“All right. She grabbed me.”
“Grabbed you? I thought you said she had her arms around you.”
“Hell. You know what I’m talking about.”
“No, I don’t know. You tell me.”
“She grabbed my private part, all right?”
“Your private part.”
“That’s right, my private part.”
“And what did you do?”
“I’m not the lustful swine you think I am,” I said. “I took it away from her.”
She looked at my face. Then she looked at the middle of my anatomy. Then the strain went away, and color came back into her cheeks, and her mouth began to twitch-and suddenly she burst out laughing. She laughed so hard tears squeezed out of her eyes; she staggered past me to the bed and collapsed on it and sat there cackling and hooting like a madwoman.
“What the hell’s so funny?”
“You took it away from her!” Kerry said, and let out a whoop that rattled the windows. “Oh my God! You took it away from her!”
“Ha, ha. Big joke.”
“What did she say when you tore it out of her hand? ‘Oh please, give it back to me?”’ Another whoop.
“She didn’t say anything, she just left, and I haven’t seen her since. Okay? You satisfied?”
Kerry giggled and snorted for another ten seconds or so before she got herself under control. “Oh Lord,” she said, wiping her eyes, “I wish I’d been there. I wish I’d seen the expression on your face when she grabbed you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, it wasn’t funny at the time. It’s still not funny from where I stand.”
“Maybe not from where you stand, sweetie,” she said, “but from where I’m sitting I’ve got a different perspective on the thing. ” And she was off on another fit of cackling.
I glared at her.
Pretty soon she quit laughing altogether, wiped her eyes again, put on a sober expression, and looked back at my face for a change. “You weren’t even tempted, huh?” she said.
“Sure I was tempted. Who wouldn’t be tempted? My subconscious is probably still tempted, which is the reason for that stupid dream last night. ”
“You sound angry,” she said. “Are you angry?”
“Yeah, I’m angry. I didn’t want to tell you about that night with Jeanne Emerson; it’s embarrassing. And I don’t like having to defend myself all the time, either. I’m tired of being sniped at and treated like a villain.”
“Don’t start yelling again,” she said.
“I’m not yelling, damn it. I’m not yelling. I’m just trying to talk to you here, get some things out into the open.”
“What things?”
“You know what things. The way you’ve been acting, all this moody stuff. What’s bothering you, anyway?”
Her gaze shifted to her hands. “Nothing’s bothering me.”
“Bull. Come on, what is it?”
Headshake.
“Kerry, talk to me.”
“I don’t want to talk. There’s nothing you can do.”
Wetness glistened in her eyes again, and her face showed more of the strain. She was hurting, that was plain now. And it made me hurt too-chased away my mad and replaced it with tenderness. I moved over to the bed and sat down and put my arm around her.
“Babe, you’ve got to tell me what this is all about. It’s tearing both of us up, you keeping it bottled inside.”
Silence.
“Tell me,” I said. “Please.”
More silence. But then, just as I was about to coax her another time, she sighed and said, “Ray-it’s Ray.”
“Ray? You mean Ray Dunston?”
“Yes.”
Ray Dunston was her ex-husband, a criminal lawyer in Los Angeles. Kerry had divorced him a couple of years ago, because their marriage had gone stale and because she suspected he was seeing other women; that was the catalyst for her move north to San Francisco. She’d referred to him several times as a schmuck, and in my book that was what he was for letting her get away from him.
I said, “What about him?”
“He… I think he’s mentally ill.”
“What?”
“He gave up his law practice three months ago,” she said. “And sold his house and gave up liquor and meat and half a dozen other things, including sex. He’s become a religious convert.”
“What’s so bad about that?”
“I don’t think it’s a healthy thing, not in Ray’s case. He said he couldn’t bear to deal with drug peddlers and thieves and whores any more, but that’s not all of it. Something happened to him; something happened inside him. His new religion… it’s one of those off-the-wall Southern California cults. He chants, for God’s sake.”
“Chants?”
“Some sort of… I don’t know, what do you call it, a mantra? They make their people chant it forty or fifty times a day, no matter where they are. Ray… you never met him, you don’t know what he was like before. Pseudo- sophisticated, success-oriented, a real three-piecer. And now… his head is practically shaved, he wears poverty clothes, and he lives in a commune.”
“When did you see him?”
“He showed up at my place about a month ago,” she said. “Drove up from L.A. with another member of the commune. It was… unreal. Scary.”
“Why scary? Lots of men in their forties go through some sort of identity crisis.”
“No, it’s not like that. I told you-he’s changed. Completely. He’s not the same man I was married to.”
“That still doesn’t tell me why you were scared. He’s not part of your life anymore.”
“That’s just it. He wants to be.”
She said that without looking at me. I used two fingers against her chin to lift and turn her head. “What do you mean, he wants to be?”
“He wants me again. As his wife. That’s part of this whole… this conversion of his. He’s decided he loves me and has to have me back.” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “My God, can you see me living in a commune with a man who chants?”
“What did you say to him?”
“I told him the truth-that he isn’t part of my life any longer, that he never can be again.”
“How did he take it?”
“Not very well. He wouldn’t accept it.”
“He didn’t get abusive or anything?”
“No. He was so calm it was… well, that’s what scares me. How calm he is. The way he looked at me. His eyes… that’s why I think something must have snapped in his mind.”
I said, “You think he’s dangerous?”
“No, he’d never hurt me. It’s just that…”
“Just that what?”
“He’s called me seven or eight times since his visit. No matter what I say he won’t listen, he won’t go away. He’s just ‘.. there in my life again.”
“Change your phone number,” I said.
“All that’d do is bring him back to San Francisco. I can’t move on account of him. I won’t disrupt my life any
