Eve's Men (25 page)

Inevitably, though, the conversation got around to Brian, and for the rest of dinner there wasn’t much to laugh about. Eve asked him about the charges against Brian, apparently assuming that because Charley had been questioned by the FBI, he would have a pretty good idea what his brother faced. But he explained that the agents tended to ask a lot more questions than they answered. Nevertheless he told her what little he knew, most of it having to do with Brian’s crimes in Colorado.

“The new stuff,” he said, “the Greenwalt thing and running away with Terry—I just don’t know. But putting a gun on the servants and locking them up, that’s assault and probably kidnapping too—I’m not sure. In any case, if and when he’s caught, I honestly can’t imagine he’ll get off with less than twenty years.”

“
Twenty years?
”

“Eve, it’s just a guess. I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know any more about these things than you do.”

“But twenty years, Charley! Some killers don’t even get that, do they?”

“He almost got Jolly killed.”

“Only because that Chester was a wacko. It wasn’t what Brian intended.”

Charley took down about a third of his martini. “You’re probably right,” he said. “But even if it were twenty, there’s early parole and time off, things like that.”

She gave him a rueful smile. “Oh, let’s not talk about that anymore, okay?”

He wanted to remind her that he wasn’t the one who had brought up the subject, but he didn’t. “I’m with you,” he said.

“You know, there’s all this furor over what he’s done,” she said. “But nobody seems to care
why
. The networks and the pundits, they couldn’t care less about his motives.”

“That’s usually the case, isn’t it?”

“Maybe so. But still…”

Eve went on then, telling Charley more about Brian and Kim Sanders, how much he had cared for her and even fought for her. In a story oddly similar to the one Waldo Trask had told Charley, Eve explained how bad the situation had become at the country singer’s posh farm outside Nashville. As Kim’s career waned and her need for narcotics steadily increased, Brian had tried to keep the drug peddlers away, even to the point of beating up on one who came right to their door. The man swore out a complaint against him, and Brian spent almost a week in jail before Kim sobered up enough to find out where he was and get him out.

“And finally I guess he just gave up,” Eve said. “Kim dragged him off to her cabin near Colorado Springs, not far from where she was born. And for the next six months I guess all she did was drink and listen to her records and shoot up with heroin and whatever else she could get. Brian told me he went for long walks and did a little grass and coke. And since he couldn’t stop her from using, he sometimes had to go out himself and find the stuff for her. He said the night she died—the night she overdosed—it was just like most other nights, the two of them lying together on a mattress in front of the fireplace and listening to music and sleeping off and on. But in the morning, when he finally awoke, she was already cold. He had no idea when she’d died. So he called an ambulance and the police, and when they asked him where he was when she died, he simply told the truth.”

“And then the feeding frenzy began,” Charley said.

“Right. The media all over the place, sticking their mikes in his face. And from then on, he’s been this lowlife pusher who slept while his ladylove, the great superstar, died beside him.”

Thinking Eve looked close to tears, Charley reached over and put his hand on her arm. “I don’t think very many people feel that way anymore.”

“No, now he’s the
wacko
lowlife who …”

Unable to finish, she started to get up, probably headed for the bathroom to cry. But Charley moved faster, getting up at almost the same instant and holding her there for a few moments before she gave in and sank back down.

“I know how you feel,” he said. “I realize you love him, Eve. But this meal’s just too fine to waste. We can talk about Brian later, okay?”

Smiling sadly, her eyes moist, she nodded as he sat down again too. “And maybe not even then,” she said.

Later they took their drinks out onto the deck and watched the last streaks of sunset following the sun into the sea. Charley commented that the place smelled even better now than it had earlier, and Eve explained that as the breeze lessened, the bushes and trees around the house—hibiscus and jacaranda and bougainvillea—got their chance to show off.

“It doesn’t sound much like Flossmoor,” Charley said.

“What do you grow there?”

“Oak trees mostly,” he said, which made her laugh.

“The truth is, though, it’s very beautiful. In fact, that’s one of the things I miss out here, the great old trees, the oak forests. Flossmoor seems more, I don’t know, more like America.”

Eve pretended to be offended. “It wouldn’t if Norman Rockwell had lived here.”

Charley laughed. “You’ve got a point.”

She went over and turned off the hot tub, which had been filling since they’d come outside.

“The tub’s ready,” she announced. “Now, if we only had some swimsuits.”

“We don’t?”

“No, I checked Aunt Maureen’s room. No guest suits, just her own, which could serve as a tent. So I guess we’ll just have to go with our underwear.”

“Boxer shorts?” Charley said. “You sure you’re ready for that?”

She laughed. “Indeed I am!”

Charley had already brought out glasses and a pitcher of martinis, and Eve now placed three candles around the tub and lit them, candles that she said were guaranteed to keep the mosquitoes away. Charley turned away from her as he got out of his clothes, all except his shorts, and he pretended no great interest in Eve as she slipped out of her dress now and edged down into the tub, her taut, lovely body naked except for a lacy white bra and panties.

The two of them slipped all the way down into the water, with only their heads visible, facing each other about six feet apart, both smiling as the hot, churning water caressed their flesh.

“It’s kind of like that beer commercial,” Charley said. “It just doesn’t get any better than this.”

Eve laughed. “I’ll second that.”

Pushing back and upwards, Charley poured their drinks and reached out to give one to Eve.

“Not yet,” she said, her head still the only part of her above water. “There’s one thing I want to say first, while I’m still sober. You know what you said inside, about knowing that I loved Brian?”

Charley nodded.

“Well, I just wanted you to know I’m not sure about that anymore. Lately it seems that my feelings for him are more sadness and anger, you know? I mean, it hurts me to see the state he’s in. And I get angry too, at the things he’s doing. But love? I just don’t know anymore, Charley. Okay?”

Charley wasn’t sure what to say to that. Setting her drink close to her, he nodded sympathetically. “Of course, Eve. And being his brother, I think I know where you’re coming from.”

“I’m sure you do.” Suddenly then she smiled, happily, beautifully. “There! That’s over. Now we can soak.”

“Right.”

She took a sip of her martini and set it back down. In the position the two of them were in, half reclining, their bodies tended to rise in the water, and as a result, their legs kept touching.

“There is one other fly in the ointment,” she said now. “Underwear.
Clothes!
In a hot tub, they just don’t feel right, at least not to me. So I was wondering, if I were to suggest we dispense with them, would it be possible for you not to think I was coming on to you?”

“Of course.”

“Why ‘of course’?”

“I don’t know. Because of Brian, for one thing.”

“What else?”

“Because if that’s what you said, so be it. I believe you.”

Eve shook her head, almost in wonderment. “Charley, you’re something special, you know that? I don’t think I’ve ever known a man like you before.”

“You poor kid.”

“No, honest.”

“It’s my shorts, right?”

She laughed. “No, I mean the fact that you can be such a straight-arrow one minute—such an innocent—and the next, funny and sophisticated. And you’re so easygoing on the outside…”

“And on the inside, what? Paranoid schizophrenic?”

“No, easygoing.”

“You found me out.”

“Well, what about it?
Au naturel?
”

“Why not?” Putting down his drink, Charley slipped out of his shorts and tossed them onto the deck just as Eve began to remove her bra and briefs, all done underwater. In her case, though, she didn’t toss them onto the deck so much as
set
them there, which caused her to come up out of the water for a second or two, exposing her breasts in the process.

Naked now, unencumbered, she and Charley settled back, content to loll there in the burbling water, with the candles burning about them and the sky beyond the lemon trees slowly darkening, becoming almost the inky color of the sea, where a scattering of oil-drilling platforms winked on and off, red and green. Their legs continued to touch every now and then, and Charley helplessly felt his cock swelling. Afraid she might see him through the water, he sat back farther and took his drink in hand, wanting to drain it almost as much as he wanted her not to notice his tension. So he sipped at it slowly, saying nothing, unable to take his eyes off hers, unable to read what he saw there.

Oddly, Eve suddenly was looking almost grave, as if she had remembered something unpleasant or pressing. And she too seemed to have nothing to say. It was as if, in becoming nude, they had rendered themselves mute. Occasionally she seemed to forget about the natural buoyancy of her body, and her breasts would rise briefly out of the water, two perfect little islands, pink at the crest. And Charley continued to wonder if she could see his erection through the water. Rattled, he poured himself another martini and gestured to freshen hers, but again she declined.

“No, I’m fine,” she said.

Charley settled back then, somewhat puzzled by the intensity of her gaze. As he watched her, the corners of her mouth curled upwards in the hint of a smile, one of irony or reflection.

“It’s funny,” she said, “being here like this. Doesn’t it make you kind of regret that we’re not more like Brian? I mean, him and his meaningless one-night stands.”

Not quite knowing what to say to that, Charley heard himself going off on a tangent, practically babbling. “I’ve got this weird phobia about phrases like that—I mean, one-night stand. I mean, it might have been hip at one time, but now it’s just a cliche. Like ‘on the rocks’. I sometimes order Scotch and ice, and the waiter invariably looks dumbfounded for a moment, then says, ‘Oh, you mean
on the rocks
.’ I’m tempted to bring in a real rock one day and drop it on his foot and say, ‘Now,
that
is a rock. What I want is ice.’”

By then, Eve was smiling at him as if he were a child. “Charley, I think you’re evading my question,” she said.

Nodding in defeat, he set his drink down. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. I guess I just didn’t want to admit that I lied to you in Colorado about my faithfulness. The fact is, over the last ten years or so I’ve done my share of cheating too—away from home, at conventions and the like, one-night affairs every bit as meaningless as Brian’s. And worse in a way, because I don’t like to admit to them.”

“You’re ashamed of them?”

Charley started to say ‘Of course,’ another lie, but caught himself in time. “No, not really. I can’t truly say I think it’s wrong or evil. I mean, all our married lives, men fight against the desire for other women. We look at all the beautiful girls—all the beautiful women—and we eat our hearts out, while our wives seem to have pretty much what they want—the home and the kids and, on occasion, us. So I guess I rationalize. I tell myself that an occasional dalliance far from home—what does it hurt? When I return home, things don’t change. Everything’s still pretty much just like it was before, not bliss maybe, but not misery either.”

Eve shook her head. “That’s a pretty sad story, Charley.”

“Is it? Yes, I suppose so. But I wanted you to hear the truth, Eve. And please don’t think I’m telling you this in order to make things happen between us here tonight. I’m glad you’re true to Brian. But even if you weren’t, nothing would happen between us.”

“Why? Because of Brian?”

“That too.”

“What else?”

Charley didn’t answer immediately. He knew he had been backed into some some sort of ultimate corner where there could be no more facile twists and turns, no more evasions. And he regretted it, because he knew the truth would put an end to the whole lovely evening as well as to his own stupid, hopeless dreams and send her running for the nearest exit. When he spoke finally, his voice was matter-of-fact, even cold.

“I think you know the reason, Eve. I’d never want it to be a one-time thing. I’d never want it to end.”

As before, her head seemed disembodied, floating on the roiling water, the beautiful face and abundant hair, the large green eyes looking almost orange in the candlelight. But suddenly the eyes were glistening and the head was moving toward him and rising, followed by her shoulders and breasts and arms coming up out of the water, the arms reaching for him.