“Come on, what am I saying?”
Sam shook her head.
“I know what I say.” He tilted her off and put his lips to her ear and whispered a string of outrageous commands and nipped at her earlobe. That started their usual delirious tangle, which after six months still had the power to leave Sam breathless and amazed. Randall always found just the right touch, the exact timing that could drive her pleasure up and over thresholds whose existence she hadn’t even suspected. Was it just because he was older? Or did he have some kind of gift? Or was it-maybe, oh, she hoped so-because he really, totally, absolutely loved her? A Force Ten orgasm in no time at all.
He fell away from her, gasping and laughing. “That’s it. I swear. That was the one. I’m never going to need another one. That was it for all time.”
Sam laughed. “They ought to have an Olympic event. The hundred-metre orgasm.”
“Synchronized orgasms.”
They were laughing, but Sam was already beginning to feel sad the way she always did afterward. Sad that Randall would be going home to his wife. Sad that she would be going home to her mother and her little brother and her self-absorbed art instructors at Algonquin. Most of her friends had left town for universities farther afield. Her dad was off on one of his winter camping trips, hunting or just being alone, something he liked to be a lot. She turned on her side and touched Randall’s pale shoulder. “Can we go away somewhere, sometime, maybe?” she said. “For a few days at least?”
“That would be nice, wouldn’t it.”
“Can we do it? Just take off for Toronto or Montreal or, I don’t know, anywhere? For a weekend maybe? Even just overnight?”
“I’d love to, Sam, but I can’t. What am I supposed to tell Laura?”
“Tell her that you’ve found a beautiful Indian princess who makes you incredibly happy.”
“That’d go over real well.”
“Well, make something up, then.”
“I can’t, Sam. I’m a terrible liar and Laura would know like that.” He snapped his fingers.
Sam could feel his tension rising the way it always did whenever she talked about life outside whatever vacant house they happened to be in. She knew she should shut up, but she couldn’t stop. “Don’t you want to spend time with me somewhere else? Somewhere outdoors maybe? Or anywhere-a coffee shop, a bookstore-it doesn’t even matter. Just somewhere we could be like normal people?”
“Sam, Laura and I have been together a long time. I can’t just up and dump her, and like I say, I’m a lousy liar.”
“Well, that’s a good thing, I guess.” Sam moved her hand to his forehead and stroked his eyebrows. He gave a little moan of pleasure, and soon he was asleep.
He always fell asleep after, out cold like you’d shot him full of Valium. He’d stay that way for five or ten minutes, during which time Sam got to wonder about his other life, his real life. Laura Wishart was pretty and smart-Sam had looked her up on the Internet-the quintessential blond success, some kind of financial expert. She must have been well off to start with, because her father owned Carnwright Real Estate, where Randall worked. Sam wasn’t sure why Randall was unhappy with his wife. He rarely talked about her, except to say they never had sex anymore.
She tried to think about Loreena Moon. Loreena was free, always on the prowl. Loreena was cool and untouchable. She was like Pootkin, Sam’s black cat that roamed the neighbourhood and sometimes came home and sometimes did not. She had given Loreena Pootkin’s green eyes-the only spot of colour in her monochrome artwork. She wasn’t sure if you could actually have a single dot of colour like that in a real book, but she liked it.
She wanted her heroine to be essentially good-that is, always helping the underdog and bringing evildoers to justice. But she didn’t want her to be bound by petty rules of behaviour. This past weekend she had drawn a series of images of Loreena swiping stuff. She was investigating a rich industrialist whom she suspected of poisoning the water supply of several reserves, and while snooping through one of his mansions she pocketed various valuable items. Sam liked the idea of Loreena being as amoral as Pootkin, but wasn’t sure if she could square that with helping the underdog. She loved Pootkin, but not because the cat had shown any inclination to altruism.
Randall woke up, and picked up his watch from the bedside table. “God, I gotta go. I’m supposed to be watching the game at Troy’s place. I did see most of it.”
“Better check the score before you get home.”
“I’ll check it on my phone. Not that Laura cares.”
They got dressed and Randall folded up the blue blanket. In the vestibule they put on coats and boots. Randall switched off the light. His hushed voice in the dark as if people might be listening right outside the door. “Give it two minutes, right?”
“Okay.”
“And make sure the door is shut properly. Lock seems to be screwed up-everything sticks in this house.”
He gave her a quick kiss, said he couldn’t wait until next time, and then he was gone. A cloud of cold air, smells of snow and pine. His car starting in the drive. It shouldn’t hurt this much, she told herself. You’re a big girl. Supposedly. No cat-hearted Loreena, though, that was obvious.
She watched through the door window as his tail lights winked through the trees. It was a long drive back to town and then up the highway to the reserve; she decided she’d better visit the bathroom before hitting the road. She wiped her boots on the mat until she was sure they wouldn’t leave water on the hardwood.
As she was coming out of the bathroom, she heard a key in the front door. A man’s voice. Not Randall. Stomping of boots and voices answering.
Sam stepped into the bedroom. If these are the owners, she said, or even another agent showing the place, I am in shit city, and so is Randall. But the owners weren’t supposed to be back yet, and why would an agent be showing a house at this hour of the night? It didn’t make sense. The toilet was still running, and she prayed it would stop.
Voices and movement deeper into the house. Hall light going on.
Sam got down on the floor and slid under the bed. There is no kind of serious person, she said, that would be in this situation.
Several minutes of quiet, then the man’s voice louder and footsteps coming her way. Dulled sound of stocking feet. Did that mean they would be staying?
The man’s voice from the hall. “Got a nice bathroom. Nothing luxurious, but it’s the location you’re paying for. The tranquility.”
The bedroom light came on and Sam held her breath. She couldn’t see anything, the bedspread hanging almost to the floor.
“Good-sized master bedroom. Room for a queen-size bed, obviously. Decent closet space. You might want to pick yourself out a different colour.”
Sound of closet doors sliding open.
A woman’s voice, some kind of accent. “It was built when, you said?”
“Early sixties.”
“So new. Looks older, the style.”
Closet doors sliding shut.
“Character,” the man said, closer now. “They didn’t just reach for the cookie cutter.” He crossed the room and there was the sound of curtains being pulled back. “You got the lake out back, snowmobiling in winter, canoeing, water skiing or whatever’s your fancy in summer. It’s the view makes the place. I gotta get you-all out here in the daytime. Smack dab on the water, out on a point-it’s a postcard, there’s no other word for it. Pretty unique. Got two more bedrooms.”
“Is only one bathroom?” Another man’s voice. Again a foreign accent.
“Yessir. You mightn’t consider it for your primary residence, but for a northern getaway? I think you’d be hard put to beat it.”
Their footsteps thudding toward the hall and the light going out.
“You-all check out the other bedrooms,” the man said, “and then I got a little something to warm us up.”
Sam shifted her position under the bed. She could hear the man and woman in the hall, some foreign
