Блейк Крауч - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, No. 5. Whole No. 813, May 2009

In her bed again, the smell of jasmine would stir him, the sight of her often more than he could take without his throat tightening so he could hardly breathe. For this he would lie to Dale and probably later have to cover for that lie and the one before it too, his list of fictions long enough that most wives would have already stumbled upon the obvious. Not Dale. Before returning home, Don would have to smoke at least another half-dozen cigarettes to hide Mary’s perfume. And he managed their checking account, not that Dale ever looked, to hide the money he spent somewhat recklessly on Mary: from bottles of peach brandy to the chiffon housecoats and the latest appliances from General Electric and Zenith she pined for. All of this for the love of a short-haired supply clerk named Mary Hooks.

When they had listened to “Rain” three more times, dancing slowly to the last two, Mary pulled a record from a stack on top of the stereo cabinet and placed it on the turntable. She took Donny by the hand and pulled him towards her bedroom as the first strains of “I’ve Just Seen a Face” came through the console speakers. Mary was no fool; she knew where this evening led, and she knew it was wrong. Yet the desire she saw in the boy’s face, whether for the simple pleasure of dancing in her living room, away from the repressive air of his father’s house, or some more fundamental yearning, driven by curiosity and nature, was irresistible. Mary could satisfy that hunger, which filled a hole that always threatened to tear her in two. In quieter moments, when she surrendered to a head-hanging shame for the things she had done, she wondered what devils her parents had been, what sins they had committed and left for her to bear. It was then she wanted most to drown in her troubled waters, to put an end to her own longing, to fill the hole up with red clay and silence.

Donny stopped and smiled in recognition, his blue eyes wide with gratitude and a flicker of hesitation. “Rubber Soul,” he said. “My mother gave me this record last Christmas, just like I asked. Made my father madder than hell.”

“Your mother sounds like a very nice lady.” Mary smiled at him again. Outside, the rain came down harder; thunder growled overhead.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Donny said, his stomach knotting at the thought of his mother at home. Donny looked beyond Mary to her bedroom and back to her, a question on his lips he could not ask. He guessed what might happen in there, but his feet seemed fixed to the pineboard floors. Dancing with Mary, Donny felt swaddled in the scent of her, a scent he couldn’t name, though it felt as familiar and calming to him as the smell of his mother’s dressing room. With the curl of her hair on his neck, her breath in his ear, and the sound of rain outside and in, Donny felt at home and wondered how he would ever return to his parents’ house.

Mary held out her hand to him. “Don’t worry, honey. I won’t burn your records.”

Outside Mary Hooks’ kitchen door, Don Palmer, Senior, stood in the rain with the bottle of Old Crow and a bag of caramels in one hand and the Sinatra record in the other, listening to the heavy beat of rock-’n’-roll music and grinding his top canines into his bottom ones. When he tried the door, he found it locked. Peering in through the kitchen window, Don saw no one. But hearing the sound of rock-’n’-roll music drained the pleasure he had nurtured on the drive home right out of him. He had cautioned Mary about listening to such garbage, this hoax on the ears, this foreign fashion — for wasn’t that all it was, a fad — but here she was, behind his back, doing just that. He held his finger on the doorbell for nearly a minute so she might hear it over the music. When Mary finally answered the door, the music had stopped and she stood there as if he might be a traveling salesman trying to unload a vacuum cleaner.

“It’s me, Mary-girl. What’s going on?” Don’s face had gone red, his jaw locked so in aggravation he didn’t notice she bit nervously at her bottom lip.

“You’re back.” Mary opened the kitchen door, but the screen door stood between them.

“Of course I’m back, honey. It’s Friday, like I told you. I’m getting soaked out here.”

“Of course. Just... I wasn’t expecting you.” She straightened her blouse, clutching it at its neck, unlatched the screen door for him, and let him inside. She smelled the whiskey on him.

“I know. I wanted to surprise you. Got you something from Atlanta.” He pulled the Sinatra record from a paper bag.

“That’s nice. Have you been drinking? That’s not like you.” Mary moved to the kitchen where she put on a pot of water to boil, hardly listening to Don at all.

“I only had a taste of this Old Crow I bought for us to share. Just enough to put me in a fine mood — that is, until I heard that racket. You know how I feel.”

“This isn’t exactly a good time, Don. I’m not feeling so good. All this rain, I guess.” Mary kept her back to Don as she fumbled with teacups.

Sensing an unusual nervousness in his mistress’s behavior, Don offered her a candy from his bag of caramels as a peacemaker. Since he was already at her house, he didn’t see the harm in wrapping himself in her intoxicating smells and staying longer than he had planned. He would just have to dream up a bigger lie for Dale when he got home.

“Well, I got something might make you feel a whole lot better. You’re going to love this so much more than that noise. Bring us a couple of glasses and some ice. And sit down, I don’t need any tea.” Don moved to the living room, sitting down on the sofa as if he lived there.

The bag of cherry sours on her coffee table gave Don Palmer his second feeling of out-of-placeness. He couldn’t figure out if it was he who felt out of place or the bag of cherry sours. He had never seen Mary Hooks eat anything but caramels and this bag of cherry sours looked like they had just then been plopped down on her coffee table and offered up.

“I didn’t know you liked cherry sours,” Don said, picking up the bag of candy, examining it as if the answer might be inside.

“I didn’t,” she said, “but I do now. I’ve had enough of caramels, anyhow.”

“Is that so?”

“It is,” Mary answered. “A person needs change once in a while.”

“Is that so?” A familiar resentment rose in Don’s throat as he recalled the music he had heard coming from her living room.

“It ain’t Christian.”

“What?”

“That music.”

“And this is?” Mary could hardly believe the words spilling from her mouth. But she recognized their truth.

“What’s that?”

“You and me. That’s Christian?”

“You know what I mean.

“Just saying, that’s all.”

Don didn’t like the defiance he recognized in his Mary’s face. “Just saying,” he said. “What’s gotten into you? Are you mad at me? Did I do something wrong, because you know I’ll do anything for you, honey. Didn’t I get you those tickets, even though you know how much I hated the notion of you sitting inside a baseball stadium, of all places, listening to that abomination?”

Don was right. Mary didn’t know what had gotten into her. She was scared; she felt like someone had come along and loosened up her head so all the pieces of it fell to the floor and she only had time to pick them up in a scramble, not one fitting together like it had before. Why had she encouraged the boy to come to her house? What good could possibly come from his being there? And how many times had she asked herself these same questions when she had encouraged other men to do the same? And Don loved her so. What devils drove her to invite his son into her home? Something was coming to an end tonight, but Mary was afraid to see just what it might be. From the kitchen, she felt detached from Don in the other room, his words like a voice on television, unreal and far away.