Peter Abrahams - A Perfect Crime

Brenda’s island, two or three hundred feet across the river, almost halfway, was a fat oval with flattened ends, no bigger than an acre. It had a floating dock, five huge elms, isolated from disease, thick brush that hadn’t been cleared in years, and a flagstone path leading up to the cottage. Francie unlocked the door and went inside, closing the door and leaving it unlocked, as she always did.

The cottage: pine-floored, pine-walled; all that old, deep-polished wood made it almost a living thing, like a fairy-tale tree house. There was a south-facing kitchen, looking down the river; an L-shaped dining and living room facing the far shore; and upstairs two square bedrooms, each with a brass bed, one unmade, the other covered with pillows and a down comforter. A perfect little cottage that had been in Brenda’s family for more than a hundred years; but Brenda, Francie’s former college roommate, was the last survivor, and she lived in Rome. She’d asked Francie to keep an eye on it for her, using it whenever she wanted, and Francie had agreed, long before anything ulterior came along.

Francie switched on the generator, lit the wood-stove, poured herself a glass of red wine, sat at the kitchen table, and watched night swallow everything-riverbanks, river, floating dock, great bare elms-leaving only the stars above, like holes pierced through to some luminous beyond. The skateboard painting- oh garden, my gardendrifted into her mind. Could she properly buy it for herself if the price was right? The artist would probably be glad of the money, but a sale to the foundation would do more for his career. Francie debated with herself for a while. The answer was no.

She threw another log into the stove, refilled her glass, checked her watch. The first feeling of anxiety, like a thumb pressing the inside of her breastbone, awoke within her. Perhaps some music. She was running Brenda’s CD collection through her mind when the door swung open and Ned walked in.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said.

“You scared me.”

“Me?” he said with surprise. He smiled at her; his face was ruddy from the cold, his black hair blown by the river breeze. The atmosphere in the cottage changed completely: the night lost its power, lost its grip on the cottage, withdrew. “You all right?” he said.

“Totally.”

They faced each other in the kitchen of Brenda’s cottage. The expression in Ned’s eyes changed, dark eyes Francie had learned to read like barometers, meteorologist of his soul.

“You know what I love?” he said. “When you’re waiting here, the only light for miles around, and I’m rowing across.” He came closer, put his arms around her. Francie heard herself moan, a sound that happened by itself, in which she heard unambiguous longing. She didn’t care if he heard it, too, couldn’t have kept the sound inside in any case.

“I missed you,” he said. His voice vibrated against her ear; and yes, what a voice it was.

“What did you tell Marlene?” Francie said, her face against his chest.

“Marlene?”

“Who wanted to get in touch with her old high school boyfriend.”

“You caught the show?” He leaned back a little so he could watch her face. “What did you think?”

“You’re getting better and better.”

He shook his head. “Thanks, but it was flat from beginning to end-and just when this syndication thing is in the air.”

In the silence that followed, Francie felt his mind going somewhere else. She repeated her question: “What did you tell her?”

He shrugged. “That she’d be playing with fire.”

A little chill found the nape of Francie’s neck, a draft, perhaps; it was an old dwelling, after all, with almost no insulation. The very next moment, Ned put his hand right on the spot, right on the chilly part, and rubbed gently. Then the voice, in her ear again: “But sometimes fire is irresistible.”

Francie felt her nipples hardening, just from the words, just from the voice. And life can begin. They went upstairs, Francie first, Ned following, as they always did.

Brenda’s cottage was their world. In truth, their world was even smaller than that. They spent no time in the living room, except to feed the stove, had the occasional drink in the kitchen, but not food-Ned never seemed to be hungry-and they both showered in the upstairs bathroom; other than that, their time together was spent in the made-up bedroom on the second floor. It was not much bigger than a prison cell, a prison cell where the sentence was never long enough.

There was no sound in the made-up bedroom, other than what they made themselves under the down comforter. Sometimes Ned moved very slowly; sometimes he just reached between her legs with no preliminaries, as he did now. It didn’t make any difference: Francie, who had always responded slowly in sex, or not at all, responded to Ned no matter what he did. She started moaning again, and the moans turned to little cries, and rose in volume, so loud they could surely be heard outside-or so she thought, although that didn’t matter either: they were alone on an island in the middle of the river, with no one to hear, and then she was coming, just from the touch of his fingertip.

After that, they moved together, not like dancing partners, or old familiar lovers, or any of those other similes, but more like a single organism rearranging its limbs. Their world shrank still more, smaller now than even the bedroom, down to the space under the comforter, a warm, humid, gentle world where the ancient connection between sex and love was at last clear, at least in Francie’s mind. She stared into Ned’s eyes, thought she saw into him to the very bottom, thought he was doing the same to her.

They came together-how Francie disliked the vocabulary that went with all this-could reach this supposed goal of lovers whenever they wished, and Ned settled down on her.

“It’s different every time,” he said after a minute or two.

“I was thinking the same thing.”

They lay quiet. Francie pictured Ned rowing across in the darkness, herself in the cottage, both hearts beating in anticipation. “It’s like ‘ Ode on a Grecian Urn, ’” she said, “except the anticipation is met.” He was silent. “At least in my case,” she added, not wanting to speak for him. But Ned had fallen asleep, as he sometimes did. Because of the way he was lying on her, Francie couldn’t see her watch; she would let him sleep for a little while. They breathed together, noses almost touching. In a way, this was best of all.

Sometime later, Francie heard a sound outside the window, a sound she couldn’t identify at first, then realized was the beating of heavy wings. An owl, perhaps. There was at least one on the island; she’d watched it, flying by day, minutes before she saw Ned for the first time: August, only a few months earlier.

Francie sat on the floating dock, her feet in the river’s flow. She spent an hour or so studying slides before putting them away and lying back, eyes closed to the sun. The slides lingered in her mind-images of cold-hearted children, alienating and unsettling-then faded. Francie was close to sleep when she felt a shadow pass over her body. She opened her eyes and saw, not a cloud over the sun, but an owl flying low, something white in its beak. The owl spread its wings, extended its talons, disappeared in the high branches of one of the elms. Turning back to the river, Francie caught sight of a kayak, gliding upstream.

A black kayak with a dark kayaker, paddling hard. As he drew closer, Francie saw he was shirtless, fit without being muscle-bound, hairy-chested, gleaming with sweat. He didn’t see her at all: his eyes were blank and he seemed to be paddling with all his might, as though in a race. He flew by, into the east channel of the river, and vanished behind the island.