John Lutz - The Ex

Molly shook her head. “No, really-”

“Don’t you worry,” Deirdre said. “He’ll be snug as a slug in a rug.”

David shifted his weight nervously. “We’re gonna be late, hon.”

Molly was beaten, resigned. “All right,” she heard herself say in a defeated voice. “All right…”

David nudged her toward the door, and Deirdre followed.

“Anything I need to know about how the TV works?” she asked.

“No, it’s easy,” David said. “The remote’s right there on the table.”

When they were in the hall, Deirdre leaned against the doorjamb, smiling at them. “Don’t you worry, you two. Everything’s gonna be just fine here.”

“We won’t be gone long,” Molly said. She realized it had sounded almost like a warning.

“Be gone as long as it takes,” Deirdre said. “And please, don’t worry.”

She closed and locked the door, still smiling as she thought back on this evening.

After a moment, Deirdre went to the window and watched Michael and Molly climb into the back of a taxi. As the cab pulled away, she could see Molly’s pale face as she craned her neck to glance worriedly out the rear window. Like a ghost watching her life recede.

Deirdre tiptoed into the bedroom and stood gazing for a long time at the sleeping Michael. He was frowning in his sleep, his closed eyelids pulsating as he dreamed. He looked so much like David when he frowned. She closed the door softly and went back to the living room.

This might be my apartment, she thought. My life. David might be my husband, Michael my child. Destiny had decided otherwise, but destiny could be manipulated. Fate could be tricked.

Sitting down on the sofa, she aimed the remote at the TV and pressed the power button.

My favorite button, she thought with a grin.

After tuning to a Roseanne rerun, she sniffed at the sleeve of her blouse. Then she walked into Molly and David’s bedroom and chose a perfume from the array of bottles on Molly’s dresser. She dabbed some on her wrists. You never could tell who might show up at the door unexpectedly-maybe even Molly and David, returning home with changed minds about attending Bernice’s visitation.

Deirdre touched her fingertip to the bottle again and pressed it here and there to her blouse. She bent her left elbow and held the material of the blouse’s cuff to her nose.

Better, she thought, smiling at herself in the mirror as she replaced the cap on the bottle. Hardly detectable. Though she was sure neither Molly nor David had noticed. It was something only she’d be aware of, because she knew and they didn’t.

She’d returned from Brooklyn only an hour ago, and she still smelled like smoke.

The next morning, a cab pulled to a halt at the curb where the taxi had picked up Molly and David the previous night. The sun hadn’t yet burned away the clouds and it was a softly lighted, hazy morning, not yet oppressively warm. Passersby on West Eighty-fifth stepped along with energy and enthusiasm; their posture and expressions were unlike the heat-intensified weariness they would display at the end of the workday.

Craig Chumley climbed out of the cab and slammed its door. As it drove back out into the stream of traffic, he put on the gray suit coat that he’d been carrying and straightened his tie. Then he drew a miniature aerosol can from his pocket, sprayed some breath freshener into his gaping mouth, and entered the building.

Deirdre’s doorbell worked only some of the time, so he ignored it and rode the elevator to the fourth floor, then walked down the hall and knocked on her door.

It took her a while to open the door. She looked delicious and prompted the familiar tightening sensation in his heart and groin. She was wearing makeup, and her red hair was arranged in its characteristically tousled look that quite correctly hinted at wildness in her nature. But she hadn’t finished dressing for work and was barefoot and wearing a green robe with a sash pulled tight around her slender waist. She was obviously surprised to see him at her door, and for a second she appeared annoyed.

But she quickly recovered and smiled, then leaned forward and pecked him on the cheek.

Chumley was mollified. She stepped back as an invitation for him to enter, then closed the door behind him as he stepped inside.

It was the first time Chumley had been in her apartment since he’d helped her move in. Things were still untidy from the recent move. There was a hodgepodge of furniture, most of it obviously secondhand, lined along the walls, as if Deirdre still hadn’t decided where to place it. Near the living room window was a small wooden desk on which sat a calendar, a phone, a blue mug stuffed full of pens and pencils, and a green-shaded banker’s lamp. Chumley could smell coffee, but she didn’t offer him any.

“This is a pleasant surprise,” she said, not exactly in a voice bursting with sincerity.

“I thought you might want to go out for breakfast before work this morning,” Chumley said.

Now she seemed pleased. “Sure. Sounds fine.” She was staring at him with those luminous green eyes, that pinpoint of something in them that intrigued him and suggested danger.

“We have things to talk over,” he said, as if he needed a reason other than personal to come here. As if he didn’t want to take her into the bedroom and mess up her makeup and hair and fuck her until they were both crazy. “The shipment of watches from Taiwan is coming in today.”

“Okay,” Deirdre said, “but you’re a little early. I haven’t been awake all that long. Give me five minutes to finish getting dressed.”

Chumley grinned. “I’d rather give you five minutes to get un dressed.”

She smiled and wagged a finger at him as if he were a crude and naughty boy. “There’s a time and a place for many things. Morning in my apartment, before going to work, is neither time nor place for what you have in mind.”

“Don’t be so sure,” he said. “I might have something in mind that you’d like very much.”

She gave a backhand motion that seemed to brush him off, as if the matter had been settled. “Oh, I don’t doubt that in the slightest! But I have to finish dressing, and we need to leave. You know that.”

“I know that,” Chumley admitted.

He watched the sway of her hips beneath the green robe as she walked from the living room. It had been years since a woman had reached him as she had, had so excited him. She wasn’t a ripe and eager girl-only a few years younger than he was, would be his guess-but there was a sensuousness to her that was eternal.

“I won’t be long. Make yourself comfortable,” she called to him from what he assumed was the bedroom.

He considered walking back there to join her, then thought better of it. That would be pushing her too far. And she was right; they should tend to business. There’d be plenty of time for play later today.

The apartment was quiet except for the intermittent humming of traffic from the street below. Somewhere in the building water ran. There were very faint voices, a muted thump as if a shoe had dropped.

Chumley slipped his hands into his pants pockets and walked over to the window overlooking the street. Traffic had picked up and the sun had come out full strength and spoiling for a fight with the city’s air-conditioning resources. It was glaring off the windshields of cars and causing pedestrians to squint or shield their eyes. Summer was getting down to business, too.

Turning away from the window, he glanced in the direction Deirdre had gone, then began idly wandering around the living room. He knew so little about her, and he wanted to know so much more. He ran his fingertips over the threadbare back of an armchair, lifted a book, Astrology and Eros, to examine a slip of paper sticking out from between its pages. The paper was blank. He replaced it and carefully laid the book on the coffee table exactly as he’d found it.