But she relished the pained look that would register on that Lee Van Cleef mug of his, when he saw the sacks from North Park stores.
“They don’t have a Limited at Brady Eighty,” she’d explain innocently, shrugging.
And he’d shake his head, eyes wide.
Childish of her, she supposed, as she tooled her midnight-blue Nissan 300 ZX across the bridge at Moline; the river tonight was smooth, shimmering with ivory, reflecting the three-quarter moon that rode the sky like a gray-smudged broken dinner plate. The fuel-injected toy she drove had been Nolan’s gift to her last Christmas. She felt a fool, and an ungrateful one at that, for considering him a Scrooge.
Who cared why he had affection for Jon? He clearly had it, despite his surly treatment of the “kid.” And Jon clearly looked up to Nolan, despite his efforts to stand up to him and be equally surly.
She knew the story. She knew Jon had been the nephew of a man named Planner, an old guy who ran an antique shop in Iowa City, who on antique-buying jaunts would seek out, scope out and scheme out what Nolan referred to, euphemistically, as “institutional jobs.” Robberies was what they were, and when Nolan had been on the outs with those Chicago gangsters, Planner had helped him line up “one last job,” asking Nolan to take Jon along, his green, young nephew, whose criminal experience had been limited to a couple of gas station stickups with several wild friends. As a favor to Planner, and out of desperation, Nolan had undertaken the job—a bank robbery—with Jon and those two wild friends, one of them a young woman who worked at the bank in question. The “job” had gone well enough, but shortly thereafter, the Chicago gangsters descended on Nolan, who got shot up, bad.
Jon, however, had stuck around after the “job” and spirited the wounded Nolan away, to safety and a doctor.
Maybe it was that simple—Jon had saved Nolan’s life, once; maybe that was what linked them. She knew, too, that the old antique shop guy, Planner, had later been killed by the Chicago people, and that Nolan felt responsible, and seemed to have taken the “kid” under his wing, after that. They’d pulled a couple more jobs and faded into separate, straight lives: Nolan with Nolan’s, Jon with this rock ’n’ roll band he traveled with.
He was also a cartoonist, Jon was, and apparently his rock ’n’ roll band had split up and his creative energy was being channeled into comic books, at the moment. He had set up a corner of the rec room downstairs, by the sliding glass doors facing the swimming pool (covered over with plastic now), where he could work in “natural light,” he said. He had a drawing board where he worked on big sheets of heavy white paper, drawing in pencil, then going over it in ink. He was really quite good—the drawings were realistic but pleasantly goofy; it was something about outer space, sort of a skewed Star Trek. She had found one of the comic books lying around and she had read it and found it amusing. She would hate to admit that, but she did find it amusing.
He was no trouble. None at all. Quiet. Living his own life. He filled the little refrigerator behind the bar with little cans of orange juice, which seemed to be his only breakfast. She didn’t know where he took his other meals—he was in and out, driving Nolan’s Trans Am, while his own vehicle, an old light blue Ford van from his band days, was at a nearby service station for some work. What he was doing with his time away from the house, she had no idea. Mostly he spent long, long hours at the drawing board.
The problem wasn’t Jon. The problem was his presence. This Las Vegas trip was coming up in two weeks. She had counted on having a month with Nolan to work on him. To put her plan in motion. To put it simply, her plan was to get Nolan to marry her—”on the spur of the moment”—in Vegas. In one of those charmingly sleazy little wedding chapels she’d read about. She would orchestrate it so it was his idea. Nolan was the kind of man who only acted on his own ideas; she knew that well—she’d been giving him ideas to have ever since she met him.
But having that extra person in the house was throwing things off kilter. Their sex life was off—she was uncomfortable having sex while somebody else roamed the house. Even though Jon stayed downstairs, she found herself trying not to make noise, during lovemaking, not wanting Jon to hear. Why she cared, exactly, she didn’t know; but she did. It bothered Nolan too, whether he knew it or not—their little ritual was undone: he could no longer go downstairs to shower while she luxuriously bathed and readied herself for him. They had to share the bathroom, and sharing a bathroom is a sure way to kill the mystery.
She loved this man so. He was all she had in the world; both her folks were gone, and her life without him had been a mess: a failed attempt at college; working as a waitress at a Denny’s, for Christ’s sake. To every other guy she’d ever known she was just a piece of ass. Nolan treated her like a person, with a certain unspoken respect. And he treated her like a piece of ass, too, when the time was right, and she liked that as well.
She wanted his name. She wanted his child. She wanted the whole traditional nine yards.
God, he was good in bed. She loved that musclely, hairy, scarred body of his. She knew the map of him like the expert traveler she was—it excited her to think that knives and bullets and years had conspired to make the slightly surreal work of art that was his body. She even liked the potbelly; it showed he was human after all.
She was well aware that Nolan was a father figure to her. She’d always liked older men; she’d always had a crush on her own father, a steelworker, a tough, grizzled, silent man who had never once told her he loved her, but she knew he did. Like she knew Nolan loved her. Even if he hadn’t ever said it, goddamn him.
When her father died, six months ago, and she went home to the funeral, alone, having told Nolan not to come, she stood at the grave and said good-bye to her one father and went back to the ranch-style house in Moline to be with her other father.
Coming back from her father’s funeral, she’d decided: she was going to marry Nolan. It had been a long, slow, steady campaign; only recently had she openly tipped her hand. And he had reacted well. He would come through. All he needed was the right coaxing, the right stroking, the right nudging . . .
And now, two weeks till Vegas, there was a monkey wrench in the works, a short, blond monkey wrench named Jon.
Yesterday she’d finally talked to Jon about it. Saturday afternoon—Nolan’s didn’t open till five o’clock, and they didn’t go down there Saturdays till four-thirty—Nolan and his golfing buddies were upstairs watching some basketball game on the twenty-seven-inch Sony. She had slipped downstairs where Jon was hunched at his drawing board; the drapes on the wall of windows and sliding doors were drawn, letting in the light of an overcast day, the trees that surrounded their backyard, and its pool, were brown and gray and skeletal, touched with snow.
“How can you see?” she asked him.
He glanced up from his work at her, and immediately back at it; he was inking a penciled bug-eyed monster who was clutching a half-naked female space person in one clawed hand.
“Too busy to get up and turn on the light,” he said, stroking his upper lip, where his mustache had been, squinting at the page as he laid graceful strokes of ink on his penciled drawings.
She turned on the Tiffany-shaded hanging lamp over the pool table.
He smiled, without looking at her, and said, “Thanks.”
She went behind the bar and got herself a Coors Light from among his orange juice cans in the little refrigerator. She was wearing Calvin Kleins, very tight, and a yellow Giorgio T-shirt, and no bra. She looked like a million dollars and goddamn well knew she did. And this little twerp paid her about as much attention as if she were Ma Kettle.
She swigged the beer, mannishly, and crossed her arms on the considerable rack of her breasts. “Am I so tough to look at?” she asked.
He winced; whether it was from confusion or the distraction of being interrupted, she couldn’t tell.
He said, “You’re a knockout. And you know it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He sighed; smiled at her politely. “You’re a dish, okay? Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but if I don’t have this book done by Monday, I’m going to miss deadline. And since I’m paid on publication, my paycheck would in that case be a month late, and I can’t afford that. Excuse me.”
And he turned back to his work.
She swigged the beer again. “How long are you going to be staying?”
“What?”
“How long are you going to be staying?”
He got up from the drawing board and went to the sink behind the bar and ran the water and cleaned his brush. He said, “Do you mean, when am I going to be leaving?”
“Maybe I do.”
“Soon,” he said, passing by. He smiled tightly, politely, and sat at the drawing board and dipped the brush in a little black bottle of black ink. He began laying smooth strokes down, bringing the monster and the girl to life.
“You’ve been here two weeks,” she said.
“It’ll be two weeks tomorrow.”
She swigged her beer. “So what’s the story?”
Without looking at her, he said, “The story is I’m behind deadline. I don’t have time to go out and find a place to live right now. I have checked around some, with no luck. Monday, I’ll start making some serious rounds.”
“You’re going to live here in the Quad Cities?”
His eyes stayed on his work. “Just temporarily. I’d kind of like to move out to California, but I just can’t take the time to drive out there, with no place lined up to stay. I have a monthly comic book to produce.”
From behind them, a voice said, “As long as you’re in the Cities, you’ll stay here.”
Nolan.
He was wearing a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, first two buttons open, black-tinged-white hair curling up from his chest; and gray slacks, which fit him snugly. He walked by her without a word. He had such a nice ass. He went over and looked at what Jon was drawing.
“You get paid for that?” he asked.
“Not enough,” Jon said.
Nolan shrugged, then said to Jon, but looking sharply at Sherry, “Don’t waste your money on some hotel room or apartment. Till you’re ready to move on, you’ll stay here.”
“Nolan, I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself. . .”
“You’re practically a midget. You’ll stay here.”
Jon was shaking his head, smiling but frustrated. “I appreciate you bailing me out like this, Nolan, but fish and company stink in two days. It’s been almost two weeks, and I’m starting to reek.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Nolan said, and went upstairs.
Sherry felt her eyes welling with tears, but it was anger as much as hurt. She swigged the beer; slid open one glass door and stood and looked at the brown plastic covering the pool. She was very cold but she didn’t give a shit. Her nipples dotted the i’s of her yellow Giorgio’s T-shirt. She didn’t care.
“A little cold for a dip, isn’t it?” a voice behind her said.
Jon.
“Go away,” she said.
“Look. I’m sorry.”
“What do you have to be sorry about?”
“You have a right to be mad. I just moved in like I owned the place. You have a relationship going with Nolan. I’m messing that up. I’m sorry.”
“Nobody has a relationship with that man. It’s like having a relationship with a chair.”
Jon touched her arm; she looked at him. He was smiling.
“He’s a fucker,” he said, matter-of-factly. “But he’s our fucker.”
That made her smile, and she allowed Jon to take her by the arm back into the rec room, where she realized, suddenly, she was shivering.
“I’ll be out of here, early next week,” he said. “Soon as I find a place.”
“You don’t have to,” she said. “I’m just feeling bitchy. I get a little irritated, before my period. For three weeks, before.”
He grinned at that, glanced at her chest, glanced away.
Then she understood.
He sat at the drawing board and began to work. “I am moving,” he said. “Soon. That’s been my plan, that’s been my intention. Nolan can’t make me stay.”
She put a hand on his arm. “You’re attracted to me,” she said, rather breathlessly, like she’d just figured out the meaning of life.
He glanced at her, quickly, rolling his eyes. “No kidding.”
“I . . . I thought you hated me.”
“You could make a man out of Boy George.”
She pulled a barstool over and sat and smiled at him. “I get it, now. You’re afraid of me.”
He sighed. “I’m uncomfortable around you.”
“I make you feel uneasy. And a little guilty.”
“Quit it.”
She was grinning. She liked this. “Because you look at me and certain thoughts go through your mind. We’re about the same age, aren’t we?”
“Give or take a century.”
“And I’m Nolan’s woman.”
“That’s a little arch, isn’t it? Is that how you think of yourself?”
“Sure,” she said. “I love the guy. And you do, too.”
Jon looked at her and made a disgusted face.
“I understand why you’ve been avoiding me,” she said. She slid off the stool, leaving the now-empty can of beer on the bar. “Out of respect.”
“Respect?”
“I’m Nolan’s property.”
“Oh, please . . .”
“And the one thing in this world neither one of you would steal . . . is something from each other.”
He looked away from the drawing board; looked at her hard, with a slow, barely-there smile.
“No wonder he likes you,” Jon said. “You’re smart.”
“I got nice tits, too.”
“Yes, and I’d thank you to quit driving me crazy with them. I got work to do.”
She went over to him and held out her hand.
“Friends?” she said.
“Why not?” he said, and shook her hand.
But the handshake lingered, and they both felt the danger. And in a look they told each other that they would still keep their distance.
Now, pulling the blue 300 ZX into the drive, the smudged three-quarter moon painting the landscape ivory, Sherry was confused. Talking to Jon had done no good; she didn’t dislike him, now—but she’d traded her negative feelings for feeling attracted to him. Now she had another man in the house to distract and attract her, complicating the situation even more. She had work to do; she had to concentrate. She had a man to marry. A man she was currently pissed off at, by the way. Yes, she was good and pissed at Nolan—for standing up for Jon yesterday, and quietly putting her in her place.
And despite what Jon said, she had the nagging feeling he’d be underfoot for weeks yet. When was her life going to get back to goddamn normal?
She gathered her Limited sacks and stepped out of the car and somebody grabbed her, a hand slipped over her mouth, an arm looped around her stomach, yanked her into the bushes. Something wet smeared her face and she smelled chloroform.
Somebody was dragging her, through the bushes, over the rough, viny, snowy ground, down the incline; she heard a motor running, a car.
She heard a voice, an older man’s voice, very smooth, very soothing, very folksy, saying, “Nice work, son.”
And a younger voice, an immature voice, said, “Thanks, Pa.”
She saw the moon above, that broken-plate moon, go smudgier and gone.
8
NOLAN, GETTING HUNGRY, walked downstairs and found Jon at the drawing board; the drapes were drawn, but the sliding glass doors let in nothing but night.
“Did Sherry say anything to you about when she’d be getting back?”
Jon reached over and turned the sound down on his portable radio; he’d been listening to an oldies station—“Mack the Knife” continued brassily, but softly.
“She doesn
’t say that much to me, Nolan.”
“Hmm.”
“Is she late? What time is it, anyway?”
“After seven. She went shopping. Stores close at five-thirty.”
“Could she have stopped for a bite to eat?”
“Maybe. We were supposed to eat together. But she is ticked at me.”
Jon shrugged, said, “Sorry,” and returned to his work.
Nolan was going up the steps when Jon said, “That’s funny.”
Nolan, one foot on the third step, other foot on the fourth step, said, “What is?”
“I was upstairs stealing a beer out of the kitchen about an hour ago. I thought sure I heard her pull in.”
Nolan thought about that. Then he shrugged, too, and went upstairs.
A little after eight he looked out the front entrance, which was actually a door along the side, as the garage took up the front end of the house; he had to stick his neck out to see the driveway. Which he did, and saw her red Jap sports car.
He also saw the white shopping sacks, scattered on the driveway, like rumpled oversize snowflakes.
He turned his head back into the house and called, “Jon!”
And rushed out into the cold night.
Streetlights and moonlight conspired to make the outside of Nolan’s house as bright as noon. He could see everything—except Sherry. She wasn’t in the car; the rider’s side was locked—the driver’s side wasn’t. He opened the door and reached under the dash and sprung the latch that popped the hood. He felt the engine. It wasn’t warm. This car had been sitting awhile.
He heard Jon’s footsteps crackling on the icy cement behind him; then Jon was next to him, coatless, hands dug in his jeans pockets, breath smoking, saying, “What is it?”
“I’m not sure.”
The drive had been shoveled and salted, but a light snow had fallen that afternoon and he could make out where something—or somebody—had been dragged through the dust of snow. He quickly followed the trail to the edge of the drive, to where the bushes started.
“Fuck,” he said.
Jon had been kneeling, looking at the discarded sacks, one of which contained a Ralph Lauren blouse, another a man’s pale blue Van Heusen dress shirt, another a box of Maud Frizon shoes. Now he joined Nolan.
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