“Betrayed a trust? Not really.”
“Don’t say it, Charlie. You know better. It doesn’t matter there’s no documentation or promises. Not between us. We both know better. I said words to you I didn’t mean, out of fear. And I had frivolous sex with Patrick Sweeney, and it was wrong, and I’m ashamed of it.”
Maybe he understood. The anything goes girl, Schmidt thought. New discoveries, parts of the past coming loose—that’s what happened when you were with someone for years. The simple detail about her name scrawled on toilet walls in college hinted at all he didn’t know about her. He wanted to believe she was right.
But as he stood feeling the slight breeze of a ceiling fan, it didn’t work. There were basics you needed to agree on. Fundamentals. Sex could be gym, or religion, or nothing at all. But you had to agree on it. You had to share that attitude. He was too old for surprises. Not this kind.
“I’m going back,” he said.
“Stay for the brats, then you can go.”
“Are you trying to be funny? To me, this is not funny at all.” He still felt superior, but now the feeling was empty. He didn’t want it.
“I’m trying to create some space,” she said. “Just an hour, some time—”
“You want your space,” he said. “I get it. ‘Give me some space.’”
Now Brenda laughed, a bark like his own. “You know that’s not it. Some time,” she said. “What are you afraid of? That I might talk you into something? I did something wrong. I made a mistake I absolutely regret, and I want an hour of your time.”
“Why?”
She sighed. Not because he was dense, but from the weight of the moment. He felt himself yielding. No, Schmidt told himself. No.
“Because,” she said. “Why should a mistake have to lead to another? Why does there have to be some built-in destiny, some punishment for both of us, because I did what I did?”
Think, Schmidt said to himself. With her, you had to. You couldn’t just blow her off, even when you wanted to hurt her. And he did. He wanted her to hurt the way he hurt.
“If you go,” she said, “if you leave now, this will harden. For both of us. I know you enough to know you’ll work it over. You’ll worry it and study it. I won’t do that, Charlie. It’s happened so many times, I’ll just turn away and move on. Because it’s one more failure, and I’m not worthy.”
She looked up through the pool cage. The sky had darkened.
“Our start was twisted,” she said. “Terrible. Ugly. We live in different cities, and that’s made what happened easy to avoid. Because we didn’t want to risk how right we are together. For me, I’m sure facing what happened last spring would mean showing you much more about me. And I don’t want to. I’m afraid, and it’s what I always do, every time. But because of how we met and what happened, I can tell myself that’s the real problem. I talked about killing someone with Sweeney, a stranger. Someone I met on a plane. It was safe with him, it meant nothing. I think you went up to Minnesota for the same reason. To deal with it in your own way. I think that’s why I gave myself to someone I didn’t care about. I was grateful to him. Two people, Charlie, with secrets. If you go, that’s all there’s going to be.”
Again Schmidt understood, and he thought she was somehow right. But his neck hurt from the flight. It made him think of his age. Of someone with white hair sitting next to her on the way to Florida. It made him jealous. It made him feel useless.
The pool faced south, and a trace of western sunlight still glittered on the surface. He looked up through the cage at what just then were beautiful clouds, pastels. He felt alien, a northerner. With the pain in his neck, he again felt old, not up to whatever she wanted from him.
That’s it, Schmidt thought. He turned and made his way through the house.
Why are you speaking Spanish? You always tell me to speak English.
Someone is with me. I need you to call Perez. Tell him to lease the big truck, and load everything at my house for Miami. Including my furniture.
Why does this have to happen right now?
Later, Ray. Don’t turn your pager off, keep it with you. Just tell Perez to be ready. I’ll be there in two hours.
You’re going with the truck. You’re leaving.
Don’t turn off your pager.
This is about Marco, isn’t it? They called again.
Tomorrow, I want you to take some money from the bank.
All of it? Do we have to leave?
Only me. Take a few thousand to be safe.
“Come on, let’s go, let’s go—”
George Ivy stood waiting under the light in his domed entry hall. Rivera pocketed his phone and knelt to re-tie his boat shoes.
“I don’t know why I’m doing this,” Ivy said. “Just get the fucking lithograph and bring it here.”
“You’re doing it because you’re a good man.” Rivera tied the other shoe. “You were mad before, I don’t blame you. I’m sorry about your wife—” He finished and stood. “But it has nothing to do with me. I don’t know about her life, I don’t know about art. I didn’t understand the picture was valuable.”
“You can tell it’s worth money from what she says,” Ivy said. “‘He’ll go ballistic.’ What the hell did you think that meant?”
Rivera stepped to him. “Only that you wouldn’t want anything missing.”
“But you went ahead and took it anyway.” They looked at each other. Ivy’s fleshy mouth and blue eyes communicated contempt. “Not a good idea,” he said.
“You’ll see.”
Rivera got out his keys. Stepping around Ivy, he
