John Lutz - The Ex

Chumley was breathing more evenly. The desk chair, tilted as far back as it would go, gave a final eeeek! as he dropped forward in it.

“We should do this at your place,” he said. “In a bed. We keep this up and you’re gonna kill me.”

“It’s possible.”

“Your place next time?”

She yanked her belt around so it was aligned with her skirt. “I kind of like this, with the window behind us and everybody in New York with a telescope watching.”

Chumley laughed. “You’re an exhibitionist.”

“Only sometimes.”

Chumley bent low, then pulled up his shorts and pants as he managed to climb out of the chair. It was an awkward maneuver. He rebuttoned his shirt, fastened his belt, and straightened his clothes. Then he stooped and picked up his tie from the floor. Also on the floor were a goose-necked desk lamp, a jumble of file folders and papers, and various other items brushed from the desk during their sometimes violent lovemaking. Chumley picked up the In basket, which had been lying near his tie, and set it on the desk next to the Out.

He looked around and shook his head. “We made a hell of a mess here.”

“Worth it?” Deirdre asked.

“Worth it.”

She picked up an ashtray and laid it on the desk. “Don’t worry about the mess. You go ahead home and I’ll straighten things up and put everything back where it belongs. There’s a place for everything, and I know where.”

“You live in a conveniently compartmented world,” Chumley remarked, smiling.

She tilted her head, thinking about that. “Sure. That’s how the world should be.”

“Well, since you came on the scene, this place is certainly getting more organized.”

She flashed him her wicked grin. “Not to mention more fun.” Then she put her hands on her hips and looked at the folders and papers scattered on the hardwood floor. “But now’s the time for organization rather than fun. Time to pay the pauper.”

“‘Piper,’ you mean.”

“Whoever.”

“You’re too good to me, you know that?”

“Uh-hm, part of my job.”

He tucked in his shirt, then rolled down and buttoned his sleeves and put on his tie, making sure the wide end overlapped the narrow. He knew his wife could be on the alert for any sign of irregular behavior in the city. When it came to that kind of thing, women had radar.

“Presentable?” he asked.

“At least.” She brushed off his suit coat and handed it to him.

He worked his arms into the coat. She stepped in close and buttoned it for him.

“You are something!” he told her again.

She smiled up at him. “You already said that.”

“Well, I think it’s worth repeating.”

She kissed him lightly on the lower lip, then nudged him toward the door. He hesitated, looking back at her.

“Don’t be late,” she said. “We don’t want questions.”

He nodded, then went out the door.

Deirdre picked up the still-glowing goose-neck lamp and placed it on the desk, then gathered some papers from the floor, rearranged them, and placed them in the In basket.

When she’d decided that Chumley was gone from the building and enough time had passed that it was unlikely he’d return, she went to the door and shot the deadbolt into its shaft. She rolled Chumley’s chair into the kneehole of his desk, then lowered the blinds. The office suddenly seemed smaller, quieter.

Still in her stockinged feet, Deirdre walked to the file cabinets and opened one of the bottom drawers. Squatting effortlessly so that her buttocks rested on her heels, she quickly found the hanging file folder she sought and lifted it from its steel tracks, then stood up and nudged the long drawer shut with the side of her foot.

She carried the folder to the copy machine and set to work, smiling.

Molly scooted over toward the window to make room for Michael. David sat across from them in the booth at the Choice Deli, on the corner two blocks down West Eighty-fifth Street from their apartment. The Choice had been at the same location for decades. Though the walls screamed for plaster-patch, their coat of rose-colored paint was fresh. The counter stools and booths were only a few years old, gray vinyl with a sparkling silver design salted throughout. A tall, slowly revolving glass display case near the cash register dated back to the fifties and somehow made the thick cream pies and cheesecakes look like delicious confections from childhood.

The waiter came over and they ordered an omelet for Molly, scrambled eggs and milk for Michael, a toasted corn muffin for David. Molly scooted the steaming coffee cup that the waiter had left, so it was well out of Michael’s reach, and stared at the back page of a Saturday Times the man two booths away was reading. A young woman from the Village had been raped and murdered near the East River, full-column news because it was in the area of Sutton Place, where the wealthy of New York didn’t factor possible murder into their plans.

The pretty, young victim was smiling mischievously in her photograph, as if someone had just told her an off-color but amusing joke. On that sunny day she’d been psychologically a million years from unexpected violent death, but in reality closer than she’d known when the camera’s shutter was tripped. The city had been waiting.

Michael stared up at Molly over his mustache of milk. “I’m hungry.”

“Everybody’s hungry,” David said.

Molly patted Michael’s wrist. “The food will be here soon,” she assured him. David handed him a pencil and he began scrawling crude stick figures on his napkin, his eyes sharply focused and his lower lip tucked in with childish concentration.

Molly glanced out the window at the wet street. It had been drizzling from low, dark clouds since early morning. The sky looked like an upside-down gray bowl arcing inches above the tops of buildings. Along with the heat and almost tropical humidity, it helped to produce a claustrophobic feel to the city.

“Thank God it wasn’t raining yesterday at Bernice’s funeral,” Molly said.

“This isn’t your morning to run, is it?”

David changing the subject yet staying with the weather. Very adroit.

“Tomorrow,” Molly said.

He picked up the Times he’d wrestled from the corner vending machine and folded then started to read the front section. The smiling young woman who’d met her death near Sutton Place again stared at Molly from her newspaper photo.

The waiter arrived with their breakfasts, and David had to lay the paper on the seat beside him to make room.

When their coffee cups had been topped off and the waiter had left, Molly spread butter on Michael’s toast, then, at his insistence, jelly. He beamed when she gave in to his demands, then promptly stuck his elbow in the jellied toast as he reached for his milk.

David observed this and grinned. “He’ll clean up okay with a little soap,” he assured Molly.

“Deirdre called and offered to baby-sit him today while I work,” Molly said, using her napkin to wipe jelly from Michael’s arm.

“Take her up on the offer?”

“No. Julia called with the same offer. I told them both no. I think we should keep him home for a while, watch him for…you know, effects.” She lowered her voice to pronounce the last word, knowing even as she did so that it was silly. Michael was sitting right beside her and would hear. But he wouldn’t know that the effects she referred to were his possible reactions to Bernice’s death. Molly was worried about what the experience would do to him. Three-year-olds could accept these things with a matter-of-factness that eluded some adults. Yet on a deeper level the trauma and grief could leave a lasting scar.