turned to look back at the house for a moment. The light was on in
Faith’s bedroom. The mini-blinds were down but not closed.
As Faith came into view, Lee stiffened. She didn’t close the blinds.
She moved through the room, disappeared into the bathroom for a minute
and then reappeared. As she started to undress, Lee looked around to
see if anyone was watching him watching her. The police responding to
a Peeping-Tom call would put the finishing touches on a spectacular day
in the charmed life of Lee Adams. The other homes were dark, however;
he could safely continue his voyeurism. Her shirt came off first, then
her pants. She kept shedding clothes until all the window was filled
with skin. And she didn’t slip into any pajamas or even a T-shirt.
Apparently this highly paid lobbyist-turned-Joan-of-Arc slept in the
raw. Lee had a fairly clear view of things the towel had only hinted
at. Maybe she knew he was out here and was putting on a peep show for
him. What, as compensation for destroying his life? The bedroom light
went out and Lee popped a beer, turned and headed for the beach. The
show was over.
He had finished the first beer by the time he hit the sand. The tide
was starting to roll in, and he didn’t have to venture far to be in
water past his ankles. He cracked another beer and went in farther, up
to his knees. The water was freezing, but he went in farther still,
almost to his crotch, and then stopped, for a practical reason: A wet
pistol wasn’t particularly useful.
He sloughed back to the sand, dropped the beer, slipped off his
water-logged sneakers and started to run. He was tired, but his legs
moved seemingly of their own accord, his limbs scissoring, his breath
coming in great chunks of foggy air. He did a quick mile, one of his
fastest ever, it seemed to him. Then he dropped to the sand, sucking
oxygen from the damp air. He felt hot and then chilled. He thought
about his mother and father, his siblings. He envisioned his daughter
Renee when she was young, falling off her great horse and calling for
Daddy, her cries finally dying away to nothing when he did not come. It
was as though his flow of blood had been reversed; it was all backing
up, not knowing where to go. He felt the walls of his body giving way,
unable to hold everything inside.
He stood on shaky legs, jogged unsteadily back to the beer and his
shoes. He sat on the sand for a while, listened to the ocean scream at
him and downed another two cans of Red Dog. He squinted into the
darkness. It was funny. A few beers and he could see clearly the end
of his life at the edge of the horizon. Always wondered when it was
going to happen. Now he knew. Forty-one years, three months and
fourteen days and the Man upstairs had pulled his ticket. He looked to
the sky, waved. Thanks a lot, God.
He rose and moved on to the house but didn’t go inside. Instead he
went to the enclosed courtyard, put his pistol on the table, stripped
off all his clothes and dived into the pool. The water temperature, he
figured, hovered around eighty-five degrees. His chills quickly
disappeared and he went under, touched bottom, did an awkward
handstand, blowing freshly chlorinated water out his nostrils, and then
floated on the surface, staring at a sky smeared with clouds. He swam
some more, practiced his crawl and breast strokes and then drifted over
to the side and downed another beer.
He crawled up on the pool deck and thought of his ruined life and of
the woman who had done it to him. He dived back in, did another few
laps and then climbed out of the pool for good. He looked down,
surprised. That was a real kicker. He looked up at the dark window.
Was she asleep? How could she be? How in the hell could she be, after
all this?
Lee decided he would find out for certain. No one could screw up his3