they made love.
Katherine shifted in her seat. “In a few years, my oldest girl will be out on dates. It’s a shame-she’ll never do the stuff we did, never know those good times. The nights in D.C., the concerts at Fort Reno. I won’t let her, you know? It’s too dangerous now, with the guns. It’s crazy.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Yeah, you heard. You haven’t been around.”
“I’ve seen the world,” he said.
Katherine smiled. “You took a helluva slow boat.”
Constantine nodded and butted his cigarette in the ashtray. Katherine did the same and looked at him coyly as she blew the last of her smoke in his direction. He looked around the place, listening to the music, watching a sad-eyed man bobbing his head to it at the bar, and then he looked back at Katherine. Her eyes were still on him.
Constantine said, “Let’s go upstairs.”
Katherine pulled a twenty from her wallet and signaled the waitress.
Constantine broke the seal on the motel cup and tore away the paper. He pulled some cubes from the room bucket, dropped them into the two cups, and poured vodka over the ice. He walked across the room, turning off the lamp on the way. He handed Katherine her drink where she stood against the wall nearest the window. He tapped her plastic cup with his.
She nodded and drank deeply, closed her eyes. Constantine looked out the window and saw rain falling thickly through the glow of the streetlight.
Katherine opened her eyes and placed her drink on the formica-top dresser. She slipped her hand behind Constantine’s neck and pulled his face down to hers. Her lips were cool from the ice and her tongue bit of scotch against his.
Constantine put his hands up into her skirt and slipped them behind her panties. He pushed his groin into hers and freed one hand to unsnap the fastener on the side of her skirt. The skirt fell to the ground, Katherine kicking it away sharply with the toe of her pump. Constantine unbuttoned her blouse, his fingers brushing the warmth of her smooth belly as they traveled down. He released the hook on the front of her brassiere, peeling it back and off her shoulders. In the light he saw her chest redden, as it had always reddened when he undressed her, and he smiled. Katherine kissed him again, pushing her tongue aggressively into his.
He led her to the bed, where she lay back, her feet still on the floor. Constantine undressed quickly and lowered himself onto her, rubbing his phallus along the front of her panties. He squeezed one dark nipple into stone, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger as he kissed her open mouth. Then he turned her over, pulling her panties down below her knees and off her pumps.
Constantine took Katherine in the yellow light that spilled in from the streetlight outside the window.
Katherine showered while Constantine freshened his drink. He sat on the edge of the bed and sipped vodka, listening to the water run behind the door. After a while it stopped running and ten minutes later Katherine walked out into the room.
She was dressed and made up exactly as she had been when he had looked at her in the lobby through the smoked glass of the lounge. He watched her walk to the dresser and clasp her watch to her wrist. He watched her straighten herself in the dresser mirror.
She looked at his reflection in the mirror as she pulled the cuff of her shirt down over her watch. For the first time that night he could not see a trace of the girl in the woman’s face.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Katherine said. “Why did you have to do that?”
Constantine butted his cigarette in the night-table ashtray. “It was the one thing we never did,” he said.
She looked him over. “So that’s what it’s about for you. New experience. Nothing deeper than that.”
Constantine shrugged unconsciously. Katherine’s eyes glazed.
“You want to know something?” she said, their eyes still connected in the mirror. “What I told you earlier, about those good times we had-that was all bullshit, Constantine. The truth is, I’ve got a life now, and a career, and a beautiful family. When I look at my children, and I think I ever knew guys like you, it just makes me feel dirty.”
Constantine said, “How do you think you’re going to feel when you look at them tonight?”
Katherine took her eyes from the mirror and picked her handbag up off the dresser. She tucked it under her arm and walked with her head up to the door. She opened the door and walked out, closing it softly behind her.
Constantine listened to her footsteps in the hall, and when he heard the bell of the elevator he rose and stepped over to the window. A minute later Katherine walked through the lobby doors and out onto the sidewalk below.
He watched her step off the curb into the wet street. A car filled with kids passed in front of her and accelerated at a puddle. Katherine stepped back and avoided the splash. She wound her straight hair back behind one ear, walking with a forced bounce in her step as she crossed the street. She slipped once on a patch of slick asphalt, the heel of her pump sliding out from under her. But she caught herself, and quickly put the key to the lock of her imported sedan. Katherine lit the smooth ignition, pulled away from the curb, and drove north toward the suburbs.
Constantine turned his head, stared deeply into the darkness of the motel room. So that was over now too.
Chapter 5
Constantine sat freshly showered under the cloth awning of the motel the next morning at nine o’clock, his backpack leaning up against the brick wall at his side. The rain had continued in spasms through the night and now came steadily and with the added push of wind. He smoked and listened to the hiss of the southbound tires on the wet street.
The yellow Super Bee approached just after nine and stopped at the curb, pointing north. Constantine put his Jansport over his shoulder and trotted through the rain, across the street to the car. He threw his pack in the backseat and climbed in next to Polk.
“Mornin’,” Polk said.
“Morning.”
Polk wore the blue windbreaker buttoned high, with a triangle of white T-shirt showing below the neck. He held a styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand, a small ring of plastic cut from the top. He took another full cup off the dash and handed it to Constantine.
“This’ll start us off,” he said.
Constantine tore a piece from the lid. He blew on the steam that twisted out of the hole before he sipped. He took his Marlboros out of the breast pocket of his denim shirt and tossed them onto the deck of the dash. It was a gesture to let Polk know that the cigarettes were theirs. The ride south was going to be long, and everything from then on would be cut straight down the middle.
They rode out toward the suburbs of Wheaton and caught the Beltway east. A half hour later they were on Route 4, and soon after that the crispness of country had returned to the air. Gradually the traffic died out and then it seemed to be just the two of them and the occasional pickup passing from the opposite direction. Constantine noticed a stone marker at the head of the unnamed two-lane that they had taken the previous day. Polk turned onto the road and gave the Dodge some gas.
They drove past woods and took a wide curve, past more woods fenced with a split rail, and then a clearing. The big colonial sat back in the clearing. Polk slowed and steered the Super Bee between the squat brick pillars, stopping at the iron gate. He glanced at his watch and shifted in the bench.
Through the windshield Constantine could see the figure with the field glasses framed above the portico in the center window. The figure moved out of the frame, and the iron gate opened inward. Polk eased through the gate and drove toward the house.
A thickly barred cage containing a doghouse stood thirty yards to the left of the house. In front of the
