Shadow Woman (35 page)

The second one took off her
towel and knelt to touch the water with her fingers. “You’re
right. It’s perfect. Just like a bath.” She was wearing a
suit that Jane guessed had probably come from the same store, but on
this one it looked even more obvious, almost indecent. She was
shorter and blond, with big white breasts that seemed painfully
confined by the top, and when she stood to dive in, Jane saw the
lower part of the suit as a blue line bisecting a heart-shaped flash
of white buttocks.

The blond one surfaced near
Pete. “I hope you don’t mind our coming in with you. We
saw you from our room, and it just looked so good…”

“Not at all,” said
Pete. “We’re glad to have you. This way we don’t
have to wonder if we’re crazy, because you are too.”

“I’m Pam,” she
said. Jane could hear something in the woman’s voice. Then she
decided it just sounded tense because she was treading water and in
the effort her throat muscles had tightened. “And this is
Carol.”

Jane tried to analyze her
unpleasant feeling. It was the way bodyguards must feel when their
charges decided to go into a crowd. The bodyguard’s adrenaline
flowed, her muscles contracted for action, and then the threat turned
into a mere distraction.

Pete said, “I’m Jim
Holstra. This is… Mary. She’s my sister.” Jane’s
distracted thoughts suddenly crystalized. He was using her own words.

“Oh, really?” said
Carol. She half-turned toward Jane and smiled faintly. “You two
must get along pretty well, to travel together.”

Jane had no direction of escape
from this conversation. Was he doing what she thought he was doing?
The distraction had blossomed into an annoyance. “Yes,”
she said.

Her mind was prickling with
irritation. They were gently closing doors on her. She reminded
herself that whoever they were, they weren’t killers. They were
making it obvious that they were intrigued by Pete. If anyone asked
later if they’d seen him, they could hardly forget, but what
could they say? She couldn’t take them seriously as a threat to
Pete’s safety. She could not think of a reason why they seemed
so threatening to her.

The one with the red hair glided
out into the deep water and bent at the hips. Her bottom broke the
surface and then her feet, and she disappeared in the direction of
Pete and the blonde. Jane had to fight some inner resistance to bring
the names back. The blonde was Pam; the redhead Carol. In a few
seconds Carol emerged again, beside Pete. For a minute the three held
on to the tile in the deep, shadowy end of the pool. She couldn’t
hear what they said. Then Pete floated out into the center.

Jane saw the copper head slip
very close to the yellow head, cup a hand, and whisper something. The
blonde gave a little squeal, and they started whispering again, then
giggled like two unappealing children in a conspiracy. Then they
began to swim slowly on either side of Pete. She stared at the two of
them, and found herself thinking, Wait until he gets them under the
light.

She was horrified at her
thought. She was acting as though she were jealous. For the first
time she was glad he had offered himself so she had gotten the
opportunity to turn him down and acquit herself of that charge. Why
was she suddenly feeling angry? The anger didn’t seem entirely
real. It occurred to her that it might be her mind’s way of
protecting her from something else, and she could even identify what
that something was. It was regret at the loss of something that never
could have been, something that would have been beautiful, but was
now being transformed into something tawdry. Why did she call it
tawdry?

She moved to the top of the
steps and she realized that she had been unconsciously moving away,
to escape the place where this was happening. She shivered when the
air touched her skin. She stopped. If she left, went back to the
room, these two almost certainly weren’t going to try to kill
Pete Hatcher. But if she weren’t present to control the
situation, they might ask him questions he was not prepared to
answer, or even attract attention that would get him killed.

She felt the urge to hear what
they were saying. She slipped back into the water and drifted toward
them. Suddenly there was splashing. Pete was out of the pool walking
toward the hotel room. He opened the door and disappeared. Jane
looked after him in confusion.

The two women suddenly appeared
on both sides of her, heading for the steps. “Your brother is
really something.” Pam laughed. Jane altered it: little
turned-up nose, pink all over – Spam.

“Yes,” said Jane.
“He’s a lot of fun.” She loathed them.

“Aren’t you coming?”
asked the other one, turning to the side to wring out the long copper
hair. She seemed hopeful.

“Coming where?”

“To our place, for a
drink.”

“Your place?” asked
Jane. She let her feet touch and began to walk along between them.

“Yeah,” said Spam.
“We’ve got a little suite, and we’ve got supplies.”

Jane’s head began to ache,
but she hid her distaste at the idea. It was after one in the
morning. If these two got tipsy and festive, they could be loud
enough to get Pete arrested. Then there would be fingerprints, public
records for the killers to find. “Sure,” said Jane.
“We’ll stop by for one drink.”

She saw the look that passed
between Carol and Pam. They were not pleased.

Jane was still twenty feet from
the door of the hotel room when it opened and Pete stepped out
wearing a dry pair of jeans and a T-shirt, carrying some glasses. He
walked to a room two doors from theirs and waited while Carol
unlocked it. She considered calling to him, but it would have to be
loud if she wanted him to hear it. She tried to catch his eye, but he
was looking down, as though he were staring at the lock.

The two women were busy
pretending they didn’t know he was looking at them, and they
seemed to enjoy the task, giving little shimmy-shivers they could
blame on the cold, then tiptoeing into the room ahead of him.

Jane stepped into her room. She
stripped off the wet suit quickly in the bathroom and hung it in the
shower. She glanced at her own naked body in the mirror and caught
herself making the comparison that seemed inevitable at this strange
instant in her life. It made her feel a little better: she was not
the hag she was feeling like. She was pretty.

She stepped into a pair of jeans
and pulled a sweatshirt over her head. At the door she stopped, stood
absolutely still, and took a breath. Why am I doing this? Because if
I sit in this room alone, I could wake up alone and wish I had kept
him from getting himself killed.

She blew out the breath, closed
the door behind her, and walked to the women’s room. The light
was on, so she was sure it was the right one. She knocked. The door
opened a crack, and she pushed it cautiously to come inside. The
connecting door to the next room was open, and a dim light was on in
mere too. Carol, the copper-haired one, emerged from the next room
still in her bathing suit, set two glasses of brown liquor and
bubbles on me table, and headed into the bathroom. She stopped in
front of the mirror and began to blow-dry her hair with a loud dryer.
She yelled over it, “Where are you two from?”

Jane picked up the drink that
was closest to her and walked to the doorway of the bathroom. “More
important, where are Jim and Pam now?”

Carol clicked off the dryer and
began brushing her hair, an amused little smile on her face. “Didn’t
they come in there?” Then she stopped brushing. “Why, mat
little…”

Jane turned toward the open
connecting door and Carol stepped to her side. “If you can’t
see them, do you really want to go next door looking for them?”

“Probably not.” She
took an experimental sip of her drink. It was warm and sweet, like
bug repellent.

“Are you really his
sister?”

“Sure.”

“You don’t look like
him.”

“Different fathers. Our
mother was a magnet for bums.” Jane wasn’t sure why she
had chosen to make up this kind of story, but it fit her mood. It
occurred to her that Pete could easily be telling a different story.
“Jimmy might not tell you that, because it’s not nice.
And I think men make up nice stories because they need a father they
can admire. But we’re all grown-up women here. Are you and Pam
related?”

“Just friends,” said
Carol. She pulled down the top of her bathing suit and Jane looked
away involuntarily to see if Pete was behind her seeing this. But the
door to the next room was now closed. Carol slipped the tight suit
down from her hips, and Jane looked at her objectively. She had been
given to understand that men liked red hair, and hers was at least
real.

Carol caught her eye and smiled.
“We’re on vacation together from the car agency.”
She cocked her head. “You wish we’d drop dead, don’t
you?”

“No,” Jane lied.
“Why would you think that?”

Carol found a small perfume
bottle in the shoulder bag on the counter and dabbed a bit on her
neck, then another on her belly, close to the patch of red hair. The
little smile was conspiratorial. Jane’s stomach felt hollow.
Carol leaned close to the mirror and began to make up her eyes. “I
don’t know. That’s what I was wondering.”

“That’s not the way
I feel,” said Jane. “But he’s my little brother,
and maybe I’m protective.” She walked into the outer room
and sat at the table.

In a few seconds Carol walked
out to join her. Only then did she carelessly slip on a terrycloth
robe and tie it. She sat on the bed and switched on the television
with no sound. “I guess you should be protective,” she
said. “He’s such a hunk. Of course, if you’re his
sister, he probably doesn’t strike you that way.”

“I can see,” said
Jane. She needed to add something malicious. “He seems to
attract one after another.”

It didn’t seem to touch
Carol. She shrugged. “Life is short. He might as well have some
fun.”

Slowly, against all of Jane’s
hopes, she began to hear faint noises coming from the next room. The
walls were so thin that they muffled none of the sounds. There was a
soft, female moan, and then the springs of the bed. She needed to
talk. “You said you and Pam work together?”

Carol stared at the silent
screen of the television set, but Jane could see she was listening to
the sounds behind the door. “Uh-huh.”

“And this is your
vacation. Have you been up in the mountains?”

Carol looked at her, the blue
eyes focused on something behind Jane’s head. “A couple
of hikes.” The voice in the next room was up an octave now, and
louder, sounding almost distressed. “Oh,” it said. “Oh,
oooh, yes. Please.”

Jane considered that this was
one possible way that hell could be. It was torment, and it was
designed to make her know, and to feel, that she was bad and weak.
She could do nothing but talk to this idiot on the bed, and talking
to her was like looking in a mirror and seeing a grotesque parody of
herself. Carol was lying there and the robe barely covered her
anymore, but she didn’t think to close it, and her face showed
that she wasn’t just hearing, she was listening, and wishing
more fervently each second that it were she instead of her friend.
“Are there any good hikes that we shouldn’t miss?”
asked Jane. “We’ve been sticking to the road a lot.”

“No,” said Carol
absently. “I don’t really think it’s much fun.”
She turned to glance at Jane, then said to the television set, “You
get hot, and sweaty, and out of breath.” She lifted her glass
to her lips, tasted it, and made a face.

“What’s wrong?”
asked Jane. Talk, damn you.

“These taste awful without
ice. We need ice.”

Jane almost sprang to her feet.
“I’ll get some,” she said. “Do you know where
the ice machine is?”

Carol shook her head. “I’ll
get it. It’s around a couple of corners.” She stood and
walked to the door. Jane noticed that she put no shoes on her feet.
She paused and studied the two room keys on the table, then seemed
unable to remember which one fit this room and slipped both into the
pocket of her robe.

For the first few seconds, Jane
was relieved to be out of Carol’s company. But as minutes
passed, the sounds from the next room seemed to grow louder and more
frequent. Jane tried not to hear them, then knew that there was no
way not to hear them and let them induce clear, detailed visual
images in the mind. She was ashamed, and she resented having to feel
that way. Her mouth was dry and she detested the drink in her hand,
and she needed to clear her throat, but if she did, then Pete and the
blonde would hear her, and it would show them that it was impossible
for her to be in this room without eavesdropping. She could not even
deny to herself that she was listening now, feeling each minute that
this was some low ebb in her life and that it was sinking lower, and
she with it.

Then Jane heard a new sound. For
a few seconds, she wondered why it had surprised her. It was the
voice of Carol, coming to her through the connecting door like the
other one. “Oh, Jim,” it said. “Oh, Jim.”
Jane carried her drink to the bathroom sink and poured it out. Then
she walked out of the room. When she reached her own room, she
remembered that Pete still had the key in his pocket.

She was not going back. She
picked a credit card out of her wallet without looking at it, curved
it a little so it would fit between the door and the jamb to depress
the plunger, then slipped inside and stood alone in the darkness.

She was amazed. She had left her
husband and rushed all the way out here, maybe to walk in front of a
gun muzzle, because that man had called for help. Then she had
carefully piled up day after day of invisible, anonymous travel to
let his trail get cold. Now he was busy burning up all of her
efforts, making himself as memorable as any human being could be to
two women who probably couldn’t wait to meet the next strange
man in the next hotel. She hated Pete Hatcher. He had done this to
punish her for rejecting him – wanted to make her imagine, know
what she had thrown away, and learn to want it. No, that was too
simpleminded. It had been for both of them, to prove that he was
still attractive, still manly, still Pete. He had done that better
than she would ever let him know. The word
ever
struck her ear
as accurate, so she said it aloud: “Ever.”