“Don’t worry, Mrs. Goss, I’ll warm you.”
He angled her athwart the bed, where she was startled by the white of her own legs. She wanted a sheet on her, but he pushed it away. She tried to knock her husband’s picture over, but he would not let her. “I don’t want him to see us,” she protested, distorting her mouth as if to disguise her face.
“He wants, he can close his eyes.”
She accepted the queen-size pillow beneath her but rejected the grip of his hand, her breast still sore from the last time. From his knees, he gave her a grand look that turned painstaking and made her feel that he was writing his name on the soles of her feet, on the lazy parts of her thighs, on the soft mass of her stomach. “Please,” she said, jiggling a half-clenched fist, “let me do this.”
He floated over her. “Trust me.”
With no slickness to ease his entry, he delivered nothing but a bolt of pain, another bolt when, with his full width upon her, he pried her up for a tighter fit. His breath fell hard between them. He tried to rouse life from her, but she closed her eyes to him, then her mind. He mouthed things into her ear, but she was conscious only of the essence of his underarms and a sepulchral wail from the picture.
She knew it was over when his breath collapsed against her throat.
A while later he drew the sheet up and tucked it around her. She lay with her back to him, stiff and straight, on Harold’s side of the bed. He said, “Know what, Mrs. Goss? It’s getting better each time.”
“You bastard,” she said quietly.
“Me, Mrs. Goss?” he said in a playful tone.
“The both of you.”
TEN
KIT FLETCHER woke with a start to Barney Cole’s alarm, snugged her legs into the warmth of his, and whispered her sudden decision to take some days off, a bunch due her. Cole killed the alarm and overslept an hour. She rose when he did and made the coffee. When he came into the kitchen after a quick shave and a shower, he said, “I don’t get it. What about the Globe case?”
She poured coffee. “It’s on hold.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“I want to protect my interest.”
“That’s in Boston, isn’t it? Pullman and Gates.”
“It’s here too,” she said. She placed the cups on a tray and added cream. He knotted his necktie.
“I don’t know whether to be flattered or suspicious.”
“Be neither. Feel loved.” She lifted the tray. “Shall we?”
He looked at his watch.
“Please,” she insisted.
They settled in the sun room. It was a watery-looking morning, glassy and green, with the whole notion of summer laced into the moist restless air flowing through the wide screens. Spiders abounded, especially daddy-longlegs, which scaled the screens, some making their way inside. Kit sat in a wicker chair with her legs thrown under her. Seated in an identical chair, Cole said, “You look solemn.”
“I had a bad dream.”
“What was it?”
“I dreamed I was still married. I did something my husband hated, and he was about to throw a punch.”
Cole gazed at her over his coffee cup. “That was a nightmare.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have many?”
“No.” She gave out a loose careless smile that seemed to spill out her words. “The beatings were bad, but worse was the way he could shake every vital thought out of my head. For such a stupidly long time I never considered divorce. The world was all male, all my professors at Suffolk were, and I pictured all judges as men who would pick me apart like sections of an orange.”
“You’ve come a long way.”
“Do you want to hear the irony of it?” Again she smiled carelessly. “I went to a male shrink. That’s something I haven’t told you. It was like stretching out on an anvil and being hammered back into shape, and afterwards he’d place his hand on the back of my neck and try to knead courage into me. Yes, we had sex. He had no qualms, no apologies. Everybody’s a user. He was using me, he said, and I should use anybody and everybody, especially men. It’s how the world works.”
“Nice guy,” Cole said tightly, crowded by his own thoughts.
“He did his job well, and I did mine better. I hit him with a lawsuit on the sex thing and got a big settlement. That’s how I bought my condo.”
“Why don’t I want to congratulate you?”
“Because you’re a man.”
He nodded. “That’s probably the answer.”
“I have come a long way, Barney. I work harder than anybody else at Pullman and Gates, and I’m probably brighter than most of them. I impress my clients, and I invest a third of my salary. If I had to, really had to, I could live alone the rest of my life. I could die alone. Death doesn’t scare me.” Her eyes turned playful and droll. “I figure heaven is Boston without crime. No gobs of spit on the sidewalk and no homeless people. Everybody has a dreamy apartment and theater tickets.”
Cole was listening hard for false notes, but each word she uttered seemed to have its own irrepressible truth, its own unstinting way of revealing her. He said, “How do you use me?”
“Always with care. Haven’t you noticed?”
“Now that you mention it.”
“I don’t want to marry you, Barney, but I don’t want to lose you. You’re good with a woman, and I don’t mean just with your hands.”
He swallowed the last of his coffee and, rising, put the cup aside. “I’ll try to figure most of that out on my way to work.”
She put her cup down. “I trust you, Barney, or I want to trust you, the reason being I love you, or I think I love you, which often amounts to the same thing.”
He smiled. “I think I love you too.”
“Do you trust me?”
“You make it damn hard and too easy at the same time.” He looked at his watch. “I have to go.”
Her eyes were on the carpet. A daddy-longlegs was sprinting in a silly fashion into his path. “Don’t step on it,” she said, getting out of her chair.
“I never do,” he said and kissed her.
• • •
Court was in session, a full docket of divorce libels, mostly uncontested. Lawyers sat in a line inside the rail, and nearly every seat in the back of the court was filled. The demurely dressed young woman nervously stepping to the stand looked drained, as if she had pulled her own plug. She avoided looking at the bench, where the judge sat godlike in his robes. In a low-pitched voice she swore to tell the truth and, questioned by Attorney Cole, testified that two weeks after her marriage her husband went to jail for having brutally assaulted his best friend at the wedding reception. When a tremor tripped into her voice, Cole smiled encouragingly.
“Would you like a chair, Mary Jane?”
She shook her head, standing wide-eyed, flimsy, reduced. Only her bright lipstick added to her.
“Why did your husband assault his friend?”
“I don’t know,” she said hoarsely. “Tommy had been drinking.”
“Tommy’s your husband.”
She nodded.
“Did Tommy serve his sentence, the full year, at the Lawrence House of Correction?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
Cole retreated a number of steps to make her raise her voice, though the judge did not seem to mind one way or the other. His drooping ears looked worn out from too many years of listening, and his eyes were closed. Cole said, “Did you visit him there?”
“Yes, sir. As often as I was allowed. And I always brought packages.”
“Things you baked?”
“Yes, sir. And personal articles. And one time I brought him a sweater.”
“One you knitted?”
“No, sir. I bought it at Marshall’s.”
Cole smiled, more at himself than at her. “Did you write letters to him?”
“Yes, sir. Long ones.”
“And what did you add at the end of every letter?”
“ �
��You are never absent.’ ”
“That’s poetic. Is it something you read?”
“No, sir.” Her eyes dimmed. “It was how I felt.”
Cole moved to the table where he had deposited his briefcase. “Did anything unusual occur the day your husband was released?”
“Yes, sir.”
Cole extracted a paper from his briefcase. “Please tell the court what happened.”
“Tommy hit me. He punched me hard in the stomach.”
“Why?”
“He said it was in case I was pregnant.”
“Were you?”
She raised her chin. “No, sir.”
“Did he have reason to think you were?” Cole glanced at the judge, who rubbed an ear and opened an eye.
“He had no reason at all,” she said with sudden force.
“Did you require medical attention?”
“Yes, sir. At Lawrence General Hospital.”
Cole passed a copy of the hospital report to the clerk to give to the judge, who accepted it without scrutiny. “And are you still under a doctor’s care, Mary Jane?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where are you living now?”
She pointed. “With my mother.”
The mother, too old for her blond tresses, later approached the stand with the same depleted look as her daughter and gave corroborating testimony in an identical low voice. Afterward Cole thanked the court, drew a nod from the judge, and escorted the two women out of the building and into the sunshine. They crossed the street cautiously and entered the common, where the sun enriched what was left of the grass, bathed trampled flower beds, and increased the value of shade trees. The trees whispered. The three of them sat on a bench, and Cole, placing his briefcase between his feet, glanced past the mother to the daughter.
“How do you feel, Mary Jane?”
Her smile was paltry. “I’m glad it’s over.”
“Is it?” the mother said suspiciously, as if she had put money down on something that might not be received. “The judge took it under advisement.”
“That’s a formality,” Cole said, watching two men come into the common and sit on a nearby bench.
“I wasn’t sure he was listening.”
“That’s his way.”
“Do you think Mary Jane wore too much lipstick?”
“She looked fine,” Cole said, nodding to the two men.
“More lawyers?” the mother asked.
“Sort of,” he said, and switched his eyes over to Mary Jane. “Everything’s fresh now,” he said to her. “A different life ahead of you.”
“I just wish I hadn’t lied.”
“Hush,” her mother said.
Cole, surprised, said, “What did you lie about?”
Her voice receded. “Those words I wrote at the end of the letters. I got them from Reader’s Digest.“
“God understands,” her mother said. “Don’t you think so, Mr. Cole?”
“I’m sure She does,” Cole said with a wink.
They all rose, the mother brushing off the seat of her dress. Cole offered to take them for coffee, but the mother, with a shake of her head, said she thought Mary Jane had had enough excitement. Cole kissed the young woman on the cheek and said, “Good luck.”
“Don’t I get one?”
“Of course,” he said, and kissed the mother.
He watched them plod across the grass and was amazed how quickly they faded into the shade of the trees. Then he loosened his necktie, ran a finger inside his collar, and picked up his briefcase. He ambled over to the two men. Agent Cruickshank said, “We watched you in court. My wife ever wants to divorce me, I’ll tell her who to see.”
“I didn’t realize you guys were there.”
Agent Blue, adjusting his gold-rimmed glasses, said, “How did you miss me?”
Louise Baker sipped a Pepsi from the can and said, “Why did you pick this place?”
“You said you wanted a quiet place,” Chick Ryan said. “Nothing quieter than this. Besides, I own it.”
“You’re kidding,” she said.
“Nothing’s on paper, but it’s mine.”
It was a tawdry little sandwich shop, pinchbeck with its walls of coated plastic paneling and paper brick. A ceiling fan worked sluggishly, each lugubrious whirl seemingly its last. Louise and Chick sat at a corner table, the only customers except for a shabby man with a cough who was seated at the counter. The woman who ran the place lifted the protective dome from a cake and gave the man a slice.
Chick said, “I also own the empty store next door. Valuable properties. The whole block’s going to be taken for public housing.” He stretched a leg. He was in mufti except for his heavy-duty police shoes, which had once broken a suspect’s ribs and injured his spleen. “People look at Lawrence,” he said, “they think it’s been plucked clean. No way. Plenty of stuff going on here.”
“I’m glad you’re doing well,” Louise said.
“The bookies still take care of me.”
“I’m happy for you.”
“Then you got spic dealers wearing ruts in the road driving to New York and back. Crack’s the thing. That’s what they’re all pushing.”
“You getting anything from it?” she asked.
“Not as much as I should.”
“You ought to learn to speak Spanish.”
“Yeah, that’s what one of the spics told me, knowing I wouldn’t.” An awful cough racked the man at the counter. It almost jerked him off the stool. Chick rose in the instant and flailed an arm. “Get him out of here.” The woman, broad and bandy-legged, hurried around the counter to the man, who had averted his head and was using a napkin. There did not appear to be much of him inside his clothes. The woman whispered to him and then swung around.
“He wants to know if he can finish his cake.”
“Tell him to take it with him. And put up the Closed sign. Lady and I want to talk.” Chick sank back into his chair. “I’d shut this place up for good, but I’ll get more if the property’s an operating business.”
Louise watched the man shamble out of the shop, holding the tattered piece of cake in his hand like a hurt canary. The woman latched the door and hung up the sign, a hand-printed square of cardboard that read Ain’t Open, the drollery of the previous owner, a bookmaker now deceased. “I’ll be back later to clean up,” the woman said, and left by the back way.
Louise said, “You should’ve let the man eat his cake.”
“Life’s hard.” He grinned. “When I helped you out a long time ago I thought you were going to take me along, let me grow with you.”
She played with the Pepsi can. “That was never a promise, not even a consideration. It was strictly a business deal, and your promotions weren’t part of it. They were personal favors. Those were big strings I pulled.”
“I’m not complaining. I’ve done all right, and I’m glad I could help you again in this trouble you’ve got. Why didn’t you come to me direct? You didn’t have to go through Barney.” His eyes confronted her. “I could’ve told you straight out nobody local would dare take a pop at you.”
“Sometimes I need a filter.”
“I did Barney a favor, you know. Well, I guess it was really for you. I checked up on that Polack from Chicopee. Nothing but a punk. Not even big enough to have a real record. Only thing going for him is he’s a stud.”
She gazed at him with noticeable reserve.
“I guess I should shut up. Maybe Barney wasn’t supposed to mention it was for you. Comes down to who you can trust, Lou. Me, you always know where you stand.”
“Yes,” she said. “You always tip your hand.”
“Because I got nothing to hide. That’s the best thing about me.”
She let her head fall back for a second, then spoke lightly. “Something about you I’ve never liked, Chick. It probably goes back to childhood.”
“Probably. That’s when you didn’t know shit from your underpants. Lucky for you I didn’t h
ave pubic hairs then.” He grinned. “You want another Pepsi?”
“No, thank you.” Her neck and shoulder hurt her. Smiling thinly out of a face of warm moisture, she pushed her chair back and sat sideways for comfort.
“Goddamn nice legs,” he said.
“You’re OK yourself,” she replied in a tone too subtle for interpretation. “Except for that clump of gray, you haven’t changed all that much since we graduated from high school.”
He watched her dent the soda can with her thumb. “We’re talking around something, Lou. You want to tell me what?”
“Business.”
“What kind?”
“Big business.”
He drew his smile wide. “Something’s changed, Lou. You ought to know that right off the bat.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t come cheap anymore. Those days are gone.”
While Emma Goss watched from the kitchen window, Henry Witlo did business in the driveway with a man wearing a necktie and a short-sleeved shirt that had come untucked in back. The man inspected the outside of Henry’s Dodge Charger, ran a finger through the grime, squatted to examine the tread of a tire, and yanked up the hood with a signal to Henry to start the engine. Later, the hood closed, the engine off, Henry and the man stood in the sunshine and talked some more. Through the screen Emma listened to the plangency of their somber male voices without hearing a single word. She closed her eyes when the man stooped to attach a dealer’s plate to the car and opened them when she heard him slam a door and drive off. Henry thumped in with a check in his hand.
Her voice quivered. “Why did you do that?”
“No sense having two,” he said.
“You can have the Plymouth,” she said. “Take it and go.”
He wrinkled his brow. “What would Harold say?”
“He’s in hell … in heaven.” She was confused, bedeviled. “Harold’s gone.”
“No, he’s not.” Henry pointed. “He’s standing there!”
Her head snapped around.
“No, there!” He pointed in another direction.
She staggered against the table, unstrung by the spin and play of his voice. It was like the time she was a child and an older boy full of moods pushed her higher and higher on a schoolyard swing, not to please her but to terrify her.
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