Elmore Leonard - Cat Chaser

When he pushed up, throwing her leg aside as he got off the bed to stand with his clothes open, wiping a hand over his face, he looked at her and said, “Whore. Does he do that to you?”

She got up and walked out of the room, aching, feeling her front teeth, testing them with her fingers. In her bathroom she turned the light on to stare at her reflection, slipped on a terry-cloth robe now as she studied a face she had never seen before. God, she was a mess, mouth swollen, teeth aching with a dull throb. She bathed her face with warm water. It surprised her to realize she was alert, more relieved than resentful, a feeling of confidence giving her new energy. Then jumped in spite of her calm as Andres’s face appeared behind her in the mirror.

“I’m not finished with you.”

He gestured to her to come with him. When Mary hesitated he took her by the arm through her room and across the hall into his bedroom again. “Goddamn whore,” he said, “go over there,” and pushed her toward a bank of low dressers. She saw the legal papers, a gold ballpoint pen. “Read them or don’t read them, I don’t care,” Andres said, “as long as you sign.”

She saw her name in block letters on the copy of the hotel registration card, knowing at once what it was, feeling some of her confidence slip away. She picked up the photocopy and looked at it, remembering the moment-standing at the desk and writing in “700 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach,” making up an address but using her actual maiden name-thinking of Moran in the same hotel five floors above her. Thinking of him now…

“Sign it.”

Andres was coming out of his walk-in closet carrying luggage, a full-size Louis Vuitton fabric suitcase in each hand. He swung them in Mary’s direction to drop in the middle of the floor.

“Sign each copy. Then pack your clothes, everything you own, and get out.” He turned and went back into the closet.

Mary picked up the legal papers, saw the heading, Amendment to PreNuptial Agreement , and glanced through the typewritten page, familiar with the legal terms, the ponderous sentence structure. She looked up as Andres came out of the closet with a second pair of Vuitton suitcases.

“These I give to you,” he said, dropping the luggage. “There are more in the closet, all you need. Take them and get out.”

“Let me be sure I understand this,” Mary said, with cold composure, nothing to hide now, nothing to lose. It had begun as a business deal and was ending as one. “The divorce settlement is now an option?”

Andres was moving toward her. “That’s correct.” He picked up the pen from the dresser.

“And it’s up to you whether you want to honor it or not.”

“Yes, I have the privilege of not paying a wife who whores with other men.”

“Before, it didn’t matter,” Mary said, composed, but with an effort now. “You insisted on a two-million-dollar agreement, regardless of what might cause a divorce.”

“Now I change my mind,” Andres said. “You get nothing in settlement, you get nothing in my will, no matter when I die. So if you’re plotting my death with your lover you been wasting your time.”

The words stunned her, yet were believable coming from Andres. She could study him six more years and still not understand the twists and turns of his mind, the man refusing to accept reality, or still living in another time.

She said, “You’ve got a lot of class, Andres. You know how long I’ve been trying to talk to you?”

“I would believe,” Andres said, “since you began fucking in hotel rooms.”

God-she wanted to hit him and tried to, bringing up her hand, but he caught her wrist and slapped her hard, slapped her again and forced her over the dresser, face stinging, eyes blurred, and worked the pen into her hand.

“Now sign it!” Holding her head bent with his fist tangled in her hair.

She wrote her name and he turned to the first copy.

“Sign it!”

She signed twice again, writing Mary de Boya in a scrawl that seemed as unrelated to her as the name itself, Mary de Boya , signing an identity that was no longer hers.

Once she finished he was finished. Andres pulled her upright, his hand still knotted in her hair, and threw her to the floor, discarded. He walked over to his closet, threw out another suitcase, then went through his dressing room to his bath and slammed the door closed. Within a few moments Mary heard the shower running.

She lay on the floor among several thousand dollars worth of matched Louis Vuitton luggage, eyes level with the pedestal supporting the king-size bed. She moved, pushing up on her elbow, and saw her shadow move on the dull sheen of Italian marble. She was aware of a faint ringing sensation, a feeling of pressure within her head.

But her mind was clear. A deal was a deal.

MORAN WALKED THE BEACHin a fine mist of rain, sky and ocean a blend of the same dismal gray, the day showing in faint streaks of light but not promising much. It was all right though. The solitude was like a vacuum, seamless; he could stand in the middle of gray nothingness with his mind at rest and soon a burst of revelation would come to him. Enlightenment. A cosmic reaction to his panting neurons. He waited, looking at nothing, trying hard to think of nothing. He waited and waited, calm. Still he waited. Then raised his face to the rain, to the murky wash of light, and yelled against the moan of the wind as loud as he could, “Fuck!”

After, he felt some relief but not much. It released maybe a few pounds of frustration and was better than slamming his fist into a wall, though the wall was still there and he’d be god damned if he could see a way to get through it. All he wanted to do at this moment was talk to her.

He’d phoned at eight and the maid, Altagracia, had said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. de Boya is not here. She out for the day.” Moran had said, “Please, okay? She wants to talk to me.” And the maid had said again she was sorry…

His sweater and jeans were soaked through, hair matted to his head. He had been wet before. He had come up against walls before. Had learned patience, he believed, in the Marines and could wait sitting on his seabag when there was purpose in waiting. He had learned about frustration in his war in the D.R. trying to tell Friendlies from Unfriendlies and it had been, up to now, the most gut-twisting time of his life-yes-frustrated on the one hand and set up and sucked in on the other, just like now, and he’d hacked and stalked his way through it-that’s what you do . (Was it his revelation, the answer right there inside him all the time?) Yes-you don’t think, you do!

Moran left the beach and went in his bungalow tracking sticky sand to the counter and dialed Mary’s number. He felt pumped up. When the maid with the immutable tone said, “I’m sorry-”

Moran said, “Listen, you put her on the phone right now or I’m calling the police.” Which made no sense to him but maybe it would to her.

Altagracia said, “A moment, please.”

Moran said to himself, Do, don’t think. But when de Boya’s voice came on he was stopped. De Boya said, “Yes? Who is this?”

“Andres, it’s George Moran. I’d like to speak to Mary.”

“She’s busy,” Andres said.

“Would you ask her to call me?” Christ, saying it to her husband.

“You going to be busy too, very soon.” Andres hung up.

For the second time since waiting for his revelation Moran felt a slight lessening of pressure. Mary was home. At least for the time being. All right. All he had to do was go get her. Then wondered what de Boya meant: he was going to be busy, soon.

Jerry, the morning paper under his arm, got his key out and unlocked the door to the office. He noticed the trunk of Nolen’s car raised, then saw it go down and there was Nolen holding a grocery sack. Jerry watched in wonder because he had never seen Nolen up and about before 10:00 A.M. Jerry said, “I didn’t know the liquor stores were open this early.”