things got rough. She had to talk to him. So she had gotten out of bed, thrown on her cross-trainers and her jacket, and gone in to the dark dining room to find her keys.
At the gate to the estate, though, her mood had altered. A new sign on the curved iron arrows of the gate said KEEP OUT. Mike had probably put it up for the reporters, but it applied to her now, too, so she walked the perimeter of the fence to the little gate on the far side in the woods and climbed right over it, and walked down toward the water, and lay down near the dock until she could figure out what to do, her chest feeling tighter every moment, as if her heart wanted to rupture. She wished she had pebbles to toss at his window, something that would tell him she was here, waiting. Tell him how angry she was. How hurt.
For a while she lost herself in the rhythmic sound of the wavelets and the cold, grainy feel of the sand. Geese honked above, flying overhead, late for their appointment down south. The breeze moved gently over her back, stirring her hair. She remembered the other times she had awakened in the middle of the night, after her father had died.
When he died he left her with no support. She would lie in her bed looking at the ceiling, imagining death, wondering what it was like to be nothing and nowhere, getting so far into the blackness she could barely claw her way out in the morning.
Aunt Beth, who had often stepped in when times were bad, took her in permanently, and when Lindy was seventeen, helped her find a job at a coffee shop in Henderson and a room in town. Lindy spent only her base salary, saving all her tips in a big pickle jar, an antique her aunt had kept around, God knew why. When she saved enough, she moved on, putting on her suit jacket from the Salvation Army store and applying for a job as a secretary at the Burns Brothers’ Car and Truck Stop in Mill City.
After a few years she was booking the acts at a casino in Ely, making enough to rent an apartment and send a hundred dollars to Aunt Beth every month, taking night courses at the business school. She earned a reputation as hardworking, never late, never missing a day, always giving it a hundred fifty percent.
After a brief, disastrous marriage, she had met Mike. He worked as a bouncer in the club, a guy on his way down at thirty-five, ten years older than she was but like a kid in so many ways. He stood the exact same height as she did, five feet eight, and he had a surprised, boyish expression, eyebrows raised high like he still couldn’t believe he’d been given a knockout punch. After sixty fights, thirty-two as a pro, he’d cut open his eye one too many times and the Nevada Boxing Commission doctor had said he would lose the eye if he kept fighting.
He didn’t care about that, Mike had told her; he still had the other one. He wouldn’t accept that his fighting days were over. He came from a family of poor Russian immigrants who had settled in Rochester, New York, in the forties, and they had all the faith in the world he would still someday make it big and send his smart younger brother money for school.
On her way out at five o’clock he would come on duty and stand by the door to say good night to her. Laughing at the stupid jokes he made, she worried about him and finally worked up the nerve to invite him over to her place for dinner.
It was midsummer in the high desert, about a hundred ten degrees in that town, and the air-conditioning had quit on her. She couldn’t cook at all, so they ate olives and crackers and cheese and drank cheap Russian vodka with 7UP, sitting out on the shady fire escape above the main street. He didn’t even kiss her, but the next day he came by with a new air conditioner and put it into her window for her, and then they did a lot of kissing on the dusty red couch in the living room.
That day had been the happiest day of her life, because she mattered to someone again.
“Dad,” Lindy breathed, and rolled over and looked into the California sky. “You out there?” No answer. He was gone, gone somewhere forever where she couldn’t follow, leaving behind a tender indentation in her heart. She pulled herself to her feet and started walking up the hill toward the big house.
Sammy, their rottweiler, came rushing toward her, wagging his whole rear end when he recognized her. “Sammy,” she whispered, crouching a little to scratch him behind the ears. “What are you doing outside? Your job is to stay in the house. You’re supposed to guard Mike,” she said, rubbing him on the back. Then she remembered. Rachel didn’t like Sammy. She probably didn’t want him inside. He followed her silently as she climbed the wide wooden stairs up to the back door.
She turned her key in the door, which unlocked without a squeak. Her watch told her it was three-thirty.
In the dark kitchen the only sound was the humming of the refrigerator. How strange to creep around her own house. She opened and closed a few drawers, maybe to reassure herself that this was the place in spite of how alien it felt. Without giving it any thought, she picked up their sharpest knife from one of the drawers, a favorite she used to cut the tips off of carrots. She had bought the knife herself at Williams Sonoma on a trip to the Bay Area. She had used it often, helping the housekeeper with party preparations. This knife definitely belonged to her.
She passed through the dark silence into the hall to the reception room where the great staircase wound upstairs. Her footsteps in the big rooms seemed to echo with the sounds of parties gone by.
The banister felt warm to the touch. She led with her free hand, running it along the smooth surface upstairs, around the curves she had been so proud of when they first had the stairway built. At the landing she paused, waiting for a sign, but there was no sign. The house slept. Tuesday was the housekeeper’s night off, and Florencia lived far away in what Mike called the dungeon, a two- bedroom apartment on the basement level that opened out onto sloping gardens at the side of the house.
The heavy Persian rug in the upstairs hallway muffled her progress. She approached the bedroom door. How outlandish everything seemed. She was a foreigner in her own home. On its stand by the door, the big blue Chinese vase was still filled with the same willows and reeds she had arranged three weeks before, dried and dusty now, looking like plants arranged by some other woman’s hands, the new woman of this house.
She used the knife to push open the door. In the dusky light, Mike was lying on his back, snoring lightly, asleep. Rachel lay on her stomach beside him, her lower leg and bare foot free of the covers, her right leg looped over his, her beautiful long hair covering her shoulders.
She looked at them for a long time, clutching the knife in her hand, struggling to accept the proof of her eyes so that she might finally allow the umbilicus that still tied her to Mike to disintegrate, feeling the shaky instability that comes when death is very close.
Mike’s eyes opened. He had always been a light sleeper, awake at any sound. He didn’t move. Neither did she. For a long moment they stared at each other.
Then, while Rachel slept on, he carefully pulled the covers off himself and got out of bed, not taking his eyes from Lindy’s. In the dimness his bulky nakedness shifted like a shadow among shadows. Bending down, he picked up his old wool robe from the floor, pulled it on, tied the belt. He stepped into slippers. Lindy watched, hypnotized.
He came to her and touched her. That corporeality of his touch, the blanket-warmed fingers, shocked her out of her reverie.
“Mike?” she said softly.
“Who else?” he whispered, and she wondered if he was smiling.
She took in the familiar smell of his body.
He nodded toward the door. Then, holding on to one of her wrists, he drew her out of the room. In ghostly procession they drifted down the stairs, back through the kitchen, out the back door. Sammy picked them up at the door and followed close behind.
Out on the path, where they could hear the lapping of the lake, Mike looked at the knife, then at her face. Standing across from him she saw again how well they fitted together. It was as if their bodies had been molded exactly in reverse, so that her curves disappeared to accommodate the knobs and slopes of his physique. After a moment, while the breeze hushed and the sounds of the lake receded, she reveled in their mutual awareness. Breathing deeply a few times, she thought about the knife in her hand, not wanting to give it up.
“What’s the plan here?” Mike asked, sounding so much like his old self, she almost melted.
“No plan.”
“All action, no talk,” said Mike, teasing gently. “The knife, Lindy. Give me the knife.”
“No.”
“Lindy, if you don’t give me the knife, you’re going to have to use it. You don’t want to hurt me, do you?”
She didn’t know what to say to that. He stood there patiently, fearlessly, the breeze ruffling his robe, looking the same as he did in the ring years ago, not a care in the world in spite of the tough punk across the way wanting to rip his heart out. Deciding, she lifted the knife from her side and raised it so that the tip just brushed his stomach. He didn’t move, didn’t even blink. This was the Mike she knew. She turned it around so that he could take it by the hilt.
He dropped it into a low bush beside the path. She buried her head in the scratchy wool, and his hand came up to stroke her hair.
“I’m having a hard time, Mike,” she said. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Lindy,” Mike answered, like in the old days when they had just met. They went down to the beach, clear of the forest, while he half-supported her, and they crumpled to the sand together.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “So sorry. I think I was dreaming about you.”
“Won’t you-will you please-”
“It isn’t right-”
But her hand was pulling at the tie around his waist and the robe fell open.
“Please,” she said.
“Oh, Lindy.”
She put her arm around his neck and drew him onto her, and after lying there with her for what felt like a long time, his hands tugged at the zipper on her pants, then pulled them down to her shoes. He lay on top of her for a moment, his heavy weight lulling and comforting her.
Then he gave her his love, like he always had.
Afterward, when they were dressed again, sitting together and supporting each other, looking out at the lake, he said, “I’m ashamed. I should have known better.”
“Is there-any chance-”
“I’m marrying Rachel.” He spoke without malice, sounding almost as confounded by his own words as she felt.
“She’s so young.”
“It’s a fresh start. I looked around one day, and everything looked different. It was like another man was living my life, doing all the usual things, paying bills, making love, on the phone, and I was outside looking in through a window at him, mixed-up as hell. I couldn’t hear the words anymore. I didn’t like what I saw there, this old face and these wrinkled-up paws of mine.” He held his fists up. They both inspected them in the dark, until he dropped them again. “They were…” He thought, but couldn’t come up with the word he wanted.
“Beautiful, Mike.” She had told him that many times.
“You remember? Like bowling balls, smooth to the touch, cruising down the alleyways… fast.”
“Oh, I remember.”
“Now, see that?” He tried to flex. “I can barely bend the fingers. I got arthritis in them, I think. I’m just so tired…”
“Of what? Of me? The business?”
“I don’t know. I don’t feel the same as I used to about anything.”
“I just can’t believe it.”
“I still care for you.”
“You have such an odd way of showing it.”
“Don’t leave yet, Lindy. We may never get to talk like this again. It’ll always be the lawyers, the reporters…”
“The money,” Lindy said.
“I’ll take care of you like I always have.”
“Was it you taking care of me, Mike? Or me taking care of you?”
