Impersonal Attractions (18 page)

They were the only straight patrons in a sea of pretty male faces, but the bartender made them welcome as he poured Martell cognac into warmed snifters. Harry stood and she sat on a tall stool. They were crowded very close together. Even if the bar had been empty, she would have wanted to be this close to him, to smell the leather of his dark brown Italian jacket, the slight hint of a woodsy cologne. She felt very pretty and a little flustered, the way she always did when with a man who reminded her that she was a woman.

Before she even thought about it she had asked him to accompany her to Sam’s benefit ball the following week.

“I’d love to,” he said, “but I lost the pants to my tux. I can’t imagine where.”

Did that mean yes or no?

“I can’t dance, don’t ask me,” he hummed in her ear.

No or yes?

“Sure, toots. I’ll be there with bells on.”

Yes.

Mostly they sipped their cognac and touched. Was she getting tipsy? She was running her hands up and down the front of his red cashmere sweater.

She caught herself.

“What am I doing?”

“Feeling up my tummy,” he said and kissed her. They were thirty-seven and forty-one, necking in a gay bar. It felt wonderful.

He started to say something and then stopped himself.

“Nope, can’t tell you that.”

“No fair. You can’t start and not finish unless you give a reason.”

“Reason is—I don’t know you that well.”

It was one of her least favorite reasons for anything.

But as he said it he dropped his eyes. Annie followed his glance and understood. He didn’t know her that well, indeed, as he stood at the bar with her, an erection pushing against his nicely tailored charcoal corduroy slacks.

“I’ve been like this for the past half hour,” he muttered into her ear. “Let’s blow this pop stand.” He took her jacket, her hand, and led her down the stairs. The car was still there, unticketed.

As they drove back across town, they talked very little. Harry dialed in a late-night station playing honky-tonk blues. He was driving like in high school, with one arm around her. He parked illegally in the alleyway across from her building.

“You might get a ticket here.”

“Just as long as I don’t get one upstairs.”

For one brief moment Annie worried about the tiny rosebud buttons on her peach silk blouse as Harry fumbled with them, seeking her flesh. But buttons could be resewn.

The loving was sweet and simple. No pyrotechnics or gymnastics. No games. Just a boldly shy, big, gentle stranger whom she’d invited to ride in for the evening and steal her heart.

He slept funny. Cold at night, he’d pulled back on his red sweater. He huddled under what was plenty of cover for her, a cold-natured woman. He clutched an extra pillow to his stomach like a teddy bear. He didn’t snore, but he didn’t sleep very well either.

They patted each other in the night, that kind of pat-pat, pat-pat-pat that means, “I’m here. It’s okay.”

About four in the morning she patted him beneath the teddy-bear pillow and they fell into one another once more.

*

Six A
.
M
.
was grim, dark, and cold. Harry stumbled into the kitchen in his baggy Brooks Brothers shorts and sweater and peered into her refrigerator with a frown. He had wrinkles from the pillow on his forehead.

“I dreamed that you were feeding me chicken. There’s no chicken in here,” he grumbled.

Quickly he dressed and, refusing her offers of coffee, he swatted her on the fanny, gave her a fast hug, and was gone out the door.

He was halfway down the hall to the elevator when Annie was stricken with panic.

“Harry,” she called and then slapped her hand over her mouth.

He smiled. “I’ll give you a jingle.” The elevator came and he was gone.

*

Sam couldn’t wait to hear all the details.

It was great to have someone to share both the good and bad times with, but sometimes their kaffeeklatsching troubled Annie.

First there was the superstition, a leftover from childhood. If you really wanted something, you shouldn’t talk about it.

Second was the question of loyalty to the man involved. She had learned that men don’t talk about women nearly as much as women talked about men and that the degree of their locker-room specificity is highly exaggerated. However, women talking about men could get pretty specific.

Third, maybe she and Sam simply talked about men too much. But all single women of a certain age did. “He said, I said, do you think he?” Or more common, the never ending strategizing of where to meet them. Did well-educated professional women have nothing better to talk about? Or was the ticking of the biological clock turning their minds to mush?

Annie realized that Sam was grinning at her across their shared sashimi. She hadn’t been listening.

“Sorry.”

“I just think that it’s so great that Harry’s coming to the dance. I’m sure he and Sean will like each other. Does he have a tux?”

“I’m not sure. He said he lost the pants.”

Sam laughed. “That sounds like Harry. And it’s going to be a fantastic evening.”

Annie snorted in reply.

“Annie, Annie, you always get this way at the beginning of a love affair. Just like I do. Sad and fatalistic. But look how much I’m enjoying Sean, now that I’ve decided to relax. I promise you. You’re going to live happily ever after. You’ll see.”

*

Harry and Annie were not to live happily ever after. He didn’t send her flowers. He stood her up for the ball. And she never heard from him again.

TWENTY-EIGHT

He followed her home from the Safeway carrying a bag of groceries in his arms just as she did.

He was out of his neighborhood here. She was out of his league, too, with her fancy clothes, gold jewelry, alligator shoes. The heels click-clicking on the pavement ahead of him made her look a little taller, but she couldn’t have been much over five feet. You could tell by the way she walked, with her groceries in one arm and her leather briefcase in the other, that she thought she was somebody.

A briefcase! Why would a little nigger gal need a briefcase? To carry her shoplifting home in? Or had they made her some kind of boss, the way they did here these days? With a big desk she would perch behind and a phone she would use to order men like him around.

“Do this by four o’clock.”

“I said I wanted it by three, do you understand?”

He understood okay. He understood that women like her were too big for their britches. And her especially, talking in that voice that reminded him of home.

That’s why he’d noticed her. He’d been in the store to pick up a couple of things, might as well since he was in the neighborhood dropping something off. Some beer, chips, and, while he was in line, leafing through an
Enquirer,
he heard her just ahead of him.

It had been a long time since he’d heard a nigger girl talk like that. Some of the softness was gone. She’d probably been away from home a long time. But so had he.

He’d liked listening to her talking with the woman at the checkout who was telling her a story about people trying to buy liquor with their food stamps.

He caught up with her just as she walked out of the parking lot. She must live close by. He was careful to stay a few yards behind and then to cross over to the other side of the street. The buildings were all two or three stories. There were very few trees and bushes. He was going to have to be very cool because there was no place to hide.

But that was okay. He was just following her because he liked her voice. This was different. He wasn’t going to…or was he?

As he thought about it, the warmth began to grow in his groin. Yes…well…maybe he was. He looked at her again across the street, tapping so efficiently toward home.

She was light, gold-colored. But look at the hair, the nose, the lips. With little brittle bones like a bird. But not too skinny. There would be softness there too. Softness that she didn’t even know she had.

He’d help her find it, point it out to her.

Shit. She turned the corner. Would she notice him if he did too?

No, it was cool. She was home. She’d put the groceries down on the step and was unlocking the front door. He kept walking.

He walked all the way around the block and when he came back past her house he was on her side. As he passed her door he slowed down just long enough to memorize her address and the name she had printed on a little card on her mailbox. It was like the cards that had names on them in graduation invitations.

She would see her name on another little card like that, almost the same size, when he came back another day to bring her the flowers.

TWENTY-NINE

The ringing phone cut through Annie’s sleep like a knife.

She bolted up and grabbed her alarm, squinting at it without her glasses in the darkness. Two A
.
M
.
Was her father dead? Her mother?

“Annie, I’m sorry, but…”

“Are you all right?” Annie interrupted, her heart pounding. Sam’s voice on the other end was tight.

“Yes, I am. I’m okay. But I wanted to call you before you read it in the paper. She’ll be on the front page… This makes four.”

“Sammie, you’re not making any sense. Who’s number four? What are you talking about?”

“He hit again. They just found her body. Sean called me when the report came in. I’ve got to go down to the office.” Sam’s voice broke. She took a deep breath and then began to speak in simple sentences, as if the simplicity of the facts would relieve the horror.

“He said there was lots of blood. On everything. Everywhere.”

“Sam…”

“I’m trying. He killed her, Annie. He strangled her, choked her.” Sam took a deep, deep breath. “And then he took a knife, and he…”

“Who, Sam, who?” Annie was yelling into the dark apartment.

Finally the words plopped from Sam’s mouth like drops of blood.

“He took a knife and when he finished, in the hole where her heart had been, where Lola Davis’s heart had been, he left a single, perfect white rose.”

PART TWO

THIRTY

Fifteen minutes later Annie stood in front of the well-stocked liquor cabinet Sam kept for guests. Her mind was blank as her eyes scanned one label after another.

Finally, her hand shaking, she pulled down a bottle of Amaretto.

“Honey, you don’t want that in the middle of the night.” Sam’s voice came from behind her. “Here’s what you need.” She handed Annie a tumbler of Jack Daniel’s and ice, threw an arm around her shoulder, and pulled her into the living room.

The lights of Sam’s Christmas tree twinkled in a corner.

Annie finished off the tumbler before she started to talk. She looked at the mounds of gaily wrapped packages.

“I bought Lola an exercise mat for Christmas.” Tears welled in her eyes, and then she was leaning on Sam’s bosom. “I hate this. I want to go back to sleep and start over.”

Sam patted her back, smoothed her hair.

“Why Lola?”

“Hey, hey, you know there’s no answer to that. This isn’t something you can make sense out of. Come on. Sit down.”

Annie leaned back on the sofa, lighted a cigarette, exhaled a long plume of smoke. She stared at the end of the cigarette.

“You know, Sammie, it was like this with the kids, when I was teaching. Every year there was at least one who died. It was never a rotten one. It was always a great kid who got it.”

“It always seems that way, doesn’t it?” Sam’s voice was low. She splashed more whiskey into Annie’s glass.

Annie continued. Past pain was easier than present. “Like that little kid Danny Johnson on his bike the semi ran over. Great kid.” Annie took a gulp of her drink and shuddered. “Such a sweetie. A loner just beginning to peep out of his shell. Then smack. The last thing he saw was a Peterbilt grill in his face.”

“Hey, come on.” Sam squeezed her hand.

“No, it’s okay. I want to talk about it. You know,” she said, sitting up and setting her glass on the coffee table, “you know, it was really ironic about Danny Johnson. The driver who killed him was killed himself a few weeks later. A car ran a stop sign and killed him in a pickup truck. Isn’t that funny?”

“Not funny ha-ha.”

“But you have to admit there’s poetic justice there. It doesn’t make Danny’s death okay, but it makes it better.”

Sam could tell that Annie was getting a little drunk, which was what she wanted her to be.

Annie gestured with her almost-empty glass. “Like I’m going to make Lola’s dying better!” She raised her voice. “I’m going to find that son of a bitch and kill him!”

Sam grabbed her arm in midflight. “Right, love. But now I’m tucking you into the guest bedroom. You get some sleep and we’ll talk about this tomorrow.” She looked at her watch. “I mean later today.”