Stranglehold. Part 7

"Thank you."

He watched a moment longer.

"Well, I'd better get back to work," he said.

He smiled and turned to leave and then turned back to her again as he'd intended to do all along and gave it a beat, still smiling, looking puzzled now but knowing full well that this was a city girl. h.e.l.l, he could smell it on her.

"You're not from around here, are you?" he said.

"No. Boston. I'm just in for a few days, for this."

"Really? I went to school in Boston."

"Did you?"

"Had a restaurant there too-in Cambridge actually-but it went under. To tell you the truth it's been so long since I've talked to a city person I feel like there's hay sticking out of my hair. I don't suppose it would be possible to buy you a drink later on?"

"Well, I ..."

"Or tomorrow night if that's easier for you."

"I ..." She laughed. "Sure. I guess. Why not?"

"Tomorrow night, then. Great. Whenever it's convenient for you. I'll be here. It's good to meet you, Cindy." Always be nice to the girlfriends, he thought.

It was one of the rules.

He walked back across the room smiling, thinking, now where is all this going. He felt strongly attracted to this woman. Up close the eyes were a beautiful amber-green, the skin creamy and smooth and the scent of her a rich clean spicy smell, not sweet or flowery.

He liked the fact that she seemed a little shy, a little puzzled by him-off balance somehow. Maybe walking directly over had been the best thing after all. He hadn't really thought about it at the time. He'd just sensed for some reason that he could not afford to wait. That he had to grab this one fast or she'd be gone.

He wondered why he should care.

He wondered if he was good enough to get her to put off going back to Boston for a day or two.

It'd be interesting to see.

The band was playing a fairly respectable version of Springsteen's "Hungry Heart." He didn't stick around to listen. He had things to do.

He was taking tomorrow night off.

Maybe, if he was lucky, the next couple of nights.

He wondered if Lydia McCloud knew that her life had already changed a bit.

Meeting him.

Lydia turned to Cindy and smiled. Feeling slightly foolish.

Here we go again, she thought. For better or worse, here I am again.

Six.

Long Distance

Plymouth, New Hamps.h.i.+re, and Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts June 1985 to September 1986 He had a restaurant to run. She had a good-paying nurse's job at Ma.s.s General.

They practically lived on the telephone.

She grew to know him this way, mostly through sleepy late-night calls that would often last an hour or more, going over each other's day. Her work and his. Her family and friends and his. None of whom they knew in common.

Gradually she told him about her life with Jim-or her lack of a life-and something, but not all, about her father. He was sympathetic. He told her about the trouble he'd gotten into as a kid. Truancy, stealing. It seemed to her that he still felt guilty about some of it and she wondered why he should hold this against himself for so long.

He seemed concerned about her interests, financial as well as personal. She hadn't taken a penny from Jim so it was hard to get along now living in Boston on a RN's salary. He advised her on a few investments to increase her capital. They talked movies, books, television. He seemed shy about expressing critical opinions, as though afraid to offend, though when he did express them he was smart and kind of funny. He made her laugh.

She thought it amazing and delightful to find that they had actually gone to the same school together and at roughly the same time, had probably pa.s.sed one another at some point in the halls.

Sometimes he'd fly down to Boston for the weekend. Though it was hard for him because the restaurant was busiest on weekends, that was her only time off. Occasionally she'd drive to Plymouth.

In bed he was gentle, considerate, undemanding. She liked the feel of him, the smell of him.

She noted that while he had many acquaintances made through the business he seemed to have few friends. None of them close. She attributed this to his work schedule and a basic reserve in him. She had dinner a few times with his mother and father. The father seemed to warm to her immediately in his quiet way but his mother never did, nor Lydia to her. She thought the woman was probably a tough old bird-she was handling a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis with nothing more than the occasional dose of Tylenol and Lydia could admire that-but Ruth struck her as coa.r.s.e, not the least endearing.

In July of 1986 they took a whole week off and flew to Jamaica to a resort where silly plastic shark's teeth subst.i.tuted for money and the two of them lay basking in the sun drinking pina coladas and a lethal rum punch, das.h.i.+ng indoors to escape the drenching daily ten-minute rainstorms, dancing at night and eating the wonderful island food alfresco and making love, and at the end of that week, on a starless moonless night on the terrace of their hotel, he proposed to her.

She did not accept immediately. There was no question of his leaving the restaurant in New Hamps.h.i.+re. And it was hard for her to consider leaving behind her friends and job in Boston for a man she knew mostly from telephone calls and weekends. Hard to consider marrying any man again even though she had come to be very fond of this one. Almost, but not quite, in love with him.

She reminded herself that she had been in love with Jim.

And that was a disaster.

Love was not necessarily a requirement.

She consented in September over drinks at The Caves. Quite a number of drinks. Enough so that in the future she'd wonder sometimes how much they'd actually had to do with it. By then she'd seen certain sides to him that had not been apparent before and which would certainly have prevented her from marrying Arthur Danse had she known of them. No matter how many margaritas she'd had that night.

By then she knew all about the guns.

She knew about the father and mother.

She knew about the bouts of drinking.

She also knew that the expected had happened, that she had come to care for him despite all this. Sometimes she thought you could fall in love with anyone if you lived with them long enough and got to know them. She saw the remorse in the aftermath of his drinking. She saw the deep, almost childlike dependency upon his parents-especially upon his mother. She saw that to him firearms meant a kind of status and power and wondered why he needed them.

But for all this she doubted he was much different from any man.

That was how she felt at first.

It all changed when she had her baby. Their son Robert.

Their only child.

Seven.

Coming Out Party

Plymouth, New Hamps.h.i.+re September 1987 He watched her read in bed.

The night was unseasonably mild so she had the bedroom windows open and the covers off the bed and she lay there on the sheets in the green silk chemise he'd bought her for her birthday. The chemise was scooped low in front and slim-strapped and plunging in back. Soft and smooth. His wife liked pretty things and he liked to give them to her. Her body had come back quickly after the baby. She hadn't worked at it. Some women had the genes, she said. They were lucky.

She was lucky.

Of course she was.

Her nipples were swollen from the baby's sucking and they had changed in color from a pale to a very much darker brown but that and a certain softening of the flesh, a certain overall voluptuousness, were the only major changes in her. She was still that woman whom all the men would want and all the women would want to know.

The softness only made her more attractive to him. He wanted to touch it, grasp it, almost all the time now.

He'd showered long and thoroughly, the water as hot as he could take it.

He was shaving for the second time that day and glancing at her over his shoulder in the clouded mirror.

Inside the boxer shorts his p.r.i.c.k was hard already.

What he'd always taken elsewhere he was beginning to want more and more at home now.

It was funny.

Maybe he'd logged in too many miles on the car, traveled too many roads to too many places. On "business trips" to collect "supplies and equipment" for the restaurant or interviewing "potential business partners" who never quite came around to investing. Happily she didn't ask many questions.

But maybe he was getting tired of that.

Or maybe it was the baby. His baby. The thing he'd put inside her that had grown there and now claimed her attention utterly. The fact of that which excited him. The challenge to take her back.

Or maybe it was the softness of the flesh.

Whatever. It was time to show her.

Just a little.

He'd been patient. Amazingly so.

And she was ready. She wouldn't deny him.

The baby, Robert, made her happy. At least that was what she told him. And he couldn't see any reason to disbelieve her. Though it was hard to understand. It seemed to him that Robert was all demands. He cried. He wanted feeding or fresh diapers or to be held. What he wanted, he got.

He could understand that much at least.

But the point was that she was happy with the baby and consequently happy, he felt, with him. With life in general. Which meant it was time he showed her.

Just a little.

He splashed water on his face and toweled off and checked his upper torso in the mirror. Small pouches at his hips but not too bad, the rest of him still tight and young and strong.

He walked to the bed and stood over her.

"What's the book?"

"Novel." She showed him the cover. He pretended to be interested in the book. Something called Hero Jesse by Laurence Millman. He hated novels.

"It's about this r.e.t.a.r.ded boy," she said, "or maybe he's insane, I don't really know yet, but he romanticizes the Vietnam War because his brother's over there and ..."

"Any good?"

"Yes. Very."

He sat down next to her on the bed and rested his hand on her hip. He smiled.

"Okay. How good?"

She smiled back. She was flirting with him. She knew what he was after.

Or thought she did.

"I told you. Very good."