Bad Desire (7 page)

At first, it seemed so inconsequential that she hardly gave it a second thought, but he kept doing it and in the most unobtrusive ways. Each time, the tilting of his watch was cloaked in a passing gesture, subtle and sly. What's he waiting for? she wondered. Otherwise, he seemed entirely himself, ebullient, charming, almost boyish in his desire to please. Still, it had a disquieting effect on her; almost against her will, Faith found herself keeping track of the time, too.

It was seven-thirty; it was ten past eight. Whenever he looked at his watch, Faith inevitably lifted her own watch to the edge of the tablecloth in her lap and again checked the time, but the position of the small gold hands meant nothing to her. What is it? she wondered. What's bothering him? Henry didn't seem to be particularly on edge. Was the evening moving too fast for him or was it impossibly slow? It can't be anything important, she finally decided. She would have known if it was, wouldn't she?

The relaxed conversation and laughter rippled around them. With a subdued clatter of plates, the waiters cleared the table; coffee and brandy were served. Against the protests of his wife, Deke Holloway told a joke about nuns and a parrot—the abrupt wave of laughter eddied away; on Faith's left, Bunny Cartwright praised the diving crew she'd hired on North Eleuthera; across the table from Henry, three of the men were baiting him to join in still another poker game, the “Saturday Night Massacre” Henry sometimes called it.

“All right,” Claudie Murdock said, “we're in Kansas City and I'm in this game, straight poker, seven-card stud. Sixth card, two other guys still in the game, betting like hell, no end in sight. One's got a straight flush, nine, ten, Jack showing, could, conceivably, fill a royal. The other guy shows an ace and three deuces, have to figure he's got the fourth. I'm showing two ladies and I've got the other two in the hole. One card to go. The deuces bet fifty, the flush bumps him fifty. So, Henry, what would you do?”

Slater grinned. “I'd order some whiskey,” he said and everyone started to laugh. Faith knew what the men were doing; she had listened to this talk before. Saturday night poker was a fiercely guarded tradition among the club's wealthier members and Henry rarely lost at poker. She was aware that he had a reputation as a savvy but unpredictable player. In the lull of after-dinner conversation, the men were dealing him speculative hands, asking how he would bet them, all designed to lure him into a game. When Faith had a chance, she whispered, “Henry, go ahead, if you want to. I've got lots of catching up to do with Jeannie and Fran.”

He leaned back, expansively, put his arm around her and gave her a familiar hug. “All right, Claudie,” he said, “you set it up, but no wild cards. Straight poker.” Faith collected her purse, Henry drank the last red-gold dollop of his cognac and they stood, along with several of the others, who were also leaving the long table.

Except for her vague feeling of uneasiness this evening, she was happy trailing a step behind her husband. It was the order, the comfort of being married that lent stability to her life. She depended on it. Faith liked the confidence with which Henry moved through the crowd, calling everyone by name, a handshake here, a slap on the back there, a few effortless words of flattery or good-natured teasing, laughing companionably all around, then moving on, leading her through the rough tide of his admirers, while she twisted around in his wake, saying, “Hi, Fran, save me a place. Yes, thank you, order for me, same as always.”

The crowd scattered at the dining hall entrance. Henry signed the check, passed it back to the maître d', then he winked at her and said, “This won't take long.” As he turned to accompany the men to the locker room where the game would take place, Faith heard him say, “I'll sit in for an hour and that's all tonight.”

It was then that Henry removed his watch, wound it with a twist of the tiny knob and returned the polished gold band to his wrist, all without appearing to notice the time. But Faith knew otherwise. When she leaned down to say good evening to the Kramers, who were still seated at their table, she, also, looked at her watch. It was twenty past nine.

Oh, stop it, she thought.

At ten-thirty, she saw him leave the locker room. In the lounge where she was sitting, the quartet had started up again after taking its second intermission. Fran Baudin, complaining of a cold, had gone home early; Faith had lost Jeannie Whitman in the crowd. The conversation around her had grown muted, rich with gossip. “Did you hear what happened to Carolyn MacRae last night?” “No—don't tell me.” Faith tried to be polite, but was unable to concentrate on the tales of local intrigue. She excused herself and went to find her husband.

The outer regions of the lodge were deserted that evening as she made her way through the smoking room, then the trophy room with its walls of mounted antlers, and out through the music room, moving quickly around the silent Boesendorfer. The lodge's back entrance appeared at the end of the hall. Faith was headed toward it, past the dark, cavelike ballroom called The Cotillion, when a gust of wind blew from its vast interior, carrying with it flecks of confetti and a few tumbling curls of white and silver ribbon.

In the spindrift of debris, she saw something tightly crumpled and green. Money, she realized. It must've fallen out of someone's pocket. Hardly breaking her stride, she stooped to pick it up and saw—across the blackness of the dance floor—a service door swing open. In the sudden wedge of moonlight, the silhouette of a woman appeared for a moment before the door clapped to. Who was that? Faith wondered as she continued toward the lodge's back door, but from somewhere in the darkness behind her came the long, silvery echo of a laugh.

My God! That's Jeannie's laugh.
Jeannie Whitman
. Meeting someone! Quickly, Faith went outside and across the patio, hearing her heels strike the old clay tiles. She didn't see Henry anywhere.

The perfume of star jasmine hung on the air like scented beads and she could feel her linen dress relaxing with the night's dampness. Before her, the golf course stretched for a thousand moonlit yards, but out over the Pacific, the clouds were heavy and rolling and black. No stars shone there. Leaning forward against the stone balustrade, Faith closed her eyes and breathed in the warm air. One of those treacherous spring thunderstorms was blowing in, maybe the last before summer, she realized as she opened her eyes. Every few minutes, a blue-white flash of lightning ran jaggedly along the horizon, silent, ominous. “I don't like lightning,” she murmured to herself.

Jeannie Whitman!
My God, what gets into people? She has four children. Faith felt the beginnings of a profound loneliness settle over her. I don't understand how people can do that to themselves. To take her mind off it, she loosened the wadded money she'd found, smoothed it out and examined the two ten-dollar bills in the moonlight. It was as if God had put the money there to stop her so she would find out the truth about her friend. What an odd twist of events.

Folding the bills, she put them into the pocket of her loose, pajamalike jacket. All right, Henry, she wondered, biting her lips, Where did you go? She lifted her head and looked back in the direction of the ballroom. Someone—some man, undoubtedly—had been waiting there in the dark for Jeannie. Henry had come this way and vanished.

Shame on you, she scolded herself. You ought to be ashamed of even thinking such a thing. Henry and Jeannie? Don't be ridiculous.

She heard nothing but the eternal hiss of the Pacific. Then, as the currents of the night changed, Faith sensed that someone else was standing farther down the patio, beyond the honeysuckle that trespassed the stone railing of the balustrade. She tried to see over the tumbling mass of flowers but all she could make out was the motionless profile of a man, facing the night. Is that Henry? she thought. Without making a sound, she lifted the vines aside to see him more clearly.

A reading lamp inside the lodge had been left on; the beam it sent across the patio was fine as mulled cotton. It caught one of his shoulders and half of Henry's face. Immediately, she went toward him.

His left hand was thrust in his trouser pocket, his right hand held a cigarette. In the way he stood, in the set of his head, Faith could see how intensely he was gazing into the distance and she approached him quietly. When he lifted the cigarette cupped in his hand, she noticed how his fingers were webbed with light, his lips cast red by the glow. A few steps behind him, she stopped. “Hello, sailor,” she said, light-heartedly, “want to dance? I think I'm free tonight.”

It was as though her voice had struck him physically; she could feel his body go rigid as if to ward off a blow.

“Henry, what is it? Are you all right? What's going on …”

When he finally turned to look at her, his voice was calm, but flat. “Why're you always following me?” he said. “Can't I get a breath of air?”

Faith swallowed the dryness in her throat. “I don't always follow you. I hardly ever follow—”

“You're here, aren't you?”

“I was only going to ask if we were winning or losing at poker—but I will gladly leave you alone.” She took a step to go, but all her instincts told her not to leave him like this. “What's the matter with you, anyway? What is it, Henry? Are you angry with
me
? You're certainly angry about something.”

For several seconds he didn't speak. He stared at her, eyes flashing. She saw something in him then that she had never seen before and it chilled her. His eyes were a thousand years old, hard with hatred, the eyes of an old, old soul masquerading in his man's face. “Why are you staring at me like that?” Like the changing moonlight, in an instant, his expression seemed to her to dissolve, his face returning once again to that of the husband she knew. It's the night playing tricks on me, she thought.

“I hate these people,” he said, quietly, “sometimes …
goddamn
, I hate them, I can't begin to tell you. We're all on our own out here, Faith.”

He wasn't making sense to her but she dared not ask what he meant.

An abrupt snap of wind shook the panes in the lodge windows behind them and the first plump raindrops struck the awning above. They stood at the edge of the patio, facing each other, like cats. Rain rustled in the bougainvillaea, lightning cracked and the thunder rocked the tile floor beneath them; he stiffened and looked at the night.

“What's the matter, Henry,” she said, softly, “afraid of the storm?” Never before had she wanted to sound so loving, so tender. “Something's going on, isn't it, my darling?”

Through the wet air, her hand went out until she was touching his sleeve. “You're so tense and keyed up; you've been looking at your watch every five minutes.” Her fingers continued to search until finally she touched his hand; gently she closed her fingers on his. “What is it, Henry? I've had an awful feeling these last few weeks that you want to tell me something and you can't. It's something about you and me, isn't it?” She tried to smile, but her whole body shivered. “So tell me, Henry … just tell me this is all the silliest damned thing you've ever heard of.”

He knew at once he had nearly revealed too much. “I swear to God, Faith—what are you talking about? There's a lot of things going on. I'm a little strung out. I'll be all right.”

“So you really have nothing you want to tell me? Nothing at all?”

“No,” he said. “Except I'm going back in there. I have to.”

He turned his head to look at the rain.

She saw the back of his neck where the hair whorled into a thin dark fold and it all came flooding back to her, the apartment in Chicago, the roughneck boy she had loved so recklessly, the disgrace and humiliation when he lost everything. “In a minute,” Faith said. “You can go in a minute. But first, is this something I've done?” She drew closer to him. “Or have you done something? Why won't you tell me? Have you fallen in love with someone else?”

It was unnerving how close she came to the truth. He remembered holding Sheila's face in his hands and her tentative, young kiss. There were moments when he thought how easy it would be to throw away everything he had worked for and escape with her.

But not this night.

His smile came easily. “Faith,” he said. “Who would I fall in love with? Who, but you?”

Sudden relief swept through her. His face, close to hers, seemed pale but he was smiling; that great warm smile flowed toward her from his eyes, his mouth, the tilt of his head, from all the stretches of the whispering rain. “Oh, I love you so much,” she told him. “I always will. Please don't scare me like this.” She thought, Whatever it is, my darling, we'll get through it. Impetuously, she kissed him and clasped him to herself a long time, letting the kindling of her love come again as once, years ago, she had known it, trusting only in that, believing in it and wanting to believe, with all her heart, in him.

She felt him start to pull away and let him go. “Oh, I nearly forgot,” she said. “Look.” She held out the two ten-dollar bills from her pocket. “Look what I found.”

He glanced at her outstretched hand and began to laugh. “Christ, Faith, it's just money. This goddamned place is practically carpeted in ten-dollar bills.”

“Yes,” she said, “I know. But these two are mine.”
And so are you, my darling. So are you
.

Henry shrugged and then he put his arm around her shoulders. Moving her toward the door, he said, “You shouldn't stay out here in this rain. Go on in with the others; I won't be gone much longer.” He opened the door for her and let her pass, and as she stepped inside, ahead of him, Slater looked down at his watch.

Now
.

5

Beecham laid the room key on the dresser, took up his gym bag and stepped out to the sidewalk, shutting the door behind him. It was ten past eleven. With the wind whipping around him, he went through the hedgerow of rubbery jade plants and, again, studied the low, swarming clouds. The night smelled heavily of rain and electricity. He shoved the oversized bag onto the passenger seat and climbed in behind the wheel of the Mustang. Raindrops were beginning to pepper the windshield.