’s agent and the prospective ghostwriter. The plan was for the three of us to meet at a restaurant off Pennsylvania Avenue, Maison Madison, which was almost as old and venerated as the White House. I followed the maître d’ to a table near the window where two men were chatting. At the sight of me, Nate sprang to his feet and Hector Fuentes laid his napkin on the gold charger and shifted his chair back so it scraped the hardwood.
“Nora. You made it. I was worried about traffic on the Bay Bridge,” Nate said.
We didn’t kiss in the double-peck continental style. Nate wasn’t that kind of guy. He hugged me decorously.
“You look well.”
Thank God he hadn’t said beautiful or wonderful or any of the exaggerations that would have come off with my makeup at the end of the day. I’d swiped on extra to cover the bags under my eyes and the worry lines crossing the bridge of my nose. I’d had a bitch of a Sunday, thinking about Scott and the night before, ruminating on my romantically blighted future, my lousy luck, my selfish perspective on what I’d named “the incident.” Not my fault, I reminded myself. It had nothing to do with me. I’d tried to smother my obsessing with the Sunday Times, the magazine section, the crossword, but it refused to die because nudges conspired to revive it. Margo called twice—I let her ring—and Jack crashed my afternoon with questions.
He caught me in the kitchen. “How did your date go?” His thin layer of innocence didn’t fool me. He was probing about the status of Scott and me as a couple.
“Fine. The VFW put on a good show,” was my evasive answer.
“You going to see him again?” Offhandedly.
I shrugged. “Time will tell.”
That was the truth. I had no idea if Scott would turn up Tuesday for ballroom. He might catch a convenient cold. He might make an appearance in body only, emotion checked at the door. Who knew what he might do? Or me? Who knew what I’d do if and when I saw him?
“You know,” my son said, keeping his eyes on the knife he was using to spread peanut butter, “he’s not the only fish in the sea.”
Ah, now we were getting somewhere. I answered, more pointedly, “Did you have a specific fish in mind?” knowing exactly which one he’d hooked for me. He shrugged and tossed the knife into the sink with a resounding clang. End of discussion.
This meeting with Nate about Thunder Hill Road was a welcome distraction. Nate was saying, “Hector and I were talking about the state of publishing these days.” By then, the ghostwriter was on his feet and I realized we had the odd couple here. Nate was six-three and this fellow couldn’t have been more than five-two. Nate had a deliberately shaved head. Hector’s was jumbo-sized and overgrown with a thicket of pitch-black hair. A black unibrow perched like a balcony on his domed forehead. His skin was a stark white and he wore a black shirt and black-and-white polka
dot bow tie whose horizontal lines accentuated the breadth of his barrel chest. He gave off the impression of a bulldog, compact, strong, and, from the brisk double nod and the knuckles rapping impatiently on the tablecloth, ready to pounce. He flashed me a gap-toothed smile and ducked a quick bow on the introduction.
I sat, the men sat, and Nate filled in the first few awkward minutes with an update on his other literary projects. He was a senior VP now, having climbed the ladder on rungs of charm and talent at one of the most prestigious agencies in the country. When he ran down a list of his current clients, I recognized every name from the New York Times bestseller list. Yet with all these live wires, he’d made room for a dead man. Nonetheless, a dead man with the potential for profit. If Thunder Hill Road turned out to be a hit, the agent got fifteen percent of the action. And if Hector Fuentes copped even partial author credit, Nate had a rising star in his galaxy.
Hector was Nate’s choice. He made that clear over manhattans for the men and a glass of Riesling for me. I waited to be convinced. I’d skimmed Hector’s two credited novels, the second having absorbed most of my non-obsessing hours the night before. It was well crafted but not genius, not particularly original. Then again, we had original here already; Lon had done that work. All the book needed was six or seven chapters to tie up the story line and finish up or off the characters. After speaking with Nate the week before, I’d thumbed through two recent releases Hector had helped produce in the factory operated by one of the world’s best-known suspense writers. It was hard to tell where the old lion left off and the young cub took over, and that counted in the ghostwriter’s favor. He’d captured the essence of his master, and that’s what I wanted for Thunder Hill Road. It was essential that Lon’s work and the ending chapters meld seamlessly.
Nate worked through his spinach ravioli and peach tart to convince me. Hector mostly listened as he chomped through a Kobe burger on brioche. Then, as the conversation moved to a discussion of writing styles, he spoke up. “I understand Lon Farrell,” he said, wiping béarnaise sauce from his chin. “I can channel him.”
I wondered how this small, pale man could contain my large and ruddy late husband. Lon’s protagonist in this book was a crabber on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. I asked Hector if he’d ever been on a crab skiff, seen one, captained any kind of boat, could swim.
“In here.” He tapped his temple. Which was poetic and clever, but I wasn’t persuaded that imagination would be enough.
That’s when the agent, who was something of a magician, as many are, plucked a large, thick manila envelope from his briefcase and extracted a manuscript. He waved the fan of paper over the table.
“Read at your leisure, but not too much leisure, because I’m eager to get going. Hector’s done three chapters that pick up after the house-fire scene. They’ve got Miles, Fran, and Seth, which should give you a good idea of how he handles that triangle. And Bones, of course.” Bones was the Chesapeake Bay Retriever who in an earlier chapter had snatched a five-year-old from a riptide. “I want you to see how he moves the plot along and how he captures Lon’s tone.” He slid the pages back in the envelope and extended the package.
An unexpected gift, John Updike had written, was the only one worth giving. I wasn’t so sure. This was too much of a surprise. The promise of something with Scott had nudged Lon from my real life, but reading this would summon my husband back, either howling with fury at being surrogated once again (the Donor Dude Redux) or crooning gratitude for hauling him back into the limelight, even posthumously. Saturday night had left me feeling pretty fragile. I wasn’t sure I could handle Lon’s specter bounding back.
I accepted the manuscript as its author observed me with twitching eyelids. He’d written sixty pages purely on spec at Nate’s urging. It was the only way, Nate said as he fiddled with the bill, to show me, really show me, how right for the job Hector was. I had to be absolutely on board with the choice. My comfort was his first concern. He concentrated on adding numbers while telling me that.
We said our good-byes. Hector gave me his paw, a short-fingered square of padded flesh, for a gentle handshake. I got another, warmer hug from Nate with instructions to reread Lon’s last two chapters of the unfinished manuscript before starting the new material so I could judge continuity.
“I’ll call you Thursday to see what you think,” he said.
“No, no,” I protested. “Not before next week. I’ll try to get to it over the weekend. Seriously,” I added as he gazed at me with eyebrows askew in a half-forlorn, half-chastising expression. “I’m up against the wall with the rest of my life.”
“Seriously, aren’t we all?” he said, as he flourished his signature on the American Express receipt.
The two men stood politely to watch me leave. When I glanced back, which had been the habit of my life, a habit I would have done well to break, I saw maybe a third, maybe Lon. But he was very faint, just about transparent, and I decided to ignore him.
The Baltimore house was empty when I arrived at six. No ghosts. No birds, bats, or snakes, which occasionally invaded in summer. Not even a live mosquito, though I’d never gotten around to having the screens repaired beyond taping the holes myself. Only one problem, but it was major. Before leaving for the beach, I’d set the thermostat to switch on the air-conditioning at eighty-five degrees, as Lon had always done. But something must have gone kerflooey with the cooling system. We hadn’t lost power. The lights worked; the TV news blared; the fridge held a chilled bottle of wine. But it had to be at least ninety-five inside the house.
Under previous circumstances, I would have called my landlord, Mr. Lieber, to let him know, since the service contract was in his name. But Mr. Lieber Jr. had hijacked his father, shipped him to a nursing home, and taken over the business, which included the row house that Senior had first rented to Lon the summer before he started teaching.
Mr. Lieber had been honored to have a famous author occupy the house on Calvert Street. As a token of his great respect, he had set the rent ridiculously low and raised it with small increases only five times over the next two and a half decades. When we expressed concern that we were taking advantage, he said to Lon, “Look, I’m a rich man and any extra from you wouldn’t make me so much richer. Also I can tell my friends at the country club that great books are being written in the first piece of real estate I ever bought for investment. Maybe one day I’ll put up a plaque.”
And although Lon and I had periodically talked about buying a house in the city, the advantage of home equity and the tax benefits, we kept falling back on the lure of the low rent and how it would break Mr. Lieber’s heart if we moved out, especially after Jack came along. “Like a grandson to me. I don’t have any grandchildren of my own.” Mr. Lieber dropped by even more often to check the plumbing, the state of the furnace. Sometimes on an evening visit, he had a glass of schnapps with Lon and the two of them would help Jack build bridges with LEGOs.
After Lon died, Mr. Lieber wouldn’t think of an increase for the widow of a once famous author with a half-orphaned child. I was grateful for the break. But if we’d bought a house in the early days, there would have been something to sell now, money to support the Tuckahoe place so our summers wouldn’t be in jeopardy.
The house was stifling. It was after six and BGE was closed for anything but an emergency like a gas leak. I went from room to room, opening the windows to let in air, which declined the invitation. It wasn’t just the temperature that was intolerable; it was the vast emptiness of the house, which seemed to me a desert on two floors. I swiped and polished, which took care of the fine sift of dust, but I couldn’t wipe away the musty odor of neglect or a feeling of loneliness that went way beneath the surface.
In another month, Jack would be returning to school, and by September I’d be back here alone, but with a possible new twist that made me uneasy. If things kept chugging along on the current track, I might have to share my son w
ith his Donor Dude on the holidays. Thanksgiving in California—could Jack resist? Winter break in San Francisco? The thought, plus the house—musty and gummy—made it hard to take a full breath. So I grabbed a pillow and headed to the back porch, where I made a bed on the glider, churned for a while, and finally got lulled to sleep by the familiar grinding and honking music of the city.
You would have thought that out there in the oppressive dark, I’d dream of the night beach, icy waves, cooling breezes, but I didn’t. What I remembered on waking the next morning was that I’d danced in my dreams, the cha-cha, the salsa, the Lindy Hop, dances that didn’t involve the embrace of a partner’s arms.
My schedule for Tuesday got screwed early with a seven a.m. call from Tess Gaffigan, the woman who might have a job for me. A situation had cropped up at headquarters that forced her to shift our appointment from ten a.m. to five p.m., her only available spot that day. She hoped I could make it and the change wouldn’t inconvenience me too much.
Well, yes, to the first, and no, to the second.
I left a message for Jack, telling him I was spending another night in the city. I texted Bobby that there was no way I’d be back in time for class, so he and Larissa would have to cover for me. And I asked him to announce that I’d gotten tied up in Baltimore. I didn’t want Scott, if he showed up, to think I was ducking him. Damn. I didn’t want to do anything that made him feel worse than he already did.