Angel Falling Softly (13 page)

Troy said, “I think you could read better if you turned on the light.”

She hadn’t noticed the darkness.

He sat on the couch and looked at her like she was a young charge he’d been asked to babysit. He said, “I marked a place. Verse four.”

Milada tugged on the black ribbon. The book opened near the middle. She found the verse and began. “
When ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God,
and et cetera, and et cetera—” She scanned to the end of the selection. “Well,” she said, “that’s nice. To paraphrase André Maurois, in religion as in love, we are readily astonished at what is chosen by others.”

“The things people believe in are often true.”

“Perhaps
valid
is a more accurate term than
true.
And perhaps not
often.
But, yes, they are.” Milada closed the book and ran her fingers across the textured leather. “I am not unsympathetic to the religious impulse, Troy. I was born into what is called the Eastern Orthodox Church. My parents had belief to spare. But belief did not spare them from cholera. I don’t blame God. I don’t even feel that my faith is less now than then. I have only as much as I was born with. No more, no less.”

Troy took the book from her. “I believe this book is true.”

“I respect that. You could say I have faith in other people’s faith. A disciplined passion is an admirable thing. It is good to have believers in the world to keep alive the possibilities of transcendence. My passions, however, tend toward a more earthly nature.”

Milada took the book from Troy and placed it on the coffee table. Her little discourse had left the boy stymied. She gave him a delectable smile. “You Mormons are full of surprises.” She plumped the cushions and snuggled up next to him. She smelled his aftershave and then his apprehension and took it as a challenge. She kissed his cheek, nipped at his earlobe. “But to tell the truth,” she breathed, “I really do not have an overwhelming passion for theology at the moment.”

She draped her arms around Troy’s neck and kissed his mouth. Her weight pushed him back on the couch. His hands played across her blouse, slipping across the silk from her waist to her breasts. He was probably just trying to push her off, but she permitted herself a small, encouraging moan.

His whole body recoiled.

Men simply did
not
recoil from her. But this man leapt—in a single movement—from the couch and backed away hunched over, hastily buttoning his jacket. Milada could feel the heat beating off his face, the strong scent of testosterone mingled in his sweat. She stared at him, stunned. She came dangerously close to grabbing him and throwing him against the wall and screaming,
Where do you think you are going?

Troy turned and fled up the stairs, as Joseph fled from Potiphar’s wife. The front door opened and slammed closed. The Wrangler started up and exited her driveway with a screech of tires.

Milada fell back on the couch and covered her face with her hands. Damn, this was embarrassing. Okay, the transition from the sacred to the sensual had been a bit abrupt. But frankly, bringing God into the picture had always been a bit of a turn-on. She’d bedded preachers and priests—she knew damn well that sex and religion were not mutually exclusive pursuits.

A hundred years ago, Mormons were the lechers of the western world. The New York press could not scandalize them enough, Brigham Young and his umpteen wives. Those well-bred men of society—and their mistresses—delighted in being shocked—shocked!—by the
immorality
of it all.

Who knew Mormons were all a bunch of born-again Victorians underneath? Milada paced a line across the floor, met the wall, paced back.
Damn,
she said to herself. Damn, damn, damn,
damn, damn!
She stopped pacing and put her hand on her stomach. She was hungry. She really was. Well-nigh ravenous. When had she last fed? Three weeks ago? That was pushing it. Garrick warned her about getting wrapped up in her work. She should have just taken the boy and been done with it.
Good God, what am I saying?
She hunched over, feeling weak. She wasn’t thinking straight.

She headed down into the basement, peeled off her clothes, stalked back and forth. She flung open a drawer, closed it, opened another. There were the BYU sweats Rachel had traded her. Milada held up the top that showed the cougar draped with rapine seductiveness across the block letter Y. She grinned, brushing the tips of her canines against her bottom lip. Yes, this was just right.

She set her wristwatch alarm to four-thirty—always a precaution—and hopped into the Mercedes. The keys were in the ignition, car door remote under the visor. The car glided down the driveway onto Larkspur Lane. She felt extraordinarily good. Her body sensed, anticipated, expected satiation. The adrenaline pumping into her bloodstream gave her an almost giddy high.

She wound her way out of Cottonwood Estates and headed north.

T
he first time Milada had mentioned her interest in Utah and Salt Lake City, Garrick asked, “What institutions of higher education are we talking about?”

The University of Utah boasted a highly regarded teaching hospital and computer sciences program with a number of well-known spin-offs, she told him. Division I football, basketball, and women’s gymnastics.

All fine and good, but Garrick wasn’t referring to the university’s academics. He was thinking of the student
body.
Or rather, that’s what he wanted Milada to keep in mind. It was a good thing he was over two thousand miles away right then. If he ever got wind of this little fiasco, he wouldn’t give her a moment’s peace about it for the next decade.

Jane was bad enough. Garrick playing mother hen could get downright annoying.
Don’t go hunting in your own back yard,
he always said, and she saw the wisdom in that advice.

But the University of Utah was a
state
university, which meant it should be crammed with libidinous and barely legal young adults eager to get stupid over alcohol and sex, religious convictions notwithstanding. She could get what she wanted with a minimum of manipulation.

It was easier for a woman that way—easier to be seduced than to be the seducer. Even her sister Zoë would settle, in a pinch, for strolling into a bar and letting a man get lucky with her. “Like falling off a log,” she’d say, with no little contempt. Zoë had been off men for a century or two, and Milada could see her point.

To seduce was the greater challenge, to consummate the seduction the greater reward. Milada herself hardly missed this intersection of business and pleasure. She could pretend to be above it. But the hunt always thrilled, especially after a long fast. She fell easily into the routines of pursuit. Her long-honed instincts quickened at the thought of blooding the prey.

Which was why her attention this night fell on a comely junior sitting alone at the bar. She was dressed in white cotton and wore about her a practiced look of sophistication. The boys caught up in her scent flitted to and fro about her until she batted them away and they fluttered off, wings and egos bruised.

Milada slid onto the barstool next to her. “Hi,” she said, her arm brushing the girl’s. “Is this place taken?”

The girl beamed at her. “Not anymore.” She tossed her golden locks.

“I just thought—that last boy looked interested in you.”

“He might have been. But I wasn’t.”

“I’m glad you weren’t,” said Milada.

In her rush, Milada had left her driver’s license behind. The bartender wasn’t the same one from earlier that evening. To make matters worse, she couldn’t remember how old she was supposed to be. She was supposed to start out at twenty-one in each rotation. Or was it every other? What a monstrous annoyance the whole routine was.

“Perrier,” she said.

The bartender harrumphed to himself. Yeah, he had her pegged right.

“I’ll have another beer,” said the girl. She said to Milada, “I’m Teresa.”

“Milada.”

“Interesting name.”

“It’s Czech.”

“Really? Is that where you’re from? Your accent is
so
cool.”

“I call New York home these days.”

“New York City? Wow. This is really pathetic, but Salt Lake is the farthest east I’ve ever been.”

“Where is home for you?”

“Reno.”

The bartender placed two glasses on the counter along with a bottle of Perrier and a bottle of Coors. Teresa took a drink from the Coors. Milada watched her carefully. She guessed the girl had deliberately drunk enough to shut down her superego and relieve herself of any personal culpability should her choices tonight lead her afoul of her desired expectations. This was what college girls called being “liberated.”

Teresa said, “You going to school here?”

Milada shook her head.

The girl looked at her sweatshirt. “You a BYU student?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t think.”

“I don’t think so either. I got it from a friend.”

The girl giggled. “Not a bad idea. Kind of a turn-on, especially around here.”

“Is there some sport in doing a BYU coed?”

“Next best thing to beating ’em at football, from what I hear.”

Two boys came up to the bar, one to the left of Milada, one to the right of Teresa. “Hi,” said the boy at Teresa’s shoulder. Teresa coolly ignored him. Milada might have enjoyed flirting with them, but she couldn’t be distracted now. She scanned the room and picked out a pair of wallflowers next to the jukebox. The boy’s hand rested on the bar next to hers. She touched his hand and said, sotto voce, “Those two over there are pretty cute.”

The boy picked them out at once. “Hey, Ross, check out those two.” He set off across the floor, the other boy on his heels.

“Pricks,” said Teresa.

“Not all of them.”

“Yeah, I suppose. If you want it, you always know where to get it.”

Milada laughed. “Demand always exceeds supply.” She took a drink of the Perrier. “Do you live around here?”

“A couple of blocks.” Teresa finished her beer. “How about we get out of here?”

They drove north and then east in Teresa’s Honda Acura, her daddy’s old car. Daddy’s generosity, Teresa admitted, was his excuse to get an Infiniti M45. She turned past a lighted sign announcing the campus of the University of Utah. They passed a darkened tennis court, continued down the shaded street. Along the sidewalks the canopy of the trees shadowed the street lamps. Blue moonlight marbled the asphalt.

“What about your roommates?” Milada asked.

“School doesn’t start for a couple more days. They’re still out of town.”

Milada ran her fingers through her short-cropped hair. She flashed a smile at the girl and moistened her lips with her tongue.

Teresa parked in the driveway of a white clapboard bungalow hidden behind a copse of overgrown spruce. Higher up on the university grounds, the rhythmic
swish, swish, swish
of the sprinklers syncopated with the drone of cicadas and Mormon crickets.

Teresa unlocked the door. “Come in,” she said.

Milada stepped across the threshold. The interior of the house had been converted to a rabbit hutch of student apartments, killing any charm the early twentieth-century architecture promised from the outside. But it was safe here, shielded by thick plaster walls. And empty—except for them.

Teresa shut the door. Before Milada could turn around, the girl had wrapped her arms around her waist and kissed her sloppily on the back of the neck. Milada relaxed into the embrace, her hands resting on Teresa’s before she turned and kissed her back, tasting the alcohol on her breath.

Their lips parted. Teresa cast her eyes toward the bedroom. “You know how to whistle, don’t you?” she whispered, her hot tongue touching Milada’s earlobe.

“Put your lips together and blow.”

The girl giggled. She was not devoid of wit. Or maybe it was a line a boy had used on her once, and she had no idea who Lauren Bacall was. But the girl was enjoying playing the seductress. Or was enjoying the pretense.

Inside the bedroom she darted to the window and yanked down the shades. She returned to the foot of the bed, tugging at her shirttails. Milada caressed the back of the girl’s neck with her cheek, the way a cat marks the object of its affections. Teresa fumbled at the buttons of her blouse. Milada undid the girl’s jeans, eased off her blouse and bra.

They kissed again. This time after they broke apart, the girl flung back the covers of the bed and cast herself across the sheets. Milada stripped off her sweat bottoms and lay next to her. The girl was not, Milada was sure, a lesbian. This was a dare with herself. A self-indulgent form of payback. If she were clever enough and brave enough, she’d write a paper titled “My First Lesbian Experience” and submit it to the prettiest and most progressive of her assistant professors. And titillate the hell out of the cute boy two desks in front of her when he happened to glimpse the report title as it was handed back.

Milada kissed her long and slow. There was venom on her tongue. No more than a drop. The hollow of the girl’s throat invited. She resisted, pressing her cheek against a rising curve. The girl moaned. Milada set to coaxing from her deeper, more passionate exclamations—