Bad Desire (32 page)

Its upper story hidden in leaves, the back of it built into a steep bank, the early nineteenth-century farmhouse looked as much a part of the landscape as the massive gray oaks that sheltered it. A spooky desolation hung over the barn lot; a soundless night bird darted through the air. Not a light burned in the house. The grounds were deserted; no one was about. On the other side of the tiny front yard, Faith could barely make out a pond shining up like a mirror in the dusk.
Does someone live here?

Never had she felt so alone and exposed. The main road over the ridge, where she had left her car, seemed to exist in another world. A voice in her head kept repeating, Don't go in there. Go back.
Go back
. But she knew she had to do it. I won't be able to live like this, she thought. Forever in the dark, never knowing from one minute to the next what's going on. I just can't bear it one more minute.

Her hearing sharpened for the slightest disturbance, Faith looked back to estimate how far she had come and then went on toward the old stable—the only place where Sheila could have hidden her car. The weathered clapboard siding showed dull gray in the twilight. Keeping an eye on the front of the house, half-expecting someone to rush out demanding to know why she was there, she crossed the pebbled barn lot as silently as she could. To Faith, even the soft grit of the gravel under her sounded grotesquely loud.

Suddenly there was a deafening shriek. Her fist clasped to her chest, she twisted, eyes startled, searching the empty lot. Again the wind blew; the weathervane atop the stable roof pivoted, metal scraping metal.

Completely shaken, she reached the only true door among the six closed stalls and tried the handle. The door opened; she stepped inside. She was in a dark vestibule, a sort of wind trap, then in front of her, a second door. She opened it and took the step down into the stable. The deep room was dark, shards of light filtered through chinks in the siding, but even before her eyes completely adjusted, Faith recognized their cars—Sheila's white car and, parked beside it, Henry's dark Jaguar.

She felt sick. It was as though she had never once expected it. So they're here, she thought. They're here, together, after all. In admitting it to herself, she grew weak, her legs melting under her. When she put her hand out to steady herself, her fingers brushed across a light switch. Faith hesitated, then flipped it up.

A single bare light bulb came on above an old workbench, cluttered with tools. She saw that the Jaguar XK 140—which he had said could take a few months to restore—was already done, the new black and burgundy paint sparkling, the rechromed bumpers smooth as bright silver. And the leather, the new dove gray leather—she could smell it across the room. Kept here, secret from her. All of her anguish attached itself to that beautiful little car and she nearly wept. Instead, she let the misery she had felt, all the hate she had tried to suppress come to a boil.

And then, after that, everything came a little unstuck.

She thought, They're here … someplace … hiding from me.

The next minute she was wondering if they actually knew she was there. Surprise would be to her advantage, not theirs. Faith turned and went out of the stable, carefully shutting the outside door and crossing the pebbled drive. Now the crickets seemed to mock her with their raucous chatter. The flagstone walk leading to the house was so old that dead moss withered in the crevices. She stepped up on the shabby porch where the windows were boarded shut.

She had an urge to bang demandingly at the front door, but she wanted to come upon them together. Determined, now, to put an end to this thing, Faith wanted blatantly to expose him, whatever the result. Without making a sound, she tried the doorknob. It was locked.

Shading her eyes, she squinted through a knothole, but the room inside was dark. Where are they? In minutes, it would be night. Time was abandoning her. Faith looked over her shoulder for the sun, trying to gauge how much longer she would have its waning light, but the sun had gone down over the Pacific.

What was that?
She stiffened and raised her head. Not a breeze sighing on the eaves, no, but a sound like that. Or a bird cooing.

Quietly she went down the porch steps and looked straight at the windows upstairs—open windows. And there it was again.
Music
. She thought, crazily,
it is music
—leaking from the windows. Maybe that was why they hadn't heard her. As though from faraway, a note of laughter passed above her head; it was a sound that almost wasn't a sound, drowning in the music. It lurked. It played on the air, like a whisper, teasing, mocking her through the red-gold gloom.

She thought, They're upstairs.

It's got to be them.

Moving as silently as she could, she went down along the side of the house toward the rear, looking for a means of getting up there, some other entrance. The back of the house was built into the slope of the hill behind it, but she saw no door. Faith started backing up. Maybe on the other side. She noticed a kind of beaten path going up through boulders at the side of the slope—there wasn't enough time to search for anything else. Crossing through weeds, she started to climb among the large rocks.

She climbed until she found herself shielded behind a large protruding boulder and across from a rear window. The window was open.

She heard them before she saw them. Small but unmistakable sounds.

Through the music, a girl was moaning.

Then Faith heard his voice.

And in a gap of silence on the record, there were other sounds. She had no trouble recognizing them; they were all too familiar. Instinct warned her, Don't look. Don't. You really don't want to look.

The window was open and gave in on a small dim bathroom with its door ajar. Through it she could see a portion of a larger room, which was fire colored; even the shadows were molten. The harder she looked, the smaller the room seemed to become. At first, against the vivid glare, Faith hardly realized what she was seeing. She thought she saw only the girl kneeling face down on the bed. Sheila was swaying up and back, gently, rhythmically.

This is evil, she thought. This is an evil place.

Still rocking, Sheila unfolded, rising, pushing herself up on her arms and the radiance streamed in, tracing her bare pink body in gold. From beyond Faith's angle into the room, dark hands came up, rubbing the young full breasts. For an instant Faith felt the insane urge to be touched in just that way.

Sheila wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, arched up, slipped lower on the bed and bent downward, her hair a gold turbulence, and Faith saw what they were doing, where her mouth went, the man she straddled. Then his voice, Henry's voice: “Sheila …”

Hearing him say it sent the blood singing through Faith's head, but already her eyelids were shut, while the hard thumping of her heart went on and on as though it would never slow down. She didn't remember getting down from the hill. Her face burned with blood as if she had been beaten. “Caught you,” she whispered, no louder than her breath. Eyes closed, fighting to keep herself quiet, she was standing deathly still, shaking with hatred, wave upon icy wave of it.

“Caught you,” she murmured. “Caught you at last … you stinking bastard.”

So it was over. It was
all
over. She would no longer have to suspect or doubt anything about him.
She knew
. Finally, she knew, after eighteen devoted years of marriage. Faith's rage gathered until it loomed stronger and larger than she was. She hated him. Her body throbbed with it, her chest ached with it, her face was consumed with its fury. I'm going to kill you. Taking up her purse, she stalked across the pebbled lot. I'll set the fucking house on fire.

She spent swift, urgent seconds digging inside her purse, sifting through its contents for matches, but none were there. Inside the stable, she found a hatchet, the blade the color of gun metal except for its sharpened edge.

Adrenaline blew through her veins. I'll kill you.

Grasping the stubby handle in her fist, she whirled to go back to the house—and noticed their cars. No one was escaping this. She was crying by then, sobbing, tears running from her open, angry eyes.

The hood of the girl's car was still warm; Faith put it up and swung the hatchet, driving it down with a careful, deliberate fury, the blade hacking through hoses and wires. The wires she couldn't cut, she yanked out with her hands, connectors popping from spark plugs.

The noise
, she thought suddenly.
They'll hear me
.

She ran to the door and peered across the barn lot at the house, waiting for Henry to come tearing from it. But no. They had music on and they were too far away to hear. There was nothing to hold her back. Faith rushed back to the Jaguar's hood, folded it up and over. Again she destroyed—new red rubber hoses, new electrical wires, anything she could cut.

When she was sure both cars were immobilized, she felt a welling up of gleeful relief, yet she was still shaking with hatred—trembling so hard she thought the air around her shook with it. “To hell with you,” she gasped, barely able to speak. “To hell with you both.”

Sweat covered her face, and she could feel it dripping down her sides, under her arms. Tossing the small hatchet aside, Faith grabbed her purse, flipped off the light and ran out, closing the two doors behind her.

The music still leaked from the windows.
They're still at it
. A flurry of stars lit the night sky.
I'm going to be sick
. She reached the split row of evergreen hedges barely in time; she stumbled into the weeds, doubled over and threw up. Grabbing a handful of waxy branches to keep from falling, she vomited a second time and then, feeling weak and light-headed, she straightened to look back at the house. No lights burned.

She started to sob uncontrollably as she scrambled through the darkness up the hill. By the time she got to her car, she was calm. Deathly calm. Caught you, I caught you. She started the motor, shot back across the pavement, ground gears and tore away.

21

Nine-thirty.

They dozed, Sheila curled to his side, her arm draped loosely over him. The upstairs room was like a black ship adrift in the slow, spinning currents of starlight. A breeze stirred the air; Sheila's lashes rose and fell and she was awake. She didn't want to be awake. She touched Slater's hair and then held it between the scissors of her fingers, thick and damp and luxurious. “You're so warm,” she whispered.

She waited, but he didn't answer. Dreamlike, with a slow, roving hand, she felt the hair on his chest, then his stomach, his genitals. She nestled her cheek against him for a moment, then raised her head and kissed his ribs, looking up at him, smiling.

“It's late,” he said, quietly. He shifted, stretching out, and reached to turn on the night-light. From its sconce, the white beam leapt up the wall, spilling its reflection over them. He took up his watch, looked at it and put it on his wrist, but all the while Sheila was sliding on the bed. She kissed his chest, then turned her head toward him again.

“Yes,” she said, “yes, I know.”

The house was quiet as a stone. “Come here first,” Slater told her and drew her into his arms, bringing the sheet up over them. She was damp with his sweat. She liked the intimacy of being here, hidden with him, the world awaiting them outside—so far away, it seemed.

“I love it here,” she murmured.

“This place?” he said. “It doesn't exist. It disappears when you're gone.” He ran his hand between her legs and Sheila wanted it never to end. This was the feeling of time standing still, waiting for her, that she always wanted, having him inside her and the forgetting. “I want it always to be like this,” she whispered. “So you'll never forget me.” She tried to grasp his hand with her thighs when he took it away.

“I never forget anything about you,” he said. He got out of bed, and she went after him, playfully throwing her arms around him, pulling him back. “Now I've got you,” she said, smiling up at him. “Come back.”

“I think I'd better not,” he said.

Her arms went tightly around him in an impulsive embrace. She was keenly aware of who he was going home to. She covered his shoulders in kisses, took his hand and slid it under the sheet, onto her skin. “For a minute …,” she said, “for just one more minute.”

“No, Sheila,” he said. He disentangled himself from her a second time. “I've got a full day tomorrow, even if you don't.”

“Won't you ever stay with me?” She stroked the bed between them.

He started to laugh. “You know I have to go home. Come on, get with it.” He pulled the sheets from her and she lay there naked, her breasts curving softly toward her upper arms, her eyes half-closed watching him. He groaned and looked away. “My God,” he said, “you drive me crazy.” He took his clothes into the bathroom to get dressed.

Sheila rolled into the middle of the bed. I don't want you to go home to her, she thought. In the other room, she heard him turn the water on. The bed was a cool white field and she luxuriated in lying there, hearing him move about. On the other side of the world, Faith Slater would be waiting for him, Sheila was sure, in an elegant silk negligee. After a moment, she stood and slipped into her brassiere. She knew how dangerous this was for him politically. But I'm taking risks too, she thought.

She was pulling on her khaki shorts when he returned to the room, immaculate and distant now in his thoughts, his neat, dark hair with its silver cast, his shirt dazzling white, the creases sharp in his trousers. It was as if for a while they had forgotten who they were and now had to assume different identities. It always left her feeling a little unstrung.

He watched as she finished getting dressed, as he always did, admiringly, she thought. Sheila buttoned her blouse, stepped into her Weejuns, ran a comb through her hair.