“Is Michael asleep yet?”
“Maybe,” she said, wondering what this was about.
“Let’s take him and go out someplace. Maybe walk down and get some ice cream. He loves to do that.”
“But he’s in bed.”
“So? How much trouble can it be to get him up? Hell, he can go in his pajamas. There are only so many chances in life to get ice cream. You’ve got to take them.”
She wasn’t going to argue against that philosophy She pressed the remote’s power button again and the television went silent and dark.
“Are you restless, David?” she asked. “Or is there some reason you don’t want me to watch the news?”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that. I don’t know why, but I don’t feel like watching television tonight.
From her window overlooking West Eighty-fifth Street, Deirdre watched David, carrying Michael, walking with Molly toward the lights of shops at the corner.
They paused for Molly to adjust her shoe or sock, and David moved over to walk on the curb side. An unconsciously protective gesture, Deirdre thought with envy. She’d read somewhere that the custom dated back to when gentlemen walked closest to streets of mud to shield against ladies getting their dresses stained from the splashing of passing carriages. She narrowed her eyes and for an instant her lips arced in a tight, grim smile.
She placed the side of her forehead against the warm glass, leaning forward and staring with fierce attention at them, clenching her teeth so that her jaw muscles danced. Her hands were clenched too, into tight fists that she leaned on against the wooden sill.
When the Jones family was out of sight, Deirdre straightened up and stared down as she unclenched her fists. She’d dug her long fingernails into her flesh so deeply that her hands were bleeding. The blood on her palms reminded her of photos of stigmata, before she’d become a lapsed Catholic.
Leaving the window, she went to a cardboard box and dug out a Bible she’d stolen from a motel room outside Saint Louis. Then she went into the kitchen and got a sharp knife.
She sat down in the living room and began methodically slashing the Bible’s pages, tossing them to the floor with abandon when they separated from the binding.
When she was finished, she gathered up the pages and the mutilated fake leather Bible jacket, carried them in to the kitchen sink, then burned them.
The forsaken, the truly lost, obeyed only their own commandments.
It was almost midnight when Molly loomed over David. She’d removed her sleep shirt and panties and stood nude next to the bed, trailing a corner of her silk scarf lightly over his cheek.
She grinned as he swiped at the scarf with his hand, then opened his eyes and saw her in the dim light.
“Mol?” There was surprise in his voice. And, she thought, anticipation.
She bent lower and kissed him then, reached down and felt him between the legs. His penis was flacid now, but she could change that. The really sensual sexual organ was the brain, and she was going to enter David’s mind tonight even if he thought it was the other way around.
Standing up straight, she used both hands to twirl the scarf into a taut twist of smooth material. Then she smiled. “How about tying my hands and feet, lover? Would you like that?”
He paused, then surprised her.
“Not tonight, Mol. Not that kind of game.”
“You’ve played that kind of game before.”
He almost sat up, as if she’d alarmed him.
“Remember? The lodge in Maine?”
“Ah, yeah.” He seemed to relax. “No forgetting that.”
Puzzled, she stared at him. “You want me to tie you up?”
“No.”
“Something wrong, David?”
“Nothing.”
“The way things have gone lately, I thought you might want me to spice up our bedroom time.”
He reached up and grabbed the scarf, hurting her finger as the material was wrenched from her grasp, then threw it across the room into shadow.
She was stunned. Confused. “Jesus, David! There’s no reason to get mad.”
He lay very still for a while, not answering. Then he cupped a hand behind her head and pulled her down to him. She resisted, still unsure and angry. But this was at least some reaction from him. And she needed that, dammit, she needed it! She let the strength drain from her as he kissed her.
He smiled at her with something like regret. She thought he was going to apologize for snatching away the scarf, but he didn’t. “Nothing needs spicing up where you’re concerned, Mol. I’m just not into that kind of stuff anymore.”
She kissed his forehead, then his lips. “You used to be adventuresome in sex. Used to get a little kinky from time to time. I never minded that. I liked it.”
“So did I, but I don’t feel adventuresome tonight.”
She settled back down beside him in the bed.
Within a few minutes, his hand brushed her nipple, then moved lower. As his finger found its familiar spot and began its subtle rotation, he rolled toward her, craning his neck, and his lips warmly encircled the nipple that still tingled from his touch.
“Plain vanilla, David,” she said, half-jokingly.
Only half-jokingly.
34
A light rain was falling the next morning as Molly delivered Michael to Julia beneath the canopy in front of Small Business.
“Going to rain all day, Michael,” Julia said, lifting him from his stroller and hugging him. “But not on us.” He seemed to enjoy the irony of that and grinned.
Molly turned up the collar of her yellow raincoat and adjusted Michael’s waterproof miniature windbreaker when Julia set him down. She kissed him. “Be a good boy for Julia.”
“Michael’s always good,” Julia said. Her gaze went beyond Molly to a black minivan that had pulled to the curb. A woman climbed out and opened a sliding door in the side of the van to reveal three preschoolers strapped into their seats.
“Two of them are mine,” Julia said, possessive about her young charges. “I’ll get the littlest one next year.”
For a moment Molly and Julia watched the woman lean into the van and begin struggling with safety belts, rattles, and galoshes.
“Family must be a wonderful thing,” Julia said, watching the woman and her children.
At first Molly thought she might be kidding, but when she saw the longing on Julia’s face, she knew better. Julia actually envied the woman.
“It is wonderful,” Molly said. “Someday you’ll know, Julia.”
“That’s what my husband and the doctor tell us. I guess I might as well believe them. And you.”
“You’ll see that we’re right.”
“We keep hoping. That’s what there is to life-hope and family.”
“That sounds about right,” Molly said.
She kissed Michael again and went down the steps to where she’d left the stroller.
As she pushed the stroller along the sidewalk, away from Small Business, she felt the light rain work its way beneath her collar. She paused and opened her umbrella, then continued on her way, not looking back.
Behind her, Deirdre, in a yellow raincoat, had approached Small Business from the opposite direction. She
