“That was then. Now is now. Everything is different now.”
“No it ain’t.”
“Boy, you thick?” Ike’s patience was not infinite, especially after paying for dinner. “They was not ready before. Now they had some drinks and dinner, they talked things over, and everything’s different now. You saw how he didn’t eat nothing. He need to be fit for what follows.”
“There ain’t no difference then or now.”
Ike studied Billy’s long face. “What are you talking about?”
Billy waved Jenna forward to clear the table. As she did, he leaned across so the girl had to scurry around him. His face was now barely six inches from Ike’s: “I don’t know who’s fucking who. But he don’t have a clue what’s going on. It’s been that way since she walked in.
It ain’t no different now or then. He’s gonna wind up with towels he never heard of.”
Billy did not have many theories, least of all about people. He did have one about Walter. Billy believed he knew why Walter had never had a girlfriend on St. John-or, as far as anybody knew, a date. He believed that Walter’s wife would show up one day, and that Walter had a religious nature where that was concerned. He was waiting for his wife. Billy respected him for that, the way he used to respect the Church before his mother lost her faith.
Billy also had a general sense that the worst was most likely to happen. Once in a while he got a more specific feeling-that something was coiling to strike like a snake. He had that accurate intuition to thank for his presence here, in relative safety and comfort, in a business of his own.
He had that feeling the minute he saw the straps on Isobel Gitlin’s little white blouse.
Clara brought Walter and Isobel ice in a bucket, and placed a pitcher of white sangria toward the edge of the black marble table. She made an interesting point of saying that she was feeling tired now and would go to bed if that was all right. In the cool repose of her room downstairs she opened the thriller she’d started the day before. Clara hoped Walter knew what he was doing. She understood quite well that the girl knew what she was doing.
Isobel had spent five years discussing great books, and she’d written “Sex and the Serious Scholar.” She had few illusions, and none about this kind of thing. The horny goddess had taken her now for good and sufficient reason. She was overstimulated. The dread, and relief, and intimacy; the sudden rush of ambition, and the unexpected knowledge of her seductive power… do things to a girl. And here was Walter, bursting for her, walking around inside her head; a perfect gentleman, with really good eyes, an eminently decent sort, with what looked like a perfectly…
Oh, who the fuck cared why?
She’d had enough of gratification delayed. She sipped her sangria delicately and said, “I’ll be back in a little while. I have to use the bathroom.”
He told her he had plenty to think about. He did not confide that it wasn’t easy because his thoughts were past controlling. He hoped she’d not seen that he was burning up inside.
Where sex was concerned, he had one rule: “Not with anyone close.” That left women he met in the course of his travels-good natured, attractive women without expectations, who asked or implied no questions that required him to lie. Plus, of course, professionals. And over the course of twenty years, that had worked well enough, from time to time.
But now… now he was nervous as a kitten up a helluva redwood tree. He could not honestly tell himself when it started-not at the Mayflower, surely. Probably during those days in her apartment, but not as he could clearly recall. On the phone last night? Yes, it was in his head then, as soon as he awoke. Maybe she was in the vanished dream. And when she walked into Billy’s, wearing that little white thing with the straps… He wondered how he’d managed to think straight all day, and force his eyes off her, even for seconds, at dinner.
Minutes after Isobel’s afternoon arrival, Clara had shown her to a cozy room under the deck beneath where Walter waited now. It had dark walls, a bronze tile floor with throw rugs, a wall of closets, a comfortable-looking king-size bed. She never even looked at the bathroom. Instead, she’d left the wheelie unopened, tossed her coat, and gotten her tour of the house.
She remembered Walter’s room at the other end of the hall and stopped there en route to her own. Compared to Walter’s, hers seemed awfully small. She peeled off her clothes and opened the bathroom door. The sight astonished her. It was half the size of the bedroom. The toilet and vanity set in a corner hardly seemed to matter. A vast, black-tiled shower filled most of the bathroom. It had no curtain and no wall. It was more like a locker room shower. You walked right onto the sloping tile floor, and you looked out through a huge glass door to the sea, the very same view from the deck just above. She looked for a curtain. There was none. She saw that the door could slide, and she moved it back. The warm, humid air flowed in. She turned on the faucet and water rushed down with extraordinary force from a very large showerhead. She soaped and let the water work on her body and her mind. She watched the ocean outside, the lights on the water; the boats still at sea, testing the darkness, strings of lights across their decks. She remembered Leonard telling her she was being watched. And if they were looking back at her? Fine. And if they could make her out clearly? “I hope they like what they see,” she thought.
She turned off the water and stepped outside. It wasn’t a night for a moon. The sky was black. She did not attempt to dry herself, but slid on the T-shirt she’d pilfered from Walter’s room. She looked in the mirror. It stuck to her. She tied her hair behind, touched scent to herself, and went upstairs.
Walter heard her coming, smelled her coming, knew she was coming before she came. That drove his heart faster than fear ever had. The sight of her and the meaning in her eyes had him shaking. She knelt in front, undid his belt, and took him into her mouth. The act sent vibrations through her and she looked up into his eyes to let him see that. The sounds he made stroked her insides; she wanted them louder, and making them louder was all that mattered. When the throbbing started she forced herself back, sat on her heels, let him see her breasts rise with her rapid breathing, then stood. She pulled the T-shirt over her head and said, “Let’s go to bed.”
He took her first smoothly, expertly, with more than enough crazed urgency to set her off within seconds. He was strong and he quickly understood what she needed most. He showed remarkable stamina and excellent self- control. He shuddered when she wanted him to and he could get sounds out of her at will. It was like they’d been at it forever; like they knew each other before they’d begun. And then they began experimenting, and to Isobel’s overflowing amazement, everything worked as well as it ever had. And when she could think, she thought she was getting what someone had been missing out on for years. She fell asleep after coming again-wondering whether it was the fourth or the fifth… and awoke still joined with him, awkwardly, at right angles. He was sleeping too. It was just after three in the morning. She watched the rise and fall of his gut. She shivered seeing the white of her leg against his dark brown belly. Walter was her first old man, the first one close to her father’s age. He was a revelation, all right. But was he a one-time wonder? Could he ever do it-quite that way-again? Was it Viagra?
Walter woke up alone. Seven-fifteen. Clara would sleep till nine. He sniffed. Nothing was brewing or toasting now. He creaked out of bed, stepped into his shorts, made his way upstairs. He realized that he was smiling; he imagined his smile painted on, like a clown’s. It occurred to him that he had not thought of his wife-not from the moment Isobel told him to wait. Not when she came to him on the deck, or in the blazing mindlessness that followed, or in the dreams that followed that. That was a first in twenty-five years. Walter felt better than fine. He did not dwell on the fact that he was thinking of Gloria now.
Nobody on the deck. He took the stairway down to the guest room. He found her asleep, on her belly, facing the shower and the ocean. A sheet had drifted over the small of her back, but her shoulders were bare, and most of her backside, and both of her legs, one of them bent at the knee. He noticed a twitch at the top of one shoulder; waited to see it again. Her mouth was open, just slightly. She didn’t look nearly as pretty as she had. Her eyes seemed smaller, her nose somewhat thinner at the bridge, her skin looked like normal skin. He liked her a good deal better this way. She must have heard his boxers hit the floor. She smiled before she opened her eyes. When she saw him, she said, “Oh, m-m-y,” and maneuvered onto her back with her arms outstretched.
Nashville
They arrived at the Nashville airport in late afternoon. The flight from Atlanta was short and uneventful. They
