Snakehead tct-4

by Peter May

  They picked in silence at their food for a few minutes before Steve took a mouthful of wine and asked, ‘Any regrets?’

  She met his eye. ‘Every minute of every day,’ she said, and his disappointment this time was clear, almost tangible.

  ‘So now he’s in America, you’ll get back together?’

  ‘Not a chance.’ Her voice was strained by hurt and anger.

  Steve looked perplexed, but also relieved. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he’s been in Washington for nearly a year, Steve. Because he’s never once tried to contact me. I read about his appointment in January, and I spent every night for weeks sitting by the phone waiting for him to call. He never did. Obviously he no longer feels about me the way I feel about him. He got a hell of a shock today. I don’t think for a minute he expected to see me in that hangar at Ellington Field.’

  It seemed extraordinary to her that she was saying these things out loud. Things she had been keeping bottled up inside all this time. And here she was unburdening herself to a man she had only just met. But there was something in his eyes, an empathy there that was drawing her out of herself, allowing her to release the mental toxins that had been poisoning her for so long. She felt better, even as she spoke.

  ‘I’ve been wondering about that ring on your wedding finger,’ he said.

  ‘Jesus!’ She laughed out loud. ‘You like picking at sores, Steve, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, especially when you pick off that itching scab and make it sore all over again. The good bit is that it stops being itchy for a while.’

  ‘The point being that the raw pain is better than the itch?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  She drained her wine glass and held it out for him to refill. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Here’s the raw pain. I married a guy when I was too young to know any better. A lecturer in genetics at Chicago. Good-looking, smart as hell, great future. He hanged himself after being convicted of raping and murdering one of his students.’ She took a large mouthful from her refilled glass.

  Steve was stunned to silence and took a moment or two to recover. ‘Jees, Margaret, that’s one scab maybe I should have left unpicked.’

  ‘But you’re right,’ Margaret said, hanging on to control by the merest thread, ‘the raw pain is better than the itch.’ She turned the gold band around the base of her wedding finger. ‘Actually, I only started wearing this again to keep guys like you at a distance — and to keep them from asking awkward questions.’

  He reached out and took her hand in his. It was firm and cool and held her gently. His eyes looked into hers with an almost unbearable directness. ‘No more questions,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

  She laughed. ‘Bit late now.’

  But he didn’t laugh with her. ‘Never too late,’ he said very seriously. ‘For any of us.’

  * * *

  They walked side by side in the dark toward the three arches of the Waterwall. Through them, illuminated by concealed lighting, water poured in a constant stream down a high wall shaped like a horseshoe around an artificial pool. They could see the silhouettes of people against the water, moving between the arches, lovers hand in hand, a woman with a long shawl dancing in the fine spray, a slow elegant dance of the night. Behind them, two tree-lined pedestrian walkways ran along either side of a long, manicured lawn, toward the rising shadow of the Transco Tower, lights still shining in every window.

  Couples sat on benches under the trees, locked in embrace, kissing in the darkness. Shadowy figures moved about on the lawn below. As they neared the wall, Margaret felt the cool spray in the warm air. They had walked this way in silence since leaving the restaurant, and now, finally, Margaret put her arm through Steve’s. She felt his warmth and his strength through his shirt. But she was also aware at once of his uncertainty when at length he said, ‘I was told this afternoon that Li Yan was being officially attached to this investigation.’

  She tensed, and then immediately forced herself to relax again. ‘So?’ she asked.

  He said, ‘I didn’t want to say anything during the meal. I figured I’d inflicted enough damage already.’

  ‘So you saved this one till you knew my guard was down, huh?’ He looked at her quickly, and saw in the reflected light of the streetlamps in the road, that she was smiling. He was relieved.

  ‘I didn’t know how you’d cope with it, that’s all,’ he said. Then added quickly, ‘Being in close contact with him again, you know, while this thing’s ongoing.’

  She shrugged. ‘I’ll just have to, won’t I?’ She thought for a moment. ‘I’ll avoid him when I can, and ignore him when I can’t.’

  They were right up at the Waterwall now, the spray falling on them like a light drizzle. The arches were formed in a free-standing wall which reached an apex centrally above them. Beyond was a cobbled area leading to the pool below the curve of the Waterwall itself. The woman with the shawl was still dancing, drifting light-footed over the cobbles, arms stretching her shawl out to either side like the wings of a butterfly.

  Steve took Margaret’s hand and led her through one of the arches. ‘Hey, it’s wet,’ she protested.

  ‘Does it matter?’ he asked.

  ‘I guess not.’

  Her hair always separated into curling strands when it was wet. She brushed it out of her face, and almost before she knew it, Steve had stooped to kiss her lightly on the lips. She drew back.

  ‘Hey, I gave you permission to call me Margaret, not to kiss me.’

  ‘Who’s asking?’ he said, and he pulled her toward him and kissed her again. This time she didn’t draw away, and she felt his arms slip around her waist, and she draped her arms over his shoulders and raised herself on tiptoe to kiss him back.

  * * *

  Their cab drew in past a Pizza Hut to the car park of the Holiday Inn. Across South Main, the floodlit heart of the Texas Medical Center filled the night sky. Margaret and Steve walked into the hotel foyer. As always it was busy. People in wheelchairs, others hobbling on crutches. Pale-looking Arab men whose wives were robed from head to toe leaving only the narrowest strip across the eyes. Eastern European children with large, dark-ringed eyes and a dreadful pallor. Sick people. Wealthy foreigners come to America to buy the best medical care available. A bunch of Steve’s pathologists and investigators was drinking at the bar of the Bristol Room restaurant. ‘Hey Steve,’ one of them called. ‘Where you been, man? Come and get a beer.’

  Someone else shouted, ‘And bring the medical examiner with you. It’s not fair keeping her all to yourself.’

  Steve grinned, embarrassed. ‘I’m having an early night, guys.’ There was a low murmur of suggestive ‘ooohs’. ‘And you should, too,’ he added. ‘Heavy day tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ someone else hollered, and they all saluted.

  ‘Down boys,’ Steve shouted. ‘Or I’ll set my eyebrows on you.’

  They could still hear the laughter as the doors of the elevator slid shut, and then the silence between them was broken only by the hum of the motor.

  ‘I enjoyed tonight,’ Margaret said.

  ‘Me, too. We must do it again sometime.’ Steve paused for just a moment. ‘Like tomorrow.’

  ‘Before you leave, you mean?’ She didn’t really intend it, but there was a slight sting in her tone.

  He looked at her seriously. ‘I get out of the Air Force in six months, Margaret. That was the deal. They pay me through med school, I give them three years of my life. I was doing great working out of the ME’s office in San Diego when they called in my contract. But I’m a free man in April.’

  ‘A lot can happen in six months.’ She knew it was way too early to make any kind of commitment.

  ‘A lot can happen in twenty-four hours,’ he said. ‘Live for the moment. We could be dead tomorrow.’

  ‘Yeah, or still alive and full of regrets.’

  They got out on the fifth floor and started down the long hallway, walking slowly so as to delay the moment when they wou
ld stop at Margaret’s door. When eventually they got there, they stood for a long time not knowing what to say. Finally Margaret reached up and kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘See you tomorrow, then.’

  ‘Margaret…’

  But she put a finger up to his lips to stop him. ‘We can’t run before we can walk, Steve. And I’m still learning how to walk again.’

  He nodded solemnly. ‘I could lend you a bicycle.’

  Which made her smile, and she kissed him again. On the lips this time. Then, ‘Good night,’ she said firmly, and she unlocked her door and stepped into the darkness of her room.

  She knew immediately he was there. She could feel his presence almost as clearly as if she could see him. But her eyes had not yet adjusted, and all she could see, through net curtains, were the illuminated twin peaks of St Luke’s Medical Tower across the road in Medicine City. She fumbled for the light switch without finding it, and then the bedside lamp flickered on, and she saw Li perched on the edge of her bed, the strain of apprehension etched clearly on his face.

  ‘You bastard,’ she said, almost in a whisper. ‘Do you have any idea what you put me through these last ten months?’

  He looked surprised. ‘You knew I was in Washington?’

  ‘Of course I knew you were there, for Chrissake! It was in all the papers. This isn’t China, Li Yan. It’s not a state secret when someone gets appointed to a new job.’

  He appeared crestfallen. Unable to meet her eye. ‘You’re the only reason I took the job,’ he said.

  It was both what she wanted and didn’t want to hear. ‘So it took you all this time not to find my phone number?’

  Li stood up. He was like a giant in the room, both his size and his presence filling it. But it was in a small voice that he said, ‘I lost my nerve.’

  Margaret had no patience with him. ‘Oh, gimme a break! You’re a big boy now, Li Yan.’ And then she remembered the red spots around his eyes earlier in the day. That he had wept over Wang. Big boys weren’t supposed to cry either.

  ‘It was you who walked out on me, remember,’ Li said.

  ‘You know why.’

  But Li pressed on. ‘We hadn’t spoken in nearly six months. When I was still in China it all seemed like it would be easy. I would come to America, and I would pick up a phone and we would be together again.’

  ‘So why didn’t you?’

  ‘Because you were still half a continent away, Margaret. Because I had no idea whether you would want to be with me again.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus!’ She bit her lip and looked away from him. ‘How could you ever doubt it?’

  ‘Very easily,’ he said. ‘I loved you, Margaret. But whatever you say, you left me. Got on an airplane and flew back home. I couldn’t know that there was any way back for us. And I got scared to ask in case there was not.’ He held out his hands in front of him, a gesture of despair. ‘When I got here, the job just took over. It is twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Time passes. And it is easier to live in ignorance than with an unpalatable truth.’

  But she wasn’t about to forgive him so easily. ‘Is that one of your Chinese proverbs, Li Yan? One of those little pieces of wisdom that just roll so easily off the tongue? Because, you know, there’s been nothing easy for me, any single day in fifteen months. We had no future in China, you know that. But I’ve spent every waking minute since I left wondering if I made a mistake, knowing that I was just as unhappy here on my own.’

  She glared at him, hating him for making her love him. Hating herself for being so weak.

  ‘Margaret…’ Li took a step toward her.

  She turned her back on him, moving off toward the window, looking sightlessly out on a semiderelict car lot and the lights of the traffic on South Main. ‘I don’t want to hear it, Li Yan,’ she said. ‘Just go away.’

  Li stood helplessly looking at her. It was the rejection he had always feared. They had encountered each other by chance, but he had had to steel himself to come up here, to face her hostility, to try to explain himself. He wasn’t about to turn back now. He stepped up behind her and put a hand lightly on her shoulder. He was not expecting the speed with which she turned around and took her open palm across the side of his face. His cheek stung, and he stood smarting, waiting for the next blow. It came this time from the other side and he turned his face with the slap to take some of the force out of it. But still it hurt. She had strength in her hands and her arms. But now he caught them, and their strength was no match for his.

  ‘Are you done hurting me now?’ he asked her.

  She made a vain attempt to free herself. ‘Not by a long way,’ she whispered. And his mouth was on hers, soft and moist and sweet, and she felt a strange falling sensation that travelled all the way through her to her loins.

  He let go of her arms and lifted her in his, as if she weighed nothing at all, carrying her to the bed and dropping her on the bedspread. As she struggled to wriggle out of her jeans and pull off her tee-shirt, she saw the light from the window fall obliquely across his pectorals, his white shirt dropping to the floor. She felt guilty now, that she had been kissing another man only an hour before. Li fell on top of her, his smooth skin seeming to envelop her, his hands running over all her softness. His mouth pressed hard to hers. She had not been aware of him removing his pants, but she felt his nakedness hard against her like a rock. So much, she thought, for ignoring him when she couldn’t avoid him. His mouth slid down to her nipples and pulled them in, each in turn, and she moaned when eventually she felt him slip inside her, and all thoughts of Steve were finally banished.

  ‘Jesus! Sweet Jesus,’ she whispered. It had never been like this with anyone else.

  Chapter Four

  I

  Margaret stood outside the NASA hangar, still in her gown and apron. The clear evening sky was turning pink as the dipping sun promised a spectacular sunset. Bombers, jets and Second World War fighters had been taking off and landing all day, swooping overhead, to the cheers of the crowds gathered along the edges of the tarmac. Drinks tents and hamburger stalls had kept them fed and watered as they watched displays by Russian Polikarpovs, British Hurricanes and American Wildcats, oblivious to the conveyer belt of bodies being processed in the large white hangar just a few hundred yards away. The car parks were full. The Wings over Houston Airshow had been a great success.

  The last of the refrigerated semitrailers was gone, autopsies completed, the bodies now in the hands of the morticians who would prepare them for shipping back to their families in China once identities had been established. As yet, more than two-thirds of them remained John and Jane Does. Fifty-two men and fourteen women. All of them in their twenties. None had carried official papers of any kind, even forgeries. Their clothes were not their own. There had been clues in Wang’s diary as to several of the names, and others had carried personal items — letters, photographs, engraved jewellery — that would eventually identify them. A sad collection of anonymous young men and women whose dreams had turned to death on a hot day in Texas.

  ‘Going to be another scorcher tomorrow.’ She turned to find Steve standing beside her, almost as if he had read her mind. And she was flooded with a sudden guilt at the memory of what had happened the night before. He deserved better.

  ‘You look tired,’ she said. There were deep shadows under his eyes, and some of the sparkle had gone out of them.

  ‘Didn’t sleep too good,’ he said. Margaret glanced instinctively at the plaster on his finger. He caught the look. ‘That,’ he said, ‘among other things.’ And she felt a fresh prickle of guilt.

  ‘I take it there’s been no word back from Washington on the lab results.’ She knew there hadn’t, but she was desperate to deflect the conversation away from the subject of her and Steve. It was ironic, she thought, that just as she had met, for the first time in years, a man who might have interested her, Li Yan appeared back in her life, as if determined somehow to keep her trapped in her cycle of unhappiness. And then she remember
ed, with a slight tremor, how it felt when Li made love to her and she thought how she could take any amount of that kind of unhappiness.

  ‘I figure it’ll be tomorrow at the earliest before we get anything definitive,’ Steve said. ‘By which time,’ he added, ‘I’ll be back in DC.’

  ‘And I’ll be headed back to Huntsville to try and sort out the mess with my landlord.’

  ‘What mess is that?’

  ‘Oh, he’s trying to evict me because I changed the locks.’

  ‘Why d’you do that?’

  ‘Because the guy’s a real sleazeball. He’s been harassing me with suggestive comments ever since I signed a lease on the place. And then I caught him sneaking in and going through my underwear.’

  ‘So why don’t you just find somewhere else?’

  ‘Oh, because there’s still six months of the lease to run, and I paid up front. And I didn’t want to be bothered right now with trying to find a new place.’

  He looked at her for a long time. Then finally he said, ‘Why do I get the feeling, Margaret, that you’re happy to talk about anything but us?’

  ‘Because there is no us!’ she snapped, angry that he was forcing her to confront this. And she turned and walked briskly back into the hangar, feeling like she had just inflicted hurt on some poor vulnerable animal who had trusted her. She pulled off her apron and gown, hopping briefly at her table to rip off plastic shoe covers, and headed for the row of sinks at the far end.

  She scrubbed her hands and forearms vigorously with anti-bacterial soap as if she thought there might be blood on them, and that it might not come off. After a few moments she turned and saw Steve at the next sink calmly washing his hands.

  ‘Does this mean I don’t get to take you out to dinner tonight?’ he asked with a wry, resigned smile on his face.

  ‘Sir!’ The urgency in the call made both of them turn. One of the AFIP investigators was running down the hangar toward them. ‘Sir.’ He stopped in front of them, slightly breathless. ‘We’re outta here.’