Goldilocks

by Andrew Coburn

  An arm squeezed her. “I was only fooling,” he said. His finger came at her, took a tear away. He fluttered the check and tried to make her read the figures, but she averted her eyes. “It’s for us, Mrs. Goss. I want to pay my keep.”

  “Are you never going to leave?”

  He did not answer right away. His hand was fixing her hair, the palm smoothing it as she stood quite still and composed, faintly breathing and screaming to herself. “If I left, who would take care of you?” he said. His jaw came closer. “Who does the cooking? Not you, Mrs. Goss. You burn things. Cut yourself. Look at your fingers.”

  Worse were her nails, chewed as if in a kind of ritual mutilation. She felt dog-eared and overly thumbed, like the pulp pages of lurid magazines boys in her class had passed around.

  “Who makes sure you shower?” he said. “Look at your dress. It’s not clean.” His hands passed over her. “You’ve got to change it,” he said. “And your breath is a little bad. You’ve got to brush your teeth.”

  She had no choice, no stamina, no will to resist the direction in which he was pushing her. For a second she feared they might bump into Harold.

  “Watch your step, Mrs. Goss.”

  In the bathroom she used a damp pink towel to ease the heat in her face. A warm breeze blew in on her. She picked up a toothbrush, not the green one, which was his, or Harold’s. She was not sure. The Colgate tube lacked a cap and was squeezed in the middle. She brushed her teeth vigorously, almost savagely.

  From the doorway he said, “Gargle good.”

  In the bedroom he chose the dress he wanted her to wear, but when she put it on he stepped back and grimaced. He did not like the fall of it. He selected another and said, “Thought we might go to the movies tonight.” When she looked away, he said, “Or maybe just for a ride.” He did not like the second dress either. Patterned with roses, it made her look like a floral offering, and he told her to take it off. Pawing through the closet, more of Harold’s clothes in there than hers, he said, “You don’t have a hell of a lot to pick from. We got to do some shopping sometime.”

  She stood in a partial state of insensibility, with a ladder in her pantyhose. He had another dress in his hand, but he soon tossed it aside and slowly circled her with critical eyes. A smile emerged, and his voice lifted. “It’s not the dress, Mrs. Goss, it’s you. You’ve lost weight.” His eyes danced. “Everything about you is better, I’m not kidding. More shape to you now. Nicer titties, honest.” He swallowed hard. “Even the dark circles make you different.”

  “Pig,” she murmured.

  “Beg pardon?”

  Her voice was arid. “You’re going to do it again, aren’t you?”

  “It’s on my mind, Mrs. Goss.”

  “Then get it over with,” she said coldly.

  Barney Cole got home a little before three and changed into casual clothes while Kit Fletcher, wearing a white shirt and chino shorts, stuck a chilled bottle of wine and hastily wrapped sandwiches into a basket. While she was poking into a cupboard for paper cups, Cole lifted her hair and kissed the back of her neck. When his arms started to go around her, she pushed him back with the point of an elbow. “If you start that,” she said, “we’ll never leave.”

  A short time later they drove down Wildwood Road to Route 125 and within minutes penetrated Harold Parker State Forest. Cole parked the Cutlass off the road near Field’s Pond, where a number of Hispanic women from Lawrence were fishing off the bank, some sitting on boulders and dangling their feet in the limpid water. Their bare-chested children dawdled nearby. Kit climbed out of the car and stretched her legs. Looking at the women, she said, “What do they hope to catch?”

  “Bass, perch, I’m not sure,” Cole said, joining her. “The pond’s man-made. The state stocks it.”

  “I can see they’re not doing it for sport,” Kit said, her eye gradually shifting from the women to the children, scrawny little beauties.

  Cole took the basket from her and they followed a footpath into pinewoods lit only by the sun’s ability to hurl knives through the thick branches. The air was spicy and green and without grit from the road. The path meandered but never far from the pond’s jagged edge, where skeletal stumps lurked in the water and blueberry bushes grew mammoth with the promise of fruit. Cole, who led the way, soon strayed from the path.

  “Don’t get us lost,” she said.

  “I don’t think it’s possible,” he replied, for he had too often walked the woods with his wife to lose his bearings.

  They wended their way through brush and fern, stepped over fallen branches, avoided trampling wildflowers almost too small to see, and came upon a clearing where a cardinal flared up and disappeared. Kit said, “You’ve been here before, haven’t you?”

  “It seemed fitting,” he said.

  They sat near a scaly rock on a sunburnt patch of ground, the basket between them. Kit poured the wine as Cole held the paper cups. The sandwiches were salami on rye. Cole ate the pickle slice in his and tasted the wine.

  “What exactly do you want to know?” he asked.

  “How did your wife die?”

  “Slippery road. She always drove too fast. It was in her blood.”

  “You make her sound fated.”

  “Perhaps she was,” Cole said. “She wasn’t the sort to let time drag. She wanted oomph in every hour. I was consumed in building a practice, and she was into causes, the kind I gave lip service. She donated all her energy. She worked her head off for politicians she liked, state and national. She was a good organizer with no patience with people who complained they had only two hands. Busy, busy, that’s how she lived. When she went to sleep at night she wanted big bright dreams. Otherwise sleep was a waste, she said.” He smiled. “That was my wife, Sandra, a kind of breathless person.”

  “Pretty name.” Kit drew her knees up and hugged them. “What did she look like?”

  “She had red hair.”

  “I can’t picture you with a redhead. My mother used to say redheads have different dispositions from the rest of us. Was she thin, fat? Did she have freckles?”

  “Some freckles, and she was well-built.”

  “A full bottle like me?”

  “In a way.”

  “Attractive, I take it.”

  “Not ravishing, but she stood out.”

  “Most women do if they manage their weight and their makeup.” Kit slipped off her sneakers and flexed her toes. Then she picked up a sandwich as Cole bit into his. The warmth of the afternoon sun curved around them. “Were you good to each other?”

  “We tried to be. We were each other’s second choice, which we joked about, not often because it could turn touchy. A couple of times we nearly broke up over things that never should have mattered.”

  “Did you love each other?”

  “Yes, in our spare moments.”

  “Was that something else you joked about?”

  “At times. Sundays we tried to make ours. We took walks here. Sometimes we put a canoe on the pond.”

  “Why didn’t you have children?”

  “We were waiting. We waited too long.”

  Kit poured more wine. Together they watched the shadow of a low-flying bird streak through the growing grass. “Regrets, Barney?”

  “I wouldn’t be human without them. The trick is not to let them deepen with the years.”

  “Any guilt?”

  He shook his head. “More the case of a few haunting images. The night she was killed we had met at Bishop’s, arrived in the rain in separate cars. Both of us were on edge. I’d had a lousy day in court, and Sandra had a headache from a state senatorial campaign that was falling apart, some bad stuff coming out about the candidate. Halfway through dinner we got into a stupid argument and said things we shouldn’t have. She went down to the ladies’ room and didn’t come back. The waitress brought me two words scribbled on a toilet tissue. I’m leaving. I didn’t know whether she meant she was leaving the restaurant or leaving me forever. I rememb
er thinking about that very hard when I paid the check and said good night to the hostess. As it turned out, it was forever.”

  “I’m sorry, Barney.”

  “Me too.”

  “What I mean is, I’m sorry for making you dredge this up. I’m not jealous of her, but I have to know the competition.”

  He looked at her with an intimate widening of his eyes. “For God’s sake, she’s dead.”

  “No,” Kit said. “As long as you live, she’s alive.”

  Clouds strayed in front of the sun, but the air stayed warm. The Spanish voices of children drifted in from a distance and dissipated. Kit lay back and closed her eyes, letting dry grass grip her hair. Her bare toes worked up a cloudlet of dust. A bird was whistling from a tall pine and receiving no answer. Kit half opened her eyes.

  “I was going to ask about your friend,” she said, “but there’s no need.” Her lips parted in a dry smile. “There’s a joke on somebody here. I hope it’s not on me.”

  “What’s the joke?” he asked.

  “We tend to be alike.”

  “You and I?”

  “No,” she said. “Your women.”

  He sloshed the wine in his cup and drank it. “If that’s the joke, why do you think it might be on you?”

  “Call it female intuition, but I think you’d do things for your friend you’d never do for anybody else.” Her eyes were fully open now, and she gazed at him as if charting his thoughts and understanding them all. “Am I right?”

  He said, “You may be.”

  “If she’s Mafia, it could be the ruin of you.”

  “You may be right about that too,” he said, and looked at his watch and then up at the sky. The sun broke through the clouds and fired a beam straight in his eyes.

  She said, “I have a good future at Pullman and Gates. I wouldn’t want to be touched by any scandal.”

  “I’d never let that happen.”

  “Your word?”

  “My word,” he said.

  She hoisted herself up on one arm and slung the other around him. She kissed him with a passion she allowed to surface and with a trust she had long held in reserve. When he sank back, she plunged both hands into his shirt, popping a button and then another, drawn to him as if on a rope. A light plane appeared against the sky and began smoking out a commercial message, but neither noticed it. Moments later a spider’s thread of semen glittered across her spread fingers.

  “Damn it, I do love you, Barney.”

  • • •

  At nine in the evening Cole drove into Lawrence, to a large beige house off South Union Street, where the district attorney lived with his wife and his spinster sister, who many years ago had come for a visit and had never left. It was the sister who opened the door for Cole, shyly escorted him to the door of the district attorney’s study, and silently vanished. Cole stepped into the room and said, “Good of you to see me, Chugger, this late hour.”

  The district attorney, seated in a deep chair, had obviously been dozing. He was in shirtsleeves and slippers and had a newspaper in his lap. “Sit down,” he said. “Watch out for the cat hair.” A cat was sleeping on the sill of an open window, its body stretched against the screen. “There are four more roaming around somewhere. My wife and sister collect them, God bless their simple souls. What’s the problem, Barney?”

  “Cruickshank and the other guy followed me onto the common this morning. I thought you might’ve been watching from your office window.”

  The district attorney shifted his feedbag body. “I got better things to do than that. You want coffee or something? No? Just as well, it’d probably have a hair in it.”

  Cole said, “They put the squeeze on me.”

  “You knew they would.”

  “I didn’t like them throwing my father in my face.”

  “You must’ve expected that too.”

  “And Daisy Shea. They know about the time he transferred money out of that old lady’s trust. Cruickshank insinuated I was in on it.”

  “What was his reasoning?”

  “The old lady was originally my client,” Cole said. “I let Daisy have the account when we busted up our partnership.”

  “Some people you should never do favors for. The art of politics — the art of anything — is knowing who you do for and who you don’t. Always figure out who’s going to make you bigger for the favor. Otherwise, forget it.”

  “I’ve never operated that way.”

  “That’s why you’re a good fella and a rinky-dink lawyer. Your only assets are your office furniture, your house in Andover, and a couple of CDs. I know, because Cruickshank showed me a financial statement on you and asked where you were hiding it.”

  Cole laughed.

  “Yeah, I laughed too,” the district attorney said, “but they don’t know you like I do. They figure you do business in Lawrence, you must be dirty. That’s why they’re tossing shit at you and staying on your ass like a diaper.”

  “Sounds like it’s me they’re after.”

  “No, they just want to get to you.”

  Cole gazed at the cat, which was stretching its front legs to the fullest, the claws tearing against the screen. “They must want Louise awfully bad.”

  “My guess, Barney, is they want to spin her around. The truth is, I think they’re after bigger fish.”

  “They don’t know her very well.”

  “I don’t think we do either.”

  Cole sat silent for a while. The cat, which had orange fur and yellow eyes, stood up and humped its back. Then it leaped from the window and clawed the carpet. “It’s a funny world, Chugger.”

  “It’s a changing one, Barney. Far as I know, women aren’t supposed to do what Louise does. Perverse, you ask me.”

  Cole set himself to evacuate his chair. “I’m keeping you up.”

  “No, you’re not. I wait for my wife and sister to go to bed so I can do what I want in the house. My sister’s going soft, you know. Alzheimer’s probably. God help me.”

  “I’d better be going anyway,” Cole said, and rose. The district attorney also pulled himself up, the throes of the effort in his face. They moved into the passage to the front door, where the district attorney stooped to adjust a slipper. Another cat appeared, this one fat and fluffy, with erratic markings. It rubbed against Cole, leaving hair on his trousers.

  “Kick him, Barney. It won’t bother me a bit.” The district attorney stooped to fix the other slipper. “If I come back in another life, it’s going to be as a goddamn cat. Then I’ll just eat, sleep, and let people do for me.”

  Cole opened the door, and the cat scampered out and vanished beyond the spray of the light.

  “Don’t worry about it. Maybe he’ll get run over.”

  “I don’t really know why I came here tonight, Chugger. Maybe it was just to kill time.”

  “A little warning to you. Cruickshank does the talking, but I think it’s the black guy that calls the plays. That’s my impression.”

  “Mine too,” Cole said. “The clue was his fingers. I could imagine them around my neck.”

  The district attorney followed Cole outside to the top step and inhaled the moist dark air. “I’ll give you some advice while I’m at it. Don’t do Louise any harm, but by the same token don’t do her any favors. You could get caught in a crossfire.”

  Cole consulted his watch. “I’m meeting her in twenty minutes.”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  Cole smiled. “At this moment I think I’d rather be in your slippers than my shoes.”

  The voice of the district attorney’s wife sounded from a deep part of the house. “Don’t leave the door open. Bugs.”

  “No, you don’t, Barney.”

  Cole drove to the north side of the city. Downtown was mostly in shadow and deserted except for loitering bands of boys, the faces Hispanic. Cole turned onto Amesbury Street, cruised through a green light, and pulled into a shadowy parking lot. A cream-white car was waiting in the
middle of one of the lanes. Cole drifted alongside it and braked. Louise Baker smiled over at him, her oval face perfectly framed in the open window of the Porsche.

  “What’s all this secret stuff for, Barney? You trying to hide me from your girlfriend?”

  “Nothing like that. How are you?”

  “I’m fine. What’s up?”

  “I think you should be careful.”

  Her voice went hard. “What are you telling me?”

  His foot was poised lightly on the gas pedal because the motor was idling hard. Suddenly it coughed and stalled.

  “If you know something,” she said, “tell me.”

  “I’ll say one word, Lou, all right? Feds.”

  Something significant changed in her face. Her voice softened. “They been talking to you?”

  He held up two fingers. “A pair of them. For both our sakes, don’t tell me anything. Ever.”

  “You’ve never let me,” she reminded him.

  “Aren’t you glad?” he said, and tried to restart the motor, but it failed to catch. He tried again, unsuccessfully, and looked over at her.

  “You’re driving a junk, Barney. If you had devoted your professional energies to me, you’d be in a Cadillac now.”

  “Wasn’t meant to be.”

  “That’s what I tell myself when I’m alone at night.” She slipped the Porsche into gear. “Will you be able to start that?” He nodded, and she smiled. “Thanks for your information, Barney. I was just a little bit afraid of coming here.”

  “Why?”

  “You never know.” She gave him a sudden affectionate look and blew him a kiss. “Forgive me.”

  “What for?”

  He did not get an answer. He watched the Porsche drift away with the silence of a fish, and seconds later, in the rearview, he saw it float out of the lot. He was about to give the motor another turn when he heard a sound from about twelve feet away and froze in his seat. Poised between two carelessly parked cars was the partly shadowed figure of a man with a shotgun held downward, laid against the leg. Under the bill of a baseball cap a smile was perceptible one instant and not the next, as if the man were clicking it on and off. Then he swept forward.