The Barbed-Wire Kiss (10 page)

“He hit that going out,” she said. “There’s no way he couldn’t have noticed it. I heard it in the house. He didn’t even stop to look.”

He knelt, examined the scrape. There were blue flecks of paint driven into the splintered wood.

“What kind of car was it?” he said.

“I don’t know cars that well. A Chevy maybe. It was old and banged up, I can tell you that. Big and noisy, like it needed a muffler. That’s what I heard first.”

“Do you think I could have a look in that apartment? It would only take a minute. His sister would be grateful.”

She folded her lower lip between her teeth.

“That wasn’t very nice of him,” she said. “Take off like that, leave her worrying.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

She watched him for a moment.

“Hang on,” she said.

As she walked back to the house, he heard chains creak and he turned. Terry Jr. sat on a swing, scuffing his heels in the dirt, watching him. Harry smiled and the boy stared back at him, his expression unchanged.

When she came out of the house, there was another brief struggle with the dog. She pushed it back inside, shut the screen door. He met her at the bottom of the stairs, and she handed him a single key on a paper clip.

“You know, you’re pretty good at this, for someone who’s just doing a favor for a friend,” she said.

“If you’d told me to leave, I would have.”

“I know.”

“You must fool a lot of people yourself. With that act.”

“Act?”

“Never mind,” he said. “Let’s go.”

As they went up the stairs, their shoulders brushed. He caught a faint whiff of perfume.

“It works in both locks, I think,” she said.

He unlocked the doorknob, then the dead bolt.

“Let me go in first,” he said. “And give me a minute.”

He turned the knob, pushed the door open with his fingertips, sniffed, then stepped into the dimness of a kitchen. The air inside was hot and oppressive. All the blinds were closed, and dust moved in shafts of light around their edges. The sink was filled with dishes.

There was a phone on the wall but no answering machine. Beyond the kitchen was a small living room with a love seat, a recliner, a TV and a VCR on a stand. The VCR’s clock was flashing 12:00. A battered air conditioner sat silent in one window.

He heard her come into the kitchen.

“Well?” she said.

“Hold on.”

There was a single short hallway off the living room. He walked past a bathroom and into a room with an unmade bed, a scratched dresser, and a cheap stereo with turntable. There was a poster for a boxing match on one wall, a framed Harley-Davidson print on another. There was no sign of a woman’s touch anywhere. He wondered if his own bedroom would look the same to a stranger.

“It’s okay,” he called out. “It’s empty.”

He looked in the bedroom closet. Work shirts, a leather jacket, and a single suit hung there. He went to the dresser, opened drawers. There were clothes in all of them.

She came into the bedroom.

“I guess he did leave, after all,” she said. “It would have been awful if he’d hurt himself on something in here. I don’t think I could have handled that.”

He squatted beside the bed, looked beneath it. There was a suitcase there. He dragged it out. It was cheap, vinyl over cardboard, and the latches were dusty. He popped them open. There was nothing inside.

“Maybe he had another one,” she said. “Or one of those overnight bags.”

“Maybe.”

He shoved the suitcase back under the bed, dusted himself off. She unlocked one of the bedroom windows and pushed up on it until it opened. A breeze blew through the apartment. Outside, birds were singing.

He went into the tiny bathroom, tugged aside the plastic shower curtain. The sink and tub were rust-stained but clean. The medicine cabinet held a disposable razor, toothpaste, a can of shaving cream, and three condoms in foil wrappers. In a wicker basket beside the toilet was a
Racing Form
from May and a
Rolling Stone
and a
Penthouse
that were both a year old.

That was the whole of the apartment. He went back into the living room, felt the depression settling around him.

On top of the VCR was a videocassette in a brown plastic case. He opened it. Inside was an adult film and a yellow rental receipt from a video store. It was dated June 28. Four weeks ago.

“He never returned this,” he said.

“What?” she called from the bedroom.

He put the tape back. She came into the living room, went to the window beside the love seat.

“Have you seen enough?” she said.

She undid the latch, pushed up on the sash, but it wouldn’t give. He came up behind her, saw the thin sheen of perspiration on the back of her neck, smelled her perfume.

“Hold on,” he said.

He reached above her, his chest touching her shoulders. She didn’t move away. He pushed up on the sash with both hands until it slid open.

“There,” he said and stepped back. She turned to face him, only inches between them. The room felt tiny, airless.

Without thinking, he touched her forehead, pushed a lock of hair away from her eyes. She looked up at him and he leaned close, gently kissed the side of her neck. When he drew back, she caught his hand.

Outside, Terry Jr. was singing a nonsense song, accompanied by the squeaking of the swing.

“What about the baby?” Harry said.

“She’s sleeping. She’ll be all right.”

She smiled, bit the edge of her lip.

“Lock the door,” he said.

Later, he went naked into the bathroom, urinated into the toilet, dropped the condom in, and flushed. He looked at himself in the mirror, turned on the faucet, and palmed cold water into his face. He wanted a drink. He wanted to be gone from there.

When he went back in, she was still in bed. She stretched her arms above her head, then sat up, the sheet slipping away from her. She got her panties and cutoffs from the floor, wriggled into them without leaving the bed.

“God knows what you must think about me,” she said. “I’m not like this.”

He pulled on his jeans, saw that she was looking at his scar.

“An accident,” he said, “at work.”

“It must have been a pretty bad one.”

“It was.”

She gestured at her shirt. He handed it to her, watched her finish dressing.

“Do you think we should call the police?” she said. “About Jimmy being missing? Wouldn’t his sister want you to?”

“At some point, maybe.” He sat on the edge of the bed to pull on his boots. “But we’ll give it some time first. I’m going to look around a little more, see if I can turn him up. If I can’t, I’ll call her and ask what she wants to do.”

She sat beside him, put an arm across his bare shoulders, and kissed the side of his face.

“I’m glad you wore that thing for me,” she said. “Some men won’t. I don’t know why. There’re enough babies in this world already without somebody to love them.”

She got up and went down the hall to the bathroom, closed the door. He pulled on the T-shirt, went out into the living room. The VCR blinked at him. He had the feeling that, whatever happened, Jimmy was never coming back here.

When she came out of the bathroom, her hair was still damp with sweat, her face flushed.

“I hope he doesn’t get back and wonder why his bed is messier than when he left,” she said.

“I wouldn’t worry about it.”

She stood on tiptoes, gave him a quick kiss on the lips.

“I’m going to leave the windows open a little while,” she said. “Let some fresh air in here.”

They went out onto the steps and she locked the door behind them. Terry Jr. was gone from the swings.

“The mail you saved for him,” he said. “Do you have it handy?”

“The mail?”

“It might be helpful. There may be some sort of indication as to where he went.”

“I don’t know if I should let …”

“I want to be able to tell Andrea everything I can.”

She looked at him, considering.

“Come on, then,” she said.

He followed her to the house. When she opened the screen door, the dog came scrabbling along the kitchen floor toward him. She slapped it sharply on the snout, and it whimpered and backed away. She pushed open the door, let it run out into the backyard.

In the living room, Terry Jr. sat on the arm of an old, overstuffed couch, watching cartoons, swinging his legs.

“Hi,” Harry said.

The boy ignored him. His heels thudded on the couch.

“This way,” she said. “I keep it in here.”

There was a small table in the hallway leading to the front door. She opened a drawer and started to pull out envelopes. Upstairs, a baby began to cry.

“I threw all the junk mail out,” she said. “Everything else is here. You’ll have to look yourself. I’ll be back.” She went up the stairs.

He flipped through the pile. About a dozen envelopes, mostly bills—cable, phone, electric. Credit card solicitations. No personal letters. He folded the envelope with the phone bill in half and slipped it into his back pocket.

She came back down cradling the baby, its crying now reduced to moist sobs.

“Anything interesting?” she asked.

“No. Bills mainly.”

She gently bounced the baby. “This is Lee Ann,” she said. “Say hello, Lee Ann.”

The baby turned away from him, buried her face in her mother’s shoulder, gripped her collar.

“She’s shy,” she said. She cooed to the baby, then shifted it to her other side. “You know, I don’t remember seeing any letters in there from Colorado. Isn’t that where you said his sister lived? Why didn’t she write if she was worried about him?”

“He never was very good at answering letters. She figured it would be quicker if I stopped by.”

The baby began to gurgle. Lynn took a corner of her shirt and wiped its mouth. He looked at them, searching for the words.

“Can I call you?” he said.

“If you want to.” She pulled the baby close, kissed its forehead.

“I want to.”

Outside the kitchen door, the dog began to bark.

He leaned to kiss her brow and she tilted her lips to meet him instead. As they kissed, the baby extended a tiny hand, touched his face.

Driving home, he stopped at a liquor store in Neptune and bought two bottles of wine. He knew he’d need them.

He locked the bottles in the trunk, then went across the street to a coffee shop and got change for a dollar from the cashier. She pointed him to a phone booth by the kitchen entrance. He called Ray at his office.

“You still have a Red Line to DMV?” he asked.

“Don’t use it much, but I still pay for it. What are you looking for?”

He gave him Cortez’s name and address. “Car make, model, license number,” he said. “Anything that DMV has in their computer that might help.”

“If I do you this favor, you promise to tell me what’s going on at some point?”

“I promise. I know it’s hard to believe, but right now you know almost as much as I do.”

“You’re right, it is hard to believe. Give me a few minutes. What number are you at?”

“It’s a pay phone. There’s no number on it.”

“Call me back in ten minutes.”

Harry gave him twelve, drank a cup of coffee at the counter. He borrowed a stub of pencil from the waitress, got a white paper napkin from the dispenser, wrote down the information Ray gave him.

After he hung up, he pulled a tattered directory from the shelf beneath the phone. He paged through it, found a listing for a Pettimore, L., at the right address. He wrote down the number, looked at it for a long moment.

He imagined calling her. He wondered what he’d say.

When he got home, Janine’s blue Subaru was parked in front of the barn. She was sitting on the picnic table in his side yard, palms against the wood, shoulders forward, watching him. She wore jeans and a black jersey with a white 12 on it.

He parked alongside the Subaru, got out.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

She shook her head, hopped down from the table.

“Nothing. I had to run some errands in Freehold, so I thought I’d come by, say hello.”

“I don’t know if I believe that,” he said. “But come on inside.”

In the kitchen, he got two small plastic bottles of Evian from the refrigerator, held one out. She took it.

“Are you okay?” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“You look a little down.”

He shrugged, opened the Evian.

She looked around.

“New floor in here,” she said. “Or new linoleum.”

“Both. The old wood rotted straight through, I had to rip it all out. First time you’ve been up here in a while, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It’s amazing, all this time and it still looks like no one lives here.”

“I’d give you a tour, but I gave the maid the year off. Let’s go out on the porch. It’s cooler.”

Outside, he let her take the rocker, sat on the top step near her feet, facing her. He sipped water.

“How do you feel?” he said.

“Fine, so far. Fat.”

“I can’t tell.”

“Give it a month.”

She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, the bottle in both hands. She scraped at the wet label with a thumbnail.

“I did have another reason for stopping by,” she said.

“I guessed.”

“I wanted a chance to talk with you when Bobby wasn’t around.”

He drank water, waited.

“Bobby’s good at a lot of things, but he’s a bad liar,” she said. “And I guess he’s smart enough to know when not to even try. He told me what you gave him.”

“It was a loan. That’s all.”

“I’m not sure whether to be grateful or angry.”

“Why would you be angry?”

“This is our mess, Harry. Not yours. And that’s a lot of money.”

“That’s a matter of perspective, isn’t it? I’ve got this house, this land, and the money that went along with it. None of which I worked a day for. And a pension on top of that. I can afford it.”

“That’s not the point.”

“All of a sudden I feel like I should be defending myself, and I don’t know why.”

“That other night, after you left. I was up a long time thinking.”

“About?”

“About pulling you into this.”