Thomas Perry - Shadow Woman

He turned the key carefully with dread in his heart and listened intently. The engine turned over, and the car violated Carey’s sense of the laws of physics by starting, then taking him to the gas station without running dry.

As Carey drove up to the big old house in Amherst he was thinking about food. It was nearly ten o’clock, and he had not had dinner yet. Maybe he would just make himself a sandwich and go to bed. He saw that there were lights on in a couple of the downstairs windows. Susan Haynes had obviously forgotten to turn off any switches before she had locked the door this morning … if she had remembered to do that much. He pulled into the long driveway toward the garage. As he reached the place where the drive turned the corner of the house, his headlights lit up the bright-red tail reflectors of the car parked by the back door. It was the big black Mercedes that Susan Haynes had leased.

Carey stopped his car, pulled it forward around the big Mercedes to keep from blocking it in, and killed the engine. He glanced at his watch again. It was nine fifty-six. This woman was in his house at nine fifty-six waiting for him to come home. He closed his eyes and felt a constriction in the muscles of his throat.

His mind surveyed his mistakes leading backward in time like stepping stones. He should never have given her his key. He should never have invited an unattached woman to stay the night, never have given her a ride, never even have let on that her car had been towed to clear his parking space. He batted away the excuses that his mind automatically fabricated and spit out for him, like a machine that had short-circuited: no, he had not done it because she had really needed his help. He had done it because she was beautiful and he had not wanted to stop looking at her; because she was smart and distracting and he was tired of being alone. He had liked her. The nervously clinical words of an old study of physiological responses came back to him. Affection—even the most innocent kind—was found to prompt a “slight tumescence of the genitals.” And that, in turn, would probably prompt a rationalization.

He knew that he could not start his engine again, back out of the driveway, and abandon his house until this woman got tired of waiting and went away. The only other option he had was to go inside and find out what she thought she was doing. It took him a moment to identify the source of his reluctance to face her. It was the instinctive alarm that made animals shy away from one of their kind that was behaving strangely. It had probably kept a lot of epidemics from spreading to healthy animals and wiping out entire species. This time the instinct was serving no purpose. Neuroses weren’t contagious.

He walked around to the front door, found it unlocked, and stepped inside. The smell of food cooking overwhelmed him and reminded him how hungry he was. Susan had sneaked into his house and cooked something for him. He was relieved. It was unwelcome, but at least it was comprehensible, possibly even within the boundaries of normal behavior. He tried to analyze his lingering irritation at her. What had she actually done? He supposed that what had annoyed him most was that she had playfully set off a sexual longing that he was not entitled to feel. As soon as he had admitted it, he felt ridiculous for resenting her for it: blaming women for stimulating impure thoughts had gone out with witch trials. Or it should have.

He detected that he was also straining against some primitive territorial reaction she had triggered by coming into his lair without permission. The hostility was misplaced—just another legacy from earlier primates that had begun to get in the way. She wasn’t trying to harm him. She was trying to be kind, after all. A lot of people believed that the rules should be abrogated for surprises. Carey was not one of those people, but he had to live in the world. “Hello?” he called. “Anybody here?”

When he heard no answer, he ventured into the living room. He moved into the dining room, and saw her. She was facing away from him, wearing a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt that he recognized as Jane’s. If it had not been for the long, golden hair he might almost have convinced himself that she was Jane. She was pouring champagne into two glasses. The table was elaborately set with the best silver, and the candles were lit. She turned and held out a glass. “Hi,” she said. The reserved, distant smile was on her lips. “Have you eaten dinner?”

“No,” he admitted. “To what do I owe all this?” He realized that his jaw was tight, the muscles working. He smiled to cover the tension.

She shrugged, and he wished that it had not made him aware of the movement of her breasts under the fabric. “I’m showing you my gratitude. You’ve been very nice to me.”

“I thought you had your heart set on a big dinner party.” He looked around the corner toward the living room. “Should I expect the Rotherbergs and Bortonis to leap out from behind the curtains?”

She grinned and shook her head. “No, it’s not a surprise party. It’s just a surprise.” She sipped her champagne and looked into his eyes. “For you.”

“Why?” He tried to seem casual. “I mean, I guess I should just say, ‘Thanks.’ ” Unexpectedly, the rest of it came out. “But, to be honest with you, coming in and finding someone inside my house is not my favorite experience. I suppose that for a lot of people, it must be an accepted custom: it seems to turn up in television plots almost as often as the Evil Twin or the Long-Lost Father, and nobody else seems shocked. But I am. If I want somebody to come, I invite them.”

The suddenness of her smile staggered him. It seemed to come from absolutely nowhere, and to be immune to anything he had said. She shrugged. “I gave you every opportunity, but you don’t seem to let yourself think about anything personal until after work, and that would have been too late, wouldn’t it? If I’d known it would bother you, I would have done it another way.” She turned away and began fiddling with the objects on the table again.

He was positive that he was right, but he began to regret having said the words. When she spun around to face him, she seemed to have forgotten he had spoken at all: the smile seemed more radiant. “This doesn’t get you out of my party, by the way. When your wife comes home, I’m still going to have a bunch of the local gentry over for dinner. That pays you back officially for helping me last night.”

He waved his hand at the table. “Isn’t this enough?”

She cocked her head at him. “This isn’t the official thanks, which will be completely insincere and self-serving, and which Jane and I will like more than you do. This is something I thought of after I called you today. You’re all alone and you don’t know when your wife is coming back, and you sounded unhappy. Now is the time when a woman can offer something that will actually do you some good. So I decided to cook you a meal. Big deal.”

She pointedly set her champagne glass beside the nearest plate and pulled out the chair at the head of the table. “I’ve done enough explaining and I’m hungry. So sit while I serve you.”

Carey sat in the chair and she reached over his shoulder, then ceremoniously placed the linen napkin on his lap. “This is really something,” he conceded. He turned his head as he said it, and found her still leaning over him, her face much closer than he had anticipated. He could smell the subtle scent of her hair, see the big liquid green eyes glinting in the candlelight.

“It’s meant to be,” she said. “No empty promises.”

He was relieved when she brought out the big pot and began to serve the food. She had made bouillabaisse, and it had certainly not gotten worse during the hours after she had expected him to arrive. He tasted it.