by Paul Moomaw
She sits on the edge of the room’s single, queen-sized bed, still wearing her lawyer’s uniform, except that she has removed her shoes. The toe of her right stocking has a hole in it. She appears not to notice. She has one of those leather valises that open to reveal a bar, and is pouring Scotch whisky into two glasses filled with ice. I watch her, and decide again that I like her hands.
She reaches toward me with the glass. When I take it from her our fingers touch and cling for a moment. She holds my eyes with hers, and smiles, and I am surprised to find myself glancing away. I straighten awkwardly and walk to the windows. The sound of traffic rises faintly from the street.
“You get a good view here.”
She nods. “It feels more spacious, I guess because of the extra windows.” She rises from the bed. “Have another if you want,” she says, and motions to the bottle. “I’m going to change.” She pulls blue jeans and a shirt of pale lilac from her suitcase, and walks to the bathroom.
I pour more Scotch into my glass and turn back to the window. The hotel is not far from the river, and you can see the park stretching along both sides of the water, grass and trees and scattered buildings. Directly across the roofs from my window I see an airy construction of cables and wires, like the rigging of a sailing ship. To the west of that is the little aerial tram where I killed Arden Frost. It triggers a feeling—unsettling and fascinating at the same time—looking at that place while I sit in a hotel room with a woman who is on the same hit list.
“That thing that looks like a ship’s rigging is the ice rink. It’s closed this time of year.”
I have not heard Katherine approach. She rests her hand lightly on my shoulder as she speaks, and I embarrass myself by flinching and spilling part of my drink. She has put on the jeans and shirt, which is oversized and drapes softly from her shoulders. She does not wear a bra, and her nipples have firmed enough to dimple the lilac. She has tied a scarf of a darker purple loosely around her neck. She smiles again, an expression as soft as the blouse. I am sure she feels my desire. She takes my glass and sips from it, hands it back again.
“Let’s go to the park,” she says. “I want to play.”
The air is crisp, with a hint of autumn coming, but still warm enough that men are in shirt sleeves and women unbothered by the breeze that scurries around the buildings, tugging at their skirts. We walk toward the river. Katherine moves with long, eager steps, strong legs flexing under denim. A foot bridge crosses to the other bank. We stop at the midpoint to watch the water.
“When did you decide to be a lawyer?”
“Why?”
“Curiosity.”
“I think when I was very young.” She continues to stare down at the water as she speaks. “I liked the puzzle of it. And I think I expected I could stay in my head. It seemed austere and unemotional, and I liked that.” A shadow crosses her face briefly, although it may have been only from a wind-blown cloud. “I’m not crazy about feelings.” She pauses, shakes her head briefly, as if to clear something away. “Who was it that said you can never cross the same river twice?” she asks suddenly.
“Heraclitus. It is not possible to step twice into the same river.”
Katherine turns her gaze from the river to me.
“You actually knew. I’m impressed.” She tilts her head and looks at me for a long moment, wrinkling her brow against the afternoon sun. “I wonder what other surprises you have hidden behind those interesting eyes.?”
I do not reply, and Katherine laughs, shakes her head, and begins to walk again. I follow a step behind, and a curl in the breeze fills my nostrils briefly with her perfume. I am unreasonably pleased by her comment about my eyes.
Once on the north side of the river, Katherine leads me toward a small building with glass walls. Beyond the glass ornate wooden horses circle, rising and falling under their riders.
“Have you ever been on that?” she asks, and goes on without waiting for an answer. “It’s wonderful, and old. Ninety or a hundred years, I think. Someone restored it and donated it to the city. I ride it every time I come to Spokane.”
She walks quickly to the large, glass doors and pushes through them. I follow. Loud music fills the building, interspersed with laughter and loud calls from the riders. The horses carry at least as many adults as children. Katherine goes to the ticket kiosk and returns with two pieces of pale green pasteboard just as the carousel slows and stops.
“Pick a horse,” she says. She grabs the reins of a golden steed with a silver mane and hoists herself into the saddle. She tucks her feet into the stirrups.
“This one is mine; I always ride this one.” She grins like a small child, and briefly the sadness disappears from behind her eyes.
I climb onto the horse behind hers. It is dark brown, with a cream mane and tail, and a quarter-sized circle of paint has been chipped from the neck. I tuck my feet awkwardly into the stirrups. There is a safety belt, and I consider securing it, but then I see that Katherine is not using hers. I feel out of place. Even as a child I was not comfortable doing child-like things.
The carousel begins to move, increasing its pace quickly until the horses are rising and falling in giant swoops at a speed that surprises me. From the top of the ticket kiosk a metal rod extends toward the horses. It holds rings of dark plastic, interspersed with gold-colored ones. Katherine stands in her stirrups, stretches toward the rings, and snatches one. I try to follow her example, and miss, managing only to bang my finger painfully on the rod. Part way around the building the giant canvas face of a clown, its mouth gaping, covers the wall. Katherine tosses the ring at the opening, and misses. The next time around I catch a ring, and flip it neatly into the clown’s mouth. I am skilled at hitting targets with small missiles. I have killed men that way. But as I circle around to grab another ring, I am aware only that I wish suddenly I were in front of Katherine, so that she could see my skill.
Just before the ride ends, Katherine snatches one of the gold-colored rings. As the horses come to a stop, she jumps from hers.
“Don’t get down,” she says. She runs to the kiosk, and trades the ring for another ticket, which she hands up to me.
“Here,” she says. “Ride again.”
“You won it.”
She shakes her head. “I want you to ride. My gift to you.” Before I can argue, she steps down from the carrousel frame and seats herself on one of the benches that line the building. The music starts, the horses begin their flight again, and so I ride. I catch a ring on every pass, none of them gold, and toss each of them into the clown’s maw, dead center. Each time I circle by Katherine, I see that she is sitting, elbows on knees and her face cupped in her hands, gazing up at me and smiling.
The ride ends, I climb from my mount, and we walk back out into the late afternoon.
“It used to be, if you hit the clown’s mouth with a ring, you got a free ride,” Katherine says. “But I guess some people got too good. Like you.” She takes my hand, and we walk across the grass toward the river and the foot bridge.
“Do you like Thai food?”
I nod.
“Good. There’s a place right down the block from the hotel where they make it as good as anything in Seattle. You even get your choice of heat. Very hot, very very hot, and too damn hot.”
As we cross the river, a gust of wind tears Katherine’s scarf from her shoulders. I lunge and grab it just before it sails out of reach.
“Keep it in a pocket for me, please,” she says. I tuck the into the inner pocket of my jacket.
She is right about the food, and there is good Thai beer to go with it; but as we eat, her animation seems forced, and the shadow returns to her eyes. A family sits across from us—a young couple with two small children, a boy and girl. Katherine gazes at them frequently. At one point she manages to get the girl to wiggle fingers at her, then turns back to me.
“Do you have children?”
“No.”
“That’s right. You never married.�
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I shake my head. “And you?”
“No kids.” She toys with her beer, and a shadow crosses her face. “I was pregnant once. It was when I already knew I was leaving the marriage.” The shadow grows deeper momentarily. “I had an abortion.” She takes a long swallow of beer. Her eyes are directed toward the table top, but I sense they are seeing something far away.
“Its funny, when Paula was born . . . that’s my niece . . . the first time I tried to pick her up she screamed and screamed, and wouldn’t stop until I handed her back to her mother. It was almost as if she knew I had killed a baby, and hated me for it. Even now sometimes, I can turn and catch her giving me a mean look.” She stops, rolls the beer glass in her hands, then tilts it and drains it.
“Does that sound crazy?” She looks at me intently, and I realize she wants a serious answer. I try to make light of the question.
“Do I look like a psychologist?”
Katherine keeps staring at me.
“You look like you could be anything,” she says.
The family across from us gets up to leave, the parents leading, the children following, nudging and shoving and giggling.
“They look like they love each other a lot, don’t they?” Katherine says. “It must be nice, for a brother and sister to love each other.”
I try not to think of Edward Angwin, paired to his sister in a deadly contract. A tendril of troublesome thought slips into my mind and I wonder again if Katherine knows at some level, the same way she believes her niece knows about her abortion. I shake the thought away. For the time being I will refuse to let myself believe in such things. It would just get in the way.
We finish our meal and fight politely over the check. I agree finally to let Katherine pay this time.
“Good,” she says. “That way you’ll owe me a next time.”
As we walk back to the hotel, I ask her if she has brothers and sisters.
“A brother. I don’t think we love each other very much.”
We cover the last block to the hotel in silence, and maintain it through the lobby and into the elevator.
“A last drink?” she says, as the elevator doors close. I nod. “In my room,” she says.
I sit in the chair by the window again. Katherine hands me a scotch and settles onto the bed.
“I used to love my brother a lot,” she says suddenly. “But we’re very different. His name is Edward, and he’s pretty mad at me these days.” She stretches out on the bed spread and stares at the ceiling.
“Our parents died about ten years ago. A plane crash. Dad was piloting, and no one is sure what happened, but he always took crazy chances. Most of the time my mother wouldn’t fly with him. I guess she picked the wrong time to change her mind.” Katherine sits up again, tugs her shoes off. “They left Edward and me a fair amount of money. Not a big fortune, but enough to live on if you invested it right. Eddy . . . he hates it when I call him that . . . is already broke again. He’s after me all the time to lend him money. He never pays me back. Last time he asked, he wanted ten thousand, and I said no, and he shoved me into the wall and called me a selfish bitch and walked out.” She stands up. “I’d offer you another drink, but I have an early day tomorrow.”
I finish my Scotch and rise. “I understand,” I say. She walks me to the door. I take her hand, and she squeezes mine hard, then suddenly reaches her other hand out to brush my cheek and pulls it back as quickly, but the feel of her fingers remains imprinted on my skin. I want her, and I know she wants me just as badly. I reach out and take her hand. She smiles, then she leads me back into her room. She closes the door, then turns and steps into me. I wrap my arms around her and we stand, glued together. I kiss her cheek, then her neck, and then run my tongue along the crevice between her neck and her jaw. She moans and hugs me tighter, then begins to push be backwards until my calves press against the bed. She giggles and pushes again, and I let myself fall to the mattress. She steps back and begins to undress. Halfway through, she pauses and says, “What are you waiting for?” I rise and begin to remove my clothes. I feel awkward. I am more than accustomed to sex, but never overlaid with the kinds of feelings that are vibrating through me. I fumble with my shoes, and finally get them off. As I unbuckle my belt, Katherine pushes me back onto the bed again. She grabs the zipper of my pants and tugs it down, then grasps my penis, which is gratifyingly hard. She stands up and tugs my pants off, then unbuttons my shirt. As I wriggle out of it, she pulls down my shorts and removes them. Then I am on my back and Katherine is crouching over me. She gazes down at me and licks her lips.
“Much better than the carousel,” she says. She bends forward and kisses me, then spends minutes using her lips and tongue to play my body like an instrument, licking my neck, nibbling on my nose, sucking on my nipples, which have gotten as hard as any woman’s. She moves forward a few inches, spreads her knees wider to get well over me, and guides my penis toward her vagina. The head tickles its way past the forest of pubic hair that spreads in a dark red triangle below her belly button. It touches the lips, so wet that even the insides of her upper thighs glisten with her fluid.
And then it wilts. I feel it about to happen and beg it not to, but some part of me I am a stranger to is in command. We rub and flounder for a while, but nothing happens. Katherine smiles softly and lowers herself to my side. “First time is difficult, sometimes,” she says. I do not know how to respond. Every part of me is still hot with passion, except for my goddamned penis.
“Let me do this, then,” I finally say. I work my way down her body with my mouth until I reach her vagina, and begin to explore the lips gently with my lips and nose. She gasps as my tongue touches her clitoris, which is as hard as a tiny fire hydrant. Her juices are flowing, and she bubbles around my face. I stroke her with my tongue, slowly, evenly, letting the pressure build until she screams and grabs my head, pressing it has hard as she can against her vagina. Then she moans softly and her body relaxes, but she keeps holding my head, pulling and moving it from side to side against her.
Afterwards, we lie together quietly. As it grows dark, I realize I do not want to spend the night in this bed, although I do not understand why. I tell her this, and she nods.
“It’s all right. I’ll just go to sleep and dream about your tongue until breakfast time.”
In my room, as I undress again, I discover that I still have Katherine’s scarf. I carry it to the bed with me, and let its perfume surround me. My hand creeps to my penis, which is stiff with desire. I brush the tips of my fingers across my scrotum, and try to imagine that the fingers are Katherine’s. I feel a moment’s frustration that now, when it doesn’t matter, I have no problem keeping an erection. I masturbate slowly, letting the alcohol, and perfume, and the fantasy of feeling Katherine’s thighs around me carry me to an orgasm so intense that I cry out in the empty room.
I fall asleep quickly, but some time during the night, the dream comes. I have not had it for several years. It is a dream of my mother. I know she is my mother even though I cannot see her face. She is speaking to me, because her mouth moves, but I hear nothing. I see her through a red veil, and she is huge, and I know I am a small child, and yet I am looking down at her. It puzzles me. It has always puzzled me.
Chapter 22
I never have trouble keeping it hard with Skeeter McLeod, which is probably why I am eager to see her as soon as I return to Seattle. Skeeter is a talented artist and successful whore. When I first met her, I timidly referred to her as a lady of the night.
“I’m a whore,” she told me. “I like it, and I like the money, and I do it any time, day or night. In fact I like fucking in daylight better.”
Skeeter came originally from somewhere in the Middle West. I am not sure where. There is a lot I do not know about her. I did not learn her last name until we had known each other for almost four years. We were introduced through a Mob connection, and I assume she has family ties, so to speak. She is in her fifties, and in better shape than
many women half her age. Her hair is black going to salt and pepper, curly, and kept short. Her skin is perpetually tan, a sort of mocha that never seems to lighten or darken with the seasons. Her pubic area is a veritable magic forest of curly black that reaches in a narrow line toward her belly button, and curls across the top few inches of her inner thighs. She told me once that she used to shave her muff, then decided it was too much trouble, and discovered that her customers liked her better unshaven. I can understand that. I find it irresistibly attractive.
Skeeter did well when she was working full time, and invested her earnings wisely. Now she owns a rooftop condominium in the Belltown section of downtown Seattle, with unbroken views of the harbor, the bay, and the Olympic Mountains beyond. All of the windows face west toward the water. She says she wanted it that way, so she could have plenty of wall space to hang her paintings. She works mostly in oil, and sells enough to keep her ego up. She does portraits more than anything else, and claims that her experience as a whore lets her see inside the people who sit for her. She has offered more than once to paint me, and I have always refused. I tell her I am not sure I want her to see inside me, and I am not entirely joking, even though I have let her see more of my secret nooks and crannies than anyone I have ever known. She does not know, officially, how I earn my keep; but I think actually she does. I am sure that if I asked her, she would tell me, but I will not ask. I think we both enjoy the allure that a little mystery and distance provide. I never pay her money for her ministrations, but once a month I bring her a big box of chocolate truffles. Once a year she returns the favor by giving me one her paintings as a Christmas present.