Bad Desire

by Devon, Gary;

  I like it here, she found herself thinking. But was that possible? She had always dreamed of getting away. The times she had actually been away—even if it was for nothing more than staying overnight at one of her friends—she had not missed this place at all. Now as she went about opening the windows and shaking the dust off the curtains, there was a hollow ache in her stomach, an emptiness.

  Strange, she thought. How awfully strange.

  She went out to the Karmann Ghia and came back carrying her dress in a clear plastic bag. The gardeners had gone, taking the noise with them. As the afternoon wore on, Sheila glanced repeatedly out the window, humming softly to herself, waiting for nightfall and thinking of Henry, hiding her nervousness in the dozens of unnecessary tasks she set for herself.

  Sheila turned back the covers on her own bed and smelled the warm damp odor of the unused sheets. She slipped off her clothes and stretched out naked between the sheets, feeling their coolness surround her. She could feel the sadness of dusk in the air. Occasionally, in the stillness, she heard the lonesome barking of a dog. Distances were already beginning to recede.

  She listened to the last sounds of the afternoon—sounds she had been hearing, it seemed, since that first evening when, as a ten-year-old, she came to live in this house. The crickets began to signal in the grass and the yelling of children playing down the street dwindled away. This time of day, the advent of night could be frightening to a child coming to a strange place; tonight it only made Sheila feel more and more alone. She heard the abrupt flurry of the starlings in flight, and for an instant she imagined the sky alive and trembling with their wings. Suddenly, she thought, What if I never see him again?

  That was something she couldn’t imagine.

  And besides it was time to get ready. Sheila took a bath, rinsing her hair in vinegar to bring out its golden highlights; she painted her nails. Her anticipation grew; her eyes glowed with expectancy. She couldn’t bear to think that she had to waste all this sweet urgency she was feeling on waiting. She wanted to go to him and cling to him and be with him. This is the worst, she realized, because I didn’t know what it was like to be really in love with him before, but I do now. And how did it happen? Henry brought me back to life.

  I’ve got to forget about Faith; I can’t think about her.

  Tonight Sheila would wear the new dress of rough amber silk. Its cut was impeccable; the soft skirt moved when she moved. Spreading it out on the bed, she sat in her underwear and stretched out her splendid long legs, running her fingers over them as she pulled on her nylons. She slipped into the dress and thought, I shouldn’t have sold the house. I should’ve found a way to keep it. But I didn’t. Whatever happens, I did it; I did it to be free for him.

  She was running a comb through her hair when she remembered Rachel straightening the part for her just so, cupping and lifting her chin ever so gently, looking into her eyes all the while asking, “Now who’s the prettiest girl in the world?”

  With Faith at his side, Slater looked very sure of himself, standing at the gateway to the barbecue, greeting late arrivals and saying good-bye to the guests who left early. But inwardly his nerves were about to snap. The pressure had been on him now far too long. Except for the diamond, Reeves had no evidence, no case, nothing; yet the pressure went on and on.

  But now he waited; there was nothing he could do but wait. The party was teeming with guests, and he had to subject himself to their flattery and small talk. Soon it would be over. All afternoon and into the evening, he wondered where Reeves was and what he was doing. He hadn’t appeared at the barbecue; there had been no sign of him. No matter where you are, it’s going to happen tonight. You’re going to die, Reeves. Nobody can stop it.

  It was a quarter to six and the string quartet had packed its instruments before Slater made his way to the master bedroom. He stripped out of his suit and pulled on a navy blue golf shirt and dark blue poplin trousers. Faith asked him if he knew how long he would be and he told her that his shift at the booth ran until ten-thirty but he might be tied up until after midnight.

  He drove the Eldorado into the municipal garage attached to City Hall and parked in the space marked RESERVED, MAYOR. But instead of heading for the commons, he took the elevator up to the second floor of the garage. Around the first turn, the Jeep was parked among other cars, waiting for him exactly as he had left it. Satisfied that everything was in place, he turned, went down the stairs and outside.

  People spoke to him as he crossed through the park and he answered. Night had settled in. Clouds raced northward, sweeping over the city. Minutes later, Slater entered the Chamber of Commerce booth at the entrance to the midway. The members of the city council were out in force, selling raffle tickets for a new Ford Taurus, the money to be used to build a new bandshell. Slater shook hands all around; he shook Reeves’s hand. “Evening, Burris, how’s it going?”

  “Fine, Henry, how about yourself?”

  Thirty yards away, the crowd at the street dance applauded the end of the first number. No one knows what I’m about to do, Slater thought. He stood next to Burris Reeves and smiled out across the crowd. Through the loudspeakers, the sound of the orchestra was reedy and thin, the vocalist unintelligible. Down the midway, children were knocking over bottles, breaking balloons with darts, shooting ducks. At a glance, Slater saw a merry-go-round, a Ferris wheel, octopus rides and caterpillars, a tunnel of love. Girls were screaming joyously. In the sticky heat, the smell of sex hung in the air like woodsmoke; men and women bumped against one another, brushed shoulders, rubbed hips, until the air was rank with it. Slater thought this was true every year. His eyes missed nothing, every muscle in his body alert, sensitive to the whirl of movement around him.

  It surprised him how easy it was to carry on ordinary conversations, even when his throat was dry with nervousness. So he talked on but his mind did not veer from the task that still lay before him, what he knew he had to do. A woman said, “Excuse me, Mr. Slater.”

  He said, “I’m sorry. But don’t I know you?”

  “Meredith Pannett,” the woman said. “Shame on you, Mayor Slater, I worked as a volunteer for you last fall.”

  “Of course.” Slater’s face broadened into a magnanimous smile. He held out his hand. “It’s great to see you.”

  Sheila got behind the steering wheel of the Karmann Ghia and started the engine. She looked at the large, square house flooded with streetlight as if seeing it for the last time, trying to imagine the place belonging to someone else. Never before had she been so acutely aware of time passing and of the changes that inevitably had come and were still to come. A gust of love for her grandmother came into her heart. Where do I fit in? she thought. What will become of me?

  She turned into the driveway, backed out and sped down the winding lane. For Sheila, it was always a mysterious, thrilling feeling to be driving through the night. Within minutes, she was in the thick of things. All around her, drivers sat in their expensive cars, waiting for the light to change. Somewhere a bell was ringing, and grade school girls crossed through traffic in shorts and T-shirts, their tanned arms and legs quivering like deer. Sheila parked on a side street a few blocks away from the carnival lights and hurried from the car.

  She could feel the danger she was bringing down upon the two of them. She had never defied him before, but tonight she couldn’t help herself. She had to be close to him.

  Sheila made her way through the crowd until finally she saw him. A week and a half had passed since she had spent any time with him and again she tried to rehearse what she would say and do. Act nonchalant, she told herself. Sheila knew exactly what she wanted, but not quite how to go about it. What should I say? I had the weirdest dream about you. No, too trite. Maybe: I don’t know what got into me; I came into town so I thought maybe I would … She knew she couldn’t very well say, This is a matter of life and death, although, to Sheila, it was.

  I had to see you. I couldn’t wait any longer.

  She arri
ved at a place ten feet in front of him with the crowd flowing both ways around her when she stopped, afraid to go on. How would Henry react? He would be surprised, naturally, but would he be happy? What exactly did she think she was doing? Sheila couldn’t make sense of it, even to herself. Then she realized that she had been holding her breath all that time, and she gasped for air.

  It was at that moment he saw her—her hair tumbling over her shoulders, her eyes moist with love and so blue they pierced his heart. His first thought was, How could I do without her for so long? His second, What’s gotten into you? Don’t you know what you’re doing?

  Slater watched her walk toward him, zigzagging through the crowd, her skirt shifting softly about her knees. As if oblivious to the attention she generated from the men around her, concentrating entirely on him, she looked shy and scared coming across the midway.

  She was there, before him.

  My God, Sheila, why’re you doing this?

  She looked down at the toes of her shoes, then up at his face. Under his breath, Slater said, “What’re you doing here?”

  “I had to see you,” she answered quietly. “I had to—”

  Quickly he glanced to the side and saw the bottom half of Reeves’s pant leg six feet away. “Fill out these tickets,” he told her out of the police chief’s range, then he slid a booklet of raffle tickets across the makeshift counter of plywood.

  Reeves saw it unfold: suddenly Slater’s attention was no longer on the booth and it was obvious where it had gone. He couldn’t see Slater’s eyes, but the look the girl was giving back to him was deep and seductive and intimate. Much too intimate. There was no mistaking the willfulness that flowed from her. It was pure voltage and it was concentrated directly at Slater.

  Suddenly, for Reeves, it all fell into place—all the loose ends that he had struggled with. He knew.

  He knew why it had happened. It was all in the girl’s face.

  Now Reeves knew everything he needed to know.

  “Don’t do this,” Slater whispered and immediately turned to greet a couple that had come up for tickets. I’ll never recover from this now, he thought. When Reeves sees her here, he’ll know for sure.

  He took her tickets when Sheila had finished filling them out and collected the five dollars she placed in his hand. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Her smile withered. “Nothing,” she said, “nothing’s wrong with me.”

  “You shouldn’t be here like this,” he whispered, his face grave.

  Outwardly Sheila maintained her composure while inside she yearned for him; she wanted to touch him and to be touched. “Don’t hold it against me,” she said. She didn’t like to think that she had caused him trouble, but she was taking risks too and she thought he might appreciate it. She wanted him to do something, say something. She wanted him to tell her he still loved her, still wanted her. She needed to hear him say these things.

  “Why don’t you just go?” he said and turned away, abandoning her. He was gone—down the counter to talk with someone else.

  How could you? she thought, astonished with the swiftness of his departure. Don’t leave me standing here. How cruel that he had the power to destroy all her warmth with a few words. Sheila backed away and fled through the crowd to her car. “Well, thank you,” she muttered to herself, “thank you very much.”

  Then it came to her for the first time: Henry had dropped her. Sheila tried to resist believing it, but she couldn’t. He wasn’t coming back. How could he change so much? In such a short time? I must’ve been out of my mind to think—Panicked, she wheeled the Karmann Ghia out into traffic.

  Biting her lips to keep back the tears, she drove recklessly up the ramp, onto the interstate. She drove but there was no thrill in the speed, no joy in the rush of wind. “Henry—” she sobbed. She continued south, driving aimlessly, speeding, the needle twitching on seventy. The highway had filled with trucks; oncoming lights blinded her. Hopeless. Hopeless. She ached with exhaustion and loneliness and desire, wanting to be in his arms and to go to sleep with his warm body lying crushed upon her.

  Why did I do it? Why did I say those things to him? It loomed in her mind larger and larger. Fleeting lights, silhouettes of trees, starlight—she turned into the graveled driveway on Canyon Valley Drive, leaning her head against the side window. Sheila felt as if this day had taken place a long time ago. It seemed like a year had passed with each minute.

  She climbed out of the car and ran into the dark, empty house. Home, she thought. I’m home! Gramma, I’m home! Until this moment, it had seemed that Henry Slater and their time together was the brightest, clearest thing in her mind and that this house and Rachel’s memory existed only in a haze. Now everything was reversed. Now only this home was real. But Sheila had sold it. For him. She couldn’t get it back.

  The hard truth of what she’d done brought back the sorrow of these many weeks, the sweet and exquisite pain … the loss … the life she’d had with Rachel and the time when all Henry did was give her things, the beautiful feeling she had lost and couldn’t get back again, the place she could never return to, the dream of finding that place again and struggling not to let go, lying in bed clutching the past to her breast and yet feeling it slip away, like breath. That was when it was finally gone, when she could no longer bring back the memory of her own innocence, even in her dreams.

  The tears were running down Sheila’s face and she threw back her head and screamed.

  The Malcolmsons, next door, heard the long, thin, eerie cry through their open windows. Then came a second, like an echo of the first. And a third.

  Ted Malcolmson, his hands full of the Saturday evening newspaper, came into the hall from his study. His wife met him from the kitchen, wiping the dishwater from her hands on her apron and reaching behind herself to untie it. “My God,” she said, “that has to be Sheila. You’d better go over there. I’ll come with you.”

  It was hardly ten minutes later that the telephone rang at the Slaters’ and Faith picked it up.

  “Could you come right away?” asked Annie Malcolmson. “It’s Sheila. She’s awfully upset, Faith. She’s asking for you.”

  32

  At a quarter to ten that evening Slater walked across the midway and ordered a dozen barbecue sandwiches at the Lions Club concession. Reeves thought, What’s going on, Henry?

  Shortly after ten, he slapped the police chief on the shoulder, picked up the bag of sandwiches and set off through the crowd. When he was nearly out of sight, Slater cast a glance back at Reeves silhouetted against the spinning, multicolored lights of the Ferris wheel.

  Reeves stepped aside to allow free passage to the people moving around him, but his eyes were on Henry Slater. Now what’ve you got up your sleeve? He couldn’t be sure of anything tonight; the man was too much of a wild card. Especially now that the girl had entered the picture. Reeves could see that Slater was really strung out. All his instincts told him to get to the District Attorney right away, but he didn’t want to let Slater out of his sight. Tomorrow morning would have to be time enough to swear out a warrant for his arrest.

  With the sack of barbecue sandwiches clutched in his left hand, Slater struck off through the park toward City Hall and was soon swallowed up in the crowd. All was in readiness, or nearly all. He walked briskly, keeping to the schedule he had set for himself hours earlier. The timer controlling the lamp in his office would come on at precisely ten-fifteen. He’d have twelve minutes, no more, to get past the policemen on duty and vanish down the lower-level hallway; they would think he was going to his office by way of the back stairs. It was going to be a little tight.

  Slater didn’t hurry; he was deliberately matter-of-fact in order to give the impression of not hurrying. He could feel the deep pulse of the city. The sound of a produce truck crossing the intersection echoed in the street. The city park and its crowds sank behind him. The street was empty now. He passed dark stores, locked doorways, parked cars.

  He entered the m
unicipal parking garage at the Concepción entrance, immediately took the elevator down to Lower Level One and got out. He looked at his watch. 10:12. Perfect. The door to the police department was three steps down. Going inside he always had the sensation of passing into a cavern hung with torches, bathed in half-light. As his eyes focused, a figure appeared—a patrolman faced him behind the front desk. “Evening, Mayor Slater.”

  “Good evening,” he said. He saw two other patrolmen come to their feet in the background. “Thought you guys might like a snack,” he said, offering them the bag of sandwiches. “You having a fairly slow night?”

  “There’s nothing going on,” one of them said. “We’ve got a couple drunk and disorderlies dryin’ out. That’s all.”

  After minutes of small talk, Slater winked and said, “I guess I’d better get on upstairs. You guys have a nice evening.”

  “You, too,” they said. There were three of them, altogether, one about to go on patrol.

  The hallway was quiet. His shadow loomed up and switched behind him as he went through pools of fluorescent light. Three quarters of the way down the corridor, he looked back over his shoulder: it was exactly as he’d hoped. The officers were too busy eating and laughing to notice his hand on the doorknob to the police chief’s outer office. Slater turned it and stepped inside, immediately shutting the door behind him without a sound. The darkness sealed around him—he felt as if he stood in a black pit. For a moment, he leaned against the door frame, listening, listening. Nothing. Holding his hands out before him like a blind man, Slater moved forward until his fingers brushed the side of the secretary’s desk.

  He shut his eyes to let them adjust to the darkness, still trying to listen for any odd sound at all. Unless Reeves kept the diamond on him, which seemed highly unlikely, it was here somewhere, but Slater didn’t have the time to search for it. Taking the penlight from his pocket and directing it at the floor, he turned it on.