by John Lutz
“We like it,” David said.
Molly thought it was good that no one at the table was carrying a gun.
The waiter approached to take their orders.
Molly caught his attention first.
“I’ll have the cannelloni,” she said.
That night Molly stood before the medicine cabinet mirror in the bathroom and assessed her image. She was preparing for bed and was wearing only her FOR SLEEP OR SEX T-shirt and panties. She was attractive enough, she thought. Not the potential watermelon queen of the state fair like Deirdre, but she knew she appealed to men-at least some men. David. She thought. No, she was sure.
She pulled up the front of her shirt and rubbed a hand across her slightly protruding stomach. Normal, she assured herself. Even Deirdre would have a slight stomach paunch. Maybe even a few stretch marks like the ones in the mirror. Surely any thirty-eight-year-old woman would have given some ground to gravity and age. She pinched the excess flesh around her waist. According to that cereal commercial on TV she needed to lose weight. But then they were trying to talk her into buying cereal instead of doughnuts.
Okay, they’d eat fewer doughnuts.
Dissatisfied with herself, she let the T-shirt drop. She ran some cold water, bent over the washbasin, and began vigorously brushing her teeth.
She’d closed the bathroom door only halfway. It was pushed all the way open and David stood in the doorway looking in at her. He was wearing only his T-shirt and jockey briefs.
“Okay,” he said, “it didn’t go well. It’s a shame Chumley wasn’t there. He seems like a nice enough guy, and they’re obviously crazy about each other.”
Molly leaned closer to the washbasin and spat. “If the woman were a fish, she’d be a piranha.”
David smiled. “I thought you were going to say shark.”
“No. Sharks are honest predators. They take big bites then swim on.” She wiped a washcloth almost viciously across her mouth and dropped her toothbrush back in the porcelain holder. “Piranhas take small bites, but lots of them.”
“Come on, Mol. She isn’t that bad. I’ll admit she’s a little flaky. In fact, a lot flakier than she used to be. But at heart she’s a decent enough person.”
Molly put the toothpaste back in the medicine cabinet and held his gaze in the partly opened mirrored door. “Then why did you two divorce?”
“Incompatibility, like the divorce decree said.”
“Weren’t you the one who decided to end the marriage?”
She saw guilt cross his face for an instant. He’d lied to her.
“Yes,” he said, “at a certain point. But legally which of us left the other would depend on whose lawyer you asked. And maybe I wasn’t such a decent sort myself in those days.”
“She left you, didn’t she?”
“At a certain point, maybe.” A brittle, defensive note had found its way into his voice. “It’s hard to say now. And it doesn’t matter now.”
“Jesus, David!”
She switched off the light and walked into the bedroom, aware that he was close behind her. She got into bed, didn’t look at him as she heard the sheets rustle as he climbed in beside her, felt the mattress give beneath the weight of his body and heard the bedsprings whine. She wondered if there was some way to get bedsprings to be quiet; she was sure they could be heard next door or in the apartment below. She lay facing away from him, silent. He settled down and was silent, too. The window was open but the air conditioner was off. Sounds of nighttime traffic wafted in. Someone shouting far away. What might have been a gunshot. The city kept getting more dangerous.
“Did I hear Michael?” David asked.
“No.” She knew he was only trying to forge an opening so they would talk. All right, if that was what he wanted.
Still facing away from him, she said, “That abortion story you told me, was that true?”
“Of course! Deirdre’s been through a lot, and she feels middle-age sneaking up on her. She’s jealous of you, Mol.”
Molly wasn’t convinced. “Some older woman!”
“It really doesn’t matter,” David said.
“Do you think she’s had cosmetic surgery?”
“I don’t know. Or care.”
“Sometimes you can tell if you look closely. Around the eyelids.”
“To tell you the truth, Mol. I think you’re acting a little paranoid about this. It’s the younger woman who’s supposed to be a threat to the older one.”
Molly sat up in bed and switched on the reading lamp. “I can’t believe it! You’re actually defending her!”
David stayed down. Not rising to the bait, she thought.
“Not really defending her,” he said. “I’m just trying to inject a modicum of reason into this conversation.”
It angered Molly when he did that, tried to take the high philosophical and moral ground. “I don’t want to see her again. I don’t want you to see her again.”
He still didn’t move, his face pressed sideways into his pillow, slightly distorting his words. “We probably won’t run into each other again. And if she and Chumley want to have dinner with us, we can politely decline. Is that good enough?”
“It would be if I didn’t think you were just trying to please me.” She switched off the light and settled back down, lying facing away from him again in the dimness. A breeze pressed in through the open window, swaying the curtains. Shadows danced.
He moved closer, she could hear the sheets rustle, feel the warmth of his breath on the back of her neck. “What’s wrong with doing something just to please you? I love you, Mol. I enjoy doing things to please you.”
“I do things to please you, too, don’t I? Wasn’t I polite to Deirdre? I mean, under the circumstances?”
He moved in closer, snaked an arm over her, kissed her cheek. “You’re always polite. I told you, you’re civilized. It’s one of the things I love about you.”
She didn’t answer.
“Mol?” He kissed her cheek again, then used a finger to toy with her ear. She forced herself to lie still and not respond. “What are you thinking about, Mol?”
“Architecture,” she said.
12
Deirdre stood hunched close to the public phone, as if to keep her conversation as private as possible, though she was alone on the dark street of shabby office buildings and closed shops. There wasn’t much light except for the corner where the phone was, and where some faintly glowing show windows cast pale dim illumination over the sidewalk half a block away. A red neon sign near the intersection said that used watches were sold there. There was a faint but ripe smell of sewage in the night air.
“I’ve decided to stay in New York,” she told Darlene. “To live here.”
“That would be a mistake, Deirdre.” Darlene’s voice on the phone was firm and positive. “You must not have thought this all the way through.”
“Oh, but I have. And I know this is the place for me. That I absolutely belong here.”
Darlene laughed. “I’m not sure anyone belongs here. New York is a hard city. It will allow you anything and forgive you nothing.”
“Like the rest of the world.”
“No, much harder than the rest of the world. Most of that world, anyway”
“You more or less live here.”
“I’m used to it.”
“Then I can get used to it,” Deirdre said.
“What about your job in Saint Louis? What will you do for money here in New York?”
“I have a job lined up.”
“What sort of job?”
“Import and export. In and out.”
Darlene was quiet. Deirdre could imagine her sitting in her apartment, maybe with a cup of tea beside her, with her legs curled beneath her and her hair and makeup perfect. Like in a movie. Maybe she even had a white telephone.
“Listen, Deirdre,” Darlene finally said, “it isn’t that I don’t like your company-”
“Oh, sure.”
“C’mon now, Deirdre, give me a break. I’m only trying to keep you from making the same mistake made by a lot of people unfamiliar with how New York can be for them. It’s a dangerous city.”
“Everywhere is dangerous. I learned that early. Horrible things can happen to you even at home in your own bed.”
“I wish I could change your mind.”
“You try,” Deirdre said, “but you can’t change the way I think. The way I am. Or arrange my life so it’s like yours. You’ll have to have the wisdom to accept what you can’t arrange.”
“Where are you calling from?” Darlene asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to the movies. In New York, you can go to the movies almost any time of the day or night. It’s wonderful.”
A man in a grimy green muscle shirt, cut off so his protruding stomach showed, appeared a few feet away from the phone. He looked like a small, chunky Burt Lancaster, only with darker hair on his head and more hair on his body Even his stomach was dark with hair. He grinned and Burt Lancaster was there even stronger, only uglier, with much coarser features.
“You don’t know the parts of town that are dangerous,” Darlene said on the phone.
“You about done talkin’, sweetheart?” the man asked. Above the grin, his eyes consumed her.
“Who said that?” Darlene sounded alarmed.
“Don’t worry. It’s just some guy waiting to use the phone.”
Burt Lancaster grinned wider.
“Deirdre, listen-”
“Sorry, Darlene, I’ve gotta hang up. The gentleman wants to make a call. I’ll phone you back later about New York.”
She replaced the receiver and started to walk away from the phone. Burt was suddenly in front of her, still with the toothy grin. Didn’t he know he was overdoing it?
“This is a bad neighborhood, sweets. Interesting things can happen to a looker like you.”
“You’re in the wrong role,” Deirdre said. “Even the wrong movie.”
“Role? Movie?” He shook his head, then glanced up and down the dark street. “You’re gonna play the scene just like I tell you, so you might as well accept that fact. You might say I’m gonna be your director.” His hand touched his crotch. “You really wouldn’t mind that at all, would you?”
Deirdre’s right arm shot straight out so the heel of her hand slammed into the man’s nose.
He backed up several steps, his fingers clutching his broken nose. There was blood on his shirt and dribbling down onto his hairy stomach.
For an instant rage almost propelled him toward her, then he seemed to notice what was in her eyes. It wasn’t the fear he’d expected. It was something else entirely. He stood still.
She stepped toward him, and he moved away.
“I was only trying to be nice to you,” he said, spitting blood.
“You’ve already been very nice to me,” Deirdre told him. “Maybe you can be even nicer.”
He stared at her with uncomprehending eyes, then turned and walked quickly away.
She stood still. He glanced back twice to make sure she wasn’t following.
When he saw that she was smiling, he walked even faster and crossed the street.
She shrugged and shook her head. “Men!” she said softly to herself.
13
David was sitting in his office Monday morning, staring idly at his desk photo of Molly and Michael, when Lisa walked in.
Her glance followed his gaze, and she looked quickly away from the photo with a momentary expression of pain. David didn’t notice.
“Someone in the outer office wants to see you,” she said. “A woman named Deirdre.”
David felt his body tense.
“Something wrong?” Lisa asked.
“No…no, nothing.”
“So you want me to send her back here?”
“No,” David said. He didn’t want Deirdre to see his office, didn’t want any more familiarity than was necessary. Or maybe he didn’t want to be alone with her. “I’ll go out front and talk to her.”
As he entered the anteroom, Lisa was sitting down at the curved receptionist’s desk, preparing to busy herself with paperwork. It was a sparsely but comfortably furnished area. Lisa’s desk was near oak double doors to the main offices. There was a black leather sofa, a low table with a smoked glass top with glossy magazines fanned out on it like a colorful poker hand full of face cards. On the wall behind the sofa was a glass-covered collage of dust jackets from books sold by the agency. Deirdre was seated on the sofa with her legs crossed. She was dressed down from Saturday night at the restaurant but still looked glamorous in very tight jeans, a green blouse, and low-heeled shoes. Her perfume, not so much sweet as a musky, primal scent, came to David as she stood up and smiled at him. There was no sound in the reception area other than muted laughter somewhere outside in the hall.
Deirdre took a step toward him. “I guess you’re surprised to see me, David, but I wanted to kind of clear the atmosphere. I got the impression at the restaurant that Molly was a little aggravated by the situation.”
From the corner of his eye David saw Lisa look up from her paperwork.
“No, no,” he said to Deirdre, “she’d just had a hard day and was a little touchy.”
Deirdre’s smile wavered slightly as if she were nervous. “I need your help, David. A favor.”
“Well…”
“A woman I met, Darlene, told me about a furnished apartment near here that’s for rent. I have a key and I’m supposed to go by and look at it. The rental agent should meet me there, but this is the big city, and I guess I’m a little scared to go alone. Anyway, I don’t even know what to look for in a New York apartment.”
“The agent gave you a key?”
“Well, I sort of talked him into it…”
David swallowed as he realized where the conversation was headed. “Listen, Deirdre, I’m not sure-”
She’d moved closer to him; she extended her arm and brushed his chest with the tip of her middle finger, somehow making the gesture extremely intimate. “It is lunchtime, David, and when I realized I was near your office, I thought, My God, I do have a male friend in the big city! I was sure you’d take ten minutes to walk around the corner with me and look at this place. I’d feel a lot better if a man-if you-okayed the apartment before I made any kind of commitment.”
David saw that Lisa was staring at Deirdre curiously now, her paperwork forgotten. Deirdre swiveled her head a few inches and stared back. Immediately Lisa turned her attention to the papers on the desk.
“I don’t know…” David said. He wanted to go with Deirdre, but something in the core of him told him to refuse.
“Ten little minutes out of your life is all I’m asking, David.” Deirdre smiled again, this time with subtle challenge. “Are you afraid Molly wouldn’t approve?”
“It isn’t that,” he said. He glanced over at Lisa, who was studiously not paying attention.
“Now, David…”
“All right,” he heard himself say “Give me a minute while I save what’s on my computer.”
“Sure,” Deirdre said. “Better safe than worry. And thank you, David! You don’t know how reassuring this is.”
She watched him as he disappeared through the oak doors behind the receptionist’s desk.
Now Lisa did look up from her paperwork. “There’s a copy of Home Companion on the coffee table for you to read while you’re waiting,” she said. “It might give you some decorating ideas.”
“Thanks,” Deirdre said. “I see it right next to a copy of Mind Your Own Business.”
Only seconds after Deirdre and David had left the office, Josh wandered in and stood at the desk near Lisa.
He gave her his amiable grin that always made her think he should be the host of a TV game show. “Looking out for your boss, Lisa?”
Obviously embarrassed, she glared at him. “I’ve got a feeling he n
eeds looking out for. Did you see that woman?”
“Did I ever.”
“She wants him to help her look for an apartment.”
No kidding? I think she might be his ex-wife.” He placed his palms on the desk and leaned close to her, still grinning. “You jealous?”
She pretended to stab at him with a pencil and he faded back neatly to avoid the sharp point. “Find something to do, Josh.”
“An apartment…” she heard him say as he walked back toward his office. “A pied-a-terre.”
“Be quiet, Josh.”
“A love nest…”
14
It was a corner apartment on the thirty-fourth floor of a stone and glass building on Second Avenue. The hall was white and carpeted in beige. At the end of the hall was a tall, narrow window, but most of the illumination was provided by brass sconces set high on the walls to reflect light off the white ceiling. The apartment doors looked like darkly grained wood but David suspected they were steel.
Deirdre handed him the key. The small cardboard tag attached to it by a string read 34F. After making sure they were at the right door, he fit the key into the deadbolt lock above the doorknob, turned it, then pushed the door open. Stale air wafted toward the hall, as if the apartment had been unoccupied for a while.
“You’d better go first, David,” Deirdre said behind him.
He stepped into the apartment. The living room was bright, small, and uncluttered, with abstract prints on the walls, a low-slung modern sofa and angular slate-topped tables. A black, lacquered wall unit held a large-screen TV, a stereo, and some crystal animal figures. Half a dozen books that appeared never to have been read were propped between large onyx bookends in the shape of charging bulls that seemed to be squeezing the books together.
A loud metallic click made him turn.
Deirdre had locked the door behind them.
David looked back to the apartment’s interior. “Hello!”