She pressed against him, pulled his face down to hers, and licked his lips. No kiss. Just the maddeningly quick flicking of her warm tongue – an exquisitely erotic promise.
“We’ve got the house for several hours yet,” she said. “We don’t even have to use the couch. I’ve got a great big white bed with a white canopy.”
“You’re something else,” he said, meaning something other than what she thought he meant.
“You don’t know the half of it,” she said.
“But I can’t. I really can’t, because these people are waiting for me.”
She was experienced enough to know when the moment for seduction had passed. She stepped back and smiled. “But I do want to thank you. For saving my life. That deserves a big reward.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” he said.
“I do. Some other night, when you don’t have plans?”
He kissed her, telling himself that he did so only to remain in her good graces. “Definitely some other night.”
“Mmmmm. And we’ll be good together.”
She was all polish, fast and easy, no jagged edges to get hung up on.
He said, “If Detective Wallace questions you again, do you think you could sort of … forget about the ring”
“Sure. I don’t like cops. They’re the ones who put the guns to our heads, make us kiss the asses of the nappy-heads and the Jews and all of them. They’re part of the problem. But why are you carrying on with this by yourself? I never did ask.”
“Personal,” he said. “For personal reasons.”
* * *
At home again, he undressed and went directly to bed. The darkness was heavy and warm and, for the first time in longer than he could remember, comforting.
Alone, he began to wonder if he had been a fool not to respond to Louise Allenby’s offer. He had been a long time without a woman, without even a desire for one.
He had told himself that he’d rejected Louise because he’d found her as personally repulsive as she was physically attractive. But he wondered if, instead, he’d retreated from the prospect because he feared it would draw him even further into the world, further away from his precious routines. A relationship with a woman, regardless of how transitory, would be one more crack in his carefully mortared walls.
On the edge of sleep, he realized that something had happened that was far more important than either his strong physical response to Louise or his rejection of her. For the first time in longer than Chase could recall, he hadn’t needed whiskey before bed. A natural sleep claimed him – although it was still populated by the grasping dead.
8
WHEN HE WOKE IN THE MORNING, CHASE WAS RACKED WITH PAIN FROM the fall that he had taken the previous evening on Kanackaway Ridge Road. Each contusion and laceration throbbed. His eyes felt sunken, and his headache was as intense as if he’d been fitted with an exotic torture device – an iron helmet – that would be slowly tightened until his skull imploded. When he tried to get out of bed, his muscles cramped and spasmed.
In the bathroom, when he leaned toward the mirror above the sink, he saw that he was drawn and pale. His chest and back were spotted with bruises, most about as large as a thumbprint, from the gravel over which he’d rolled to avoid the hurtling truck.
A hot bath didn’t soothe him, so he forced himself to do a couple of dozen situps, pushups, and deep knee bends until he was dizzy. The exercises proved more therapeutic than the bath.
The only cure for his misery was activity – which, he supposed, was a prescription for his emotional and spiritual miseries as well.
Wincing at the pain in his legs, he went downstairs.
“Maul for you,” said Mrs. Fielding as she shuffled out of the gameshow-audience laughter in the living room. She took a plain brown envelope from the table in the hall and gave it to him. “As you can see, there’s no return address.”
“Probably advertisements,” Chase said. He took a step toward the front door, hoping that she wouldn’t notice his stiffness and inquire about his health.