Linwood Barclay: Stone Rain

“She has a boyfriend,” Sarah said. The comment hung in the air for a while, which gave me time to consider its implications. “And she’s nearly twenty,” Sarah said. “If she boarded at university, if she’d gone clear across the country somewhere, you’d never know when she came home and when she didn’t.”

I finished off my glass, got up, and went to the fridge. “Where’s the other bottle?”

“It’s in there, just look,” Sarah said. “Did I tell you about the foreign editor thing?”

“What foreign editor thing?”

“They posted it. They need a new foreign editor. Garth’s going to the editorial board, where he can write ‘on the one hand this, on the other hand that.’”

“Are you sure there’s another bottle?”

“Do I have to come over there myself and embarrass you?”

“Look, I’m either going blind or there’s no wine in here at-hang on, here it is. Okay, so, you want that job?”

“It’s a step up from features editor. More staff, bigger stories, a larger budget to watch over.”

“More headaches.”

“It’s a good step for me. If I ever want Magnuson’s job.” Bertrand Magnuson, the managing editor, who gave every indication that he was barely tolerating me. I’d gotten some big stories since joining the Metropolitan, but they’d had a way of falling into my lap. That didn’t count, in Magnuson’s book.

“You want that job?” I asked. “Magnuson’s?”

“Eventually, why not? The paper’s never had a woman managing editor, has it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“There’s only one little problem,” Sarah said.

“What’s that?”

“I find it hard keeping all those foreign countries straight. All those — stan places.”

“That could be a problem,” I said, rooting through the drawer for the corkscrew.

“What are you doing?”

“Where’s the fucking corkscrew?”

“It’s here on the table, Sherlock.”

I sat back down, went to work opening the bottle. Sarah said, “You’re going to have to help me. Quiz me on foreign events. I’ve been working with the Metro file so long, I don’t know what’s going on anyplace in the world other than this city.”

“Hitler’s dead,” I said. “And Maggie Thatcher? Not a prime minister anymore. Oh, and there was that guy? The one who walked on the moon? The moon counts as foreign, right?”

“You’ll help me?” She wanted me to be serious for a moment.

“I will help you.”

Sarah watched as I refilled our glasses. Then she asked, “When are you seeing Trixie?”

“We’re having coffee tomorrow,” I said.

“What’s her problem?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t know. I called her up after I got back from Dad’s place. You know we’d had this lunch, she was about to tell me something when I got that call that something had happened to my father, so she never got into it. So when I called her after I got back, she said she was in some kind of trouble. She didn’t want to go into it over the phone.”

“What do you think it could be?”

I shrugged. “No idea.”

“I mean, what could she possibly need your help with? What kind of problem could a professional dominatrix have that would require your expertise?” She gave that a moment. “You’re no good at knots.”

“I told you, I don’t know. I must have insights in areas even we don’t know about.”

Sarah held up her wineglass and peered at me, as if she was looking at me through the rose-colored zinfandel. “Why are you friends with her?”

I pursed my lips. “I guess because she helped me out a couple of years back when we got into that trouble in Oakwood. I got to know her before I knew what she really does for a living. I don’t know. We just hit it off, I guess. Does it bother you? That we’re friends?”

“Bother me? I don’t think so. I mean, aside from the fact that she’s stunningly beautiful and knows how to fulfill every man’s deepest, darkest fantasy, I don’t see any reason to feel threatened by her.” She smiled. I started to say something, but she stopped me. “It’s okay. I know you, and I’m not worried about you. I know what we have.”

I smiled softly.

“But I think I understand what it is you like about Trixie,” Sarah said.

“What?”

“She’s dangerous.”

“Come on.”

“No, that’s it, I’m convinced. You’ve lived your whole life being safe, playing it safe, locking the doors at night, always changing the batteries in the smoke detectors, making sure the knives don’t point up in the dishwasher. You know what you’re like.”

I said nothing. My obsessions were well documented.

“But knowing Trixie, this woman with her dark side, who ties men up in her basement and spanks them for money, just knowing a person like this, even if all you do is meet her for coffee once in a while, this is your way of flirting with danger. Makes you feel that you’re not so incredibly conservative.”

“That’s what you think.”

Sarah leaned forward across the kitchen table. “That’s what I know.”

“I think you’re full of shit,” I said to her.

“Really.” She finished off another glass. “You know what I was thinking I’d like to do?”

“No, what were you thinking you’d like to do?”

“I was thinking I would like to take you upstairs and fuck your brains out, that’s what I was thinking I’d like to do.”

I felt a stirring inside me, and cleared my throat. “I think, if that’s what you want to do, you should go right ahead and do it. I would not want to stand in your way.”

“So like, can I have twenty bucks or not?”

Paul had reappeared. We both spun our heads around, and I don’t know about Sarah, but I could feel my brain moving about half a second slower than my cranium.

“Uh,” I said, wondering whether Paul had heard the last part of our conversation, “we vote no.”

Sarah slowly turned her head back to look at me. “When did we have that vote?”

“We’re going to have it right now. All those in favor of giving Paul twenty bucks, raise your hands.” Neither Sarah nor I raised our hands. “It’s settled, then. You have been turned down.”

“Aw, come on. There’s a bunch of us, we’re going to the movies.”

“Have you given any consideration,” Sarah said, speaking slowly so as not to slur her words, “to finding a part-time job someplace, instead of hitting us up for spending money all the time?”

“I second the motion,” I said.

Paul definitely looked pissed. “I thought you guys said I shouldn’t get a job because it would interfere with my homework. That’s what you said. Didn’t you say that?”

“I believe you may be correct,” I said, “but, seeing as how you don’t do any homework now, I can’t see where it would make any particular difference. It just means that instead of going to a movie or playing video games, you’d be making some money.”

“I don’t believe this,” Paul said. “Fuck, what kind of job am I going to get?”

“We look forward to finding out with great anticipation,” I said.

Paul raised his hands in frustration, then let them fall to his side. “I guess I’ll just hang out here then,” he said. “Maybe there’s a game on.”

I glanced at Sarah just as Sarah glanced at me. For Sarah’s recently announced plan to be acted upon, it would be better if we had the house to ourselves.

“Okay,” I said slowly, reaching for my wallet. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’ll give you twenty bucks if you promise that tomorrow you’ll start looking for some sort of part-time job.”

Paul strode across the kitchen, snatched the twenty I was holding up in my hand, and said, “Deal. I’ll be some goddamn sorry-ass burger flipper if that’s what you want.” And he was out the door again in a shot.