Better Than This (35 page)

“Let’s get it over with.”

I drove the Mercedes close to the edge of the cliff at what I remembered was the steepest spot and we hauled Dexter out of the trunk and sat him in behind the wheel. Then, with the door open and the motor running I put my foot on the brake and slipped the car into drive. For a second I hesitated, wondering if there was anything else I could do. Dexter slumped over the seat, and seemed to be looking back at me with that same accusing stare he’d worn as he fell.

“Looks like you were wrong about me,” I said quietly.

I wasn’t gloating, and I wasn’t proud of myself, but what was done was done and there was no going back. I took my foot off the brake and touched the gas. That was all it took. The car rolled forward and slid over the edge into the darkness as smoothly as a ship launched on her maiden voyage. It vanished into the void, and for several seconds there was silence before we heard the sound of splintering glass and grating metal as it hit the rocks, then that too was swallowed in the roar of the sea. I looked over and could see nothing of the wreck. Alice stepped up beside me and gripped my arm.

We looked at each other, then wordlessly went back to my car.

Alice and I didn’t speak much as we drove back into town. A couple of times I looked over at her and she was staring impassively into the night. She was pale, her jaw was clamped tight, the tremor of a muscle below her cheek betraying her inner tension. I noticed a stain on the shirt she was wearing over her jeans.

“You better get rid of those clothes when you get home,” I said.

She blinked and looked at me uncomprehendingly, then glanced down at her front. She touched her fingers to the stain which had turned a rust colour, and then let her hand drop.

“Wash them first, but then cut them up and dump them in the trash somewhere away from the boat.”

Perhaps I was being a little over cautious but I planned to do the same with what I was wearing. She nodded her silent agreement.

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked.

She gazed back at me. “I’ll be fine.”

For some reason I believed her. She was undoubtedly affected by what we’d done, but when I’d called her she could have refused. She’d had time to reconsider before she reached the office, but though she knew what she was getting into, she hadn’t changed her mind. Even after that there had been ample time for her to stop it but she had chosen not to.

We drove in silence for a little while, and then she said, “What happened?”

“I don’t know exactly. He slipped. It happened so fast.”

She shook her head. “No. I mean why was he there?”

“Oh.” I explained how I couldn’t sleep and started worrying about the program. “Dexter followed me.”

“Where is it now?”

“The program? Still in the safe.” It was funny, but now it seemed like the best place. I told Alice about my conversation with Dexter. When I told her what he’d demanded her eyes widened.

“What did you say?”

“What could I say?”

She looked across at me and I guessed what she was thinking. “I didn’t push him, Alice. He fell.”

“I know.” She touched my arm reassuringly, but all the same there remained a shadow of doubt in her eye. She was probably wondering about how he managed to finish up where he did, looking the way he did, if he only fell. As we drove on I was conscious that every now and then she glanced over at me, her expression deeply thoughtful.

“What is it?” I asked eventually, beginning to feel uncomfortable.

“Nothing.”

“You’re surprised by all of this? By me, is that it?” I guessed.

“Actually no,” she answered after a minute. “That’s what I was thinking. I ought to be surprised, or shocked or something. But I’m not.”

There was no inflection of condemnation in her tone, but nevertheless she had put me off balance. I wasn’t sure I relished the fact that she should find my actions that night within the bounds of her expectations of me.

“Do you remember the picture of mine you bought?” she asked suddenly.

“The meadow? Of course.”

“You asked where it was.”

I remembered. “You said it wasn’t anywhere in particular.”

“It wasn’t. I copied it.”

I looked at her, surprised by her admission. I suppose in the back of my mind I’d had this idea that she had grown up dirt poor in the rust belt of the mid-west or something and that the house in the picture was her childhood home. She offered a wry smile as if she knew what I was thinking.

“Before I met Marcus, before I came here, to California, I was living in Seattle. I met a man there who I lived with for a year. He was quite wealthy. He was nice enough. He owned a factory that made parts for other factories. He worked very hard, and he was honest and decent and he wanted to marry me. He was older than me, fifteen years older, and I found him physically unattractive. But I stayed with him until I couldn’t bear it any longer.”

Her expression became very intense. “I couldn’t bear what I had become. I used to look at myself in the mirror and think the only reason I was with this man was because he had money.”

“Where did the picture come in?”

“It was in the bedroom on the wall opposite the bed. I could see it when he was making love to me. He would be lying on top of me and I would imagine I wasn’t there. I imagined I was in that picture, walking across that meadow.”

She fell silent and I considered her story. In essence I supposed she was telling me that she didn’t intend to sell herself again. She didn’t sound sorry for herself, or expect me to feel sorry for her. It wasn’t as if she’d escaped from some terrible past that hadn’t been of her choosing. It was more like she was telling me that I shouldn’t feel too badly about what I’d done. We both had our reasons.

“What about Brinkman?” she asked a couple of minutes later.

“I don’t think he has any idea what Dexter was doing tonight.”

“But he knows about the program. Won’t he be suspicious when Dexter’s found?”

“With any luck by the time anyone finds him we’ll have the money. If it comes to it and Brinkman looks like being trouble, we’ll deal with him.” Alice gave me a funny look when I said that. “I mean we’ll pay him off if we have to,” I added.

When we reached her car I let her out. We agreed that neither Marcus nor Sally should ever know about this. Marcus was no problem since Alice was staying on the boat, but she asked what I would tell Sally about where I’d been.

“She was asleep when I left. I should be back before she wakes, she’ll never know I was gone.”

I thought she was going to say something else about Sally, but she changed her mind.

“Don’t forget about your clothes.”

She promised she’d take care of it, and when she was gone I drove home.

By the time I turned into our street it was five-forty and the sky was beginning to lighten. I turned off my lights and coasted into the driveway so as not to draw attention to myself. None of the surrounding houses had lights showing in their windows and when I let myself in the front door everything was quiet. I went through into the laundry and stripped off my clothes and shoved them in the washer, even my trainers, and set it to a fast cycle, then I went upstairs to the bedroom. I listened outside the door, which was open a crack. The room was in darkness and I couldn’t hear anything, so I crept in and made my way towards the bed.

I registered the sliver of light escaping from the closed bathroom door at the same time as the toilet flushed and the door opened. Sally was in the act of reaching for the light switch when she saw me and for a second we stared at each other in mutual surprise.

“What is it?” she asked.

I realized how I must look, frozen in mid-step like a burglar caught in the act. I recovered as quickly as I could and managed an unconvincing laugh.

“You startled me, that’s all.” I got back into bed. “I didn’t know you were in there.”

“Where were you?”

“I went downstairs for some juice.” It was the first thing that entered my head. “I was thirsty.”

She gave me a faintly puzzled look but didn’t say anything, then she turned out the light and came back to bed. She lay with her back to me as I wondered how long she’d been awake. I waited for her to say something, expecting a rush of questions any second, but they didn’t come. It struck me that she’d looked sleepy, her eyes half hooded, and after a few minutes I could tell from her breathing that she was asleep again.

I stayed in bed until seven, and then I got up and made enough noise to make sure that Sally woke too. I took a shower and when I came out of the bathroom I went over and sat on the edge of the bed beside her, and bent to kiss her cheek.

“I’m sorry about last night. I don’t want us to fight.”

She looked up at me, her eyes searching mine. I found her hand and held it, and though she didn’t respond she didn’t resist either. I had never needed her more than I did right then. It came over me in a wave of feeling, a swelling rush of emotion. She was the best thing in my life, and right then she felt like an antidote to the horror of the things I’d done only hours before. I thought of our marriage as a safe harbour, a place of refuge from the storms of the world. She didn’t like what I was doing, but once this was all behind us she would get over it. Things would be the way they used to be. I wanted to hold her, breathe in her sleepy scent, feel the softness of her breasts against my chest, but perhaps she saw something of my intent because I sensed her reluctance.

“Nick…” she began.

“Don’t say anything.” I put my finger against her lips. It was suddenly important that I stop her. “I know how you feel. But it’ll be okay. I promise. Leave it to me. You said you didn’t want to be involved and I think that’s a good idea.”

“It isn’t just…”

“Please, Sally,” I said, quickly talking over her and cutting her off. “I love you. Everything will be the way it used to be. Give it a little time.”

She gave in, but when I leaned to kiss her she didn’t respond. While I got dressed she went into the bathroom and a second later I heard the shower being turned on. When I got downstairs the washing machine had finished its cycle so I took out the wad of clothes and stuffed them into a plastic bag which I took out to the car. By the time Sally came down I’d made coffee and cut some grapefruit. We sat down and I turned on the TV and tuned to KTVU to catch the morning news because I wanted to see if there was anything about Dexter’s car, though I wasn’t expecting it would have been found so soon. The mayor, Willie Brown, looking as dapper as ever, was giving his views on how San Francisco was going to cope with the insatiable demand for office space in the city which was creating chronic shortages and crazily escalating rents. Last year in the Financial District the rate was forty dollars a square foot. Now try eighty-five. A Berkeley professor came on to warn that in three years’ time eighty per cent of the dot. com companies in existence who had created this boom would be gone. Tell that to the investment houses making multi-millionaires out of college kids, I thought. I switched channels looking for something about Dexter, but there was nothing.

Sally and I didn’t speak much. When I left she was resting her elbows on the table, nursing her cup as she stared over the rim, steam drifting like clouds before her face.

Instead of going straight into town I went to the pool and swam for forty minutes. By the time I got out my arms felt like lead and my chest ached and it was all I could do to haul myself out of the water. The burn of the exercise and the water itself was like some kind of cleansing ritual. I was trying to sluice off the events of the night as if they were an outer skin I could discard to emerge made new again. It didn’t work though. I felt physically drained and I knew some inner part of me was for ever corrupt. In the changing room I looked in the mirror to see if my appearance had changed. Still the deep lines around my eyes, and dark smudges, and more grey hairs at my temples but otherwise no different. I leaned close and peered deep into my eyes and I could see, or thought I could, a faint desperation, or was it the look of a haunted man? Whatever happened for the rest of my life I would have to carry around the knowledge of what I’d done. I had discovered I was capable of acts I wouldn’t have thought possible a few weeks ago. I could never tell Sally, never unburden myself and I wondered how something like this would affect us. Would I ever be able to put it out my mind or would I always be tempted to tell her out of desire for some kind of absolution? An absolution that I knew I’d never receive.

As I left I glanced back through to the pool, and there they were, the old people serenely ploughing their watery furrow in the slow lanes. For once I envied them.

It was almost ten by the time I arrived at the office. I parked in my normal spot and went through the door out of which only hours earlier Alice and I had struggled to carry Dexter to his car. Inside the building everything looked the same as it always did. The stores were open, the coffee stand was busy and people went to and fro about their business. My eye was drawn to the place at the bottom of the steps where Dexter had come to rest. A couple of young women wearing fitted black suits were drinking coffee and chatting. One of them had bright pink lipstick that matched her nails and at her feet lay an ultra-slim Italian leather case. The other had a sheaf of documents in her hand and was talking animatedly. I moved closer, studying the area around their feet until I realized they had stopped talking and were watching me curiously.

“Hi. Thought I dropped something.”

They looked down automatically and shifted their feet. “What was it?” the one with pink lipstick asked.

“Nothing. It’s okay. My mistake.”

I knew that my behaviour was a little odd. I imagined the police questioning people and how the two women would snap their fingers.

“Hey, remember that guy the other day? Doesn’t he work in the agency on the second floor, well he was acting really strangely when we were having coffee.”

“That’s right. He was staring at the floor with this really weird look in his eye.”