Goldilocks (6 page)

His voice came slowly. “I heard through the grapevine you’re doing well out there. You’ve got the best of all possible worlds.”

“You heard correctly.”

“You’re gentry.”

“I use the right fork.”

“Must belong to a few clubs.”

“I’m president of the Mallard Junction Improvement Society. We keep the town pristine.”

“I’ve never met your husband.”

“No reason you should have.”

“Sickly fellow, I’ve heard.”

She was silent, tolerating the tone of the conversation only because it suited her purposes.

Cole said, “I understand you’re making money.”

“That I don’t talk about,” she said coolly.

“We used to talk about everything.”

“In bed, Barney, not on the phone.” She shoved aside her hair and shifted the receiver to her other ear. “And in those days you were my lawyer.”

“And those days are gone.”

“Everything must end.”

“I know that, but does Henry?”

She stared through the bow window. In the lowering light of day the lawns were fiercely green, as if paint had been applied, and the sky was at its bluest. “Now you have the nub of it,” she said, watching crows sweep toward distant treetops. “You always did have a quick grasp.”

“You want me to keep an eye on him, keep him occupied. You don’t want him coming back on you and smudging what you have out there. Otherwise you’ll have to deal with him in ways that might not be ladylike.”

“Now you have it all,” she said simply.

“Why didn’t you tell me this in the first place?”

“I knew I didn’t have to. But I’ve given you an out, haven’t I? If he’s too much of a chore, forget him, send him on his way.”

“You know I won’t do that. You know me too well.”

“We know each other, Barney,” she said with sudden softness, her mind reaching back to a time tender to them both, when the urgencies of youth put nonsense in their heads and his bulky class ring on her finger.

He said, “But how well do we know Henry?”

“He’s only crazy around the edges, but everybody’s jagged there. Comes from the bombardment of life.”

A moment passed. “Will this settle my account?”

“Who knows, Barney, I might end up owing you.”

“That’s what worries me.”

She was ready to ring off when the trace of a wistful smile crossed her face, and she turned from the window. “I have the same grapevine as you, darling. I hear you have a woman living in your house. Is it serious?”

“Only on my part.”

“Does she have a name?”

“You wouldn’t know her.”

After she put the phone down, she stood for a few seconds in front of a mirror. Her general image satisfied her, but not the expression on her face, which she duly brightened. When she opened the bedroom door she saw her husband poised a few feet away, a quiet and emphatic presence. “Were you listening?” she asked, and his face heated.

“I wouldn’t do that.”

She moved quickly and pressed a propitiatory hand over his cheek. “I know you wouldn’t.”

“I love and respect you too much.”

“And that cuts both ways, Ben.”

He smiled shyly. “I was waiting to thank you.”

“For what?”

He blushed again. “You know.”

“You’re welcome,” she said as she might have to a child whose shirttail she had tucked in.

“Are you happy, Lou? Happy as I am?”

“I’m content,” she said. “Happiness is something appreciated well after the fact, sometimes years.”

“Were you ever happy?”

“Oh, yes. I was just talking to him.”

His face fell, and his voice went weak. “Lover?”

“Friend.” She fitted an arm around him. “You’re my only lover.”

• • •

Henry Witlo took a swim and a shower at the YMCA, across the street from Lawrence Common. He emerged sopping from the shower stall, squished his hair back, yanked in his stomach, and paused dramatically in a puddle like a hero ready to be cast in bronze and aggrandized on a pedestal. A voice sliced through the spongy air. “You have a great physique.” A wiry man in gym shorts stood near an open locker, and Henry, who never shunned a compliment, offered a face of innocence, like a dinner plate licked clean. “You must’ve played football,” the man said as Henry snatched up a towel.

“Not professional,” he replied, perverting the truth, for neither had he played amateur, nor for that matter any team sport. At school and in the army he had been a bit of a loner and much of a posturer. He mopped his face and dug the towel into one wet underarm and then the other, his chest protruding, his private parts shaking. “But I had offers,” he lied outright.

“You should’ve taken one.”

“We all make mistakes.”

A business suit hung in the open locker, and tasseled loafers were placed neatly together on the shelf. The man closed the locker and clicked and spun the combination lock. Then he moved obliquely closer with a bar of soap in his hand. He had a flattop cut of gray hair and comfortable crow’s-feet at the edges of his narrow eyes. His voice was chummy. “First place you go soft is in the middle.”

“You noticed, huh?”

“The rest of you is OK.”

“I try to take care of myself.”

“A man must.” Each word came out quiet. “Lean men,” he went on in the same deliberate way, “get less resistance in life and more of a lift from whatever breezes are blowing.”

“That supposed to mean something?”

“No, but it sounds good.”

Henry flipped the towel behind himself and whipsawed the back of his shoulders. “You must be a fag. You can talk to me, just don’t touch.”

“You’re quick to judge,” the man said, nothing altering in his face.

Henry girded his middle with the towel. “I’m used to the attention. In the army I couldn’t take a shower some guy wasn’t looking at me.” His clothes were heaped on a bench. Pawing aside his jacket to get at his jeans, he plucked out an Ace pocket comb and slicked it through his wet hair. “I was in Nam.”

“Then you’re older than I thought.”

“You look exactly what you are. What are you, fifty?”

The man merely smiled. “I’ve been around the block.”

“Yeah, so have I,” Henry said with sudden bitterness and a slackening of stomach muscles that disturbed the whole of his posture, as if something had twitched and given. “What’s your name? You got a business card? I ever need a job, I might look you up.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” the man said lightly, which Henry did not take kindly. His mouth went sour.

“I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but old guys like you are the sorriest in the world. You got nothing coming. Everything’s going, you know what I mean? Up ahead, what d’you see? Not much, right?”

“That’s the way the world works,” the man said mildly, and, excusing himself, padded by on rubber thongs into the same stall Henry had occupied.

Henry marked time. He drew himself up and whipped the comb through his hair again. Moving to a mirror, he projected his jaw in the cloudy glass, studied his profile, and with a substantial breath regained a sense of worth. Moments later, as if being cued onto a stage, he sauntered into the cloying heat of the stall. The man’s gym shorts drooped from a peg, the supporter hanging out, and the man stood dazzled in a cone of silver spray. His hair was soaped and his face sculpted into a perfect attitude of indifference.

“Thought I’d see you.”

“It’ll cost you,” Henry said.

• • •

“Jesus bloody hell,” said the bigger of the two uniformed policemenupon entering the stall. The grit from their heavy shoes made mud around the victim, who lay supine on the wet tiles, his face battered and discolored, his left eye swollen shut and his mouth bloody. The other officer crouched over him, and the big officer, dodging a drip from the shower nozzle, said, “Who spread the towel over him?”

“I did.” The trembling voice came from the YMCA’s assistant director, who stood shocked and frightened just outside the stall.

“Why didn’t you tuck one under his head?”

“I was afraid to move him.”

The big officer, whose eyes had a vague stinging effect, sidestepped another drip. “Was the water going?”

“Yes, sir. I turned it off.”

“Then you’re the one who found him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“See anybody?”

“No, sir.”

“D’you know who this guy is?”

“I think it’s Mr. Pothier, owns the furniture store off Essex Street. He’s been a member in good standing for years.”

The big officer stepped around his partner and squatted on the other side of the victim, his leather accessories creaking and his holstered revolver riding up on his hip. His heavy face came forward. “Can you hear me, Mr. Pothier?”

“He can’t talk,” said the other officer.

“But he can move his head, can’t you, Mr. Pothier?” There was a slight painful nod, and the big officer leaned closer. “Somebody did a job on you. You know who it was?” There was a long pause, then the barest of movements, negative, and the big officer grunted to his feet, his face pink from exertion and disgust. His partner looked up.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t think he wants to tell us.”

FOUR

B
ARNEY
C
OLE
had a wearisome day, the morning spent in court trying to squeeze child support out of ex-husbands and the afternoon in the registry of deeds tracing disputed titles to the snarl of their nineteenth-century roots. His spirits lifted when he swerved into his driveway and saw Kit Fletcher’s dusty car parked in her half of the garage. An excitement built when he entered the house and glimpsed the loaded briefcase dropped in an armchair and the navy-blue pumps discarded nearby. “In here,” she called to him in a deep luxurious voice that was a natural extension of her beauty. His heart leaped.

“Where?”

She emerged from the sun room on bare legs strongly shaped by tennis, her tailored business clothes abandoned for a sloppy sweatshirt and loose shorts. Always his breath caught at her sudden presence. She was ten years his junior, blond and big-limbed, good-natured, eternally youthful, with the air and charm of an indifferent goddess.

“I’ve missed you,” he said, staring into large eyes more gray than blue and at odd times, like now, more green than gray. He gave her no chance to speak. He kissed her. When he pressed against her, she did not mind, a good sign that everything was still right between them. They had a relationship he did not take for granted. It was, in her words, more of an arrangement, especially since she divided her time unequally between here and Boston, two semipermanent addresses. In Boston she had the glitter of Quincy Market, business breakfasts at the Ritz, evenings at the theater, and a harborside condo within walking distance of the esteemed law firm of Pullman & Gates, where her skill in litigation was growing. Here in Andover, a twenty-mile commute, she had the serenity of the Wildwood section and all of his attention. He whispered into her hair, “Rough two weeks?”

“No more than usual. I finished up that antitrust thing. Now I’m working on a libel.” Her eyes flew up. “Has it really been two weeks?”

“Almost.”

She liked living in two places, functioning in two worlds, a situation that only half pleased him. She liked her independence. He liked his too, but not so much of it. He would have proposed marriage by now, but he knew it was not on her mind. A brutal husband, whom she had shed after a single year, had left marks.

“Do you know what I want?” she said, and his eyes raced over her face.

“I hope it’s the same thing I want.”

“A drink,” she said. “I need time to wind down.” Which she could never do. Always there was a breeze about her, as if she had come out of the cradle with a sense of urgency.

In the kitchen, after stripping off his suit jacket and tie and hiking his sleeves, he measured out ice and poured from a bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream. They carried their glasses out to the back lawn, for she wanted to breathe the air, smell the lilac, hear the birds, though the birds at that declining time of day were rather quiet. The neighborhood was an old apple orchard in which, some three decades ago, felling as few trees as possible, a developer had erected houses that sold for premium prices. Cole had bought this house fifteen years ago, the down payment a wedding gift from his father, who had furtively handed him the money in a shoe box, glad to be rid of it.

Kit dropped into a canvas lawn chair, extended her legs, tasted her drink, and watched him settle near her in the same kind of chair. “I met your pal.”

Cole, puzzled only for a second, frowned. “What did you think of him?”

“Not the sort of handyman I’d hire. I was afraid he was going to fall off the ladder the way he was fiddling with the drainpipe. He was bare-chested and had a rag around his head. I thought he was Rambo.”

“His name’s Henry.”

“Yes, he introduced himself. He’s a talker, isn’t he?”

“I wish you had called me.”

“Why, is he dangerous?”

“Probably not, but I don’t want him here again while you’re home. Did he bother you?”

She smiled. “He asked if I was your lady.”

Cole gazed off at small gouges in the lawn, the work of squirrels. In July and August the damage would be greater from larger animals snouting for grubs. He said, “What was your answer?”

“I didn’t give him one.”

“What would it have been if you had?”

She smiled again, the smile unreadable, and he rested his eyes on her lax and loose legs, her bare heels pressed into the grass, her shiny ankles perhaps a shade too thick, for him an endearing flaw that increased her appeal the way an error on a coin added value. A blister glistened on her little toe, left foot. The pumps she had sloughed off were new.

“How long will you be home?” he asked, implying that this was her real home and that her place in Boston was little more than a hotel room, though he was well aware that the bulk of her clothes were there, not here, and that all he knew about her life away from him was what she chose to tell, which sometimes was not much.

“I’m not sure,” she said, holding her smile. “I never am, am I?” Her free hand reached out, and for a moment or so their fingers entwined. “For your information,” she said, “I missed you too.”