surroundings but I was restless. I kept thinking about the night of the murder. None of the lovers Van had thrown over would have had a difficult time getting into that barn-there was easy access through the thin line of forest in the back. Anybody who’d followed her to the commune would have been able to swing wide and enter the barn without being seen.
I also thought about the effect Eve had had upon the girls. Imagine if you’d grown up with a sweet, attentive, understanding mother who died and was replaced by a stunning but vapid swinger. And even worse, that your father became a swinger, too. Hey, one Frank Sinatra is enough for this planet, man. Had Eve taken her vengeance out on Van?
Victor started purring when the back door opened, which meant his mistress and patroness had come home. She carried her drink on a blue cloth coaster over to Victor’s chair and nudged him aside so that she could sit down. He went unwillingly. As soon as she was seated he jumped on her lap.
“Feeling any better?”
“Not really. So much up in the air.”
“I ran into Mike Potter at the supermarket. I bought us some red snapper we can put on the grill tonight.”
“He tell you I’m crazy?”
“More or less. And he’s worried that you could get in serious trouble with the state if you keep pushing this.”
“I just want to make sure we get the truth.”
“I said that to him. He said, ‘If Sam wants to waste his time it’s up to him.’ But he smiled when he said it.”
“That was nice of him.”
“How about a back rub on the bed?”
“Are you trying to seduce me?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I’m just trying to distract you. You need to take a break.”
We fit just about perfectly as lovers. And when we finished, Victor was squatting on the bureau and watching us in the darkness scented with Wendy’s perfumes and sachets and creams. We’d had an audience.
“I never did get that back rub.”
“Too late, buddy. I’m going to grill us some red snapper. And you’re going to set the table.”
“This is just like the National Guard I go to once a month. Too many orders.”
“Don’t say that. They’re talking about drafting you guys. I saw it in the paper this morning. You must’ve seen it.”
“I’ll start setting the table.”
“So you’re not going to talk about it?”
“They’ve been predicting that for two years now. I’ll set the table.”
I went inside and started grabbing plates, glasses, silverware, and napkins. I was careful to limit myself to the second-best of everything. The plates had tiny chips and the shine was off the silverware. I didn’t blame her. Her only real asset was this house she owned. She basically lived on the income from the trust her husband had left for her. It had been the largesse of a decent but guilty man. Not his fault that he’d fallen in love with one of the girls his bully-boy father would never have approved of. He’d married Wendy because he was fond of her and because his family approved of her family. The trouble was that Wendy had been in love with him and had come undone when he’d been killed in Nam.
And Nam was on my mind now, as well. Not only because I opposed the savage, meaningless war-Ike’s “military-industrial complex” warning coming true in spades-but also because our post commander at the guard had given us notice that we might be called up. I’d lied to Wendy. Nam was in the offing. A number of guard units had already been sent there. At the rate our troops were being killed, the great dark god that was slaughtering the lives of soldiers and innocents alike was ever hungrier. It wanted more flesh and blood, and many of the men in the guard were at the right age for making patriotic sacrifices the chickenshit politicians could prattle about when reelection time came around again.
But talking about it with Wendy was difficult. Her husband had died over there. And that’s what worried her, the cheap irony of losing her first husband and then her husband-to-be in the same war. I didn’t blame her for the dread she faced in her nightmares but I also couldn’t do anything about it. Maybe we’d luck out. Maybe we wouldn’t be called up. But as General Westmoreland told more and more lies, and more and more of our troops died, I didn’t know how we would be spared.
She came in and opened the refrigerator. She slapped two pieces of red snapper on the counter and started preparing them for cooking. She was fast and efficient and fun to watch. She didn’t say anything.
“You not speaking?”
“No, because if I do speak you know what I’ll speak about and then neither of us’ll feel like eating. You know how worried I’ve been about it. The story in the paper just made it official.”
“Maybe it won’t happen.”
“Just let me prepare this fish and not think about anything else.”
A good meal and two glasses of wine later we both felt momentarily invincible and loving. We sat in chairs on the screened-in back porch and held hands like high schoolers. Victor appeared and sat on Wendy’s lap. The only music was the night itself: the breeze and the faint passage of cars and the even more distant sounds of airplanes approaching Cedar Rapids for landing. I felt old and logy and I didn’t mind it at all. I even considered the possibility-combine alcohol and fatigue and you can come up with the damnedest thoughts-that maybe, just maybe, things were exactly as they appeared. Neil Cameron killed Vanessa Mainwaring because he felt betrayed by her. And then he killed himself. Judge Whitney wouldn’t be happy with this because Cliffie would have won one. And even one would be too much for Judge Whitney. The Sykes clan represented all things evil to her.
“How about helping me clean up and then we go to bed?”
“Fine. As long as you can help me drag myself up from this chair.”
“You were supposed to help me, Sam.” She laughed. “God, we sound like we’re eighty years old.”
“Speak for yourself. I don’t feel a day over seventy-five.”
“I love this so much. It’s so comfortable with you.”
“Is that another word for boring?”
“What an ego. You just want a compliment.”
“I love you so much because you’re so ‘comfortable.’ Not exactly inspiring.”
She giggled. “And because you’re so exciting to be with and such a stud in bed and because all my girlfriends are jealous that I’ve been able to keep a heartbreaker like you interested in little ol’ me.”
“Much better.”
“ Now will you help me clean up?”
I concentrated on the grill and she worked on the dishes. When I came inside she was just loading the dishwasher. “See, that didn’t take long.” She tossed me a towel. “How about I wash and you dry? I’ve still got these pots and pans to take care of.”
The kinds of relationships I’d had with women in the past had been all sex and tension. Lots of breakups and makeups. There hadn’t been time in all the groping and battling to get domestic in any way. Wendy and I were already married in an informal sort of way. But sometimes I got scared it would all end for some terrible reason.
She jabbed me in the ribs. “You haven’t seemed to notice but there aren’t any more pots or pans to dry. You’ve been standing there with that last one for a couple of minutes now. You must be thinking of something really fascinating.”
“I’m just hoping this doesn’t come to an end any time soon.”
“You keep asking me to marry you and you say something like that?” She smiled and kissed me. “Look, Sam, I worry about the same thing. And that’s why I just want to wait a little while. We’re crazy about each other. I want to spend my life with you. But I just want to be careful about it.” She took pan and towel from me and set them on the counter. “Maybe we’d better discuss this in the bedroom.”
By the time we finished making love, neither of us had enough energy left for discussing anything. She fell asleep against my outstretched arm. The aroma of her clean hair was innocently erotic.
The call came at 3:26.
