He leaned close to her, so that she could hear him above the excited chatter of the others. “Ready to get out of here?”
She nodded.
Over by the window, a young executive type raised his voice. “Hey! Hey, everybody! Better look sharp. The TV news people just drove up to the front door.”
“If we get trapped by reporters,” Carol said, “we’ll be here an hour or more.”
They left without saying goodbye to O’Brian. In the hall, as they headed toward a side entrance, they slipped into their raincoats. Outside, Paul opened his umbrella and put one arm around Carol’s waist. They hurried across the slippery macadam parking lot, stepping gingerly around huge puddles. The gusting wind was chilly for early September, and it kept changing direction until it finally got under the umbrella and turned it inside out. The cold, wind-driven rain was falling so hard that it stung Paul’s face. By the time they reached the car, their hair was plastered to their heads, and a lot of water had found its way down the backs of their necks, under the collars of their coats.
Paul half expected the Pontiac to be lightning-damaged, but it was just as they had left it. The engine turned over without protest.
Leaving the parking lot, he started to turn left but put his foot on the brake pedal when he saw that the street was sealed off by police cars and fire trucks just half a block away. The church was still ablaze, in spite of the pouring rain and in defiance of the big streams of water that the firemen directed onto it.
Black smoke billowed into the gray day, and behind the blasted windows, flames spurted and churned.
Clearly, the church was going to be a total loss.
He turned right, instead, and drove home through rain-choked streets. where the gutters overflowed and where every depression in the pavement had been transformed into a treacherous lake that had to be negotiated with utmost caution to avoid drowning the engine and stalling out.
Carol slouched in her seat and huddled against the passenger-side door, hugging herself. Although the heater was on, she was obviously cold.
Paul realized his teeth were chattering.
The trip home took ten minutes. and during that time neither of them said a word. The only sounds were the whispery hiss of the tires on the wet pavement and the metronomic thump of the windshield wipers. The silence was not uncomfortable or strained, but there was a peculiar intensity about it, an aura of tremendous, pent-up energy. Paul had the feeling that if he did speak, the surprise would send Carol straight through the roof of the car.
They lived in a Tudor-style house, which they had painstakingly restored, and as always, the sight of it—the stone walk, the big oak doors framed by carriage lamps, the leaded-glass windows, the gabled roofline—pleased Paul and gave him the warm feeling that this was where he belonged. The automatic garage door rolled up, and he pulled the Pontiac inside, next to Carol’s red Volkswagen Rabbit.
In the house, they maintained their silence.
Paul’s hair was wet, and the legs of his trousers clung damply to him, and the back of his shirt was still soaked. He figured he was going to come down with a nasty cold if he didn’t get into some dry clothes right away. Apparently, Carol had the same thought, and they went straight upstairs to the master bedroom.
She opened the closet doors, and he switched on a bedside lamp. Shivering, they stripped out of their wet clothes.
When they were nearly undressed, they glanced at each other. Their eyes locked.
Still, they didn’t speak. They didn’t need to.
He took her in his arms, and they kissed lightly at first, tenderly. Her mouth was warm and soft and vaguely flavored with whiskey.
She clutched him, pulled him closer, her fingertips digging into the muscles of his back. She pushed her mouth hard against his, scraped his lip with her teeth, thrust her tongue deep, and abruptly their kisses grew hot, demanding.
Something seemed to snap in him, and in her, too, for their desire was suddenly marked by animal urgency. They responded to each other in a hungry, almost frenzied fashion, hastily casting off the last of their clothes, pawing at each other, squeezing, stroking. She nipped his shoulder with her teeth. He gripped her buttocks and kneaded them with uncharacteristic crudity, but she didn’t wince or try to pull away; indeed, she pressed even more insistently against him, rubbing her breasts over his chest and grinding her hips against his. The soft whimpers that escaped from her were not sounds of pain; they clearly expressed her eagerness and need. In bed, his energy was manic, and his staying power amazed him. He was insatiable, and so was she. They thrust and thrashed and flexed and tensed in perfect harmony, as if they were not only joined but fused, as if they were a single organism, shaken by only one set of stimuli instead of two. Every vestige of civilization slipped from them, and for a long while the only noises they made were animal sounds: panting; groaning; throaty grunts of pleasure; short, sharp cries of excitement. At last Carol uttered the first word to pass between them since they had left O’Brian’s office: