Stephen White - Blinded

Behind me I heard her place the phone receiver back on the cradle.

“Sorry,” she said. “My sister.”

Before I stepped back into the kitchen, I killed the power on my cell phone so we wouldn’t be disturbed, and I changed the weight of my voice, reducing it the way my mom used to reduce the gravy before bringing it to the table. The act was pure instinct, like a big cat flexing her muscles before she pounces. I was about to pounce.

My prey was a cute blond widow who was cooking Thanksgiving supper for her extended family.

“Sterling Storey’s not the kind of guy you usually meet through… what?” I asked Holly.

She took a step back, literally, and bumped against the stove. “I hoped you hadn’t heard that. I’ve been wishing I hadn’t said that.”

“Maybe. Or maybe you hoped I did. Regardless, here we are. I heard it. You said it.”

“I’m a widow,” she said.

“Got that. I’m sorry.”

“People talk. You know what it’s like. My… options are limited. In my personal life.”

“Are we talking about sex, Holly?” I managed to ask the question with a certain panache, as though I talked about sex with cute young widows all the time.

Yeah.

My question amused her. “Yes, Sam, we are indeed talking about sex. Hello.”

I said what, to me, felt obvious. “You’re a lovely girl, Holly. Bright, funny. I don’t see how your options are limited.” I didn’t say, “You could have any guy you might want, any guy at all.” I didn’t say, “A guy would be lucky to be with you. A guy like me would…”

I didn’t allow myself to finish the thought.

“Before he died, my husband and I had an… imaginative sex life. We enjoyed a variety…”

Holly turned away from me.

Holly wasn’t bashful about sex. That’s not why she turned away. She turned away because she instinctively knew I was bashful about sex.

I tried to focus. A variety of what?

“We were careful. Always careful, especially after Zach was born. We didn’t take unnecessary risks.”

At the moment she said that she was talking directly to the turkey. Unlike me the turkey didn’t blush.

“That’s good,” I replied. “You and your husband, what you did together in your private time is… was…”

“Our business. Yes. Is this important? I’m not really comfortable talking about all this with you.”

Neither am I. Trust me, neither am I.

“Your husband’s name was?”

“Mark.”

“Thank you. Detective Reynoso and I are trying to determine what kind of danger you might be in from Sterling Storey. How you know him and how you met him are important parts of that determination. We’d like to leave here today able to assure you that you’re safe.”

She considered my argument. She looked in her hand, pulled out a card, and held it up for me to see. “I don’t have to talk to you, though, do I? Legally, you don’t have any authority here, do you?”

The card she’d chosen from her imaginary hand was a good one. I acknowledged that she held it. I said, “Nope, I don’t.”

“But then,” she said, “you don’t have to be here at all, do you?”

“Nope, I certainly don’t. I’m a volunteer in this fire department.”

She turned back toward me. The fact that I was there on my own time and on my own dime carried a lot of weight. She said, “Who will know about this? I mean, if I decide to tell you?”

I sipped at some coffee. It was cold. “This is where I could lie to you and tell you nobody but us, me and Detective Reynoso, but the truth is I don’t know who’ll end up knowing. Secrets are like puppies. Once you let them out, they tend to be pretty hard to control.”

“South Bend’s a small town. Notre Dame’s a Catholic university. A very Catholic university. I’m a mom. Some of the things I do in my private life aren’t acceptable here. I have no illusions about that.”

“I understand,” I said. “I know about small towns and secrets. In case you’ve never been, Boulder is more small town than big city. I grew up in a much smaller town in Minnesota. So how did you meet him?”

Instantly, she entered a little time warp. I recognized it. It was a little Jules Verne moment where time stopped and she tried to decide whether to tell me the truth. Ten seconds later she exited the warp with what sounded to me like honest words. “I have personal ads on the Web. Adult personal ads. I try to meet men with… similar interests… who are traveling, you know, who are in town on business. Mostly I end up going to Chicago to…”

Part of me was grateful that she left the sentence unfinished, part of me was just the smallest bit curious about what happened when she went to Chicago. “But Sterling came here to South Bend?”

“Yes, he did. His work brought him here-brings him here. You know about that, don’t you? His work?”

“I do. You didn’t meet him through his job, though?”

“No, we met, if you can call it that, over the Internet. We never ran into each other on our jobs. Even after. My job concerns primarily women’s sports. I don’t deal much with the men’s teams.”

“See, I didn’t know any of that. You have a copy of the ad you run? May I take a look at it?”

“What?”

Holly had heard me just fine. Her exclamation was understandable, about what I would have expected had I asked if I could fish through her underwear drawer. I softened the request. “I’d like to know what exactly Sterling responded to. It will help me… understand him a little better.”

She exhaled, her eyes wide. She dropped her arms to her sides and spread her legs a couple of inches farther apart. “He responded to a revealing picture of an attractive woman who said she likes sex with strangers. It’s not that complicated, Detective. Getting people to respond to my ad wasn’t difficult-isn’t difficult. Finding someone I can feel safe with… that’s a whole different problem.”

I blushed. “How do you-”

“E-mail. I set up temporary Hotmail accounts, and then I e-mail back and forth with the guy until I’m comfortable. If I don’t get comfortable with him, I close the account and start all over with somebody else.”

I didn’t know what a Hotmail account was. Hell. I’d ask Simon when I talked to him later in the day. My kid would probably know. “How long did the process take with Sterling?”

Carmen chose that moment to step into the room. “Smells great in here. You guys making progress?”

“We’re doing great, Carmen. Maybe a few more minutes?” I said. The expression on my face was intended to shout “bad timing.” Real bad timing.

She backed out.

Holly said, “I don’t like her.”

“Yeah, well. She’s great with your kid. That’s good, right? You were saying how long it took to-”

“Not long.”

“So you met him… where?”

“On campus.”

“And you…?”

“Jesus, Detective. Do you really need to know? Really?”

I said yes. I didn’t feel yes, but I said yes. Some things you want to know even if you don’t want to know them.

This was one of those.

Holly stepped over next to me, lowered her mouth to my ear, and whispered what it was she’d done with Sterling Storey.

Maybe it was the moist heat of her breath, maybe it was what she told me, but I blushed all over again.

This was going to be a first. Holly and her husband had talked about doing something like it a couple of times, but the discussions were always more joke than anything else. But this guy from California? He was serious. Right from the start, she could tell.

Totally serious.