David Wiltse - Bone Deep

Perhaps that was why she saw herself responding to him on a level and in a way that she had not felt in a long time. She could help him-he needed her. A very seductive combination. Karen was bright enough to recognize what was happening to her, what Stanley was unconsciously making happen to her-but she was not cynical enough to stop it. It Hell, she told herself, within the realm of harmless flirtation, and in the meantime she was doing Stanley some good and she was doing Becker some good. If she received a bit of a lift from that herself, where was the harm in that?

AT ONE A.M. Tee's clock radio switched on, the volume turned as low as he could get it and still have it audible. He woke to the noise of static, switched it off, and eased himself out of bed, moving on tiptoe in order not to waken his wife. She rolled over with a loud grunt as he opened the bedroom door and slipped into the living room.

Making his way by the moonlight coming through the bay window, Tee walked to the hallway. His daughter's door was slightly ajar and he peeked in. Ginny lay asleep in a pool of pale lunar light, looking to Tee's adoring paternal eyes as innocent and angelic as a newborn fawn.

At fifteen her face was — in transition, the features and shapes of the adult emerging but still embedded in the child. He realized that he had not peeked in upon her for months, forced to respect her privacy in grudging deference to her age. It had been his great joy in the past to watch her sleep, and he and Marge would creep to her door together and stand for long minutes admiring her and, by extension, themselves. Marge had given up the practice first, acknowledging Ginny's growing maturity before Tee was willing to. It had struck him as strange, cold, somehow unmatemal, this precipitous rush to see her grown, and he had at first suspected that it was female jealousy over his daughter's slowly manifesting beauty. One night Ginny had opened her eyes and looked back at him as he stood in the doorway. In the past they had smiled at each other and he would tell her to go back to sleep and she would, comforted by his presence. This time she had smiled, and she had spoken gently, but her words stung as if she had shouted.

"I don't watch you sleep," she had said. Stunned and suddenly uncomfortable, Tee had eased her door shut without a word. He had not been back to look at her until this night.

God, I love her, he thought, and felt his throat tighten and his eyes tear. We should have had more children, he thought, then felt disloyal because he didn't want any other children, he just wanted his Ginny, and he wanted her to stay his child, to be forever small and young and her daddy's darling. A surge of anger swept over him at the injustice of life, that it stole everyone's youth, his, hers, theirs.

Ginny shifted her position in bed and Tee quickly pulled away from the door. He slumped against the wall of the hallway in the instinctive lurch of the Peeping Tom, feeling both the anger and the tears and thinking what a mess he was. Some essential cement in his character seemed to have given way, allowing the elements to float freely, recombining in instantaneous, volatile, wholly unpredictable ways. That morning he had tucked his lover atop a cliff with as much regard for proprieties or his surroundings as an oversexed baboon, then minutes later had come within an inch of killing her, wanting to kill her. Naked as a jay, he had stood neck-deep in a reservoir, acting for all the world like a Hindu swami, and now he was close to sobbing at the sight of his daughter sleeping in the moonlight. This was not a midlife crisis, he thought, it was a fucking cataclysm.

Recovering himself, he went to the kitchen to the phone that was farthest from the bedroom. After closing the kitchen door, he spoke aloud for the first time since rising, testing his voice to be sure the fogginess of sleep was gone. He altered his tone and pitch, trying to disguise himself. When he was ready, he punched in a number and listened to the phone ring. His own house was so quiet that the ring on the other end seemed to shriek in his ear.

On the- third ring a man answered, sounding sleepy and annoyed.

"Yeah, what?"

Tee hesitated, wanting to just hang up but knowing that would send out alarms.

"Hello, hello?" the voice demanded.

"Is Mr. Conrad there?" Tee said in his altered voice.

"Who?"

"Conrad."

"Wrong number," the voice said, more angrily than before. The phone went dead. Tee opened the kitchen door and jerked back with a gasp when he saw Marge standing there.

"Shit a brick!" he exclaimed. "You scared the hell out of me. "

Marge stood with her arms crossed over her chest, the pale skin of her cleavage shining like a ghost. "Sorry."

"You didn't have to get up," he said. "I tried not to wake you."

"I know."

"I was creeping around like a goddamned mouse," he said. She moved slightly, making her cleavage even more prominent. Tee found he couldn't stop looking at it. In the pale light Marge looked younger, thinner, altogether more desirable.

"I know it," she said.

Christ, I'm horny, he thought, finding it amazing after the morning's performance. He reached out a tentative finger, slipping it in the cleft between her breasts. "Who is she, Tee?"

Tee stopped, puzzled. "Who?"

"The woman you're calling at one in the morning from the kitchen phone."

"That wasn't a woman."

"Uh-huh."

"I was calling McNeil."

"Then who's Mr. Conrad?"

"How long were you out there listening?"

"Who is she? Is she anyone I know? Does she know me? Because I can't stand to be walking around and thinking she's watching me and pitying me."

"Marge, I was calling McNeil. I swear to Christ. I swear on Ginny's life." Marge glared at him for a long time. Tears ran down her cheeks but she made no sound of weeping.

"I think you're a complete shit," she said at last, as she turned and walked back to the bedroom.

Tee stood in the kitchen several moments longer. I agree with her, he thought, over and over. I agree with her.

Luv parked his car in the Stop and Shop lot and walked from the supermarket to a Mobile station a few hundred yards away. He had called Denise and told her that his car had broken down and asked her to pick him up at the service station. It was a large, busy station with a ministore inside and two telephones in the lot. Luv's presence there for a few minutes should occasion no notice, but he was still uneasy about the exposure. It wasn't likely that anyone would recognize him there; he was in Ridgefield, a good distance from his home, but accidents did happen. He was even less sanguine about being seen riding with Denise in her car-he had come to rely on the tinted glass of the Caprice, it had been like moving about invisibly-but using his other car was out of the question. He would ride with Denise to and from their motel, have her return him to the station, then walk back to the supermarket to reclaim his car so that Denise did not see it. The entire episode would be a compromise, but Luv was confident that he would be safe. He had eluded Becker, he could certainly avoid detection by some random passerby. It would be necessary to acquire another Luvmobile in the future, but for right now, he would improvise. Denise arrived full of solicitude. "You've been having such terrible luck," she said. "What do they say is wrong with the car?"

"They think it's the timer belt," he said. "They said it would be ready by the time I got back."

"And just after you had it fixed," she said.

"Um," said Luv, trying to remember what he had told her about his absence the last time.

"I was so worried about you that night," she said. "I had a premonition-now don't laugh, I can sense these things sometimes. I had a clear feeling, very strong, even before you didn't show up, that something was wrong. I even told my daughter before I left the house that I had this funny feeling about the evening."