Джон Макдональд - A Flash of Green

“When asked why he had made this conspiracy a matter of public record at this time, Wing remarked that he had decided at the eleventh hour that the public has a right to know the details of this abuse of his office by Commissioner Elmo Bliss. He said that Bliss would undoubtedly attempt some retaliation for his having made this statement, but he could make no guess as to what form this would take.”

Kat slowly refolded the sheets. She found she was making a special effort to fold them more neatly than Jimmy had, getting the edges in better alignment. She crossed the room to where he sat, feeling tall and severe and gravely speculative.

She knelt beside his chair. He put the folded papers in his shirt pocket. She knelt erect, her hands side by side on his forearm.

“It’s true,” she said. “It couldn’t be anything else. It couldn’t be some kind of crazy scheme... to help us.”

He turned his head toward her, his eyes half closed. “It’s true, of course.”

“We all trusted you, Jimmy.”

“I know.”

“How does that make you feel?”

“I don’t feel much of anything.”

“But why? Why did you get into such a thing? Did you need the money?”

“No.”

“Did they have something on you?”

“What’s so astonishing? I’m a small-town cynic. I know a lot of people and I know the way things get done, and this time I was in on it. It would have come out the same way with or without me.”

“Did they have something on you?”

“When you’re bored, you want a closer look at the machinery.”

“How did they make you do it?”

“They made it sound innocent.”

“But you knew it wasn’t.”

She felt the muscles of his arm tighten, move, relax again. “It looks as if I’d gotten out of it now, doesn’t it?”

She bit her lip for a moment. “But it’s a little late, isn’t it? A little late for Jackie and Morton and Doris. What do you want me to say? Bravo? Do you want absolution, forgiveness, a fat medal of honor? You’ve been mixed up in a terrible thing, Jimmy, and I think I owe it to you to try to understand.”

“I’m not very good at explaining anything these days. There’s no logic in my head. There’s some pictures, and some darkness, and no way of knowing anything that comes next, or understanding what happened.”

“They had some way of making you do it.”

“They used you.”

She stared at him. “Me!”

“That was just a part of it. I could play. Or they’d use rougher people. I thought I could keep it easy on everybody, especially you. I kept them off you. But they decided I wasn’t suited to the real dirty work when they went after Mortie and Jackie.”

“But I can take care of myself! Did I ask to be protected?”

“No.”

“Why should I be that important to you?”

He put his free hand over both of hers. “You are. You have been. You will be, even though I’ve canceled myself out. And not a very romantic attachment, Kat. Not very civilized, even. Basic. Below the belt. Physical lust. Just a hell of a driving need to have you.”

“But how could you have...”

“How the hell do I know! It isn’t something anybody plans is it? It started seven or eight months ago, and kept building. I can’t look at your mouth or watch you walk without feeling dizzy and sick with desire.”

“I... I’m just a woman. I’m not that... special.”

“I’ve told myself that and it hasn’t done any good.”

“I... don’t think of you that way!”

“I know that.”

“I’ve been... deeply grateful to you, Jimmy. You’ve been such a good friend to me. But now I find out you’ve been lying... I don’t know what to think.”

He sat up and took her suddenly by the elbows and guided her around so that she was in front of him, forcing her to hobble awkwardly on her knees, then pulled her close and wrapped her in his hard long arms and ground his mouth into hers. She fought for a few startled moments and then endured him. He gave a long shuddering sigh and rested his forehead on her shoulder. His hands moved gently on her body.

She felt very young, inept, confused. How do I get into such things? she asked herself. Why should I feel so uncertain, and why should I feel obligated? Why should I stop fighting him because I realized he was crying? Why should I owe him anything for being nice to me? How can he expect this of me? It’s idiotic! And it’s shameful. Does his wanting you give him rights? Make him stop.

“Jimmy,” she said. “Don’t, dear. Please don’t.”

He stood up and pulled her up and stopped her mouth again, and she knew her arms were around him. He was shaking with his need for her. What can you do now? she thought helplessly. You let it go so far.

He dipped and swung her up into his arms. “Please no,” she whispered. “Oh please no.”

She felt waxen in his arms. Beyond his still profile she saw the ceiling turn and move. She felt the cold whir of air against her as she was carried past the air conditioner.

“The guest room,” she whispered, and hid her face and her shyness and her confusion against his chest.

While it was happening, she watched herself from afar, severely on guard against any thought of Van that might slip into her mind. He was more powerful than she would have imagined, and with deftness and skill that disheartened her. Her treacherous body threatened a participation she wished to deny it. She seemed to be apart from herself, off where she could watch the clever sequences lure the blind body into disloyal flexures and strainings, lead it into the dread ultimate gallop, the lungs gasping, the heart racing, the throat beginning its terminal whine, while the shocked mind, apart from all of it, seemed to be screaming, What am I doing? How did this begin? Why am I letting him?

It ended for him when she was a half step from the brink, from the long dark plunging fall. She lay in tension, in a bright agony of indignation and annoyance which was mingled with a deep and humble gratitude that it had stopped short of that most ultimate seduction, leaving her used but not using, a donor instead of an accomplice. She waited for it to recede, but found she was caught there, lodged precariously upon the edge. She gathered herself, then quickly and roughly tumbled him away, got up and padded out of the guest room and down the hallway to her bathroom.

By the time she had showered, the tension was almost gone. She brushed her hair, darkened her eyebrows, made her mouth up with care. She studied herself in the mirror. Her mouth looked slightly puffy. She put on an almost-new dress, high-heeled sandals, a touch of her best perfume. She looked at herself in her bedroom mirror, the short skirt swirling at her knees as she turned from side to side. She could think of no simple description of how she felt. She felt rueful about stumbling into one trap, yet smug about evading the second one, no matter how narrow the margin. In retrospect the second trap seemed the more deadly one because it would have made her hostage to the emotions her completion, at his hands, would have made inevitable. And she felt rather prim, as well as smug, filled with the severity of the one unjustly used, the one victimized by her own warm and generous heart.

She felt no shyness until she was a step from the guest room door. She lifted her chin and strode in quite briskly. He had pulled the draperies back, and he was standing at the window, slowly buttoning his shirt. He turned around as she walked in.

“Kat, I didn’t mean...”

“Don’t for the love of God start apologizing. I don’t recall being raped, exactly.” She went to the bed and with housewife dexterity, slapped and smoothed and poked the rumpled spread back to tautness.