17
Irun to Ned’s house without stopping, driven by a force and a strength I can’t control. I reach his door in no time and pound on it with my fist.Boom-boom-boom, right next to the brass house number, 2355. Its jagged edge rips the side of my hand.Boom! Blood runs out, but I don’t feel it.
Open the fucking door, Cool.
Boom-boom-boom!My blood stains the number.
The door opens. It’s him in sweatpants and a T-shirt that saysANDOVER. He rubs his eyes and smiles sleepily. “Mary, this is a pleasant surprise.”
So cool.
I push him back into the house and slam into the middle of his big fatANDOVER, bloodying it. “Where the fuck were you tonight, Cool?”
He looks astonished, his eyes wide. “Mary?”
I grit my teeth and shove him again. “Where were you tonight?” I advance on him, and he steps backward. “Answer the question, Cool! Why is it you never answer the fucking question?”
“Mary, what is-”
“Tell me!” I smack him across the face. My blood sears a perfect cheekbone. His hand flies to his face, and he edges against the stairwell.
“I…was here!”
“Doing what?” I smack him again, so hard the blood from my hand spatters in a tiny fan across his T- shirt.
“Mary, stop it!”
“You killed Brent! And Mike!” I start to slap him again, but he catches my wrist in midair.
“Mary, no!” He wrenches my arms together.
“You did it! You!” I scream, kicking and clawing at his arms and legs. I can’t believe what’s happening, that I’m struggling in his arms, that I’m raging. He wrestles me to the floor, pinning me there, pressing my wrists back into the rug.
“Stop it now!” he cries out.
“You! You!” I hear myself, shouting over and over, then the huff of my own panting. I can’t seem to catch my breath. I feel I’m coming out of a fit.
“Stop it, Mary!” he shouts.
“You!”
“No!”
“Cool!”
“Ned-my name is Ned! I’m not Cool, I don’t know who that is. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I would never hurt you, you know that!”
“Let go of my wrists!”
“Not until you’re calm.”
I look up at him, on top of me, looking down. His face is barely visible in the half-light. Flecks of blood mingle with his freckles; the two are hard to distinguish. I can make out his eyes, his green eyes, oddly bright and feral. His eyes are full of pain. He’s not the killer, he can’t be. He’s hurting for me, I see it there, in his animal eyes. “Brent’s dead,” I whisper.
“Your secretary?”
“A car hit him. It wasn’t an accident.”
“My God. And you think I did it?” He shakes his head in disbelief. “Never, Mary. Never.” Still straddling me, he releases my wrists.
I don’t move, I can’t. I feel utterly drained, shaken to the core. I want to surrender myself to the force out there that wants to hurt me, wants to punish me for what I’ve done. It should have been me it claimed. Not Brent, and not Mike. “It’s because of me.”
“No, Mary.” He leans down, supporting himself on his arms, and kisses me softly.
Without thinking about it, merely responding, as a child to the breast, I kiss him back. He kisses me again, so carefully, trying to reach me. He strokes my hair as we kiss, and eases himself on top of me. I feel like I want to lose myself in him, to heal somehow this great gaping hole that’s been rent in my heart by losing Mike and now Brent. I want him to love me, to fill me up inside. I don’t want to be alone anymore. I want the pain to stop.
All I can feel are his kisses, deep and sweet. And his hands, stroking my hair, then cradling me, so gently. His touch feels wonderful, my skin is hungry for it. I haven’t been touched like this in so long, and it feels so good that I go toward it. I feel my body surge to him as he lifts me easily to the couch and strips down my pantyhose and panties. He pulls up my skirt, and I can feel the cool leather of the couch under me and the weight of his hips parting my legs. He keeps kissing me, as I feel him, probing me slowly and purposefully with his fingers.
It’s what I want, and what terrifies me, too.
He enters me gently and I gasp, taking him in all at once. I can’t say anything, though I hear his whispered words in my ear, because he’s moving inside me. I can hardly catch my breath. All I can do is grab his back and hold on. And I do, clinging to him there. Suspended somewhere between heaven and hell.
18
Iwake up with my cheek on Ned’s chest and his arms linked loosely around me. His freckled skin feels cool, and his chest, almost hairless, looks smooth and perfect. I move slowly, not wanting to wake him, and let my eyes wander over the four walls of his bedroom, which are almost as familiar by now as my own. The walls are covered with a seemingly endless series of sailing photographs, taken at locales I’ve heard about but never seen. Wellfleet. Bar Harbor. Newport.
I turn over as carefully, and rest my head on the meaty part of Ned’s forearm. It brings me eye level with the desk of a very hard-working lawyer. Legal pads are neatly piled there, as are photocopied cases, highlighted with pink and yellow marker. A coffee can holds a bunch of sharpened pencils. There’s a file box of index cards, with homemade dividers starting withAPPEALABILITY and going straight through toZENITH CASE (EVIDENTIARY ISSUES). Next to the card file is a photo of a boat that Ned sails on weekends on the Schuylkill.
I pull the sheet up to my shoulders and hug it to my breast. I figure it’s midmorning, judging from the bright sun in the window. It must be Sunday. I know it’s not Saturday, because I spent much of Saturday in tears, telling Ned all about Brent. He listened patiently and kindly. He kept me in aspirin and water and even went to my apartment to fetch some clean clothes. I called Jack on Saturday too, but he was too miserable to talk. He gave the phone to a friend, who told me there would be a memorial service for Brent on Sunday night.
Saturday evening Ned and I ate Raisin Bran for dinner and went back to bed. We slept like spoons until the middle of the night, when I felt him stirring. I remember him fumbling gently behind me. I reached for him, but he felt cold and slick.
“It’s a condom,” he whispered. “I’m crazy about you, but I’m not crazy.”
Then I turned over to face him, half asleep and half awake. We made love again, slowly and quietly in the still darkness, and I felt as far away from everything as I’ve ever felt. It was time-out-of-time for us both, I think. Just the two of us, moving there together. Moving into each other.
We slept until dawn, when Ned disappeared downstairs into the kitchen to get us breakfast. He returned with aHammond’s World Atlas heaped with American cheese, white bread, and a plastic bottle of seltzer water. We talked while we ate. Then I called my mother and told her the news about Brent. She insisted on coming to the memorial service, to pay her respects to Brent’s family. I didn’t tell her Brent had been estranged from his family since the day he told them he was gay. Nor did I tell her I’d been standing next to Brent when he was killed.
My eyes fall on Ned’s answering machine. There are no messages showing, which means Judy didn’t call back while we were asleep. I called her from the hospital as soon as it happened, but she wasn’t home. It seemed odd, because I remember her telling me that Kurt would be in New York for the weekend and she’d be free. I even tried reaching her up there, with no luck. I left a bunch of messages on her machine at home and also on the voice mail
