Билл Пронзини - In an Evil Time

He kept scrubbing with the cloth, working downward across his abdomen. The instant it touched his privates, the inner tingling became something else — a carnal heat that flared the way a torch ignites. His erection seemed to leap up all at once, sprong! Like Dan Quayle’s anatomically correct doll in Doonesbury . He stood staring down at himself in disbelief. Weeks of virtual impotence, and tonight, after all that had happened, all the nightmarish things he’d done this day... a massive hard-on, sudden and unbidden. As though the acts had temporarily, perversely repaired him: bladder, prostate, sexual apparatus.

It disgusted him and at the same time he was more excited than he’d been since his first sexual experience in high school. A great, screaming urgency that was need and fear and self-loathing and a clutch of other emotions all mixed up together, his phallus so high-jutting and engorged it was like something that had attached itself to his body, a parasitic entity, rather than an extension of himself.

No! he thought. He shut off the water, stepped out, and dried off savagely, punishing his body with the towel. The erection would not diminish, the urgency remained like a consuming fire. It shut down his thoughts, engulfed his will to resist, left him with nothing but the clamant heat.

He shut off the light, padded out into the dark bedroom. Cassie stirred as he approached, started to sit up, and he heard himself say, “No, don’t put on the light.” His tone more than the words caused her to lie still. He drew the bedclothes back and slid in beside her, whispered her name, moved to fit his body against hers. Heard her suck in her breath when she felt him like iron against her thigh.

“Jack, what...?”

“I need you,” he said in somebody else’s voice, “please, baby, I can’t... I need... it’s been so long...”

She lay stiffly while his fingers fumbled with buttons, groped inside her pajama top to encircle her breast. “What is it, what’s happened?”

“Nothing’s happened.”

“Why’re you so late? Why are you like this?”

“I just need you... please Cass please...”

She yielded to him, not gradually but all at once, turning her body against his, her nipple hardening under his palm, her hand stroking down between their bodies to grip and guide him. She gasped as he filled her, clutched him tight with her hands, arms, legs, began to move with him in all the practiced rhythm of twenty-six years of lovemaking. But it was nothing at all like it had ever been before — not slow and tender, no murmured endearments. It was fierce, fast, insistent, an almost desperate coupling punctuated by pants and groans, Cassie’s as well as his, fast fast until he came with a crying moan that she managed to half stifle with her mouth, a climax as intense as a backdraft in a burning building, as if he were ejaculating jets of fire. When it ended it left him burned out inside, an empty hulk that collapsed against her. She neither moved nor let go of him, clinging just as fervently until his pulse rate began to slow down. The embrace was all hers; he no longer had the strength to return it.

He knew she was waiting for him to speak first and he groped for words. The only ones he found were “I love you. I love you so much,” in a frog’s croak.

“I know you do.”

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it, I—”

“Don’t be sorry for that. I needed you too.”

Gently she disengaged herself and sat up. He sensed she was going to switch on her bedside lamp and he lay with his eyes shut. He could almost feel the sudden radiance against his lids, her gaze probing his face. But there was nothing there for her to see, nothing left inside him to show through.

“Talk to me,” she said. “If something did happen—”

“Nothing happened.”

“Then why are you so late? Jack... did you really go to Paloma to see Nick Jackson?”

“I told you I did.”

“Not the city... Rakubian...”

“No. Of course not.”

“I was so worried. I thought—”

“You thought what?” Hollis opened his eyes and sat up weakly, blinking, to face her. “I didn’t confront or harm that psycho, if that’s what’s bothering you. Do you want me to swear it? All right, I swear it on Angela’s life, Kenny’s life.”

She believed him because she wanted to believe. She said, “Do you blame me for worrying, thinking the worst? First Eric disappeared, all upset, and then you do the same thing...”

“No,” he said, “I don’t blame you.”

“Where have you been? Why didn’t you call?”

“Dinner lasted longer than I expected. Afterward... I just felt depressed. Angela leaving, that business with Eric today, Rakubian. I needed to be alone. I went to a movie, drove around for a while afterward... avoided coming home, as lousy as that sounds.”

The lies rolled out glibly; oh, he was becoming a fine goddamn liar. Cassie believed them, too. She said, “I understand, but you still should have called.”

“I know it. I’m sorry.”

“Didn’t you think about Rakubian? That he might show up here again, do God knows what?”

“He didn’t, did he? Show up or call or anything?”

“No. But he could have.”

“I’m not myself these days, Cass, not thinking straight. One minute I function more or less normally, the next I’m half crazy, the next I’m like a teenager in heat. Schizoid. That’s not an excuse, just an explanation, such as it is.”

Cassie sighed and said, “I feel the same way.” Then she touched his face, tenderly. “You look so tired.”

“Exhausted.”

“Sleep now, both of us.” She flicked off the lamp.

In the darkness, on the edge of sleep, holding her and hating himself, he thought: Keeping them safe, that’s all that really counts. No matter what it costs me, no matter what it takes...

Sunday Morning

On the patio after breakfast, last night’s mist already burned off and balmy spring smells in the crisp air, Cassie and Angela inside out of earshot.

“Is there anything you want to tell me, Eric?”

“Like what?”

“About yesterday.”

Pause. “You mean Rakubian?”

“Yes. Rakubian.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Eric said. Looking him straight in the eye. “All that stuff stored in the garage... I admit it really freaked me. I felt like driving straight to the city and beating the shit out of him.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I didn’t. Kept my cool and went for a long ride in the opposite direction. I suppose you were afraid I might’ve done something stupid?”

“I’d stand behind you if you did, you know that.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry. I’m not a kid anymore.”

“No, you’re not.” You’re an adult liar and pretender, just like your old man.

Eric was silent for a time, that brown-study silence that always made Hollis a little uncomfortable. “Poor Angie,” he said at length. “Every time I look at her, see how afraid she is...” He shook his head, as if shaking off a painful mental image. “What’s the use talking about it? We’ve talked it to death.”

Hollis sat back, watching his son brood. Outwardly, Eric seemed all right. His eyes were clear, as though he’d slept well enough; hands steady, body language more or less normal. But inside? Frightened, worried... yes. Heartsick? Probably. Remorseful? Maybe. The same emotions Hollis himself was feeling — and concealing. The two of them sitting here as if this were any Sunday morning at home, one not a murderer, the other not an accomplice after the fact, yesterday any Saturday rather than a turning point in both their lives. Hiding the truth from each other because neither could bear to face the other with it.