I did make it to my first job on time, but I was still in my workout sweats, and still barefaced. So I was uncomfortable, and disinclined to do more than nod by way of greeting Helen and Mel Drinkwater. They weren’t chatty people either, and Helen didn’t like to see me work; she just liked seeing the results. She’d been giving me hard looks, since September when I’d been sucked into a notorious brawl in the Burger Tycoon parking lot-but she hadn’t said anything, and she hadn’t fired me.
I’d decided that she’d passed the point of most concern. Her pleasure in a clean house had outweighed her misgivings about my character.
Today the Drinkwaters went out their kitchen door at a pretty sharp clip, each sliding into a car to begin his/her own workday, and I was able to start my usual routine.
Helen Drinkwater doesn’t want to pay me to do a total cleaning job on the whole house, which is a turn-of- the-century two-story. She pays me for two and a half hours, long enough to change the sheets, do the bathrooms and kitchen, dust, gather up the trash, and vacuum. I do a quick pickup first because it makes everything easier. The Drinkwaters are not messy, but their grandchildren live just down the street, and they are. I patrolled the house for scattered toys and put them all in the basket Helen keeps by the fireplace. Then I pulled on rubber gloves and trotted up to the main bathroom, to start scrubbing and dusting my way through the house. No pets, and the Drinkwaters washed and hung up their clothes and did their own dishes. By the time I rewound the cord on the vacuum cleaner, the house was looking very good. I pocketed my check on the way out. Helen always leaves it on the kitchen counter with the salt shaker on top of it, as if some internal wind would blow it away otherwise. This time she’d anchored down a note, too.
Wednesday is the morning I reserve for unusual jobs, like helping with someone’s spring cleaning, or doing windows, or occasionally mowing a yard. I looked at the calendar by the phone, picked two Wednesdays that would do, and wrote both dates on the bottom of the note with a question mark.
I deposited the check in the bank on my way home for lunch. Claude was walking up my driveway when I arrived.
Chief of Police Claude Friedrich lives next door to me, in the Shakespeare Garden Apartments. My small house is a little downhill from the apartments, and separated from the tenants’ parking lot by a high fence. As I unlocked my front door, I felt Claude’s big hand rubbing my shoulder. He likes to touch me, but I have put off any more intimate relationship with the chief; so his touches have to have a locker-room context.
“How was it after I left?” I asked, walking through the living room to the kitchen. Claude was right behind me, and when I turned to look up at him he wrapped his arms around me. I felt the tickle of his mustache against my face as his lips drifted across my cheek to fasten on a more promising target. Claude was my good friend but he wanted to be my lover, too.
“Claude, let me go.”
“Lily, when are you going to let me spend the night?” he asked quietly, no begging or whining in his voice because Claude is not a begging or whining man.
I turned sharply so my face was to the refrigerator. I could feel the muscles in my neck and shoulders tighten. I made myself hold still. Claude’s hands dropped to his sides. I got out some leftover dishes and opened the microwave, moving slowly, trying not to show my agitation with jerky gestures.
When the microwave was humming, I turned to face Claude, looking up at his face. Claude is in his mid-forties, ten years or more older than I, and he has graying brown hair and a permanent tan. After years of working in dark corners of Little Rock and dark places in people’s hearts, Claude has a few wrinkles, deep and decisive wrinkles, and a massive calm that must be his way of keeping sane.
“Do you want me?” he asked me now.
I hated being backed into a corner. And there wasn’t a simple answer to the question.
He touched my hair with gentle fingers.
“Claude.” I enjoyed saying his name, unlovely as it was. I wanted to lay my hands on each side of his face and return his kiss. I wanted him to walk out and never come back. I wanted him not to want me. I had liked having a friend.
“You know I’m just used to living my own life,” was what I said.
“Is it Sedaka?”
Oh,
“Don’t, Lily.” Claude’s voice was gentle, but very firm. “I know what happened to you, and it doesn’t make me feel anything except admiration that you lived through it. If you care about Sedaka I’ll never say another word. From my point of view, you and I’ve been happy in the times we’ve spent together, and I’d like an extension.”
“And exclusive rights?” I met his eyes steadily. Claude would never share a woman.
“And exclusive rights,” he admitted calmly. “Till we see how it goes.”
“I’ll think,” I forced myself to say. “Now, let’s eat. I have to go back to work.”
Claude eyed me for a long moment, then nodded. He got the tea from the refrigerator and poured us each a glass, put sugar in his, and set the table. I put a bowl of fruit between our places, got out the whole-wheat bread and a cutting board for the reheated meat loaf. As we ate, we were quiet, and I liked that. As Claude was slicing an apple for himself and I was peeling a banana, he broke that comfortable silence.
“We sent Del Packard’s body to Little Rock,” he told me.
“What do you think?” I was relieved at the change of topic.
“It’s hard to say what might have happened,” Claude rumbled. He had the most comforting voice, like distant thunder.
“Well, he dropped the bar on himself-didn’t he?” I hadn’t been particularly friendly with Del, but it wasn’t bearable to think of him struggling to get the bar back up to the rack, failing, all by himself.
“Why was he there alone, Lily? Sedaka was so sick I couldn’t figure out what he was telling me.”
“Del was training for the championships at Marvel Gym in Little Rock.”
“The poster, right?”
I nodded. Taped to one of the many mirrors lining the walls at Body Time, there was a poster giving the specifics of the event, with a picture of last year’s winners. “Del competed last year, in the men’s middleweight division, novice class. He came in second.”
“How big a deal is this?”
“To a novice bodybuilder, pretty big. Del had never been in a competition before he got second place at Marvel Gym. If he’d won this year-and Marshall thought he had a chance- Del could’ve gone on to another competition, and another, until he entered one of the nationals.”
Claude shook his big head in amazement at the prospect. “Is ‘posing’ like the swimsuit part of Miss America?”
“Yes, but he’d be wearing a lot less. A monokini, like a glorified jockstrap. And he’d have removed his body hair…”
Claude looked a little disgusted. “I wondered about that. I noticed.”
“He’d been working on his tan. And he’d grease up for the competition.”
Claude raised his eyebrows interrogatively.
“I don’t know what they use.” I was getting tired of this conversation. But Claude was circling his hand in a gesture that meant. “Amplify.”
“You have a series of poses you go through, to emphasize the muscle groups.” I rose to give Claude a demonstration. I turned my body a little sideways to him, fisted my hands, arched my arms in pumped-up curves. I gave him the blank eyes and small smile that said, “Look how superior my body is. Don’t you wish you were me?”
Claude made a face. “What’s the point?”
“Just like a beauty contest, Claude.” I resumed my seat at the table. “Except the focus is on muscular development.”
“I saw the poster of last year’s winners. That woman was like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Claude said, wrinkling his nose.
“Marshall wanted me to enter.”
