of the car.
The address was one half of a duplex on a side street a block from Henri Bourassa Boulevard. The name was Boucher. The husband spoke English, the wife and daughter only French. They were going to their summer home on a lake and were picking up two weeks’ worth of rent leasing their home to Olympic visitors. I gave them the voucher from the Olympic housing office. They smiled and showed us where things were. The wife spoke to Kathie in French, showing her the laundry and where the cookware was kept. Kathie looked blank. Hawk answered her in very polite French.
When they had gone and left us the key I said to Hawk, “Where’d you come up with the French?”
“I done some time in the Foreign Legion, babe, when things was sorta mean in Boston. You dig?”
“Hawk, you amaze me. Vietnam?”
“Yeah, and Algeria, all of that.”
“Beau Geste,” I said.
“The lady she think Kathie your wife,” Hawk said. He smiled very wide. “I told her she your daughter and she don’t know much about cooking and things.”
“I told the man we brought you along to stand outside in a jockey suit and hold horses.”
“Ah’m powerful good at sittin‘ on a bale of cotton and singin’ `Old Black Joe‘ too, bawse.”
Kathie sat at the counter in the small kitchen and watched us without understanding.
The house was small and lovingly done. The kitchen was pine-paneled and the cabinets were new. The adjoining dining room had an antique table and on the wall a pair of antlers, obviously home-shot. The living room had little furniture and a worn rug. Everything was clean and careful. In one corner was an old television with the screen outlined in white, giving the illusion of greater screen size. There were three small bedrooms upstairs, and a bath. One of the bedrooms was obviously a room for boys, with twin beds, two bureaus and a host of wildlife pictures and stuffed animals. The bathroom was pink.
It was a house that its owners loved. It made me ill at ease to be here with Hawk and Kathie. We had no business in a house like this.
Hawk went out and bought some beer and wine and cheese and French bread, and we ate and drank in near silence. After supper Kathie went up to one of the small bedrooms, filled with dolls and dust ruffles, and went to bed, with her clothes on. She still wore the white linen dress. It was getting pretty wrinkled but there wasn’t a change of clothes. Hawk and I watched some of the Olympic action on CBC. We were on the wrong side of the mountain to get U.S. stations and thus most of the coverage focused on Canadians, not many of whom were in medal contention.
We finished up the beer and wine and went to bed before eleven o’clock, exhausted from traveling and silent and out of place in the quiet suburb among artifacts of family.
I slept in the boys’ room, Hawk in the master bedroom. There were early bird sounds but the room was still dark when I woke up and saw Kathie standing at the foot of the bed. The door was closed behind her. She turned the light on. Her breath in the silence was short and heavy. She wore no clothes. She was the kind of woman who should take her clothes off when she can. She looked best without them; the proportions were better than they looked dressed. She did not seem to be carrying a concealed weapon. I was naked and on top of the covers in the warm summer. It embarrassed me. I slid under the sheet until I was covered from the waist down and rolled on to my back.
I said, “Hard to sleep these hot nights, isn’t it?”
She walked across the room and dropped to her knees beside the bed and settled back with her buttocks resting on her heels.
“Maybe a little warm milk,” I said.
She took my left hand where it was resting on my chest and pulled it over to her and held it between her breasts. “Sometimes counting. sheep helps,” I said. My voice was getting a little hoarse.
Her breath was very short, as if she’d been sprinting, and the place between her breasts was damp with sweat. She said, “Do with me what you will.”
“Wasn’t that the title of a book?” I said.
“I’ll do anything,” she said, “You may have me. I’ll be your slave. Anything.” She bent over, keeping my hand between her breasts and began to kiss me on the chest. Her hair smelled strongly of shampoo and her body of soap. She must have bathed before she came in.
“I’m not into slaves, Kath,” I said.
Her kisses were moving down over my stomach. I felt like a pubescent billy goat.
“Kathie,” I said. “I barely know you. I mean I thought we were just friends.”
She kept kissing. I sat up in bed and pulled my hand away from her sternum. She slid onto the bed as I made room, her whole body insinuated against me, her left hand running along my back.
“Strong,” she gasped. “Strong, so strong. Press me down, force me.”
I took hold of both her hands at the wrists and held them down in front of her. She twisted over and flopped on her back, her legs apart. Her mouth half open, making small creature sounds in her throat. The bedroom door opened and Hawk stood in it in his shorts, crouched slightly, bent for trouble. His face relaxed and broadened into pleasure as he watched.
“Goddamn,” he said.
“It’s okay, Hawk,” I said. “No trouble.” My voice was very hoarse.
“I guess not,” he said. He closed the door and I could hear his thick velvet laugh in the hall. He said through the closed door, “Hey, Spenser. You want me to stay out here and hum `Boots and Saddles’ sort of soft while you’re, ah, subduing the suspect?”
