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Kat set her beer down on a grease-speckled table she could not recall ever being speckled before. “I have a lot I need to talk to you about.”
“Did you hear something?” Jacki said, placing her finished bottle on the kitchen counter. “I could swear I heard something.”
“Leigh-”
“Beau’s crying,” Jacki said.
“Is that his name?”
“Beau Thomas Chavez.” Jacki opened the door to the baby’s room. “Dignified and historic; that’s our boy.”
Kat followed her sister into the twilit room. Two glass night-lights shaped like daisies poked through the dark-orange gloom.
Jacki pushed open the window curtains, letting in the last light of the day. “I should have nursed him longer before putting him down. His stomach is minuscule. Babies need to eat all the time.” She sat in a wooden rocking chair and pushed off from the floor like a person trying to have fun. She closed her eyes and pressed her back against the chair, supporting her child on a pillow. “Incredible, isn’t it. Owowow-”
Her eyes closed and she snored, head at an odd angle, her baby safely propped on pillows as he nursed. When he let go of the nipple with a tiny pop, she awoke instantly. She handed Beau off to Kat. “Wet again.”
Kat changed him. They put him down. He dozed for a few minutes, then awakened, his cries amazing considering the size of his voice box.
“Forgot to burp him,” Jacki said, patting his back while he rested against her shoulder. He burped and threw up, then went peacefully down to sleep.
For twenty minutes.
Etcetera.
“I have to go,” Kat said.
“No,” Jacki wailed. “Raoul’s due home in an hour. I’m a sweaty pig and there’s no food.”
Grimly, Kat ran out to the store, bought a roasted turkey breast, rolls, packaged salad, and carrot cake. She had trouble parking, which involved giving one person the finger and screaming at another one before she landed a spot. She lugged the bags up the elevator. She unloaded the sacks in the kitchen, laid out the food on the counter.
She checked on Jacki and the baby. They were asleep in a rocker and a bassinet, respectively.
She sliced the turkey, found an almost clean platter, which she wiped with an almost clean dishrag, and assembled the salad into a pretty bowl. She found the dregs of some Caesar dressing in the fridge, which she splashed into a cute bowl with a spoon. She located two new place mats still in plastic. After wiping the table, she set them down, found candles and holders in the cupboard, and placed them in the center along with a box of matches. Then she stepped back again to observe her handiwork.
The crusty kitchen counters, rising above the dining table, detracted from the overall mood. As the sun weakened, crawling across the hardwood floors in a golden streak, Kat found bleach under the kitchen sink and blitzed through the kitchen, flinging dishes into the washer.
Raoul arrived exactly on time, full of kisses for Jacki, all smiles, and Kat was free.
Outside, pulling his Honda into the spot next to her, Jacki’s downstairs neighbor, who had invited Kat to come with him to watch the sunset several times, loitered. He had a thin mustache, a sliver of hair in the middle of his chin, and shaped sideburns. All this decorative shaving gave Kat the creeps, although she realized in a previous life, only a couple of months ago, she had thought him a bit of a hunk. He approached her car.
“How about a late drink, honey?”
She hated that her window was cracked low enough to let this guy’s voice get heard. “Uh. Sorry, Josh. Busy.”
“Hot date? Where are you going?”
“Stuff to do at home.”
“What stuff?” Big smile.
She had never figured out how to extricate herself gracefully when someone paid her too much attention. If she openly rejected him, saying, mind your own business, she’d upset him and the blow to his male ego would turn him hostile and he would say something hurtful. If she said, I need to wash my hair, same deal. She contemplated her options, feeling perplexed. Had Ray Jackson felt this way when he spotted Kat outside that house on Bright Street? Hunted?
“You bring over different guys all the time.”
She had brought a few of the good ones to Jacki’s. Not-so-hidden meaning: why not me, too?
“You’re a player, just like me. Admit it.”
“Josh, would you please back off so I can pull out?”
A certain light penetrated his flat eyes. Hostility, coming on like a 747.
Would she, two months ago, have gotten out of her car at this point, put her hand on his butt and said, follow me home, let’s go?
“Aw, come over for a coupla minutes. What’s your problem? You’re here. I made a cool drink you’ll like. Gin and lemon. Fresh mint on top.”
How did he know her favorite drink? Probably observed her once in a local hangout. Note to self: excellent reason to cruise far from her own home and Jacki’s, too.
The Echo’s interior was heating up. Perspiration pooled below her thighs on the scratchy fabric of the seat.
Get me out of here.
Could she reverse the car without knocking him down?
Without warning, as if suddenly transforming from an insensitive clod into a sensitive one, he backed away, shrugging. “Okay, another time,” he said.
Relieved, Kat said, “Josh?”
He turned back to face her. “Yeah?”
“You have a lot to offer the right woman.”
He shuffled his feet. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
“I’m looking, but I’m confused.”
“Me, too.”
“I’m not for you, Josh.”
“Guess not.”
“It’s tough. Don’t give up.”
He sighed. “You, too.”
Being a player was getting so old.
17
A fter the meeting with Antoniou, Ray phoned his mother. “I’ve been hoping you would call. Are you still angry?” she asked.
“I found another tape. That makes three.”
A long silence. If his mother had ever prayed, he could imagine her praying right this minute. “Ray, please, this is getting-you have to stop.”
“I found it at Bright Street. In the fruit cellar. He says he’s coming and then you hang up.”
“My God,” she said.
“Did he hurt you? Beat you?”
“Who?”
“You know damn well who!”
She hung up on him again.
He slammed the phone down so hard it fell off the desk.
Suza
“I better go home, Suza
“Sure, Ray.” She blinked big brown eyes and said, “I’m sorry about everything, Ray. I’m embarrassed about me and Martin.”
“It’s okay.”
“I just couldn’t control my feelings. I didn’t realize I might be hurting you, too, when I told the police about Martin and…I hope you and Leigh will be all right.”
On impulse, he leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “You do a great job here,” he said.
Ray sliced radishes in his silent stainless-steel kitchen. He put the finished salad in a glass bowl, wrapping the leftover bits of vegetable in plastic wrap and stuffing them into his refrigerator drawer. Pouring two diet sodas over ice, he carried a tray into the living room and sat it on the sculpturally beautiful dining table.
Sipping his drink, he sat down on the sofa to wait for Kat. Leigh had hated this sofa. She wanted something plush, she always said, something velvety and plump. Leigh had been right. A home was more than its walls of glass and hard furniture. He hadn’t given Leigh a comfortable home.
So many things he would do differently…his life was avalanching down…
The doorbell rang, and he answered.
Kat came inside, all business. She didn’t take off her shoes.
“This place-any chance I could get a tour?”
He led her around, explaining the mechanics of construction, telling her about tricky decisions he had made at the time, as if she was a potential client.