“We don’t know exactly what’s wrong. Then there’s…”
“What?”
“Jake.”
“A guy named Jake’s a problem?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid sometimes he is.”
“He somebody you’re romantically involved with?”
“He lives with me.”
“And it’s not going well?”
“No.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
“No. Or maybe yes. God, I don’t know.”
“It can’t do any harm if I play Dear Abby. So what’s the trouble between you and Jake?”
“He… gets physical at times.”
“You mean he beats you?” Rene didn’t sound surprised.
“Not very often.”
“They say men like that don’t change,” he told her softly. “Abby says it. I say it.”
“So’s Angie say it.”
“Angie?”
“My mother. She’s forever trying to talk me into breaking away from Jake.”
“Maybe mother knows best.”
“Yeah, maybe she does.”
“Mary, why don’t you leave him?”
“I don’t wanna face my world without him in it, I guess. It’s more than just insecurity, though I admit that’s part of it. Maybe only a woman’d understand completely.”
“I know some women are that way about some men.”
“Was your wife like that?” She immediately wished she hadn’t asked. God, what a question!
“Sometimes, but not with me.”
Mary wondered what that meant.
“I better let you get to your supper,” Rene said. “They can suspect me of murder, but never of bad manners.”
“It’s okay, really. I’m not even hungry.”
But he was insistent. He gave her the Baton Rouge address, and she jotted it down on the flap of the cardboard box that had contained the lasagna.
“It might be a few days,” she said.
“That’s okay. Honestly, I can’t tell you what this means to me, that somebody out there understands and is willing to help.”
“Why don’t you call again when you get the stuff,” Mary said, “so I can be sure it reached you okay.”
“I will, Mary. And thanks again.”
He hung up.
She immediately phoned Romance and booked a lesson with Mel for the next evening. Ray Huggins wouldn’t mind if she took or copied some of the old dance programs in his office. She could say she wanted to look them over in preparation for the Ohio Star Ball. And if he did mind, well, she’d think of some way to copy them on the machine in the corner of his office. To help Rene. That, suddenly, was of supreme importance.
After all, he was battling odds in trying to find his wife’s killer, and maybe to prevent similar murders.
A list containing possible victims might be of immense value to him.
27
“So what’s with you?” Jake asked, when he came home from work. “You look like you hit the lottery.”
Mary shrugged. “I guess I just feel good, is all.” She thought about asking him what had happened at the warehouse then decided it was safer not to bring up the subject. Sometimes it didn’t take much to trip Jake’s detonator.
He peeled off his sweaty T-shirt, stretched elaborately, then flexed his muscles. Was this show of machismo for her? “Usually you’re in bed asleep by this time,” he said, and swaggered away toward the kitchen.
“Couldn’t sleep tonight,” she said, loud enough for him to hear. “I feel sorta nervous.”
She heard him clattering around in the kitchen. “Thought you said you felt good,” he shouted.
“People can feel two ways at the same time.”
He’d returned to the living room carrying a can of beer. Some of it had fizzed over the rim when he popped the tab, and the front of his gray workpants was spotted, as if he’d been careless going to the bathroom. He took a sip of beer, licked his lips, and stared down at her where she sat on the sofa with her hands folded in her lap. Looking down at her that way, he made her feel very small. He must know that.
“I’m sorry about last night,” he said. “I was, you know, upset with them assholes at work. If you knew what I go through at that place sometimes, you wouldn’t blame me.”
Surprised by his apology, Mary smiled. It wasn’t like Jake to admit he’d been wrong. “No harm done.” Maybe he was making progress establishing some self-control. “You want a snack or something?” she asked. “I think we got some microwave popcorn.”
“Sounds great. Lemme shower and I’ll be right back.”
She sat for a moment alone, not getting up until pipes clanked inside the walls like mysterious signals and she heard the hiss of the shower running. Then she went into the kitchen and stuck a bag of Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn into the microwave.
After yanking the tab on a cold can of diet Pepsi, she stood staring through the oven’s portholelike window, watching the paper sack expand and listening to the muffled explosions of corn kernels. The warm scent of the popcorn filled the kitchen. It was one of her favorite smells, and she knew it would waft through the entire apartment and linger. After a little over a minute, the explosions inside the inflating sack built to a constant chatter; Orville Redenbacher in there with a machine gun.
Handling the bag gingerly so she wouldn’t burn her fingers, she divided the popcorn evenly into two bowls. By the time she carried them into the living room, Jake had finished showering. He was sitting on the sofa, barefoot, and wearing a clean pair of khaki pants and a white undershirt. His black hair was tightly curled from the shower’s steam, still moist and slicked back so his hairline seemed to have receded to lend him a look of lofty intelligence. He was a handsome man, and not as bad as some; she shouldn’t have been thinking… what she’d been thinking.
“Want another beer?” she asked.
He shook his head no.
She got her Pepsi can from the kitchen, then sat down next to him on the sofa with her bowl of popcorn, her legs tucked beneath her. As she often did, she seemed to see herself and her surroundings from above. She and Jake side by side on the couch, Mr. and Mrs. Domestic.
Jake had switched on the TV. They sat munching popcorn and watched the end of an old movie starring Edward G. Robinson as a crime kingpin holed up on some sort of island near Florida. A hurricane was involved.
“Know why everyone thought that little kike Robinson was so tough?” Jake asked.
Mary contorted her tongue to work a kernel from beneath it, then said she had no idea.
“ ’Cause he thought he was tough. Look at him. Don’t he look just like somebody’s tailor or accountant?”
Mary couldn’t remember the CPA at work ever snarling at her the way Robinson did, but she simply nodded.
“Goes to show, it’s what you know you are that’s important,” Jake said wisely, slipping his arm around her.
“I guess,” Mary said, her breath catching as he gave her a squeeze. She thought it might not be best for some people to really know themselves too well.
