by Paul Moomaw
“I’m Helen. What’s your name?” From that moment we were inseparable. We could talk about anything and tell each other all our secret dreams and desires. We would go for long walks along the banks of the Yellowstone River, and we would hold hands as we walked. As I remember that I feel her hand again, a little dry and rough, because she was a tomboy. Once I kissed her, and she kissed me back, and that was as close as it ever came to sex. She lived on the south side of the railroad tracks in a rented basement apartment in a small house. She lived there with her father. I never saw him. When we walked together I always escorted her to the house, but she would never let me in. For almost three months she was the one completely good thing in my life. I made up my mind to get her a Christmas present, and I worked at every odd job I could find to save money. I knew exactly what I was going to get her. It was a little bracelet that you could have a name engraved on.
Ten days before Christmas I had enough money, and I bought it and had her name put on it. I intended to give it to her at school, on the last day before Christmas vacation. I put it in a little box I found near the railroad tracks and wrapped it in red tissue paper. I did not have the money to buy a ribbon or a bow, but I knew she would not mind. On the last day of classes before the break I took it to school. Helen was not there. I ditched the last part of the school day and walked to her house. There was no separate entrance to the basement, so I knocked on the front door. A woman came to the door and I asked her where Helen was. She told me they had left that morning, and that she did not know where they had gone.
I stood there for a long time, looking up at the woman. Finally she shook her head and said, “I’m really sorry,” and closed the door. I walked away and for the rest of the afternoon I mainly just wandered, not paying attention to where I was. Finally I walked to the little park on the river near downtown. No one else was there. I walked to the edge of the river and stood there for a while, watching the water. Then I pulled the box from my jacket pocket. I tore off the red tissue paper, opened the box and took out the bracelet, and let the box and paper fall to my feet. Then I threw the bracelet as far as I could into the river. It sank right away. I stepped onto the box and twisted it under my shoe until it was just a crumpled piece of cardboard. Then I went home. I never saw Helen again.
Chapter 37
Usually I sleep through the scream of the Cuisinart coffee maker grinding its beans, but this morning the noise brings me groggily awake after a fitful sleep. A feeling of impending disaster presses down on me, but that happens when I wake tired, especially if I have had too much to drink the night before. I shake the feeling off, roll out of bed, and pull my bathrobe from the back of a chair as I pad toward the kitchen. The trickle of the Cuisinart and the smell of the coffee help put me in a better mood. I pull the pot out and pour myself a cup, then return it to the machine to finish filling. I make toast and fry an egg and sit down at the kitchen table. The food fills me but has little appeal. My taste buds seem to be on strike. I finish the food, pour another cup of coffee, and go to my computer. I want to see if Harlan Trego has made the news.
He has. The lead story in the St. Louis Post Dispatch is all about him and the bodyguard, whose full name is Leon Jeffers. The story describes the killings as gangland executions, and says the authorities believe the deaths are tied to Trego’s impending appearance before a federal grand jury. There are no suspects, but it is considered noteworthy that Jeffers was only recently hired as a replacement for Dom Gordini, who is now being sought as a person of interest. The article says that an unidentified source alleges that Gordini was fired because he was seen in unsavory company, but there is no official confirmation this, nor does the unsavory companion have a name. The police say that Trego was in the habit of taping all his conversations. They have retrieved the tapes for the day of the killings, and hope to find a lead there.
“Shit!” I say, and shove myself away from the computer. My sense of foreboding did not come from the Scotch after all. Or perhaps I was hitting the Scotch to stave off an inkling of disaster that I was not ready to face. I shut the computer down. At least there was no mention of videos. I am just a voice, not a face. Still, it is one more damned complication, and one more sign that I was right about the job. I had to take too many risks, and expose myself in too many places. The next thing will be that the god damned receptionist makes a hobby of photographing all the visitors with a cell phone camera to giggle over with her girlfriend.
I get up and pour myself more coffee, then go to my easy chair by the window. It is my place for thinking, and planning, and sometimes just brooding. I take my mind back to the brief time in Trego’s office. I talked a fair amount there. I am sure that they will run my words through a dozen different kinds of voice analyzer, but I do not worry about that. They can analyze six ways to Sunday, but barring some catastrophe they will never hear my voice again. I try to recall what was said. Fontaine. I used that name two or three times. Fontaine the conspirator. Fontaine the threatener. Fontaine the dangerous man. If Gordini is a person of interest to the police, Fontaine will be a person to obsess over. If and when the people who hired me find out about the tape, they will not be happy. But I am not happy either. This was their mess and I did my best to clean it up. If I missed a couple of spots, fuck them.
For all my bravado it is hard to shake off the shock of that tape. I put on shorts and a t-shirt, slip into my New Balance running shoes, and head for the street. I run up Eighth Place to Galer, which is at the top of Queen Anne Hill, then north to Ken’s Market. I have the impulse to buy a sweet roll, something gooey and dietetically incorrect, but I have not thought to bring any money. I turn east at Ken’s and run until I can see the Fremont Street bridge that spans the Lake Washington Ship Canal to the north. Then I turn back and retrace my steps. By the time I get home I am put back together. The weather is fine, as it is surprisingly often in Seattle, and the rest of the day promises to be a good one. There are no clouds in the sky, and the only one in my mind is the knowledge that Katherine will be coming for dinner, and probably for the night.
I shower and dress, and then head out again, this time with money. It is Friday, which means a trip to the Post Office, where I find my box gratifyingly empty. This time I drive because I must also go into downtown and visit the Pike Place Market for salmon and vegetables for dinner. It is late enough in the year that most of the tourists have gone home, but he place is still crowded. After all the years of city life, I still miss the solitude and open spaces of my home state. Sometimes, when I allow myself fantasies of giving up my line of work, I think of Montana. I own land and a small cabin there, not in Livingston where I grew up, but in the Yaak River Valley, in the northwestern-most corner of the state. Some day, if I live that long, I hope to spend the rest of my days fishing and hunting and generally being no account.
Chapter 38
I think lawyers are always late, but Katherine shows up promptly at six with two bottles of Washington State sauvignon blanc. She is wearing a pullover dress of sea foam green that shows off her legs. From the way the top drapes I guess she is not wearing a bra.
“I brought a little appetizer, too,” she says and holds up a second bag. She takes the bags into the kitchen and puts them on the table, then pulls a plastic container out of the smaller one.
“Sushi,” she says. “Costco’s finest. I don’t cook unless the situation’s desperate. If you’ve already made hors d’ouvre you can stick these in the fridge.”
“I haven’t,” I say.
“Good. And afterwards I’ll look forward to whatever the specialty of the house is. They say a man who cooks can’t be all bad.”
“Who says?”
“Oh, you know. Them.” She puts the wine into the refrigerator. “Meantimes, I could do with a real drink. I’ve had a bad afternoon.”
I wave toward the liquor cabinet. “Help yourself. Work problems?”
“Eddy problems. The son of a bitch was at my house when I got home. I open the do
or and there he is, sitting in my favorite chair, drinking one of my beers. When I asked him what the hell he wanted he just said, ‘I wanted to make sure I still knew where to find you.’ Then he smiled, only his eyes didn’t. He poured the fucking beer into my Christmas cactus before he left. I was really mad, but then I got scared.”
I want to respond, but what do you say when a woman you have had at least a sort of sex with is being stalked by the man who hired you to kill her?
“You should call the police,” I finally say.
“What I did was call a locksmith. By day after tomorrow, only God will be able to get into that house.”
And me, I think. I am not God, but I have my ways.
I feed Katherine salmon poached in white wine and saffron butter, Thai jasmine rice, and spinach cooked with cream and pine nuts. She wants to know if the salmon is wild and I assure her that it is, and fresh off the boat. My dirty little secret—one of them, anyway—is that when I am cooking for myself I am more likely to buy farmed salmon. It is not as good, and I know the farms create a hazard for wild stock; but there are only so many things in life I can worry about, and fish shit is not one of them. For desert I slice bananas into hot butter and brown sugar, flip them once, and then flambee them with brandy. Katherine is suitably impressed, which shows that simple is best.
Afterwards she helps me clean and then wanders around the living room.
“Do you really live here?” she asks.
“Where else?”
She looks at me with a quirky smile. “Confession time. One reason I wanted to do this was because usually if you see where someone takes his shoes off you learn more about who he is.” She shakes her head. “It didn’t work. It’s like somebody said about Los Angeles, that there’s no there there? There’s no you here. It’s a great place, but it feels like you’re just passing through.”
Her remark stings me, although I do not know why, and I try to make a joke. “Next time I’ll leave a dirty sock on the sofa,” but my voice gives me away, and she says, “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“I don’t get my feelings hurt.”
“Not ever?”
“Not any more.”
“Maybe just out of touch?”
“Maybe just grown up,” I can hear the snap in my voice. She has gotten under my skin. I am not sure what bothers me more, that she can do that, or that I do not know how she does.
She walks quickly over to me and gives me an easy kiss.
“Just be who you are, and if I’m prying, tell me to shut up.”
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to spend the night?”
“I’d like that,” I say, and realize it is true. Whatever ambivalence I was feeling earlier is gone.
“And in the morning I’ll cook breakfast.”
“You said you don’t cook.”
She laughs. “I’ll go out and buy something. That’s how I cook. Then you can take me to the aquarium.” She pivots, and as she does she winces and lifts her right shoulder.
“You hurt?”
Katherine nods. “Too much desk time. I spent the whole damned week hunched over a computer, looking up titles and water rights.”
“I’ll give you a massage.”
“Can you do that?”
I nod, and point her toward the bedroom.
“I don’t have a table, but the bed should work.”
She starts toward the bedroom door. “It’s a trick isn’t it?” she says. “Your going to throw me onto the bed face down, garrote me, and then fuck my poor dead body.”
There it is again, as if she knows at some level why I have entered her life.
“I’m going to ease your pain.”
She turns and looks at me. Her eyes are wide and somber, and she is not smiling.
“That’s what death does,” she says.
In spite of myself I look away. She turns again and goes to the bed, which is covered by a patterned comforter. She pulls the dress over her head and lets it drop to the floor. Underneath she has bikini briefs the same color as the dress; and I was right, she has no bra. She lies face down on the bed, letting her arms trail by her sides, then swivels her head and looks at me with a dreamy smile.
“Okay,” she says. “Ease my pain.”
I take my shoes off and straddle her back on my knees. I begin with the very top of her head, using my fingertips to stroke and knead her scalp. She sighs and wriggles a tiny bit. Her hands close into fists for a moment, and then open up. I move down behind her ears and to her neck, digging in firmly but gently with my knuckles. When I move to the top of her shoulders she tenses briefly, then relaxes again and burrows her head more deeply into the comforter. I work for a while on the shoulder muscles, and then move to the shoulder blades. I press the tips of my lift fingers against the lower edge of her right shoulder blade. The fingers go under the bone about a quarter of an inch.
“Take a real deep breath and hold it,” I say. She breathes in and I can feel her upper body expand. “Now let it out,” I say. As she exhales I press my fingers under the shoulder blade. They go in close to an inch.
“Another deep breath,” I say, and as she inhales and exhales again my fingers are able to penetrate almost another inch. Three more breaths and I am all the way under the shoulder blade, to the top knuckles of my fingers. Then I move the shoulder blade around in circles, bracing it with my other hand. Katherine groans with pleasure.
“My God,” she says. “How did you learn that?”
“Someone who does this for a living taught me,” I say. It was a woman named Yelena, and I went to her for massages every week for two years. She enjoyed teaching as well as doing, and I learned some wonderful things from her. Not all of them had to do with massage. She was Bosnian, and in this country illegally. She had a husband named Ernie who spent most of his time in the bars, except for a three-month period behind bars. When Ernie decided he wanted a younger woman, and did not want the expense of a divorce, he turned Yelena in to the immigration people, and they sent her away. It was not long afterwards that all hell broke loose in the Balkans. I never knew if Yelena survived the violence or not. I would have enjoyed killing Ernie, but I am not a creature of impulse, so I let him live.
I finish with Katherine’s right shoulder and begin on the left. It is easier this time because she knows what to expect. Then I begin to move down her spine, working with my knuckles and the heel of my hand. They say you cannot really make the vertebrae move or shift, but what difference does that make? I know it feels good afterward. Katherine has a touch of scoliosis in her lower spine, and I work more gently there. I watch my hands as they move up and down her back. It is suddenly as if they do not belong to me, and I ponder the mystery of hands, that they heal so well, and can kill so easily.
I move to her buttocks, enjoying the sensuous feeling of her strong haunch muscles giving and resisting at the same time. Her pubic hair curls all the way around from the front, so that a tuft of it is visible in the crack between her cheeks. I move reluctantly down to her thighs, and then her calves and ankles. When I reach her feet she sighs and stretches her toes.
Then I begin to move upwards again, and this time when I reach her butt I am unable to resist brushing my fingers through that tuft of curly red hair. Katherine moans slightly. She arches her back and pushes her rear up off the mattress. I press there lightly and she spreads her thighs apart and raises her butt even higher, like a cat in heat. I curl my fingers between her legs and find her labia. They are already wet with her juices. I can feel my own loins burning with the heat of passion, and yet my penis continues to hang. It tingles and vibrates on the inside, but makes no effort to stand up. I ignore that and focus on Katherine. My fingertips make contact with the hard little button of her clitoris. I stroke and rub, and Katherine pushes back against my hand. I bend over and nuzzle her cheeks, and then nibble on them. I let my tongue play around her tailbone and da
rt into the space between her buttocks. Then my wet, slippery thumb finds her anus and slips inside. Katherine opens wide and then rams against my hand to drive my thumb deeper. She keeps thrusting until at last she freezes momentarily and then screams in passion. She slumps onto the bed, then rolls over onto her back and wraps her arms around me. I hold her for a while, rubbing my nose into her neck to smell her perfume. Finally, reluctantly, I get up and take my clothes off. I pull the comforter and sheets back, and Katherine moves her body to help. Then I slide into bed and cover us both up. She falls asleep almost right away. I lie there for a while as the passion subsides, and even though I have not functioned the way I wanted to, have not ejaculated or felt any climax, I settle gradually into a degree of comfort and calm that I seldom experience, and then I fall asleep as well. Sometime in the night I wake up and reach drowsily for Katherine, but the space next to me is empty. Before I can will myself to react, I hear the toilet flush, and am immediately asleep again.
* * *
In the morning I wake to daylight and sense an emptiness right away. I sit up and look around. Katherine is not in the bed, and the whole place is too still. I get out of bed and stand for a moment, unsettled and confused. Then I walk out into the living room. No one is there. I check the dining room and the kitchen, and finally the bathroom. Katherine is gone without a word.
“Women,” I mutter to myself. So much for the trip to the aquarium. I busy myself making coffee, and do my best to brush her disappearance aside as just one of those frivolous things that emotional women do; but then I spill coffee beans all over the counter and the floor, which tells me I do not believe my logic, and that I am upset. Acknowledgment leads to reaction, and soon I am shaking with something—anxiety, anger, who knows what? I am not good at feelings.