John set his empty glass on the counter. “I’m sorry. That’s really awful.”
“Yes, your Anthony Hopkins is awful.”
Sniff, sniff-sniff. “Sorry if I made you uncomfortable. If you don’t want to talk about Miles, I understand.”
“I’m not uncomfortable talking about Miles.”
“You’re not?”
“No.”
“Of course you realize my curiosity is piqued. I don’t want to be … indelicate, but there’s a story behind four days, isn’t there?”
Willa noticed another smear of peanut butter on her robe. The whole Dominic thing was as sticky as the goo on her lapel, but talking about Miles had finally lost its hot tar painfulness. It still led to moments of unease and ‘the awkward silence’—although the awkward silence wasn’t as bad as the ‘oh-you-poor-thing’ expression that usually followed the lack of words. God forbid that John reach over, take her hand and gaze at her with heartfelt pity. Pity would ruin everything.
She said, “Miles always thought it was funny I was a physicist. He liked saying, ‘Up and atom, Chuck.’ You know, physicists and atoms … and he used to call me Chuck.”
“As in Charlton Heston, the star of two of our disaster movies cued up for tonight?”
“Yes. I knew you’d get that, knew I wouldn’t have to explain.”
“So what happened?”
Willa braced herself for the pity. “You know how in Australia they drive on the other side of the road?”
“Yeah,” he nodded.
“We were there on our honeymoon, in Melbourne. I was so jet-lagged and Miles was so excited. I was dragging my feet and needed coffee. Miles pointed to a café across the street, said, Up and atom Chuck’, looked left when he should have looked right, and stepped out in front of a tram, a streetcar. “ Willa sighed, lifted her glass and drank, jaw ready to clench the second mournful pity touched his face.
“Jesus, that sucks balls,” he said, and Queenie’s mouthful of water rocketed over the counter in a spit-take that would have impressed the Three Stooges. Liquid dribbled down her chin and throat as she choked and chortled, sounding like a cross between a seal and a donkey. Queenie slid off the countertop onto her feet. She tried to set the glass on the counter, but knocked it over. A stream rolled across the off-white laminate surface and pooled beside the open pizza box, and Queenie kept on laughing.
Sniff-sniff-sniffing, John climbed off his stool. He came around the counter and snagged the roll of paper towels, unspooling a wad. He turned towards her, laying a strip of toweling across the puddle on the countertop, then he moved to tend to her dripping, amused face, but he found himself smiling down into her green-gray eyes, not breathing.
Her hair had dried into gentle waves that framed her cheeks. She smelled clean. Freshly-scrubbed. Oh-so-inviting. “Boy howdy, drool all over your chin, peanut butter smudged on your robe, and you’re the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“That’s,” she gurgled, “the best line I’ve ever heard.”
”Well, a man’s supposed to say nice things on a date.” John put the paper towels in her hand and told himself to take a step back since his mind was filled with wildlife documentary images of lions leaping on unsuspecting gazelles. If he touched her now, even if he just brushed against her, he’d be even more rapaciously mammalian than he had been the other morning, and he wanted this to last. He wanted to take his time with Queenie and not rush into devouring her. She was a widow, for God’s sake. She deserved someone who’d ease her back to the smorgasbord of wild animal carnal pleasure.
“This is a date?” She giggled.
“Yes, ma’am. I mean, yes, Your Majesty.”
Willa sniffled, and wiped away tears of mirth. “Can I be honest then?”
“Does honesty mean we’re not going to watch a movie?”
“No. It means I’m going to be straightforward.” Willa knew her robe had gaped open a little to expose the skin above her breasts, but she didn’t care. He could look. There was so much she had to keep to herself, she wanted to lay bare the things she could. “There are things I can’t tell you about myself, or what I do, stuff I can’t talk about.”
John scratched his chin. “I know, classified information, national security and all that. I get the whole secrecy thing. You work at nuclear research facility run by the government. Trust me. I’m not interested in super-colliders or the half-life of plutonium 239. I’m interested in you.”
Willa crossed her arms for a moment and transferred peanut butter to the cuff of the other sleeve. “Twenty-four thousand years.”
“What?
“That’s the half-life of plutonium 239.” She uncrossed her arms. “About this date thing. It’s been a long time for me. Maybe we’ve gotten the disaster part out of the way already, but I’m out of practice. Way out of practice. I’m not really sure I still know how to do this. Honestly, you’re … you’re the first man I’ve been interested in since Miles died, and I’m a little, I don’t know, let’s say uneasy about that.”
His mouth flattened. “Hmm. I’m not sure how I feel about shouldering that awesome responsibility.”
“I’ve totally freaked you out then?”
“No, you’ve totally piqued my curiosity. Again.” The left corner of his lips twitched.
“Piqued is good,” she nodded, “because something about you has sparked … it’s sparked…”
John bit his bottom lip to keep a smart-assed, cocky smirk in check. “Pray continue, highness.”
Willa held his gaze. They were adults, and then some. There was no need to play games and beat around the bush. Ready, ripe, and yes, even a little desperate, she wanted to kiss him, to slip up against him and slide her hands all over his back to press him closer. Naked on the countertop would be just fine. Except… She lifted her chin without any shame and was as honest with herself as she was with him. “You make me laugh, John. I haven’t laughed much in the last few years, and I like laughing, but I…”
His hands dropped, but John’s eyes remained steady, as if he were waiting for her to say more. The smile she expected didn’t appear. He made no move to touch her.
Willa bit her lip and exhaled. “Look, my job here is temporary. My reasons for being here are involved and complicated in ways I can’t even begin to explain. I like you, and if I could, I’d date you. I’d date you very much. Only right now isn’t good. I don’t have time to invest; I don’t have time to give you. I’d like to give you time, but I plain don’t have time. Do you understand?”
John stood less than a foot away, looking at her. Just looking at her, and Willa found his sudden lack of expression disconcerting. Hazel eyes had always struck her as lukewarm, but on John the color was a scorching mix of molten amber, sultry jungle green and blowtorch blue. Her heart beat a staccato rhythm she hadn’t felt since the days of high school crushes. “Well, say something.”
“You have cheese on your lip.”
“I have cheese on my lip?” Willa muttered and the reasons for not dating him abandoned every recess of her brain. She brushed a finger over the bow of her mouth.
Queenie was near enough that John felt the electric heat of her body, near enough for him to lift her up onto the counter so he could play farmer and sow his hips between her thighs. The cheese-speck she failed to wipe away be damned. He’d lick it off her. He was ready to suck on that full bottom lip as he planted his fingers in that thatch of dark blonde hair he saw the other night. He wasn’t sure if he imagined it or if he’d actually made the sound, but something growled.
Jesus, this was happening lightning-fast. She was a widow who, not more than two minutes ago, confessed to feeling apprehensive about dating. The last he wanted to do was scare her off. He had to take this at an unhurried pace. Every action had to be deliberate.
He had no idea how to do that.
John breathed in through his nose and exhaled from his mouth, slowly. How could Queenie not know the danger she was in? How was he supposed t
o go slow and stay in control when, widow or not, she was feeding a beast that had been neglected for too long?
It was good he wasn’t in the habit of carrying around condoms because that put an immediate damper on the idea of boinking her senseless right there on the kitchen counter, which was a good thing because if they went the boinking senseless way he would last all of fifteen seconds, which would not be a shining moment of his technique. John imagined a speedy-jackrabbit-I-haven’t-been-with-a-woman-in-two-years man would be a pretty powerful turn off.
Breathe, dickhead, breathe.
“Did I get it?” she said, and her tongue touched the other side of her mouth. “Is it still there?”
Jesus, his pants were going to hit the floor around his ankles and he was going to scare her off.
Breathe, dickhead, breathe.
Time and place, John reminded himself. This came down to time and place or, more specifically, timing and location. Fast and furious on the kitchen counter would be great, but it would be too over and done with too soon. They were going to kiss instead. They were going to grind against each other, and anything that happened would be all hands and hot mouths and it would go on and on.
John leaned forward, his hands reaching out to grip the curved, hard edge of the countertop behind Queenie with both hands. Sure, it put him even closer to her upturned mouth, it trapped her between his arms, but caging her this way, holding tight to the counter, was the only thing he could do to keep from yanking that ugly purple robe down her shoulders and burying his face in her breasts.
Breathe, dickhead, breathe.
John breathed. The genius who’d decreed desire waned with age was talking complete bullshit. “Since you ate pizza,” he said, “I think we should wait at least half an hour, to be sure.”
“Sure of what?”
“Last time we kissed, you got a little seasick and that was after you had a half cup of coffee. I really, really want to kiss you again, but who knows what effect pizza’s going to have on you?”
She nodded. “You’re right. It’s too risky. This is all too risky.”
The other morning should have prepared him. The indicators had been there. John realized the lone splinter holding him back was about to disintegrate. Her mouth was scarcely two inches away, her breath warm on his chin. He shifted, raising his hands to pull strands of pale hair from her crinkling eyes. The skin of his knuckle brushed her cheekbone and something surged. It leapt across the tiny distance separating them. “Holy shit,” John murmured.
She hesitated, frowning, then her fingers traced over his lips. He let his tongue flick out to her fingertips to cool sparks that had nothing to do with static electricity.
For a moment they shared the same defibrillating energy.
Then, like a hairdryer tossed into a bathtub full of water, a backwards-sounding dong-ding tripped the circuit.
10
Lesley knew he’d never been a saint. Dominic never hid that fact. His wife knew full well he’d once had a reputation for being a bachelor with a fondness for glossy women who looked like they belonged on fold-out, glossy paper with staples in the middle of the glossy page. She knew there’d been a number of these women in his life, and none of them, with the exception of Kyle’s mother, had ever lasted long. Lesley knew all this about him and she didn’t care. She didn’t give a shit about his past. She loved him. Unconditionally.
So why couldn’t he figure out how to tell her about Jacqueline Grafton?
He crammed a handful of popcorn in his mouth and chewed, the crunchy puffs muffling his string of obscenities. He told Lesley everything. They had no secrets. So why was this different? Was it embarrassment or the fact that Jackie wasn’t one of his shining moments of manhood or parenthood?
With a groan, he looked up to the clock on the wall of the store office. It was one of those large, black and white ones, the kind that looked like it came out of a classroom, and it had a very loud tick. The minute hand moved forward with a ka-kung. It was seven forty-eight. He should have been home over an hour ago.
Instead of letting Daphne close up the store like he normally did, he told her he’d do it tonight. He needed some quiet time to be able to sit and think, without his brother-in-law’s freeloading and snarking. He needed to look at the crap Willa had asked him to read. She’d said it was about recognizing patterns, finding similarities or anomalies and establishing what these things had in common, to what or to whom they led. Yesterday, he’d taken the flash drive and put it in the digital reader she’d left with him the other day. He’d read through page after page of…
Simulation results. Computer models. Schematics. Then he read more simulations results, computer models and schematics. Dominic read still more simulations, models and schematics this evening, and he was no closer to figuring out how this crap had anything to do with him.
Here’s what he did know. Back in the early ‘90s Jackie had been something of a party girl. She liked to drink, she liked to go braless, and she liked to give head, after which, Dominic discovered, Jackie Grafton liked to light up a joint.
While he’d once had a preference for party girls, and he’d smoked a little pot as a dumbassed, smartassed, curious teenager, drug use had never been part of his life. Dominic had had a revelation and an epiphany that particular night with Jackie. He was a father with an infant son at home, and he had no business putting himself or his child in any situation that had the potential to pull them apart. The evening Jackie had smoked that joint was the last time he’d gone out with her.
In addition to flashing her tits and knocking back a couple of cold ones with tequila chasers, it seemed that these days, Jacqueline Grafton liked to cook crystal meth and take home classified information to keep her warm. Regardless of how responsible and morally upstanding he’d become since the night Jackie had blasted a roach, he wound up on an FBI list because he’d dated a known pot-smoking boozer, not because fear for his sick child and sleep deprivation had led to a lapse in protocol no one but Willa knew about.
She’d said this was a covert operation still in its infancy. She’d cautioned him about discussing anything with his wife until the FBI was deeper into the investigation, and they’d argued over that. Dominic still disagreed with that point. Infancy or not, Lesley had a right to know her husband was named in a federal inquiry.
One at a time, he fed a chain of puffed corn kernels into his mouth, and he pictured himself again, explaining to his wife how dating Jackie Grafton had become part of an FBI investigation. Doll baby, I went out with this woman about seventeen years ago. She blew me once, lit up a doobie, and stole classified information from the Lab. Oh, and did I mention the Feds think I might know something about how she did it?
Okay. It was probably smarter to leave out the bit about the hummer.
Dominic leaned sideways and spat popcorn into the wastebasket. This was bullshit.
Alicia placed the toolbox next to the sports gear in the rear of her Ford hatchback and drove across the supermarket parking lot to Sixth Street. She pulled into one of the spaces in front of Byron’s apartment.
Two skeevy-looking emo girls shuffled by, laughing at her as she climbed out of the car, slipped on a patch of ice, and came down hard on her tailbone. A middle-aged woman stared at her and ignored her yelp of pain in favor of letting her poodle take a dump two feet from the car’s bumper.
Bitches.
The idea that women were nurturing, concerned, and kind creatures was bogus; none of the females who’d gone past had asked if she was all right. Not one woman made a move to be courteous, or pretended to care. Women were conniving, judgmental, dishonest and phony, phony, phony.
Women were soulless money-grubbing alcoholics, love-takers, boyfriend-stealers, and father killers.
Women ruined everything.
Alicia sniffled and got to her feet. The myth of Pandora, the woman Zeus created as an ‘evil thing for man’s delight, was true. If this semester’s Classical Greek Lit class had taught her
anything, it was that she could call herself a misogynist because, like Euripides, like Hippolytus, she hated women. She hated her girlfriends. She hated her mother. She hated her stepmother.
She hated herself.
Tailbone aching, Alicia grabbed her stuff and locked the car. Byron used to talk about his studio like it was a classic palace straight out of the ‘40s, which had appealed to her. She loved anything from that time, just like her father had. The apartment building had been constructed back during the time of the Manhattan Project.
Unfortunately it looked as if it hadn’t been touched since 1945.
The soft glow of the moon wasn’t any kinder to the structure than sunshine or time had been. The lighting from the shopping area across the street turned the grubby tan exterior a sickly shade of orange. Paint had faded in places, and weathered wood showed through. The windows were dull brown, and a tall, galvanized metal chimney that leaned to one side stuck up out of the tarpapered roof. Trash was stuck in the bushes out front. Garbage cans lined the cracked cement path to the entrance.
Inside, the stifling foyer smelled of McDonald’s fries and take-out. Unwanted Yellow Pages and discarded mail sat beneath two rows of skinny mailboxes. The cracked linoleum floor creaked under her feet as she walked down the hallway to the apartment.
The shabby building reminded Alicia of her shabby mother, Faith. Faith had been big into peeling Formica tables and using lawn furniture indoors to replace the dinette set or the couch or the TV she’d sold, again, or that they’d moved from their Spanish-style Sandia Heights hacienda to a two-bedroom shitbox near the Albuquerque airport and Kirtland Air Force Base. Unlike that dump, the interior of Byron’s apartment was nicer than the shell it sat in.
Alicia pulled out the key she’d lifted from her former boyfriend last week, unlocked the door, and went inside.
It was dark. She flipped on a light. Small and very tidy, the studio apartment consisted of two rooms, a living room and kitchen, as well as a separate bathroom. In the kitchen was an ancient enameled gas stove and an ironing board that popped out of a wall cupboard. The ironing board and stove were things consistent with Byron’s antique furnishing and décor.
For Your Eyes Only Page 17