He took her hand, turned her wrist to check the time. “We’ve still got an hour.”
“During which I have to get home, clean up. Dogs are... very sensitive to scent.”
“Got it. They’ll smell the sex.”
“In indelicate terms, yes. So I need a shower. I also need a shirt. You ripped mine.”
“You were—”
“In a hurry.” She laughed and, despite the uncurtained windows, was tempted to leap up and do a happy dance on the table. “But I still need to borrow a shirt.”
“Okay.”
When he walked out naked again, she shook her head. After sliding off the table, she pulled on her pants, her bra.
Just as casually, he walked in and tossed her the shirt she’d recently yanked off him.
“Thanks.”
He tugged his work pants on while she pulled on her boots. Though she felt a little dreamy, she matched his easy tone when she stepped over, touched his face again.
“Next time, maybe we’ll have dinner first.” She kissed him lightly. “Thanks for the tree, and the use of the table.”
She walked out, called up her dogs and gave Jaws a body-scrub good-bye. It pleased her to see Simon standing out on the deck, shirtless, his hands in the pockets of his yet to be buttoned jeans, watching her as she drove away.
Twelve
Francis X. Eckle completed the last of his daily One Hundred. A hundred push-ups, a hundred crunches, a hundred squats. He performed these, as always, in the privacy of his motel room.
He showered, using his own unscented shower gel rather than the stingy sliver of motel soap. He shaved, using a compact electric razor that he cleaned meticulously every morning. He brushed his teeth with one of the travel brushes in his kit, which he then marked with an X for future disposal.
He never left anything personal in the motel waste can.
He dressed in baggy sweatshorts and an oversized white T-shirt, nondescript running shoes. Under the T- shirt he wore a security belt holding cash and his current ID. Just in case.
He studied himself in the mirror.
The clothes and the bulk of the belt disguised the body he’d sculpted to mean and muscular perfection, and gave the illusion of an ordinary man, a bit thick in the middle, about his ordinary morning. He studied his face— brown eyes, long, bladed nose, thin, firm mouth, smooth cheeks—until he was satisfied with its pleasant, even forgettable expression.
He kept his brown hair close-cropped. He wanted to shave it for ease and cleanliness, but though a shaved head had become fairly common, his mentor insisted it drew more attention than ordinary brown hair.
This morning, as every morning over the past weeks, he considered ignoring that directive and doing what suited him.
This morning, as every morning, he resisted. But it was becoming harder as he felt his own power grow, as he embraced his new self, to follow the lesson plan.
“For now,” he murmured. “But not for much longer.”
Over his head, he fit a dark blue cap with no logo.
There was nothing about him to draw the eye, to earn a glance by a casual observer.
He never stayed in the same hotel or motel more than three nights—two was better. He sought out one with a gym at least every other stop, but otherwise looked for the lower-end type of establishment where service—and the attendant attention—was all but nonexistent.
He’d lived frugally all of his life, dutifully pinching pennies. Before he’d begun this journey he’d gradually sold everything he owned of value.
He could afford a great many cheap motel rooms before the journey’s end.
He slipped his key card into his pocket and took one of the bottles of water from the case he’d brought in himself. Before leaving the room, he switched on the camera hidden in his travel alarm by his bedside, then plugged in the earbuds for his iPod.
The first would assure him housekeeping didn’t poke through his things; the second would discourage conversation.
He needed the gym, needed the weights and machines, and the mental and physical release they provided. Since he’d converted, the days without them left him tense and angry and nervous, clouded his mind. He’d have preferred to work out in solitude, but traveling required adjustments.
So with his pleasant expression in place he walked outside and across to the tiny lobby and the tiny health club.
A man walked with obvious reluctance on one of the two treadmills, and a middle-aged woman rode a recumbent bike while reading a novel with a bright cover. He timed his gym visit carefully—don’t be the first or the only.
He chose the other treadmill, selected a program, then switched off the iPod to watch the news on the TV bracketed in the corner.
There would be a story, he thought.
But as the newscasters reported on world events, he started his run and let his mind focus on the latest correspondence from his mentor. He’d memorized every line before destroying it, as he had all the others.
Fate had taken him to that prison, Eckle thought, where George Allen Perry had unlocked the cell he’d been trapped in all of his life. He’d toddled like a child with those first steps of freedom, then had walked, then had run. Now, now he craved the heady taste of that freedom like breath. Craved it until he’d begun to twitch at the rules, the regulations, the absolutes Perry asked of him.
He was no longer the soft, awkward boy desperate for approval and hounded by bullies. No longer the child passed from hand to hand because of a selfish whore of a mother.
No longer the pimply, overweight teen ignored or laughed at by girls.
All of his life he’d lived inside that cage of pretense. Stay quiet, tolerate, obey the rules, study and take whatever was left when the stronger, the more attractive, the more aggressive took theirs.
How many times had he seethed in silence when passed over for a promotion, a prize, a girl? How many times had he, alone, in the dark, plotted and imagined revenge against coworkers, students, neighbors, even strangers on the street?
He’d begun these travels, as Perry had explained to him, before they’d met—but he’d carried the cage with him. He’d worked to discipline his body, pushing through pain and frustration and deprivation. He’d sought and found a rigid internal control, and still had failed in so many ways. Because he’d still been locked in that cage. Unable to perform with women when, at last, one deigned to sleep with him. Forced to humiliate himself with whores—like his mother.
No longer. Perry’s creed preached that the act of sexual intercourse diminished a man’s power, gave that
