Bank Robbers (23 page)

“Now, that's the biggest crock ever to come out of my mouth and you know it. Now talk to me. Why were you trying to get caught robbing that bank?”

She stared straight ahead, trying to think of a way to explain her reasoning—which now seemed utterly insane to her.

Words began spilling from her mouth, and he kept his arm around her waist, and she kept herself pressed up against him.

“Oh God, I'm just so tired … After Nathan died, they cut off his Social Security. I don't get anything until I'm sixty—but it was all right, I had a job at a coffee shop and I could just about make it, you know? Until I fell. I broke my ankle and my wrist. I don't have any medical insurance—my last job was off the books. I had to use all my savings … And by the time I came out of the hospital, I'd lost my job. And things just got worse and worse, and no one would hire me. Just a lousy secretarial job … I saw this thing on the news about this guy in Minnesota who'd robbed a gas station to get sent to jail because, hell, they spend all this money to keep people clothed and fed and their health taken care of in jail that I—I just thought … I didn't know what to do, Arthur. They're going to evict me. I can't afford to eat, I can't afford clean clothes, I went on job interview after job interview this summer and they—goddammit! They laughed at me … and I'm just so tired.” She turned, and cried a good long time against his chest. He held her strongly, and rocked her gently back and forth. Finally, she looked up at him.

He stared down at her lips.

He reached a hand out and turned off the lights. And he slowly leaned down to give her a gentle kiss on the lips because he couldn't stand it anymore, and he because he wanted to see if she'd let him.

In a moment her arms were wrapped around him and he could feel how soft her mouth was. He found he was shaking, and they were both hanging on to one another as if the other person were going to melt away if they let go.

He began hungrily kissing her neck and up to her ear.

“Oh, Jesus, Dottie. You came to me for protection and the only thing I did was sell you a gun.” She pulled her face away to look at him.

“Don't let go of me. Don't. I should have gone with you, Arthur MacGregor, when you came back for me. I just couldn't go through another trial. I couldn't stand the thought of you…”

“Ssh. I don't care anymore. You're here now.”

She heard a little moan deep in his throat and then she wrapped herself up in him as his hands rubbed up and down her back and across her hips, down her thighs, lifting her skirt. His hands slid off her underwear, which floated down somewhere to the floor.

She leaned her head back and felt herself being backed to his bed.

He felt her drop down onto the mattress, and he stopped touching her. He was so hard that if she didn't touch him soon …

He was pulled on top of her with such strength it almost seemed to throw him in the air.

Ah, God, that was what he had been waiting for.

The words “in me” traveled along her exhaled breath, and he was rolled onto his back and she was on top of him. She fumbled with his belt and they both pulled his pants off and in a second he was there, inside her, and she was biting his neck and earlobes, and sliding up and down with almost a violence and whispering her demands of exactly what she wanted of him and how, and how much and how often …

And Arthur came.

As he had not come since 1962. She was back. She was all his.

*   *   *

W
HAT THE
hell am I going to do about my kids? Teresa lay back in bed, shaking her head and staring at the ceiling.

Florida. A hellhole, as far as she was concerned.

Her eyes darted over to the clock next to her bed.

And that stinking hospital. They couldn't tell her what the tests were but they had no problem blurting out her business to Tracy. And by ten o'clock in the morning, Fred, Jr., would be on his way in from the airport, and the two of them—she didn't even count that fool Tracy was married to—they were gonna throw her out, like some kind of garbage, to some geriatric hospital in Florida.

She was fifty-seven!

She didn't belong in some home. And she knew, no matter what they said to her, that was what was going to happen. The wife would get tired of her, and then they'd wait until she was weak enough and they'd move her into a home.

And suddenly the peculiar thought that the one person she could see trading places with right now was Dottie O'Malley Weist hit Teresa deep inside.

She wondered where Dottie was and what she was doing.

Probably on a plane halfway across the world by now. That's what Teresa would do. And now that she thought of it, she thought it was very laughable that Dottie'd duped her entirely with that cockamamy story about trying to get caught. Jeez, for all she knew Arthur MacGregor helped her plan the whole thing.

All that crap about Medicaid. That was just stupid. So maybe they were both on a plane somewhere together.

Well, good for her. After the last couple of discussions with her, Teresa could see she was a woman in need of a little happiness. And the fact she got it robbing a bank, well, God has a funny sense of humor.

So, she thought, staring at the clock, what the hell am I gonna do about this crap of moving me down to Florida?

*   *   *

B
RIGHT
moonlight was streaming in through the windows, and a small breeze was lifting the lace curtain up through the windows on one side of the room, and on the opposite wall, the curtains were being pushed outside by the flow of the air.

She lay quietly on the bed, looking across the room to which she'd awakened with a start. For one second she couldn't fathom where she was, and the memory of the dream she had been having, of the guard lying on the floor and the blood, came into her head. A violent shiver went through her.

She felt Arthur's weight shift in the bed next to her and his arm fell across her, almost as if he were reaching out in his sleep to hold her. She exhaled and wrapped her arms around him. A wave came over her of feeling so very safe in the room with him. She'd forgotten that.

Dottie felt herself exhale, and she stood up. She took a small lap blanket off the edge of the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders and walked over to the window. She stared out on the lawn and listened to the alien quiet.

In all her life she'd never woken up to such quiet.

She walked back over and stood in front of the armoire and looked at the back of Arthur's head, and watched how the covers moved up and down with his easy breathing. She stared at the armoire door and silently opened it.

She looked at the neatly hung suits and ran her hand over the sleeves of them. She opened a drawer and looked at the laundered shirts from the cleaner's, fastidiously folded into rectangles and bound with blue strips of paper.

There was the sound of a clearing throat, and she looked in the mirror at the reflection of Arthur standing behind her.

“I was just…”

“Snooping,” he said and wrapped a throw quilt from the bed around them both.

They stood before the mirror admiring the image of the two of them together, and Arthur leaned down and rubbed his cheek against hers. She could feel the sharpness of the stubble on his cheek, and she tilted her head.

“I need a shave,” he said and she nodded and he gave a little sigh. “You hungry?”

“Yes.”

“So am I. Why don't you get back in bed?”

He walked her over to the bed and she slid beneath the sheets. He tossed the blanket over her and slipped on his pants and a shirt.

“I'll be back in a minute. There's a bathrobe in the armoire.”

She watched him walk to the door. She lay back on the pillow and sighed. Arthur watched her face relax into a glow he knew he'd put there, and that was making her breathtakingly beautiful to him.

“I'll make sandwiches.”

She watched him leave the room, and she looked up at the ceiling.

Well, here she was. She'd robbed a bank, she'd shot the guard, she was wanted for armed robbery in New York City, and she was on the lam and being hidden by Arthur MacGregor the notorious bank robber.

And Dottie O'Malley Weist hadn't felt so safe in years.

She got up and went back into the armoire and pulled out a silk bathrobe. She tied it around her and found herself running her hands across her upper arms, smiling at the way it felt and smelled of him. She flicked on the lights and dimmed them.

Arthur stood at the top of the stairs dangling his foot off the top riser. In a sudden bolt he hopped down three steps at a time, and hit the hallway running.

He tore through to the kitchen, turned on the lights, and stood breathing deeply. He'd just wanted to see if he could still do it.

After about ten minutes Arthur returned with a tray containing two sandwiches and two bottles of beer.

She felt a smile slide across her face as he placed the tray on the nightstand. He glanced up at her, then turned away. She heard him unbuckle the belt to his pants, and he paused. He was aching to see …

“Come here,” she said sternly, and he turned and there was a lustrous smile on her face.

He slid in next to her and watched her unbutton his shirt, with that serious, determined look he'd thirsted for. He watched the shirt go flying, and his pants get unzipped, and those get tossed. She glanced up at him, and her serious expression melted away into a big smile, and he slowly rolled her over onto her back and began to caress her.

*   *   *

T
HE CLINKING
of metal against china stirred Dottie back to consciousness. It was morning and the wind had changed. The heavy crocheted lace curtain on the opposite wall was now blowing back through the window and gently hitting a knife balanced on the edge of one of the sandwich plates.

She stretched her arms up, and then pulled them back under the warm bedcovers, and slid down until they covered her, as she used to do when she was a child. The bed linens seemed to be the softest she had ever felt. She heard the door to the bathroom open and she pulled herself back up and peered over at Arthur. She watched him pat his face with a blue towel that was slung around his neck.

She pulled herself up onto the pillows and he sat down on the bed, and they just beamed at each other. He began running his hand alongside her on the quilt, and then up and down from her shoulder to her hip, and he stopped there at her hipbone and rubbed in a circle. There was a gurgle from her throat, and she began sinking back down into the bed, with her eyes closed.

“No, no, you have to get up, Dottie, we have a lot to do.”

“I don't want to do anything else.”

“Come on, we have to do things.”

Her eyes opened and she stared at him. “Like what?”

“We have to get you some clothes, and I have to call Sid.”

“Who's Sid?” Her voice was just a bit panicky.

“My lawyer. Listen, I have an errand or two to run. Why don't you get ready?”

It was close to nine when Dottie walked downstairs. There was the whir of a vacuum cleaner in the living room. She could tell by the way it was changing pitch that it was being pushed hard against the carpet. There was the smell of lemon furniture polish and Windex.

Dottie braced herself to meet this housekeeper. She stood at the door to the living room and stared at the very large woman inside. She coughed loudly and the woman looked at her and showed a very broad gap-toothed smile.

“Mrs. MacGregor, congratulations. I am happy for you. I am Eva. Mr. MacGregor said to have breakfast ready when you come down. Come with me.”

She held her hand out and gave a hefty shake. Dottie followed her down the hall, and was led into the kitchen. The table near the window was set and there were rolls and jellies and butter. She slid into a seat and Eva brought over a large pot of coffee.

“You want a paper?”

“Oh, yes,” Dottie said, lowering her eyes, and immediately a copy of the
Daily News,
with a huge grainy picture of her in her suit and large veiled hat, was placed before her eyes. She immediately placed her arm across it and leaned her chin on her hand.

“Oh, that's fine, Eva. Thank you very much,” she said, trying to control her voice.

“You want eggs and bacon or waffles?”

“No, no. The rolls are fine.” She flashed a smile up at her.

Eva returned her smile, which vanished immediately, and went over to the sink. She turned on the tap and began rinsing off dishes and putting them in the dishwasher.

Dottie opened the paper and began reading about the police and the guard, and the theories about her. A line reading
SEE EDITORIAL, PAGE
28, seemed to leap off the page at her and she immediately turned to the editorial page.

POVERTY AND WOMEN
, the headline read.

“Is sad, ya? The woman who robbed the bank,” Eva said evenly, turning around.

“Oh? Someone robbed a bank?” Dottie said coolly and then glanced at the paper. “Yes, that is sad,” she added nonchalantly, and exhaled as Eva seemed to turn back to her work.

Dottie was just about to read the editorial when there was the sound of Eva clearing her throat. She looked over at Eva, who was sponging down the counter. Her face had a frown-scared look to it, and she kept her eyes on the counter.

“Mrs. MacGregor,” she began, and looked at the sponge very seriously. “You have no more need of my services? Maybe?”

“Oh no, Eva.”

“Yes, well, if you think I may not be needed, I would like to know as soon as possible.”

“I see.”

“I have two children. And my husband in construction. He been out of work now and—”

“No, Eva, we'll need you full-time,” Dottie assured her.

Eva kept looking seriously at the counter, as if no matter what Dottie said, this was going to end badly for her.