Bill Pronzini: With an Extreme Burning

“We won't be.”

Another squeeze, and she was hurrying away from him. He watched her until she crossed the street to the Mill's entrance. He thought again, as he had several times over the past four years, that Chet Bracco was a damn fool for cheating on a woman like Cecca and then walking out on her. The thought stirred a vague anger, and this surprised him. Maybe he was starting to come out of it, to feel again. Old feelings, old sympathies, for others besides Katy and himself.

Even with the doors up and the fan going, it was stifling inside the garage. Ten minutes at his workbench and he was soaked in sweat, his mouth and throat parched. A cold beer, he thought. Maybe something to eat, too; he was almost hungry. Another hour or two out here, as long as he could stand the heat, and then his afternoon fifty in the pool. By then it ought to be time to get ready for his evening with Elliot.

He was taking a bottle of Miller Draft out of the refrigerator when the telephone bell went off.

He'd forgotten again to put on the machine. Two rings, four rings, six rings … and his feet carried him across to the counter and the phone.

“Hello?”

Breathing.

The tormentor again. Twice in one day—escalating it.

You weren't supposed to provoke people like this; you were supposed to be calm, rational, so they wouldn't think they were getting to you. But he'd had enough. Too much. “Listen, damn you, don't you understand that I lost my wife recently? Don't you have an inkling of what that's like? Don't you have any decent human feelings? If you don't stop bothering me, you'll regret it. I mean that. Stop bothering me!”

He would have hung up then, banged the receiver down. Almost did. He was just starting to take it away from his ear when the voice jumped out at him.

“Don't hang up.”

The words were sharp, commanding, but the voice had an unnatural quality, as if it were being electronically altered or filtered. It made Dix's scalp crawl.

“So you can talk after all,” he said. “All right. You want to say something to me finally? Go ahead, say it.”

“I want to tell you about your wife.”

“… What?”

“Your wife. I want to tell you about her.”

“You don't know anything about my wife.”

“I know something you don't know.”

“The hell you do.”

“Oh yes,” the voice said. “She was having an affair. A very torrid affair. For a little more than three months before she died.”

“That's a goddamn lie!”

“It started on May second, at two o'clock in the afternoon, at La Quinta Inn in Brookside Park. After that, usually twice a week. Monday and Friday afternoons, when you thought she was studying with Louise Kanvitz. That is what she told you, isn't it?”

Dix's larynx seemed to have undergone a temporary paralysis. He made an inarticulate sound.

“The usual meeting place was a motel. Not always the La Quinta; different ones in different locations. Once in a field off Lone Mountain Road. And more than once in her car, in the backseat, dog-fashion.”

You son of a bitch! he thought. But he couldn't say the words; he was like a mute trying desperately to speak.

“Shall I tell you some of the other ways she liked to do it? No, I'm sure you already know most of them. I will tell you who her partner was. You'd like to know that, wouldn't you?”

Lies, lies!

“I was her partner,” the tormentor said. “I'm the man who was fucking your wife.”

The verbal paralysis left him all at once. Words came spewing out like vomit. “You sick lying bastard how can you do this to me what kind of man are you—!”

He was shouting into a dead phone.

TWO

Cecca said, “ Condoms . And not just one—a whole package.”

“What kind?” Eileen asked curiously. “Not french ticklers?”

“Eileen, for God's sake. Not so loud.”

“Oh, nobody's paying any attention to us. It's too noisy in here anyway.”

Which was true enough. Romeo's at noon on a summer Saturday was always noisy. Poor acoustics and babbling tourists. Still, Eileen's voice carried. And usually at the wrong times, when she was making one of her more uninhibited comments. I should have waited to talk about this, Cecca thought. Someplace private. But it was too late now.

Eileen said, “It could have been worse, you know. It could've been drugs you found.”

“I know that. Amy's always been dead set against drugs; I count both of us lucky on that score. But condoms … I didn't think I had that to worry about either.”

“Mothers always want to believe their daughters are virgins.”

“Naive, huh?”

“The protective instinct. Was the package opened?”

“No. Why do you ask that?”

“Maybe Amy's carrying it just in case. Maybe she hasn't had occasion to use one of the things yet.”

“That's possible,” Cecca admitted. “She hasn't had a steady boyfriend in months.”

“Planning ahead. Very mature, if you ask me.”

“Yes, but my God. She's only seventeen.”

“Uh-huh. How old were you and Chet when you started doing it?”

“What does that have to do with this situation?”

“Seventeen, right?”

“We're talking about Amy, not me.”

“Kids are sexually active a lot younger these days. You know that.” Eileen devoured part of her bacon cheeseburger. Chewing, she said, “I can guarantee that neither of my kids is a virgin. I wouldn't be surprised if Bobby started when he was twelve or thirteen. He's a handsome little devil, if I do say so myself.”

“Boys,” Cecca said, “you have boys, not girls. It's not the same thing. Girls get pregnant.”

“Not if they carry condoms in their purses.”

“Eileen, this isn't funny. Not to me, it isn't.”

“I know, honey.”

Eileen reached across the table and patted her hand. The gesture was maternal and her expression was serious, but even at her gloomiest, Eileen seemed to be on the verge of a wink or a chuckle, if not one of her bawdy laughs. It wasn't that she was frivolous or insensitive; it was just that she looked at the world with a positive, sometimes wryly humorous eye. Her self-assessment, which she was fond of quoting to people she'd just met, was that she was “a big brassy blonde who loves life and doesn't give a hoot who knows it.” Even a sudden disaster like poor Katy's death hadn't dampened her spirits for long, although she'd cried as hard as Cecca had when they first heard about it.

“What would you do if you were me? Ignore what I found, or talk to Amy about it?”

“Probably ignore it.”

“You wouldn't want to know if your daughter was sexually active?”

“I don't think so.”

“Ignorance is bliss?”

“Her right to privacy, too, even if she is under age.”

Cecca picked at the remains of her Cobb salad. “I keep telling myself the same thing. But I still want to know.”

“So what's stopping you from asking?”

“Amy's finally quit blaming me for the divorce; we have a good relationship again. I don't want to do anything to rock the boat.”

“You mean she might think you were snooping.”

“I wasn't snooping. I really did bump her purse off the table by accident. But what if she doesn't believe it?”

“Mmm,” Eileen said reflectively. She finished the last of her burger, licked her fingers, wiped a spot of grease off her chin, and permitted herself a ladylike burp. “Have you ever talked to her about the birds and the bees?”

“Once seriously, when she was thirteen. I've tried since, but …”

“Awkward?”

“Awkward.”

“You used the mother-to-daughter approach, right?”

“What other approach is there?”

“Woman to woman. Casual, chatty, the way you and I talk. If she's been doing the deed, and you don't make her feel threatened about it, she'll either tell you straight out or let something slip. At least you'll know how she feels about sex at this stage of her life. And you won't have to mention the condoms at all. She'll tell you about carrying them, if she wants you to know.”