'You're on!' He grabbed her hand and towed her toward the table to collect her hat, flowers and makeup bag, and two minutes later they were pulling away from the curb in his '23 Haynes Sport Coupelet.
She crossed her left ankle over her right knee, took off the high heel and massaged her foot. 'Excuse me, but you have no idea how grossly uncomfortable dyed-to-match satin pumps can be, especially when you buy them for a wedding. You never have a chance to break them in because if you get a mark on them, it's there to stay.'
'You mean all this time your feet were aching, yet you kept me dancing without letup?'
'Well, I
'So take 'em off. We won't stand on formality around here.'
She eased off the other shoe and wriggled her toes. She stretched her legs as best she could on the angular old car seat. 'Ohh… that feels good.'
'Here, give me a foot,' he ordered, one hand on the wheel, his eyes on the late-night streets where there was virtually no traffic. 'And tell me how to get to your house.'
'Take Brooklyn Boulevard to Shingle Creek Parkway and turn right. I live in a town house on the corner.' The front seat of the old car was very narrow. She backed up against the door and plunked her heels on the car seat, then pushed her dress down between her updrawn knees. He captured her left foot and rubbed it firmly, his hand slipping over the silky nylon, sending shivers up her calves.
'Don't lean against that door. These old cars weren't exactly built for safety.'
She curled her spine, dropped her head onto her knees and concentrated on the sensual feeling of his thumb massaging the arch of her foot. 'Mmm… you're very good at that, considering
'That's right. I forgot you were. Well, maybe you can give me a rubdown after we run.'
She lifted her head and rested her chin on her crossed forearms, which still rested on her knees. 'I said I'm a therapist, not a trainer.'
He laughed and pressed her foot against his thigh, then left his warm hand covering it. Within five minutes they'd arrived at her house. She rummaged around on the floor of the car for all the trappings she'd dumped there at various times today. There was no interior light in the old flivver, but at last she'd gathered a stack of what she hoped was everything.
'Can I carry something?' he offered.
'Yes, you can bring the plastic clothing bag with my other dress in it.' She fished it off the floor, and while transferring the crooks of the hangers into his hand, their fingers touched. For a brief moment neither of them moved. Then she picked up her possessions and hurriedly opened her door. 'Come on in and see my house.'
There was a For Sale sign in the yard, and he looked back at it while she struggled to fit her key in the lock. 'I take it, it's your house that's up for sale.'
'Naturally. What would Paul and I do with two houses when he's trying to earn the money to furnish one?'
'No buyers yet?'
'No, the market's been in a slump, the realtors say. But I'm hoping to get more lookers now that spring is here.'
Inside she snapped on the entry light, and they faced an ordinary living room decorated in saffron yellow and white. The furniture was nondescript: a striped sofa in shades of brown, two director's chairs in yellow canvas, a table made from an enormous wooden spool-the kind steel telephone cable comes wrapped upon. A wine jug sat on the floor in one corner, sprouting dried bearded wheat and milkweed pods painted in horribly garish purple, red and royal blue. She caught him eyeing the ugly arrangement and offered, 'One of my younger patients gave those to me last year, and I haven't had the heart to throw them away. I know they're awful, but I love them in spite of it.' She turned, and he watched the slit in the lace along the center of her back shift with each step as she walked away down a hall. Just before she reached what appeared to be her bedroom doorway, both elbows flew in the air, and she reached for the hook and eye at her nape. There followed a soft click as her bedroom door shut, then his long sigh as he ran a hand through his hair. He tried to keep his mind off what she was doing back there. He toured her living room, then the small efficient galley kitchen behind it-a cereal bowl in the sink with three Cheerios stuck to a glutinous puddle of milk, pencils sticking out of a mug that said 'Killer' on its side, a tablet on which was written 'buy deodorant.' He smiled and crossed to a sliding glass door hovering high above the dark yard. He slid it open and stepped out onto a small planked deck. Bracing his hands on the rail, he listened to the soft rush of Shingle Creek chortling in the dark.
She was the kind of woman he'd been searching for for a long time. At least, so far he thought so. Just his luck to find her and learn she was engaged to another man. He hoped Hildebrandt had more than silicon chips in his pants-she seemed like the kind who needed and deserved a mate who was all man, demanding and reciprocating. She had that way about her-the strong sure way she moved, walked, danced. She exuded a physicality. And she had the body of an athlete-toned, tensile, firm. Surely a body like that must be agile when it came to loving.
He stepped back inside and closed the sliding door. 'Are you decent?' he called.
'Yes.'
'Can I come back there?'
A silent pause followed, then she called, 'Yes, come ahead.'
The doorknob clicked, the door swung open slowly, and Joseph Duggan leaned against the frame, his weight slung on one hip and his hands slipped inside his trouser pockets. His eyes swept her gray sweat pants and hooded shirt, then swerved to the bed where her merry widow lay like a plaster cast of the front half of her body. She snatched it up and stuffed it into a dresser drawer.
'Why aren't you and this computer man living together? Wouldn't it be cheaper?'
'I bought this town house two years ago because he said it'd be the wisest thing to do with my money at the time-an investment, you know? Then when we got engaged, he started looking for a house for both of us right away, and as soon as we found it, I put this one on the market. Unfortunately it hasn't sold, and I'm stuck here until it does.'
'Meaning you'd rather be living with him?'
She dropped to the foot of the bed and began pulling on tasseled white sport footlets and a pair of Adidas. 'You're very presumptuous, asking questions like that.' Her eyes never left her feet.
'Sorry,' he said with not the least hint of pique at her sharp retort. His eyes moved from item to item around the room: the rumpled bed, unmade, but with the spread tossed up, half covering the pillows; her panty hose; one discarded satin pump lying on its side with the tiny pearl against the saffron carpet; photographs stuck into the edge of an old-fashioned dressing-table mirror; a tangle of Ace bandages on a dresser top to his left, lying beside a black perfume bottle, a round white plastic container of body powder, a handful of change, a pair of theater-ticket stubs, a package of Big Red gum and a small plastic case with compartments numbered like days of the month.
He eased his shoulder nonchalantly away from the door frame and ambled over to the dresser, chose the black flask, uncapped it and took a deep sniff. He watched her pull on one tennis shoe while he smelled the perfume and admired the curve of her spine as she bent sharply from her perch on the mattress. Without a comment he placed the Chanel No 5 back where he'd found it, then tinkered around, touching other things atop her dresser, observing that half the compartments in her birth-control pillbox were empty before moving on to the quaint scarred dressing table.
He knew very well she'd observed him inspecting her personal possessions, particularly the pills. And she knew he knew. He admired her for not leaping up and fussing about it in some artificially apologetic way.
'Is this you?'
She looked up to find his palms braced on the top of the dressing table, head cocked to one side as he studied a photo slipped between the mirror and its frame.
'Yours truly,' she replied, reaching for her other shoe. He glanced back over his shoulder, still braced on the dresser, and gave her a disarming grin. 'You were really cute in the pigtails. But what happened to all those freckles?'
'Luckily I outgrew them.'
'Mmm, too bad,' he mused, returning his attention to the photo and a string of others. 'You played tennis in school?'
