by David Zeman
Troy had known about it, of course. He had lived with her for two years, so she could hardly hide it from him. But Troy would never tell anyone about it. He was a failure in a lot of ways, but he was not a gossip. They had parted friends, each relieved to be free of the unhappiness of living together.
The wash cycle was finished. How had it gone through so fast? Not for the first time Karen’s drunkenness had made her miss a fugitive block of time.
Instead of getting up to put the clothes in the dryer she turned on the boom box she kept in the bathroom. It contained an old CD of Mozart piano sonatas, Claudio Arrau in the early 1980s. She clicked forward to the slow movement, sat back, and closed her eyes.
There was nothing in the world so peaceful as the slow movements of those Mozart sonatas. When guests came into this apartment and heard the piano they would exclaim, “It’s so quiet in here!” It wasn’t really. The andantes brought their own silence, their own peace to the place.
By the time she emptied her glass she was almost too drunk to stand. She got up uncertainly and toweled herself off. The wet clothes in the washer were forgotten now. She staggered toward the bedroom. On her way she noticed the local newspapers, which were piled just inside the front door. They had collected in her absence, and she had dropped them unceremoniously on the foyer floor. They could wait until tomorrow, of course, but her journalist’s scruples about missed stories would not let her go to bed without quickly checking the headlines. If anything new had happened while she was gone, she should know about it.
She sank down unsteadily to the carpet, a terry cloth towel wrapped around her, and unfolded the papers. Inside the front page of Thursday’sUSA Today she saw something pasted to the newspaper. It was a Post-it note bearing a handwritten message.
She had to struggle to read the scrawled words, her exhaustion joining the overdose of liquor to make her see double.
Get off this story,said the note. It was stuck to a photograph of Vice President Everhardt on page two of the newspaper.Or you’ll end up like him .
The note was unsigned.
Karen sobered up instantly. She pulled off the note and took it to the kitchen, where the light was brighter.
Get off this story. The note was written in felt pen, all the words underlined.
“So,” she said aloud. “You’re worried enough to threaten me.”
Leaving the note on the counter, she went to the bathroom for three preemptive Advils to fight the hangover she would have tomorrow morning. She lay down in bed and thought back over her travels. Iowa, New Hampshire, Australia. Something was definitely up. And those who knew about it were desperate to cover it up.
She felt no fear. What could they do to her? She had already lost everything in life that had value to her. She was alone in the world, and not particularly attached to anything but her ability to find the truth. Let them do their worst, she thought.
Tomorrow she would think of a way to add fuel to the fire.
Restored to alertness by the challenge ahead of her, she suddenly remembered the wet clothes. She threw them in the dryer and turned on the cycle.
Five minutes later she was fast asleep. The smooth rumble of the dryer was the only sound in the apartment.
20
—————
Manchester, New Hampshire
November 29
DOCTOR JAY Waterman sat in his office at the Manchester city hall. He was smoking a cigarette and thinking.
He glanced at the clock on his desk. Seven-fifteen. Time to call it a night.
He took a drag from the Camel Filter and watched the smoke billow under the light from the desk lamp. His wife didn’t allow him to smoke at home. He was trying to quit, so he limited his smoking to a cigarette in the morning on the way here and sometimes a cigarette in a bar on the way home. He rarely smoked here in the office.
The reporter, Karen, had smoked like a chimney when he took her for lunch after her fainting spell. He had not been able to resist bumming a Newport from her. The chill, acrid taste of the menthol on his lips had been a bond with her.
She was very attractive, of course. There was something tight and tensile about her that he found irresistible. And she was so slim. His wife had become slack and overweight after two pregnancies. It was quite a while since he had been in close proximity to a girl as pretty as Karen Embry.
He closed his eyes and allowed himself to undress her mentally while the nicotine throbbed in his veins. Small breasts, no doubt, but firm. Ribs visible under her skin, a flat stomach. Good hips, rich despite their smallness and—he had not failed to notice—a nice ass. Very nice. She must look spectacular in a swimsuit.
He felt the heat of the ash approaching his fingers. He opened his eyes and stubbed out the cigarette. He made a mental note to buy a pack of Newports tomorrow.
He sighed, turned out the light, and locked the office. He had worn his down jacket—the cold weather was here to stay. Carrying the jacket in one hand and his briefcase in the other, he started down to the parking lot.
On an impulse he pushed another button and took the elevator to the basement. He had put the corpse under a John Doe in the second cooler, the rarely used one. He thought he would take one more glance at it.
It was a bizarre syndrome, that was certain. His degree in pathology had brought him into contact with some weird anomalies at the tissue level, not to mention the cellular. And many major deforming syndromes, like Elephant Man’s Syndrome, remained a mystery, in terms of both cause and cure. But this was even more strange. Strange because the deformed tissue did seem to make a kind of sense. Not in a human, of course . . .
It was just like the CDC to lose his e-mail and not respond. He had been on the point of giving them a piece of his mind, and even of calling the press to embarrass them. But then the girl, Karen, had showed up. She seemed as interested in the body as he was. She seemed to understand.
He reached the basement room and turned on the lights. He had to fumble through his keys to find the unfamiliar one that opened the door. He didn’t have to search for the drawer; this was the only body in here.
He pulled it open. From the weight he knew right away something was wrong.
The drawer was empty.
“Jesus Christ,” he said aloud.
21
—————
Washington
December 1
MICHAEL CAMPBELL was looking at his wife’s face.
Susan’s latest ABC interview was on the television screen. Susan was laughing at something the interviewer had said to her. Michael did not hear the words.
His eyes half closed as the sensation between his legs quickened. The girl bending over him knew him well. Her fingers were in places that never failed to excite him. Her mouth was making slow circles over him, the tongue darting subtly in strokes that made him gasp.
She stopped when she felt that the end was near. Wanting to excite him more, she reared back to let him look at her. The room was dark except for the blue glimmer of the TV screen. He looked up admiringly at her square shoulders, the lean silhouette of her rib cage. She was sleek, almost reptilian in her smooth firmness of line.
“More?” she asked.
He groaned in response. She bent down to take him in her mouth again. The long fingers were all over him, stroking and probing. The center of him began to strain.
“Wait,” she murmured.
She leaned back to let him have a last look. The long hair framing her face, the firm thighs, the small breasts, the smile he felt more than saw in the darkened room.
She had him in her hands, feeling the pulse of him. She measured his excitement.
“Now,” she said.
With a lithe movement she came astride him and guided him inside her. The feel of her sex around him was almost more than he could bear. He strained quickly as the hands came to pat his chest.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Come on . . .”
Her fingertips found his nipples
and squeezed gently. Her hips moved expertly to bring him to the crisis. He heard a low sweet sound in her throat, a sort of purring.
“Come on,” she said. “All the way . . .”
He groaned, thrusting hard into her.
“All the way, Michael. Come on . . .”
He came with a great burst, gasping. She rode the spasms easily, enjoying the power of him. Her eyes rolled up toward the ceiling. The warm knees embraced him. For a moment his passion seemed to transport him to another time and place. He was literally beside himself. She looked down happily, pleased with her work.
It took him a long time to come to himself. She lay down beside him, stroking his cheek, kissing his chest. His breaths came more slowly now. He took her hand and held it, trusting as a child.
She glanced at the room around them. Her suit was hanging in the closet, alongside his own clothes. The garments had been neatly disposed of before they started. A throw pillow was on the floor where it had fallen a couple of minutes ago. Near it, forgotten now, was a scarf-sized piece of silk knotted at two of the corners.
They had done it this way many times. They knew each other’s rhythms and susceptibilities. Sometimes it was quick, violent, sometimes slow and languid. But she never failed to give him the pleasure he sought.
He looked at the TV screen. Susan was nodding at something the interviewer had said, pushing a lock of her hair away from her cheek as she did so. Her expression was deferential, innocent. Sometimes, with her blond hair and her big candid eyes, she looked like a little girl. Indeed, there were ways in which she had never entirely grown up. She was softer than other women. More vulnerable. This fact never failed to charm him, though it played a part in the distance between himself and her.
Leslie was looking at him now. She leaned back on her arm, her breast rounded against the sheet.
“So,” she said. “Did you miss me?”
Michael smiled. “Not a bit.”
“Your nose is getting longer,” she said. “Are you telling a lie?”
It was true. He had missed her terribly. Events of recent days had put him in the spotlight, not only with the public but with the White House and the party leaders. He had given three speeches and done a dozen interviews. He had met with the president four times, once alone. So much responsibility, so much tension . . . He had been thinking of Leslie for days, fighting to find time to see her. His pent-up need had been almost unbearable.
“My nose is getting longer?” he repeated.
“It was a while ago,” she teased, letting her fingers graze him between his legs.
They lay together, enjoying the silence. He did not know whether she had noticed Susan on the TV screen. She ran her hand gently along his stomach.
“They’re keeping you busy, aren’t they?” she asked.
He nodded. “Never a dull moment. With all this bad publicity, and Danny Everhardt in the hospital . . .”
“How is he?” she asked.
“Not good. No change since he got sick.”
“Do you think it’s hurting the president?” she asked.
“It certainly doesn’t help,” he said. “But Tom Palleschi is a good man. He’ll do all right.”
He looked at her. “How about you? How are things?”
She shook her head. “Same old,” she said.
He admired her smooth body. The legs were hard, the stomach firm. “Still in great shape,” he said. “How do you do it?”
She laughed. “Men,” she said. “You think what you see is all there is. You don’t know what we go through for you when we’re out of your sight.”
She rarely talked about her life apart from him. She considered it worthless drudgery. He thought of her in her solitude. Dieting, working out—seeing other men? Could one know a person as intimately as he knew her and perhaps know almost nothing about her?
Yes, it was definitely possible. Come to think of it, that was part of the excitement he felt when she came to him. That shadow of the unknown behind her smile.
He let her hold him for a long time. Her hand was on his chest. She felt him breathe. Then she kissed his cheek.
“Time for you to go,” she said.
“Already?” he complained lazily.
“Miles to go before you sleep,” she smiled.
“And promises to keep.”
He got up. She watched his legs disappear into the dark trousers. Hard thighs, swimmer’s thighs . . . As he got his shirt off the hanger she looked at the long scar on his back. It ran from the mid-thoracic vertebrae all the way down to the lower spine. She knew it very well, having caressed it along with the rest of him countless times. She had grown to like it. It had an odd silky feel. It made him look vulnerable. In many ways he was.
“I don’t want it to be as long next time,” he said, buttoning the shirt. His voice sounded young and needful.
She beckoned to him to sit beside her.
“You’re getting to be a very busy fellow,” she said. “And visible. It won’t be easy.”
“I do miss you,” he said, letting his hand rest on her hip. “When I can’t see you, it doesn’t feel right.”
“Well, that’s nice,” she said. “I can see you’ll just have to make room for me.”
“What will you do?” he asked.
“When? Tonight?”
“Yes.” Again there was that candid, trusting note in his voice.
“I’ll go home,” she said. “I have work to do. Then I’ll watch TV, or read. If I get lonely I might call a friend.”
He grimaced.
“Are you trying to make me jealous?”
She laughed. “A little jealousy might be good for you, my friend.”
He stood up. She watched from the bed as he combed his hair and studied himself in the mirror. He would take his shower later, at his office. He said he liked to keep her smell on him as long as possible. She told him it was dangerous—secretaries have sharp antennae—but he had a reckless streak in him.
By the time he got home, though, there would be no trace of her. In his profession, discretion was crucial. The public knew only one face. The other must be kept invisible, always.
He kissed her a last time and let himself out of the room. She lay quietly for a while, savoring the lingering throb in her senses. Then she got up and went into the bathroom.
The sight of her body pleased her, as always. Her skin was brown, her hair sandy. Her eyes were golden. She had straight shoulders, long arms and legs. Long fingers, even. When she went to her health club to work out, women looked at her almost more than men. Most women would kill for a body like hers, so lean and trim. Her walk was erect and easy, but sinuous. More than one of her lovers had told her she had an androgynous air, both male and female. She sometimes played to this perception. Sexually she knew how to make the most of it.
She got into the shower, unwrapping the hotel’s little bar of soap. She soaped the parts of her body Michael had enjoyed in the bed. Her nipples stood up as the bar passed over them. She used the little bottle of shampoo to wash her hair. She smiled as her fingers slipped between her legs. His seed was inside her. She liked that.
They had been lovers for six years. She had no illusions about the future. He would remain with his wife for the sake of his political career. By all accounts Susan Campbell was a fine person, sensitive and interesting. Michael never said a word against her. His attitude toward her was one of fierce loyalty and veneration.
He had confided to Leslie that Susan was frigid with him. Her frigidity made him feel terribly inadequate as well as sexually unsatisfied. But this did not attenuate his love for her.
Leslie sympathized with Susan. Michael Campbell was not an easy man to know. In the very act of giving himself physically, he withheld something deeper. And in their conversations, which had become quite intimate over the years, he left something unstated. Something that, at first, seemed like a tiny blind spot in her knowledge of him, but that now seemed more like an entire unseen world, a
netherworld down a rabbit hole.
It could not be easy to be married to him. Such men were not really cut out for marriage. They slip through your fingers like quicksilver. In your closest moment with them you remain alone. A tough spot for a wife. Tough enough to make any woman frigid, come to think of it.
But for a mistress it was different. Leslie knew what turned him on. She knew she satisfied him in bed. Their fucking made her feel proud of her own attractions, her skill as a lover. Knowing this, it was easier to let go of the rest. All that was necessary was to make sure she never fell in love with him.
And she never had. Not quite.
A lot of women would have allowed their need to coil itself around that hidden core in him, would have become insatiable. But Leslie was too strong for that. She could endure the loneliness he made her feel. Perhaps because she was used to being lonely. Or perhaps because she had something else in mind for herself.
Leslie came from a small Kentucky town where, long ago, she had played with other children on her block on hot summer mornings and dreamed of being a mother like her own mother. Life had taken her far from that dusty street, but not from the dream it represented.
Some day she would take a gamble for that kind of life. She would leave this city. She would find a place for herself in the real world. A man who wanted her. A child of her own.
But somehow she could not make up her mind to do it. Not yet.
Perhaps because she didn’t want to lose Michael yet.
She put on the suit she had worn. Glancing for a last time around the room, she saw the knotted piece of silk on the floor and retrieved it. She put it into her briefcase—she had come here dressed as a businesswoman on her way to a meeting—and gave herself a last look in the mirror.
As she left the room, the face of Susan Campbell was still on the TV screen, smiling at her host with the hint of involuntary distress that was her trademark. The public had come to expect and admire that look.
Susan was loved for the weakness that made her human.
Leslie would never know that feeling.