Thomas Perry - Vanishing Act

She laughed. "This is a farm. You just go out and lift up a couple of chickens." She started to slip out of the big hunting shirt, and glanced at him. She could see he was staring at the way her breasts stood out under her T-shirt. She raised an eyebrow.

"Come on." He took her hand and led her into the bedroom.

"I thought you’d be hungry," she said. Her voice was low and tense, almost a whisper. "I brought breakfast."

"This is more important," he said. "If I die today, I won’t care if I had two more eggs."

Then his hands moved up under her T-shirt and were on her breasts, and then he was slipping the T-shirt up over her head, and he tossed it somewhere, and the jeans were coming down over her hips, and he seemed to be everywhere at once, touching her and kissing her in a way that made her ache until she kissed him back.

She had needed to hear him say he wanted to, so she could be sure that it wasn’t just something people did because they had been to bed together once, and knew that if they let that cold-light-of-dawn feeling go on for any longer it would go on forever. Then she forgot all of that because none of it mattered at all. It hadn’t happened. What was going on now was what she would have imagined while she was out walking in the dark morning, if she had let the longing take the form of a wish. He must have been thinking of it too, because there was nothing tentative, no hesitation. What they thought, they seemed to think at the same time, and the impulses were already movements before they knew. They drew together to let their lips meet in slow, moist, leisurely kisses that neither of them started or stopped because it hadn’t been an intention, just an attraction they hadn’t resisted. Their bodies had learned to know each other in the course of the long night, while the things they said to each other were still the words of strangers. She accepted it because there was no other choice, and she began to let herself feel glad instead of ashamed that this had happened.

Later they ate breakfast. It was better with the sun up and light bouncing around the bright white kitchen, with the smells of fried eggs and hot coffee and the busy chirping of sparrows outside the window. "Want to have a picnic?" asked Jane.

"I’d like that," he answered.

Just as they were packing their lunch, they heard the first drops popping on the roof. It rained for three days. The cornfield outside turned to a rich, muddy soup and the grass in the fields turned an impossible emerald-green.

On the fourth day the rain stopped, and on the sixth they woke up to find that the world had changed again. It was the first week of May now, and the small half-inch buds that had been folded tightly on the branches of the trees exploded into luminous light-green leaves.

The letter came on the seventh day. Jane began to clean the house.

16

It was morning, and they sat at the kitchen table trying to keep their eyes from settling on the two suitcases Jane had bought in Brantford.

Felker broke the silence. "Should we leave some money to pay for all the food and stuff?"

"No," she said. "There are rules about hospitality. Some time I’ll give Mattie a present."

"Like you did Wendell?"

"Yes."

"I know this is kind of an odd question, but what would happen if we just stayed here? Didn’t go on to another place?"

"Eventually something would happen. You’d get sick and have to go to a hospital, or maybe the government agent here would notice you and start making quiet inquiries, or you’d get a speeding ticket." She smiled sadly. "We’ve got to get you settled."

There was a knock on the door. Jane went to open it, and she saw Carlton the Mohawk on the porch. Felker stood up and took their bags out to the truck. They drove to Mattie’s farmhouse, and Jane ran inside.

Mattie was at her stove, and a soap opera was on the television set. "Hi, Janie," she said. "Leaving us so soon?"

"Yes."

Mattie came up and gave her a big hug. Jane could smell chicken feathers and flour and fresh air somehow caught in the big, soft apron during the early morning chores. When she held Jane out at arm’s length to look at her, she said, "You’ve been crying."

"Don’t be silly."

"Yes, you have. Not just now, maybe, but at night in the dark." She nodded at the door. "Did he see you cry?"

Jane shook her head.

"Smart girl," she said. "Keep it that way. Men don’t like problems they can’t solve. It just makes them mad."

Jane gave Mattie a kiss on the cheek, handed her Jimmy’s keys, and said, "See you, Mattie."

Carlton drove them north through Galt and picked up the 401 above it, then rode into Toronto on a stream of thick, fast-moving traffic. As soon as he had made the turn into the airport loop, Carlton said, "What parking lot should I go to?"

"None of them," said Jane. "Drop us off in front of Air Canada." When he pulled up to the curb, Jane said, "Be good."

"We’ll miss you," said Carlton.

As Jane and Felker approached the terminal doors, Jane spoke under her breath. "I’ll do this."

She paid for the tickets with a credit card that said Janet Foley and specified that the other ticket was for Daniel Foley. She checked their two suitcases and then gave Felker his ticket as they walked across the lobby.

"Take this," she said. "The gate is 42 and the flight leaves in forty minutes. Go into a men’s room and lock yourself in a cubicle until then. I’ll see you on board."

"Is that necessary?"

"Do it," she said. "This is the last place where a sensible person would look for you. Once we’re out of here, they’ve lost you forever."

He stepped into the first men’s room they came to, and Jane walked on as though she had nothing to do with him. And so I don’t, she thought. She bought a magazine in the gift shop and went to Gate 42. The magazine was just the right size to hold in front of her while she watched for the wrong sort of men to show up at the gate.

There were a couple of Canadian naval officers traveling in uniform. No matter how resourceful the ones chasing Felker were, they couldn’t have anticipated far enough in advance for the uniforms. There were eight Pakistanis, three African-Americans, nine Chinese. The men she had seen that night had been light-skinned. The most suspicious people were a young couple who appeared to stare around them a lot, but then she saw that they were staring because their two children were being allowed to play on the seats a couple of rows away, supposedly by themselves. Two men appeared who were distinct possibilities, but then they sat down and she saw that one of them had a pair of leather-soled shoes with an imprint on the sole that said Eaton’s. An American trying to look like a Canadian might buy something Canadian to wear, but not shoes. She calmed down. As a bonus, she noticed that on page 127 of the magazine there was a camel coat that an actual living woman might like to wear. She folded the comer of the page and went on with her vigil.

The airline functionaries arrived at the gate a few minutes before time, set up shop at the desk, and began to make announcements into the microphone, first in English, then in French. After the second one, Felker drifted in. She put down her magazine and scanned the faces. The only ones who stared at him and pretended not to were two teenaged girls by the window who had some sort of hormonal interest in men who looked like him but probably still had an inaccurate idea of why this should be so. There was something to be said for locking them up in convent schools until they knew how to conjugate lots of foreign verbs, she thought.

The next announcement came, and she felt reassured. "Now boarding." She waited until he was in line so she could watch his back, but she still saw nobody who had any interest in him.