Dennis Lehane - Prayers For Rain

“No.”

“Not a little bit?”

“Not even a smidgen.”

“Liar.”

I turned my head fully to the right and our noses almost touched. We didn’t say anything for a while, just lay back on the jungle gym with our cheeks pressed to the rungs, the night softening against our skin, eyes locked. Far off behind Angie, a harvest moon rose in the dark sky.

“Do you hate my hair?” Angie whispered.

“No. It’s just…”

“Short?” She smiled.

“Yeah. I don’t love you because of your hair, though.”

She shifted slightly, turned her shoulder into the holes between rungs.

“Why do you love me?”

I chuckled. “You want me to count the ways?”

She didn’t say anything, just watched me.

“I love you, Ange, because…I don’t know. Because I always have. Because you make me laugh. A lot. Because…”

“What?”

I turned my shoulder in between the rungs as she had, placed my palm on her hip. “Because since you left I have these dreams that you’re sleeping beside me. And I wake up and I can still smell you, and I’m still half dreaming, but I don’t know it, so I reach for you. I reach across to your pillow, and you’re not there. And I gotta lie there at five in the morning, with the birds waking up outside and you not there and your smell just fading away. It fades and there’s-” I cleared my throat. “There’s nothing but me left there. And white sheets. White sheets and those fucking birds and it hurts, and all I can do is close my eyes and lie there and wish I didn’t feel like dying.”

Her face was very still, but her eyes had picked up a sheen like a thin film of glass. “That’s not fair.” She dabbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.

“Nothing’s fair,” I said. “You say we don’t work?”

She held up a hand.

I said, “What does work, Ange?”

Her chin dropped to her chest and she stayed that way a long time before she whispered, “Nothing.”

“I know,” I said, and my voice was hoarse.

Her chuckle was wet, and she wiped her face again. “I hate five in the morning, too, Patrick.” She raised her head and smiled through trembling lips. “I hate it so, so much.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. That guy I was sleeping with?”

“Trey,” I said.

“You make it sound like a dirty word.”

“What about him?”

“I could have sex with him, but I didn’t want him holding me afterward. You know? The way I used to turn my back and you’d slide one arm under my neck and the other over my chest-I couldn’t stand anyone else doing that.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to say but “Good.”

“I’ve missed you,” she whispered.

“I’ve missed you.”

“I’m high maintenance,” she said. “I’m moody. Got the bad temper. Hate to do laundry. Don’t like to cook.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You are.”

“Hey,” she said. “You’re no walk in the park, pal.”

“But I cook,” I said.

She reached out, ran her palm over the permanent scruff-thicker than shadow, thinner than beard-that I’ve kept on my face for three years to hide the scars Gerry Glynn gave me with a straight razor.

She ran her thumb lazily back and forth through the bristles, gently fingered the ruined, rubbery flesh underneath. Not the biggest scars, necessarily, but they’re on my face, and I’m vain.

“Can I shave this off tonight?” she said.

“You once said it made me look hot.”

She smiled. “It does, but it’s just not you.”

I considered it. Three years with protective facial hair. Three years hiding the damage delivered on the worst night of my life. Three years keeping my flaws and shame from the world.

“You want to give me a shave?” I said eventually.

She leaned in and kissed me. “Among other things.”

Angie woke me at five in the morning, warm palms on my newly shaven cheeks, her tongue opening my mouth as she kicked the tangle of sheets off us and covered as much of my body as possible with her own.

“You hear the birds?” she said.

“No,” I managed.

“Me, either.”

After, we lay with the dawn gradually lighting the room, my body spooned behind hers, and I said, “He knows we’re watching.”

“Scott Pearse,” she said. “Yeah, I got that feeling, too. A week straight of tailing him, he never so much as stops the truck for a coffee break. If he’s going through anyone’s mail, he isn’t doing it there.” She turned in my arms, a smooth slithering of her flesh that felt like lightning in my blood. “He’s smart. He’ll wait us out.”

I lifted a stray hair off her eyelash.

“Yours?” she asked.

“Mine.” I flicked it off the bed. “He said time was an issue. That’s why he met me on the roof and tried to either buy me off or back me off-because he’s pressed for time.”

“Right,” Angie said. “But we can assume that was when he thought he had a deal with the Dawes. And now that the deal’s off, why-”

“Who says it’s off?”

“Christopher Dawe. Christ, he destroyed their daughter. They’re not going to pay him after that. He’s got no more leverage.”

“But even Christopher Dawe figured he’d come back at them. Go after Carrie, try to destroy her like he did Karen.”

“But where’s the profit in that?”

“It’s not entirely about profit,” I said. “I think Christopher Dawe was right about that. I think it’s a matter of principle to Pearse. That money he was extorting? He thinks of it as his already. He’s not going to let it go.”

Angie ran the backs of her fingers over my abdomen and chest. “But how would he get to Carrie Dawe? I doubt that if she were in therapy, she was using the same therapist as her daughter. So Pearse can’t go the Diane Bourne route. The Dawes don’t live in the city, so he can’t fuck with their mail.”

I propped myself up on my elbow. “Pearse’s standard MO is to infiltrate through one psychiatrist and one postal area. Okay. But that’s just what’s on hand, the buttons he can press easily. His father was a professional mind fucker. The son was Special Forces.”

“So?”

“So I think he’s always prepared. And more than that, I think he’s always ready to improvise. And he always, always works off private information. That’s the foundation of everything he is and everything he does. He knew enough to pay the right people to get information on us. He found out I cared about Bubba and used that. He found out you were untouchable because of your grandfather, and when he couldn’t get to me through Bubba, he went after Vanessa. He’s limited, but he’s seriously smart.”

“Right. And what he knows about the Dawes, he learned from Wesley.”

“Sure, but that’s old info. Even if Wesley is still around, bankrolling Pearse, who knows- his information is ten years dated.”

“True.”

“Pearse would need somebody who knew the Dawes well and knew them now. A close associate of the doctor’s. The wife’s best friend. Or a-”

I looked down at her and she raised herself up on both elbows and we said it together:

“A housekeeper.”

Siobhan Mulrooney walked into the parking lot of the commuter rail in Weston at six that night, an overnight bag slung over her shoulder, head down, steps quick. As she passed Angie’s Honda, she saw me sitting on the hood and picked up her pace.

“Hey, Siobhan.” I rubbed my chin between my thumb and forefinger. “What do you think about the new look?”

She looked back over her shoulder at me, paused. “Didn’t recognize ya, Mr. Kenzie.” She pointed at the light pink scars along the jawline. “You’ve scars.”