Punish Me with Kisses (18 page)

And then she felt the tension coming off him, too. He was as nervous as she. Something about his breathing betrayed him—it was too controlled—and the way he drove, the tight way he gripped the wheel. She'd been selfish, she thought, thinking he was lazy, thinking that was why he hadn't wanted to come. It was he, she now understood, who must feel the greater dread, returning to the scene of a killing which everyone still believed he'd done.

A hundred yards from the front gate of the estate he suddenly stopped the car. "Want to turn back?" She looked at him, but she couldn't tell if he was serious.

"Of course not," she said, "but I am feeling a little creepy now."

He reached out for her and touched her cheek, breaking the tension. He started up again and pulled up in front of the gate. He got out, tried to open it, then shrugged and walked back to the car. "Damn thing's locked. Guess we'll have to walk in."

"I'll go get Tucker," she said. "He'll come down and open up."

"Want me to come?"

She shook her head. "He's going to be shocked enough when he sees me."

He gave her a boost over the gate, then she started up the drive alone. Tucker and his wife lived in the caretaker's cottage a hundred feet from the road. She was relieved to see his pickup truck parked in front, but there was no response when she knocked.

Damn
, she thought,
should have phoned from town
. She knocked again, then walked around to the side. She could hear the sound of a TV, recognized the pause-filled rhythm of soap opera dialogue.

"Tucker," she called out. "It's Penny
Berring
." It was strange to use her old last name again. She heard the TV volume go down, went back to the door to wait. Mrs. Tucker opened up.

"Why Penny!" She didn't look particularly overjoyed. "We weren't expecting you."

"Sorry, Mrs. Tucker. Guess I should have called."

"Haven't seen you in a long time. Come in. I'll get you tea. Then I'll go fix up the house."

"That's not necessary," she said. "Just want to spend a few minutes. All I need is the keys."

"I'd better get Phil, then." She turned and started up the stairs.

"You don't have to bother him," Penny said. "I see them over there." She started toward a peg board in the hall where the keys, all neatly labeled, hung on little hooks.

"I need one for the gate and one for the cottage."

"You don't want to go in there," Mrs. Tucker said, poised halfway up the stairs.

"Yes, I do. That's why I came."

Mrs. Tucker stared at her. "I'll go get Phil," she said. She disappeared upstairs, then Penny heard them talking, their words muffled by the walls. She was about to reach over and take the keys she wanted, when she heard a heavy masculine tread on the stairs and knew Tucker was coming down.

"Kind of short notice," he growled, clumping over to where she stood. "Not so nice catching us off our guard this way, not giving us time to clean things up."

"I'm only going to be here a few minutes. You don't have to turn on the gas, or anything like that."

"Your father says—well, look who's here!"

Penny turned. Jared was standing at the door.

"Hello," he said to Tucker. "Remember me?"

Tucker grimaced. "I remember you, all right."

"We're in a bit of a hurry, Tucker," Penny said, "so if you'll please give me the keys we'll get on with our errand and out of your way."

The caretaker hesitated. His distaste for Jared was evident, his distaste for the whole situation. He looked at them, looked away, then went to the board and snatched up the keys.

"Here, take 'em." He handed them to Penny. "Your father says 'Tucker, don't let anyone in there, not unless you hear from me.' Then you turn up without notice. What the hell am I supposed to do? Well, you're in the family, though as far as I've heard he ain't in it yet." He looked hard at Jared. "Go ahead. It's your house. Lock up when you're finished. You can leave the keys on the porch."

He turned his back on them and walked stiffly up the stairs. She turned to Jared. "That's what they call New England crustiness," she whispered in his ear.

They walked back down the drive, unlocked the gate, drove in and parked in front of the house. They walked around it, then crossed the lawn. She felt the springiness of the grass and remembered the feel of it against her bare feet when she'd crossed it at dawn those mornings three years before. But now it was night, the wind was strong and the air was chilled. A loose shutter somewhere swung open and shut. She looked back at the house. Its Victorian profile seemed menacing against the blackness of the sky. She pulled the light switch outside the
poolhouse
, but the lights on the porch didn't come on. "Damn—the electricity's off. The panel's in the main house. We'll have to go in there and turn it on."

"Never mind," said Jared. "I brought a flashlight. I'll get it—it's in the car." He walked back across the lawn, leaving her alone at the
poolhouse
door.

He'd brought a flashlight—how intelligent, she thought. Then she remembered the flashlight beam, and was seized with foreboding.
No
, she thought,
that's nonsense
: it was the intruder who shined the flashlight at him.
Getting mixed up.
Sbouldn't
do that. Mustn't let myself get freaked.

She turned back to the
poolhouse
, peered in, felt the glass cold against her nose. She thought of herself that summer peering in at Suzie sprawled out with one of her lovers, their limbs entwined, the water bed undulating as they slept. Suddenly she stood back; the memory was too intense. She looked back at the main house, found her bedroom window, thought of herself sitting up there in her rocking chair, staring down, spying, imagining Jared and Suzie making love.

"Here—" Jared had the flashlight on and was shining it at the lock. She fumbled with the keys, found the right one, and opened the door. The air inside had a cold, damp smell.

Jared shined the flashlight around, probing all the corners of the room. There was no furniture; the floor was clean. No waterbed now, just the tile floor and the four walls. Once again she began to shake.

"Well?" He turned the light on her. She couldn't see him and suddenly felt unnerved.

"Why are you doing that?"

"What?" he asked.

"The flashlight."

"Oh. Sorry." He lowered the beam, handed the flashlight back. She took it, stepped to the center, and pointed it at the north baseboard where the tiles met the wall.

"There," she said, trying to hold it steady on a particular tile. "That's the one I think."

Jared went to the wall and knelt. "You're shaking the light," he said. "Better give it back." She paused, then handed it to him. Then she knelt beside him, feeling the cold floor through her jeans. She knocked gently at the tile and tried to pry it loose. When it didn't budge she tapped at it again. This time it fell out. She reached for it, caught it in her hand.

Jared held the flashlight firmly while she began to pull things out. The first item was a small bottle of
Amazone
. Opening it, sniffing at the stopper, she felt tears rising to her eyes. Memories of Suzie flooded back, the aroma of her body, the combination of this perfume and the essence of her skin. Inhaling the odor she almost felt that Suzie was with them in the room.

The next thing was a wallet, old and worn, the edges damp and decayed. There was no money inside, just some keys and old photographs sealed at their edges with Scotch tape. They inspected them: a picture of her mother with a tennis racket across her lap; one of her father in his bathing trunks about to dive into the pool. There was a smaller print, too, from the same series as the one she'd seen on her father's office wall, of herself and Suzie on the sailboat, Suzie in profile this time, looking out to sea, smiling, her chin jutting out, while Penny stared at her with the same mixture of envy and admiration that had so struck her in her father's office the week before. Now it struck Jared too. "You always looked at her like that," he said.

"How do you know I did?"

"I remember from those times I came around." He raised the flashlight, shined it at her again. "You're looking at the picture the same way now." He paused. "It's as if—"

"What?"

"I don't know. Like you want to be like her, somehow."

Penny's face froze. Then she pushed away the flashlight. There was more in the hiding place, a small plastic medicine bottle and a pipe. Jared opened the bottle and dumped some of its contents onto his palm. "Incredible," he said, "this must be the same stuff we smoked."

"Here it is!" She pulled out a leather-bound notebook, the pages unlined, covered with tiny script just as Cynthia had described. They thumbed through it together. "Just can't believe it," she said. "It's as if it's been sitting here waiting for us all this time."

He hugged her. "Got to hand it to you. You're a genius, babe. What do you say we get the hell out of here? I'm starting to get spooked myself."

She nodded, began to put the perfume and other things back in the cavity, then changed her mind. She decided to keep them. They belonged to her now, she guessed.

T
o annihilate myself. Burn. Catch fire. Search the gutter. Screw and screw. The sweet object of my desire doesn't care a hoot. Brokenhearted I weep and rage.

Maybe cruelty is the answer. To give pain even as I suffer. Receive pain, pain of the flesh, to burn away the pain so deep inside.

"So you want to flirt with S&M, " Jamie says. And then in an ominous tone: "You can't flirt with it, you know. Once you start with that you never go straight again."

He loves the idea that he's jaded. He adores the thought that he can't get a hard-on unless there's a whip in the room or a threesome on the bed. Anything but love. "Love gives me a shrivel-on," he proclaims.

All very
faggy
, end-of-the-Roman-Empire, Weimar-Germany, 1920s ennui stuff.
 
I nod anyway to show I think it's quite profound.

Then I ask him to cook something up. "Something heavy," I say, "I want to be—you know—scared---"

 
He nods: "Leave everything to me—"

T
hey drove quickly out of Bar Harbor. A heavy rain began to fall when they crossed Trenton Bridge. Traffic was light; the roads were deserted except for an occasional oncoming truck. Jared drove as fast as he could, but sometimes the rain was so heavy the wipers could barely clear it from the glass.

"That was crazy what you said in there," she said.

"Just being in there was crazy," he replied.

"But that was crazy what you said." He concentrated on his driving, didn't answer. "Well?"

"What was crazy?"

"Saying I looked like I wanted to be like her."

"That's what I thought."

"But it's crazy."

"Sure—sure it is. You'd be out of your mind to want to be like her."

They were silent for a few minutes, then she turned to him again.

"Why did you shine the flashlight at me, Jared?"

He glanced at her, shrugged. "Just fooling around."

"It was as if you were taunting me. You were, weren't you?"

"Just fooling around. That's all."

They drove a couple more miles.

"You wanted me to think maybe you'd done it. You were trying to get me upset."

He nodded. "Stupid, huh?"

"More like perverse."

"Well, everyone else thinks I did it. For a while after I was arrested I even thought so myself."

"My God. You
did
?"

"I actually did."

"Tell me about it!"

"Do I have to? Do you really want to know?"

"I think it would be better if you did," she said.

He looked at her, then back at the road. "It's not very pleasant."

"I can deal with it."