Greg Iles - Sleep No More

“I will.”

He shook hands with Penn and got out. The owner of the music store was standing in the display window, looking right at him. As Penn’s Audi pulled away, Waters waved, then got into the Land Cruiser and drove out of the lot. Home was only a few hundred yards away, but as he neared it, he felt suddenly sure that he would find the police waiting when he arrived. He closed his eyes and thanked God that Annelise was spending the night away from home, and would not have to see him led away in handcuffs.

The driveway was empty.

The house felt empty too. Without Ana clattering around and Rose clanking utensils in the kitchen, Linton Hill seemed like a museum.

“Lily?” he called.

No answer.

He went into the den and sat on the sofa. For once, the remote control was actually on the table beside him. He switched on the TV and clicked up to CNN. The local news out of Jackson always had murders to report, and he didn’t want to see anything about murder. The images on CNN weren’t much better, though, war casualties overseas. Wherever you went, death was news.

“I thought I heard you come in.”

Waters looked over his shoulder, and his mouth fell open. The woman standing in the doorway was his wife, but she looked as though she had stepped out of a time machine. Her shoulder-length blond hair had vanished. Now cut boyishly short, with only a few locks curling around the neck, it looked the way it had when Lily first moved back to Natchez, and was still in her athletic phase. Tight slacks, drop earrings, and a deep V-neck blouse made the transformation complete.

“Wow,” he said. “You cut your hair.”

She smiled. “I had them lighten it a bit too.”

“You look ten years younger.”

“Was I that bad? You look like you’re in shock.”

“Did you run again?”

Lily walked into the room and spun before him like a runway model. “Actually I slept most of the day. I was really tired. But after going to the salon, I felt better. What about you? You look exhausted.”

“Just worried,” he said, searching for some excuse. “The EPA won’t tell us a damn thing.”

“Screw the EPA.” Lily smiled again. “As soon as I start rubbing your shoulders, you’re going to forget all about those tree-hugging fascists.”

Waters couldn’t believe his ears. Lily hadn’t sounded this carefree in ages. She was wearing a little eyeliner and shadow too, he noticed. She hadn’t overdone it, but there was enough to give her an air of mystery.

She walked behind the sofa and said, “Turn off the news and put on some satellite music. Atmospheres or something.”

Waters fiddled with the remote, and soon the soothing sounds of a well-played acoustic guitar filled the room.

Lily laid her hands on his shoulders and began a soothing massage. She started with gentle pressure, but before long her fingers were digging into the muscle fibers of his neck, working out the tension that had been building there ever since he left Eve lying dead in the Eola Hotel.

“God, that feels good.”

“Don’t think,” she said. “Clear your mind.”

Her command was impossible to obey, but he tried. Lily thoroughly massaged his neck and scalp, then moved to his face. She worked the tension out of muscles he never knew he had: below his eyes, over the joint of his jawbone, below his nose, around his mouth. He jumped when her fingers slid into his mouth and began to rub his gums and upper palate, but it felt so good that he laid his head back and gave himself to it. When Lily flattened the pad of her thumb against his back teeth and pushed down, the sensation was amazing.

“Let go, baby,” she murmured. “Don’t fight it.”

The sensuality of her fingers inside his mouth aroused him. After a couple of minutes, she removed her wet fingers and slid them down into his shirt. His nipples constricted at her touch. She played there for a few moments, then leaned over him and slid both hands down to his lap.

“God, Lily….”

“Shhh.”

She unbuttoned his trousers and slid her hands inside, working on him with shocking directness. Then she climbed over the back of the couch and knelt before him.

“Close your eyes.”

He didn’t want to, but he obeyed. What followed was a selfless application of attention so focused that it pointed up everything Lily had neglected to do for the past four years. Longer, really. Even before losing the baby, this act for Lily had always been a brief stage of foreplay. She would touch and kiss him there, but it was never an end in and of itself, simply a prelude to intercourse. She didn’t seem to understand that what made the act so arousing was the complete focus of effort where it was most needed, with every movement assuring him that contact would never be broken or even lessened in intensity unless it was to heighten his reaction and magnify his final release. But by her actions now, Lily made it clear that she had understood this all along. Had it not felt so wonderful, Waters would have brooded over the fact that his wife had possessed this knowledge and ability all along, yet had not used it.

“Jesus,” he gasped.

She took his right hand in one of hers and squeezed, but she did not break contact.

“Lily, I can’t hold back….”

Suddenly he felt nothing but air on his wet skin.

“Yes, you can.”

She pulled him to his feet and ran back toward the master bedroom, pulling him behind her. “I’m going in the bathroom for a sec,” she said. “Get in bed and wait for me.”

She disappeared behind the bathroom door, leaving him alone in the room where he had known only frustration in the past. He removed his shirt and pants and dropped them to the floor. Lily would normally make a point of picking them up and hanging them in the closet when she came out of the bathroom, but he had a feeling she wouldn’t even notice today, or at least would let it go if she did.

He pulled back the bedcovers and started to get beneath them, but something held him back. He wanted to know what she was doing in the bathroom. Walking up to the half-open door, he leaned slowly to his left.

Lily was standing naked before her mirror, one breast in each hand, as though testing their weight. She smiled to herself, then ran her hands down to her hips, where a pink blemish marred the white skin over her right hipbone. Taking some makeup from a blue container by the sink, she rubbed a bit on her finger and covered the blemish. Then she surveyed herself again, turning her back to the mirror and looking over her shoulder.

Fascinated by this glimpse of his wife alone with her vanity-something he hadn’t seen for far too long-Waters took a half-step backward so that she wouldn’t catch sight of him. As he watched, she turned to face the mirror again, looking quite satisfied with what she saw. He was about to tiptoe back to the bed when Lily raised her right hand to her neck and entwined one of the newly chopped locks around her forefinger and began to twist it into a tight curl.

His skin rippled from his toes to his scalp, and his scrotum withdrew as fear flushed adrenaline into his system. There was hardly enough hair to twist, but Lily twisted it anyway, a childlike look of rapture on her face. She has no idea she’s doing that, he realized. He wanted to run from the room, but that was crazy. How would he explain it? He hurried back to the bed and slid under the covers, a film of sweat already covering his skin. He wanted to wipe the image of Lily twisting that curl from his mind, but he knew he would remember it on his deathbed. Worse, a horrifying movie began to screen itself in fast motion behind his eyes. He saw Eve flailing under him that last night, screaming at the top of her lungs, then himself waking to find her dead, fleeing the hotel like a craven killer. Then he was sitting in his office the following day, trying to puzzle out his strange disorientation, his losses of hours, the long naps. When Sybil came in with coffee, her face bled into Lily’s, red and blotchy from her shattering orgasm, the first in so long….