Travis reached behind her and turned off the tap, then stroked the lean, toned muscles of her back. The bathwater, leavened with oil, was smooth, supple, some exotic new liquid, not ordinary water at all.
'I've missed you,' Travis said.
She was briefly surprised. He was never sentimental.
'I…' Why was this so hard for her to say?
'I
missed you too.'
The water rose around her. He entered the tub, straddling her, his knees against her hips, as the water sloshed lazily around them and stray bubbles detached themselves from the lather to burst in small pops.
'I'm not sure the circumstances allow for much finesse,' Travis said apologetically.
She giggled.
'Finesse isn't always essential.'
They rocked gently in the water and steam. She let her head fall back, her mop of wet hair cushioning her. against the tiled wall. In the ceiling the exhaust fan hummed. The faucet dripped. She heard her heartbeat and Travis's breath.
'Abby,' he said.
She shut her eyes.
'Abby.'
He was inside her.
'Abby…'
Pumping harder. Driving deeper.
Her back arched, lifting her halfway out of the water, and her hair spilled across her face in a dark tangle, and distantly she was aware that she'd banged her head on the damn tiles, but it didn't matter.
He withdrew himself and held her, the two of them entwined amid soapsuds and lacy, dissipating tendrils of steam.
'Told you I'd fit,' Travis said.
She couldn't argue.
In late afternoon Abby woke in the familiar half darkness of her bedroom. She propped herself up on an elbow and looked for Travis, but he was gone, of course. He had returned to the office. She supposed it was considerate of him to have departed without waking her.
Dimly she recalled leaving the bathtub when the water had gotten cold.
She and Travis had toweled each other dry, and the vigorous rubbing had segued into more sensual contact, and then they were on top of her bed, and somehow the covers got kicked off and things had proceeded from there. This time the circumstances had allowed for considerable finesse.
She had dozed off afterward. And he had made his exit, gathering his clothes from the living room, where no doubt they had been neatly folded and stacked. He had fit her into his schedule, at least. He had found a slot for her between lunchtime and his afternoon appointments.
She shook her head. Unfair. What had she expected him to do? Cancel everything, spend the day with her?
He was trying to salvage a damaged business-and not incidentally, keep some of the most famous people in LA alive.
Anyway, she had never asked for more from him.
She liked her space, her freedom. Maybe she liked it too much for her own good.
She got out of bed and threw on a T-shirt and cutoff shorts. Barefoot, she wandered into the kitchen and opened a can of tuna fish. Slathered between thick slabs of date bread, it made a pretty good sandwich.
Normally, when eating alone she would watch TV or read, but there was nothing on TV at this hour, and the only immediately available reading matter was Travis's report. She almost got it out of her suitcase, but stopped herself.
'All work and no play,' she mused.
Travis had said that. He'd been right. She could permit herself a break from work. Even so, she found her53 self eyeing the suitcase as she ate her sandwich at the dining table.
'You're a workaholic,' she chided.
'This job's gonna kill you if you don't let go of it once in a while.'
Unless, of course, it killed her in a more literal fashion first.
A lot of negative energy was in the air all of a sudden.
She popped a CD into her audio deck. The disc, selected at random, was a Kid Ory jazz album from way back when. She listened as the Kid launched his trombone into 'Muskrat Ramble,' but she knew the song too well to fully hear it, and her thoughts drifted to other things.
College. A January thunderstorm, and in the rain she broke up with Greg Daly. He was pushing too hard, getting too close. Even then, she'd needed her space. For her, it had always been that way.
She had talked about it with her father once. In memory she could see him clearly, squinting into the Arizona sun, nets of creases edging his calm hazel eyes. She had inherited those eyes, that exact shade, and perhaps the quality of remoteness they conveyed.
Her father had been a contemplative man, given to long illnesses He ran a horse ranch in the desolate foothills south of Phoenix. One evening she sat with him in the russet tones of a desert sunset, watching massed armies of saguaro cacti raise their spiked arms against the glare, and she asked why the boys in school didn't like her. She was twelve years old.
It's not that they don't like you her father said. They're put off a bit. Intimidated, I think.
This was baffling. What's intimidating about me?
Well, I don't know. What do you suppose might be intimidating about a girl who can climb a tree better than they can, or shoe a horse, or mm and shoot a rifle like a pro?
She pointed out that most of them had never seen her do any of those things.
But they see you, Abigail. He always called her that, never Abby, and never Constance, her middle name. They see how you carry yourself.
Anyhow, you don't give them much encouragement, do you? You keep to yourself.
You want solitude and privacy.
She allowed that this was so.
We're a lot alike, Henry Sinclair said. We get to feeling crowded more easily than most. She asked him if this was a good thing. It is, he said, if you can make it work in your favor. When she asked how, he answered. You'll figure it out.
Had she? Sixteen years had passed since that conversation.
Her father was gone, and her mother too.
She was more alone than she had ever been as a child, and still she got to feeling crowded more easily than most. n the evening, after a light supper, Abby went downstairs to the small gym adjacent to the lobby. She used the Stairmaster for a half hour, then left the building and walked into Westwood Village, where she browsed in a bookstore and bought a book on criminal psychopathology and a collection of old Calvin and Hobbes comics. She had never quite forgiven Bill Watterson for discontinuing that strip.
Burnout, he'd claimed. She wondered how long he would last at her job.
Mostly her visit to the Village was an excuse to do some people-watching. This was not only her job, it was her hobby. In college she had majored in Psychology because the field suited her temperament. She wanted to observe people and make assessments without being required or even permitted to get close.
Had she continued with her training, she would have been a licensed psychologist by now. But in the summer after her second year of postgraduate studies everything had changed. She had met Travis.
He was giving a lecture in Phoenix at the Arizona Biltmore. His topic: warning signs of violent psychopathology.
