by Warren Adler
‘I think it’s coping with being alone that bugs me the most. The loss of companionship. I think that’s what I miss the most.’
‘You’ll find somebody,’ she said cautiously, her heart pounding. Notice me, she begged him in her heart.
‘That’s out for now. Goldstein says I should cool it. I never thought my life would one day be controlled by an ex-rabbi with halitosis.’ His arm played around to her shoulder.
‘Dear Ann,’ he said. ‘You’re like the only anchor in this damned, stormy sea. I don’t know how we’d survive this without you being here. And the kids. What a godsend you’ve been to the kids. I’ll bet you never bargained for this when you first came here. It was one of Barbara’s better decisions, I guess.’
The house was quiet. To Ann it seemed as if the earth had stopped rotating. She dared not move. His nearness was like an electric current pulsing through her. She felt his breath against her ear.
‘I haven’t had a single moment of solace,’ he said. ‘I can’t seem to wake up from the nightmare.’
For once she resisted caution, yielding to her body’s responses. She turned to face his lips, her eyes probing his. His face moved closer and his lips reached for hers. She felt his tongue move inside her mouth, reach for hers, and, finding it, move and caress it. Her fingers reached for his hair. It had been a particular detail of her fantasy, her fingers entwining themselves in his beautiful, wavy salt-and-pepper hair.
She felt his urgency, the pressing hardness, as his hands groped upward along her thighs, knowing as she opened to him how deeply she wanted him to take her and enter her as she engulfed him. Just as she touched him she felt the shuddering response in herself, startling in its ferocity, like thousands of caressing fingers on every nerve.
His sudden disengagement surprised her, a wrenching movement, and a moment later she heard what had apparently startled him, the front door opening. She was on her knees immediately, straightening her clothes as she kneeled, fussing with the gifts, not turning when she sensed Barbara behind her. Her heart had leaped to her throat and Oliver had moved into the shadows behind the armoire, just out of her vision.
‘That, you, Ann?’ Barbara called. Ann turned briefly in response.
‘Just rearranging the gifts.’
She felt Barbara’s eyes on her back. Please don’t let her go any further, she begged, invoking God.
‘I’m dead on my feet,’ Barbara said. ‘Did you finish the mix for the pastry meat loaves?’
‘Yes.’
‘Kids not home yet?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Well, tomorrow is Christmas. I dread it.’
Ann could feel the tension in the room. She held her breath, frightened that Barbara might want to talk. She did not think she could bear it.
‘Better get some sleep.’ Barbara yawned, backing away. With relief, Ann listened to Barbara’s footsteps ascending the stairs. It was only after the bedroom door had closed that Oliver stepped from the shadows.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.
Reaching out, Ann grabbed his hand and kissed the center of the palm. He quickly drew it away in what seemed like a gesture of rejection. Or rebuke. He tiptoed into the foyer, opening the front door, creating the impression that he had just come into the house. He hurried up the stairs. Straining to listen, she heard him turn the lock of his door.
She stayed in the library a long time, kneeling on the floor before the Christmas tree. Had Barbara seen them? She would not let such speculation intrude on her happiness.
Her eyes drifted upward toward the weak, flickering lights. It was only then that she realized that she had not reminded him to fix them.
13
The smell of burning had set off a reaction in his dreaming mind, suggesting fire and recalling a Boy Scout episode when a fire had gotten out of hand and burned down a country cabin. He was on his feet in a moment, bursting through the doorway, running down the steps in his bare feet.
The branches were smoldering and the flames were just beginning to sprout like orange needles among the green. He kept an extinguisher in a closet under the stairs. Grabbing it, he rushed back to the library, where the flames had already begun to eat away at the paper wrappings of the gifts.
Upending the extinguisher, he squirted the foam in large white arcs on the creeping flames.
‘Daddy.’ It was Eve behind him, stifling a scream.
‘Get back,’ he responded. The flames were quickly under control. But a foul, smoky smell permeated the room as he continued to pour out the contents of the extinguisher until the fire was out.
‘The damned lights,’ he cried. ‘I should have fixed the lights.’
‘You’ve ruined everything.’ It was Barbara’s voice, filled with anger.
‘What was I supposed to do?’ he shot back. ‘Let the whole house burn down?’
‘You knew they weren’t working right. You knew they were dangerous.’
He dropped the extinguisher, banging it on the floor, and glared at her.
‘I suppose I’m being accused of ruining everybody’s Christmas.’
Eve and Josh had begun to poke through the remains. Most of the gifts were charred or utterly destroyed. Oliver had bought Josh a pair of binoculars, which the heat had bent out of shape.
‘Well, it was a nice thought, Dad,’ Josh said, holding up the distorted object.
‘I’ll get you another pair,’ Oliver said.
‘What did you get me, Dad?’ Eve asked quietly, wiping her soot-stained hands on her robe.
‘According to your mother, a not-so-merry Christmas.’ He looked at Barbara, who turned away in contempt. I saved their lives, he thought, his eyes briefly flickering as they caught some sympathy in Ann’s. She had just come into the room.
‘Isn’t it ghastly, Ann?’ Eve said.
‘Merry Christmas, one and all,’ Josh said, holding up his binoculars and smiling at the scorched tree. Orange shafts of the early sun had begun to filter through the windows.
‘I guess there’s nothing left to do but clean up,’ Barbara said, striding into the mess and beginning to sort out the remains. The Sarouk rug was sooty but not burned and the children rolled it away from the tree.
‘I hope you didn’t cancel our fire insurance as well,’ Barbara muttered as he stood around clumsily.
‘Fuck Christmas,’ he said angrily, striding out of the room. He detested her attempt to make him feel guilty.
In his room he lay on the bed and tried to ward off an oncoming massive depression. It was as if all his old values had been tortured into new shapes.
They had seen only the destruction, none of the fatherly concern. Remembering last night he wavered suddenly, almost ready to accept blame. He had, indeed, forgotten to fix the lights, but hadn’t Ann promised to remind him? Ann. The memory of desire stirred him, focusing his mind. His body responded and he caressed his erection. Any female who had found herself in his sights at that moment would have been fair game he decided, dismissing the specter of any romantic involvement. That would be fatal, Goldstein had warned. ‘Don’t get mixed up with another woman. Not just yet,’ he had intoned. ‘It’s safer to court Madam Palm and her five-sisters.’ He had been surprised at Goldstein’s levity. Besides, Ann was too young. Yet he needed a woman. Any woman.
He remembered Ann’s orgasmic reaction to his embrace. So I’m not completely sexless, he decided, like a prisoner in a dark black cell to whom any ray of light is a gift.
He watched his throbbing erection, tense and trembling, as if it hap! a mind of its own. Closing his eyes, he imagined Ann naked, thighs open, waiting, nipples erect. He was plunging his erection into her, plunging deeply, urgendy. He reached for it, feeling the pleasure begin, then recede. Something was intruding on the mechanism of his fantasy. He tried to fight it away, but its momentum was relentless and his body reacted. The tide" of blood ebbed. He saw Barbara’s face, rebuking: ‘You knew they were dangerous,’ she had said about the lights. Had he re
ally?
Leave me alone, he pleaded.
But he did not want to be left alone.
Not alone.
He stayed in bed most of Christmas Day, although both Eve and Josh came in to apologize or commiserate. He wasn’t sure which. They had opened the windows to air out the house and he had said it was all right if they went out for Christmas dinner with Barbara and Ann. He knew it troubled them, not having him join them, but wisely they hadn’t pressed the point. When they left,
Benny jumped on his bed and burrowed his head into his chest. But he stank so badly of doggy odor that finally Oliver had to swat him off. But the odor had given him some purposeful activity for the day.
Getting dressed, he went downstairs, first taking a peek at his orchids. To his dismay, they seemed to be browning along the petal edges, an ominous sign, surprising, since only yesterday they had been in mint condition.
‘Don’t mock me,’ he told them, proud of their beauty, especially compared with Barbara’s more pedestrian plants. He watered them, offering whispered encouragement, then went down to his workroom, lifting a shaking Benny into the big cast-iron sink, which he filled with lukewarm water.
‘You and me, kid. Merry Christmas,’ he told the frightened dog, whose brown eyes begged relief. As he scrubbed the stinking dog he remembered inexplicably their Gift of the Magi Christmas.
They had vowed to give each other something non-material. He was senior at Harvard Law then and they were tight for cash, barely able to survive on her job demonstrating kitchen gadgets at Macy’s. By a stroke of providence – he used those terms then – he had gotten word about the job offer with the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, providing, of course, that he passed the bar exam. He kept the news from her for nearly a week so that it would coincide with Christmas. He had been curious, of course, about what she had gotten him, certain that, whatever she offered, his would be the topper.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she told him after he had made his announcement.
It was, in a way, a total deception on her part. Fair warning unheeded. He had hidden his confusion and displeasure, wondering why she had complicated their lives without consultation. The object is to control our lives, not let our lives control us, he told her, and she had agreed.
‘But kids bring luck,’ she had said. ‘They’re incentive.’
She had sat on his lap, smothering his face with kisses.
‘I was worried sick you’d scold me. But here you’ve come up with that fabulous job. Perfect timing.’
‘The Gift of the Magi,’ he had said, hugging her. ‘A little love child.’
The feeling of uncertainty quickly passed and he remembered how by the end of that Christmas Day they had become incredibly happy. Their future had begun.
He dried the dog and turned on the sauna. Leaving Benny to dry in the workroom, he went upstairs for his robe. The sauna relaxed him, sweated out his terrors, and the dry heat and wet cold that the shower provided left him mellow and relaxed. As he passed the sun-room on the way back to the sauna he noted that the browning had increased on the orchids’ petals and the stems had begun to bend. Looking closely, he inspected the plants, then dug his hands into the soil. The odor on his fingertips was vaguely familiar, like the foam that had spewed out of the fire extinguisher. It couldn’t be. Another sniff confirmed his suspicion. Not Barbara, he thought. Hadn’t she loved his orchids? Cimbidium was one of the few species that could be nourished indoors, and getting them to grow had been both a challenge and a chore. Not Barbara. Was she capable of that? Again he smelled his fingers. The odor was unmistakable. The confirmation removed his doubts. They were his orchids. His. For him to be the recipient of her wrath was one thing, but to vent one’s frustration on a defenseless orchid was criminal. She’s a murderess, he told himself. And a murderess must be punished.
He stormed about the house, thirsting for revenge, seeking a fitting punishment for this hideous crime. He went into the kitchen. Her domain. Opening cabinets, he looked over the myriad arrays of cooking equipment and foods, searching for something, although nothing specific had occurred to him.
Then he saw the neat silver bricks in the refrigerator. Removing one, he unwrapped it and sniffed at the meat. Of course, he thought with anticipatory pleasure. He contemplated the labels on. the spice rack, removing containers of ginger, curry powder, and salt. Then he poured huge quantities over the loaf, kneaded them into the mix, and reshaped it to fit the tinfoil. He repeated the process with the other six bricks, using different spices, substituting sugar for salt, relishing the impending confusion as Barbara’s customers argued among themselves what it was that had polluted the taste.
In the sauna he mourned the orchids, but the manner of his revenge had more than assuaged his sense of grief. He lay back on the redwood slats and felt the delicious heat sink into his flesh. For a moment the emptiness receded as he thought of the answer he had given to her message of death.
14
Harry Thurmont bore the brunt of her rage. Barbara had hurried over to his office after a most debilitating conversation with the Greek ambassador’s wife.
‘She said her guests were polite until two of them vomited, one directly on the table.’
‘That must have put a damper on things,’ Thurmont said, unsuccessfully trying to hide a smile.
‘You’re not taking this seriously, Harry. It’s sabotage.’
She was trying to control herself, to be cerebral rather than emotional. But her morning had been awful, absolutely awful. She had been summoned to the embassy at seven a.m. The Ambassador and Mrs. Petrakis met her in the dining room, which smelled unmistakably of vomit. Without a word, they led her into the kitchen to view the evidence.
‘Taste,’ the ambassador ordered. Their faces were dead white, their eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. Barbara sniffed at the loaves, from which emanated peculiar odors.
‘Taste.’ The ambassador repeated his order. From his wife’s face Barbara could draw no pity, and she dutifully put a lump of meat in her mouth, spitting it out immediately.
‘A caterer. You call yourself a caterer. You poisoned my guests.’
She was too shocked to offer any explanation. Besides, her throat was paralyzed from humiliation.
‘At first I thought the Turks had put you up to it.’
‘The Turks?’
Then I decided I wouldn’t dignify this sort of thing by putting it on the level of a diplomatic incident.’ His anger was accelerating. ‘It tastes like shit. Shit,’ he began to shout as his wife tried to calm him.
Barbara had run from the house in tears.
‘I really believe we have an actionable issue here,’ she said calmly to Thurmont. ‘It’s what we’ve been waiting for. He deliberately ruined the food.’ The memory made her stomach turn. ‘Not to mention the damage to my business. The loss of a client.’
Thurmont stroked his chin.
‘You have proof?’
‘Who else could it be? I believe in Ann.’ She found herself strangely hesitant as the memory of Ann on Christmas Eve floated into her memory. Something barely detectable had surfaced and her mind fished for it. She had, she remembered, sensed the presence of Oliver in the library, a fleeting sensation, just below the level of consciousness. She let the idea pass for the moment as Thurmont interrupted her thoughts.
‘It won’t hold up, Barbara. We could harass. But we won’t win in a way that will satisfy you. It won’t get him out of the house.’
‘He’ll admit it. He’ll have to admit it under oath.’
‘Barbara, do me a favor. Stop practicing law. Becoming an object of ridicule won’t help your case.’
She felt the provocation and her anger erupted.
‘The orchids weren’t a big deal. Not in comparison.’
‘The orchids?’
She hadn’t intended to tell him, but now her words overflowed. She had told about the Christmas-tree fire but had left out the matter of the orchids.
�
�Christmas was ruined. I was throwing out buckets of foam. I saw the orchids and they made me angry. I’m afraid it wasn’t very rational. Besides, I didn’t know the stuff would kill them. That is, I wasn’t sure. I wanted them injured. Not dead.’ He looked at her and shook his head in mock rebuke. She wondered when he would point a finger at her and say, Shame, shame.
‘The name of the game is discipline, Barbara.’
"It’s easy for you to say.’
"And I can’t be available at every little crisis.’
’ Little crisis.’ She glared at him. ‘Harry, I can’t lock up my food. I intend to make this business my livelihood. Why should he interfere with that? It’s… it’s cruel, heartless.’
‘It’s just that you need something more… more damaging. More bizarre.’
‘You didn’t do much with breaking and entering,’ Barbara huffed. But what he said had triggered the errant thought again of Ann and Christmas Eve.
‘Something with moral turpitude,’ Thurmont continued. ‘You need a real hook.’
‘Like another woman?’
‘Not necessarily.’ He looked at her shrewdly. ‘You need something that is damaging enough for a judge to say he’d better get out. It’s a bad influence on the kids. A danger.’
Oliver was there. In the library on Christmas Eve. She was certain. She had sensed it, dismissed it. Little, innocent Ann.
‘At least one good thing has come out of this,’ Thurmont said. ‘Oliver can be provoked. If only the provocation wasn’t so obvious. The thing you must avoid is the appearance of tit for tat. Judges don’t appreciate that. It puts everything on a lower plane and the tendency is to compromise, which is exactly what we want to avoid.’
‘All right, Harry,’ she said smugly. ‘I won’t be obvious.’
What was obvious was that Harry Thurmont and the law could provide only the most limited of options. She was beginning to understand the process. He came around from his desk and stood before her.
‘I have absolutely no objection to your driving him crazy, Barbara. But if he knows you’re trying to drive him crazy, he won’t go crazy. Do you understand that?’