Mike McCabe 01 - The Cutting

by James Hayman

  Yes. We usually share a bed.

  A demonstrable lie. A heart surgeon, young enough and tall enough, alone with a Lexus. Was that enough? Probably not. Tasco and Fraser had barely started checking on the list of other surgeons with Lexuses. Let alone those whose wives had Lexuses. There might be dozens young enough and tall enough who had no alibi during the critical hours. Even so, he wanted the crime scene techs to examine the Spencers’ vehicle for trace evidence of Katie. Or Lucinda. Or both. Plus he wanted to examine the house as well. He just had a feeling about this man.

  16

  Sunday. 7:00 P.M.

  Harriet Spencer, Hattie to her friends, stood by her kitchen door. Through the double-glazed panes, she watched McCabe descend the back steps, pause to look over at the garage, then turn and walk down the gravel drive toward the front of the house and out of sight. Hattie hurried through a darkened hallway to the living room, the room Philip liked to call the drawing room, where she stood by a window and watched the detective leave through the front gate. The bright afternoon had faded to twilight, the sun, deep in the west, lighting the street in a red-orange glow, casting long shadows, as the detective turned right and walked away. She wondered why there was no car parked nearby. Perhaps he’d walked. For a minute or two, even after he was out of sight, Hattie stayed at the window, looking out, standing as still as she could, hardly breathing, as if movement, any movement at all, might upset the proper order of things. An order that once upset would be gone forever.

  Finally, in the growing darkness, still dressed in her gardening clothes, she walked to the walnut drinks cupboard that stood against the far wall. She found a lead crystal water goblet and a bottle of Tanqueray. She filled the glass nearly to the top and left the room.

  Sipping warm gin, Hattie climbed the broad staircase that rose in a graceful curve from the center hall toward the second floor landing and the bedrooms beyond. She walked to the end of a long hall, entered the large master bedroom, and, without turning on the lights, sat down in a striped silk tub chair by the window. She noticed the bed wasn’t made. The rumpled sheets kicked to the bottom of the queen-sized four-poster, the thin summer blanket fallen to the floor. Still another sign of disarray? Was it worth it? Worth the lies? The secrecy? Yes, she thought, it was. Hattie sipped her gin and looked out the window. A fly buzzed on the ceiling. A car passed by on the street below. The room grew dark.

  The idea that her feelings for Philip could ever have been described as love seemed distant and alien. She remembered meeting him, senior year at Brown, in a study room in the Rockefeller Library, the Rock. They sat across from each other three nights in a row before he asked if she wanted to go and have a coffee. Such a serious young man. Good-looking, intensely involved in his studies, always analyzing, always taking things apart. Very smart. More than a little arrogant, but always quite charming.

  Scenes from their marriage, scratched and jumpy, flickered through Hattie’s mind. The big wedding on the lawn of the cottage in Blue Hill. Friends from Brown and Dana Hall in bright summer dresses. Philip’s face in extreme close-up, smiling and attentive. A kiss. A toast. A flying bouquet. Roaring off in that incredible car, Philip drunk and driving like a madman around the small and twisty country lanes. The yellow Lotus, borrowed from Uncle Bish, her mother’s rich and careless younger brother.

  Fast-forward, two years later, to their tiny one-bedroom apartment in Back Bay, furnished in equal measure from the Salvation Army store in Southie and late-night expeditions along the streets of Beacon Hill, collecting throwaways from the curb.

  Now the scene fades into another. The lighting is softer. Hattie sees the two of them standing naked by the bed. She’s laughing at Philip, who, for once, is having fun, clowning as Count Dracula come to suck her blood. She fends him off, turning away to finish folding back the yellow bedspread, her mother’s gift, to keep it from getting stained. Philip grabs her. They fall as one, as much from laughter as from lust, onto the sheets, where they make love. Once, and then again. It was love Philip was making then, wasn’t it? Not simply ejaculate?

  Fast-forward three years to the graduation party. The same tiny apartment crammed with Philip’s fellow medical students, drinking wine and beer. Smoking a little grass. Celebrating the end of four grueling years of study, the awarding of their MDs. Lucas was there. Late in the party, when they were all high, Lucas pushed her into a corner and kissed her, his tongue probing her mouth. She pulled away. She was married. It didn’t matter to Lucas. He always thought he was entitled to whatever he wanted. Even his friend’s wives. Even his best friend’s wife. Handsome, talented Lucas. So brilliant, everyone said. Destined for great things, everyone said. Even then he was an abuser. Of drugs. Of people. It wasn’t just the occasional joint they all indulged in. No, Lucas was much more adventurous than that, much more inventive. Always pushing the edge. With Lucas there was always a sense of something about to happen. Something dangerous. That’s what had drawn Philip to him. That’s what had drawn Hattie to him as well. Lucas coming into their lives had been both a beginning and an end. It changed both of them.

  After Tufts, Lucas and Philip, along with DeWitt Holland and Matthew Wilcox, applied and were accepted into surgical residencies at Bellevue Hospital in New York. Four friends, the Asclepius Society, together for another four years. She and Philip lucked out and got a subsidized apartment for married residents in one of NYU’s high-rise buildings just south of Washington Square. Lucas lived way over on the East Side on one of those streets named for a letter instead of a number. Avenue A or Avenue B. She couldn’t remember which. The area had already begun its slow transformation from a slum to an artsy enclave.

  Those were lonely years. Philip spent most of his time at the hospital, working to exhaustion, sleeping a few hours, then going back and working some more. When he wasn’t working, he was often with Lucas. The two of them sitting together, smoking dope, in Lucas’s grubby little fourth-floor walk-up. She wondered how many patients they’d cut into, the brilliant young surgeons, both high as kites when they shouldn’t have been operating at all. She wondered how many they might have killed.

  From her chair, Hattie could see a pair of cardinals on a branch of the large maple just outside their bedroom, barely lit in the last glow of the setting sun. The male preening his fiery plumage. The dull, brownish female, quietly pecking for insects by his side. She’d never known them to be out so late. Finally they flew away.

  She remembered seeing Lucas in New York before he left. The winter of 1989. More than fifteen years ago. The city was raw and cold in its covering of sooty slush. The restaurant where they were meeting was a new place – one of dozens of sushi bars springing up all over the East Village. Hattie arrived first, coming directly from her office, and she managed to snag a table for four. The place was crowded, and because she felt embarrassed fending off the waiters as she waited for the others, she drank two large gin and tonics. Finally Philip and Lucas came tumbling in, noisy and laughing. Lucas brought a new friend. A boy with a Spanish name, Carlos or Eduardo or something like that. He was a dancer in the corps de ballet with one of the big-name dance companies – the Joffrey, she thought. He had beautiful dark brown skin exactly the color of the leather sofa in her father’s den. She finished her second gin, and they ordered sake. The sake was warm and felt good going down, so they ordered more. Lucas was showing off, ordering and eating esoteric bits of sushi not found on the menu. Revolting-looking stuff, Hattie thought. Leeches and slugs, for all she knew – and there was Philip pretending to love each slimy piece, though she was sure he hated it even more than she did.

  Afterward, they all went back to Lucas’s place. She remembered climbing the four steep, narrow flights of stairs. The halls smelled of garbage and rotting food. At the top they practically fell into the studio, a tiny single room about twelve feet square with cracked plaster walls and a dirty brown commercial carpet. It was dominated by a huge king-sized bed. Hattie wondered how they’d ever gotten the
damned thing up the stairs. Two small filthy windows looked out on an airshaft. The only furniture besides the bed was a chair covered in lime green vinyl, a small bedside table, and two lamps. Most of the light came from a dim overhead.

  ‘Behold!’ Lucas drunkenly exclaimed, flopping down on the mattress and pulling the giggling boy, Carlos or Eduardo, down on top of him. ‘Behold the playing fields of Eton! Upon which the Battle Sexualis is frequently fought and usually won.’

  Lucas started kissing the boy, but he pulled away. ‘I want a drink,’ the boy said, slurring the words.

  ‘Not until you take your clothes off,’ said Lucas.

  Hattie leaned against the door, watching, while Carlos or Eduardo undressed. He had a beautiful dancer’s body, long and muscular. He posed for Lucas. ‘Now do I get my drink?’ he said teasingly. He was the first black man she’d ever seen naked. His penis was very dark and uncircumcised. She realized she’d expected it to be huge, but it wasn’t, only a little bigger than Philip’s. Even so, his body excited her in a way Philip’s never had.

  Lucas got up and opened a pair of louvered doors, revealing a tiny kitchen a few feet from the bed. Really more of a closet than a kitchen. The small sink was piled high with dirty dishes. He pulled out a bottle of vodka and a glass from a cupboard and handed them to the boy, who poured some and lay down on the bed and began drinking. Then Lucas began taking off his own clothes.

  Hattie thought she should leave. Instead, she stood, her back to the door, watching Lucas until he, too, was naked. She glanced over at Philip. He was sitting in the vinyl easy chair, watching her watching Lucas. She felt both nervous and exposed. Lucas opened a drawer in the bedside table and took a joint from a small plastic bag. He lit it, took a long drag, got up, and walked to where Hattie was standing and handed it to her. She took a drag, held the smoke in her lungs, and handed it back. Then Lucas took her hand and put it on his cock. She began stroking it and it got hard. She exhaled the smoke. ‘I didn’t know you still liked it with girls, Lucas,’ she said.

  ‘With you, Hattie, I think I could like it very much.’ She felt a tremor rather like electricity. ‘Besides, Philip and I share everything.’

  Lucas was staring at her with those extraordinary eyes. He was tall, like Philip, but with a more intense face and a harder body. ‘Including me?’

  ‘Especially you.’

  ‘Have you ever fucked Philip?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Many times – and will again. You and I have that in common.’

  She looked again at Philip. He was enjoying this. Getting off on it. The bastard. ‘Are you going to take your clothes off, too?’ she asked him.

  ‘No. I’m going to watch you take yours off.’

  The boy on the bed pouted. ‘Oh, Lucas, you are such a bore. Don’t you have anything more interesting than pot? And why are you fooling with that girl? Don’t you love me?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Lucas said, ‘of course I love you, and I have something much better than pot for you. I got these specially from the hospital.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Something special.’

  ‘Well, let me have them.’

  He handed the boy some white pills from a gunmetal pillbox on the bedside table. Eduardo or Carlos swallowed a couple, washing them down with vodka.

  ‘Philip?’ Hattie said. ‘Don’t you think you should take me home?’ She was still leaning against the door, still wearing her red goose-down ski parka, making no move to leave.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so, Hattie.’

  ‘But I’m your wife.’

  ‘Yes, I know – and a good upright New England girl you are. But, don’t you see? That’s what makes all of this so interesting. I get to share you with my dearest friend. I get to see you in a whole new light.’

  A new light? Yes. Why not a new light? Then, as much from the pent-up anger she felt toward Philip as from the attraction she’d always felt for Lucas, Hattie pulled down the zipper on her jacket.

  Both Philip and Lucas watched Hattie as she stripped. Eduardo or Carlos was merely bored. She didn’t try to make it sexy. She simply took off her clothes and folded them neatly, laying them on the floor in the corner. When she, too, was naked, she walked to the side of the bed, dropped to her knees, and took Lucas’s cock in her mouth. She licked it until it was hard again. She could hear Philip breathing heavily behind her.

  She looked up at Lucas. ‘Do you have any condoms?’ she asked. ‘There’s no way this happens without a condom. Not with your history.’

  Silently he pulled a condom from the same gunmetal box that held the pills. ‘Lucas’s magic box,’ she smiled.

  She slipped the condom over him, and then he pulled her up onto the bed and put his head between her legs. His tongue flicked delicately in and out, like a snake’s. Her breathing quickened. ‘Lucas’s magic tongue,’ she moaned softly.

  After that she took him deep inside. Even as she approached orgasm, she remained aware of Philip’s eyes, watching, probing, never looking away. His hips seemed to be rocking as if he, too, were on the receiving end of Lucas’s thrusts, he, too, rising and falling, then rising again toward orgasm.

  After she came and Lucas came, Hattie lay there for a few minutes, thinking about what she had done and why she had done it. Finally she got up and walked over to where Philip sat, still watching. ‘Philip, I want you to know,’ she said in the same even voice she’d used to announce her decision to accept the presidency of the Junior League, ‘that that was, by far, the best fuck I ever had.’ Then Hattie put on her clothes and left. Alone.

  She was long gone when Eduardo or Carlos or whatever his name was went into convulsions and had to be rushed to the ER. Lucas, high as a kite, somehow managed to carry the boy, still naked and thrashing, down four flights of stairs and into a taxi for the trip to Bellevue. To his credit, she supposed, he never said anything about her or Philip being in the apartment. Never said anything about what they had done. The boy hadn’t died, but it had been close. In the weeks that followed, there was a formal investigation. Hattie didn’t know the details, but she did know that, while criminal charges were never filed, Lucas lost his license to practice medicine. After that, he disappeared from their lives. Philip never spoke of him again or said anything about that night. Hattie, too, let the matter rest. She thought she’d never see Lucas again and was content with that. Then four years ago Philip told her Lucas was dead.

  Hattie heard the front door open and close. Philip. The downstairs lights flicked on. She looked at her glass. The gin was gone. She wanted another, but she didn’t want to see Philip and knew she couldn’t avoid him if she went downstairs. Instead, she put the glass on the mantel of the bedroom fireplace, stripped off her gardening clothes, threw them in a pile in the corner of her closet, and locked herself in the bathroom. She turned on the shower. She looked at her naked body in the full-length mirror. Still slim. Still attractive. Or would be, were it not for the scar tissue where her left breast used to be. The other one seemed so small, so lonely, so orphaned by itself. The cancer had been cut out four years ago, a full mastectomy at Philip’s urging. She’d acquiesced in spite of her own doctor’s less radical advice. ‘Much the safest course,’ Philip had assured her. Philip the self-appointed oracle. Philip the concerned husband. Philip the slicer and dicer. ‘Much the best way to make sure we get it all.’

  Afterward, angry with herself and with Philip, she decided against reconstructive surgery. After all, only Philip ever saw her naked, and it was important to her that he never again find pleasure looking at her body. That he never forget what he had done.

  Hattie climbed into the tub and let the water from the shower, hot as she could stand it, course over her body. She scrubbed herself over and over again with the loofah until her skin felt raw. Then she dried and brushed her hair and dressed in clean jeans and a new sweatshirt.

  She went downstairs. Philip sat in the den, reading. Ignoring him, Hattie crossed to the living
room and poured herself another two inches of gin. Then she went to the kitchen for ice cubes and added them to the glass. ‘I’ll have a Scotch,’ she heard Philip call out. ‘The single malt. No ice.’ She poured the drink and brought it to him. She sat in the small leather club chair across from him sipping her gin. Philip continued reading. The loudest sound in the room was the ticking of the ancient burled walnut grandfather clock Hattie had inherited from her own grandfather. As she sipped, she felt the familiar easing of tension, the comforting signal the gin was finally kicking in, beginning to do its job. She picked up the half-completed Times crossword puzzle, then put it down again.

  ‘That detective was here today,’ she said. ‘McCabe?’

  ‘Really? What did he want?’

  ‘I was in the garden and found him peering into the garage. Then he came in and asked me some questions.’

  ‘What sorts of questions?’

  ‘Mostly about who drove what car. He asked me about Lucas.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘That we knew Lucas years ago. That he was dead. That he’d been murdered.’

  Philip was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s alright.’

  17

  How long had she been there in the dark? Hours? Days? Weeks? Longer? Lucy had no idea, no way to measure the passage of time. Once or twice she tried by counting. ‘One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand. Three-one-thousand.’ Each time, she’d get up to five- or six-hundred-one-thousand and forget why she was counting.

  Her throat was parched. Her stomach hurt from hunger. She remembered reading that a human being could last for weeks without food but only three or four days without water. She was desperately thirsty. Her tongue felt like a big dry furry thing stuck in the middle of her mouth, although she didn’t think she could be totally dehydrated. Even now she could still make tears. More than once she’d felt the wetness sliding out from under her lids and rolling down her cheeks. She tried catching the drops with her tongue to moisten her mouth, but it never worked.