From behind me, a voice said, 'You'd better leave now.' Belinda Matson.
'I'm not going anywhere.'
'Yes, you are,' she said, coming into the office. 'Because Merle's going to pick up the gun and make you leave.' She looked at Merle. 'Aren't you, honey?'
Merle flushed again. He didn't want me to see how dependent he was on others for his strength. But that didn't stop him from picking the gun up and pointing it at me. There was oil on the gun and part of the handle was chipped. The flaws made it all the more real.
'You're a stupid bastard, Merle,' I said. 'There's a good chance you're involved in something that's already taken two lives. But you're not handling it right, believe me. You're going to die, too.'
I watched Belinda this time instead of Merle. I could see her pretty, tiny face stretch with anguish as I spoke. Obviously she was worried about the same thing. All these crazy people I was surrounded with-and the secret that tied them all together, the secret I didn't know.
'Merle-' I started to say, feeling sorry for him again.
'All you need to know,' Merle said, sounding much more self-confident with the gun in his hand, 'is that I didn't kill either Denny or Gettig. Either one of them. Your man Stokes is working a con game-he's got pictures of all of us who were there that night. He was hiding in the house. He decided to fleece me because he wrongly thinks I have access to certain moneys-' He glanced up to little Belinda. She shot him a glance that said he was talking too much. This is how it had been for all of Merle's life. Never quite knowing how to handle a situation, screwing it up more likely than not.
'He'll be clearing out his desk,' Belinda said. 'He won't be working here anymore. Neither will I.'
'That's going to look great to the cops,' I said.
She shrugged. Her sense of desperation matched Merle's earlier mood. 'They can't prove anything.'
I stood up. 'I wish you two would let me help you.'
'You just worry about yourself,' Belinda said, now the official spokesperson for both of them. 'Whoever's doing this may have you included in the plans, too.'
I knew there was no point in asking for that obscure sentence to be cleared up for me.
Merle waved the gun at me again, looking sad and silly.
'I hope you know what you're doing,' I said.
'I do,' he said. But didn't believe it, either.
SIXTEEN
It took me many long minutes to realize that the hands shaking me were not part of a nightmare but were in fact real.
Ultimately, it was her perfume that convinced me.
She got me up and helped me to the bathroom and held my shoulders as I vomited (and didn't seem at all bothered by the sights or sounds) and then she helped me get into the shower and start the sobering-up process.
According to my watch, it was 8:15 p.m. when I belted my robe, put my feet into slippers, and walked into the living room.
She was curled up at the end of the couch, a diet Coke in one hand, a Ray Bradbury from my bookcase in the other, a jazz interpretation of Kurt Weill's music on the stereo.
'You look a little better than you did an hour ago,' she said.
After leaving the office and Merle Wickes, I'd come home and, in a frenzy of self-pity, gotten myself hopelessly drunk.
Her knocking and ringing at the door had awakened me.
I sat down on the couch, rubbing my face. 'How are you doing?'
'All right,' she said. 'I just…'
When she didn't finish, I looked up. 'You just what?”
She smiled. 'This afternoon something strange happened to me.'
'What?'
'I found myself actually missing somebody. Somebody I really wanted to be around because it would make me feel better than I had in years.'
'I hope you're talking about me.'
She laughed. 'I am.'
'I missed you too.'
'Why don't I make you some food?'
'I'm not sure what's in the fridge.'
'There's bound to be something.'
There was. Eggs and bacon and bread for toast. In fifteen minutes I was at the table, eating. She spread jam on toast and ate with me.
'You're watching me,' I said after a time.
'Yes.'
'I bet I look great. All hungover.'
'You look great to me.' She flushed. 'God, I'm sorry. I mean, I don't want to come on too strong or anything. I mean, I don't know how to do this very well.'
With toast in my mouth, I said, 'You're doing just fine.'
'I really did miss you.'
'Me, too.'
'I kept thinking, what if it had been you in that library where I'd met Clay all those years ago.'
'Would've been nice.'
'Do you have anything against Lutherans?'
'Not a single damn thing.'
'Do you think we could go to bed?'
'I think that would be swell.”
For a while following separation from my wife, I tried the one-night-stand scene. Not for long. A peculiar loneliness results from sleeping with somebody you scarcely know. At least for me. But then I'm probably doomed to being old-fashioned in many ways. Sex is better for me when I care about someone.
The nice thing with Cindy Traynor was that I cared about her, was starting to fall in love with her.
So I took to bed some long-unsated lust plus a real sense of wanting to know more about the woman, physically as well as psychologically.
Her flesh was silken, the curves of her body tender hollows, the taste of her mouth and the smell of her hair overwhelming there in the darkness. At first there was some awkwardness as I moved down her breasts and stomach but after a few minutes, her breathing sharper, my senses beginning to dizzy, we began making love as if we'd been lovers for years.
She was the right combination for me of sentiment and skill. The things she whispered were as tender as they were sexy, as much about loneliness as need.
There was a lot of thrashing when we both finished within seconds of each other, thrashing and a certain young joy.
Afterward, we lay there listening to each other breathing in the shadows, our hips touching, her cold toes occasionally nuzzling my foot. On the bedroom window I could see snowflakes hit the glass and vanish, big wet flakes making me feel snug inside.
'Do you think you'll get married again?' she said.
'I hope so.' I paused. 'How about you?'
'I'd really like to be somebody's partner, you know?'
'Yeah. I know. That's what I want, too.'
