Wine time! LOL!
I study the woman in the background of the photo. The dark blur that had so fascinated me the first time I saw it. I stare at the picture, as if I can will the image into focus. The best I can do is squint, trying to make my vision as blurry as the object in the photo and hope they balance each other into clarity. It works to an extent. A white smudge emerges in the far edge of the dark blur. Within that smudge is a drop of red.
Lipstick.
Sam’s lipstick.
As bright as blood.
Seeing it makes my body hum with an internal acceleration. I feel like I’ve been strapped to a bottle rocket, hurtling through the ozone, streaking sparks until we both explode.
CHAPTER 27
The kitchen is cleaned and my bags are packed by the time Jeff gets home from work. One suitcase. One carry-on. He stands in the doorway to our bedroom, blinking, as if I’m a mirage.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going with you,” I say.
“To Chicago?”
“I bought my ticket online. Same flight, although we can’t sit together.”
“You sure?” Jeff asks.
“It was your idea.”
“True. It’s just very sudden. And what about Sam?”
“You said yourself that we can leave her alone for a few days,” I say. “She’s not a dog, remember?”
In truth, I hope she’ll be gone when we return. Quietly. Without fuss. A scorpion in such a hurry to get away that it forgets to sting.
Jeff, meanwhile, looks around the bedroom as if for the last time and says, “Let’s hope there’s something left when we get back.”
“I’ll take care of that,” I say.
Sam doesn’t return until late in the night, long after Jeff and I have gone to bed. Before we leave for the airport in the morning, I knock on the door to her room. After several knocks and no answer, I crack open the door and peer inside. Sam’s in bed, comforter pulled to her chin. The blanket ripples as she thrashes beneath it.
“No,” she moans. “Please don’t.”
I rush to the bed and shake her by the shoulders, barely getting out of the way before she bolts upright, wide awake.
“What’s going on?” she says.
“A nightmare,” I say. “You were having a nightmare.”
Sam stares at me, making sure I’m not part of the bad dream. She looks like a woman just rescued from drowning—red-faced and damp. Hair sticks to her sweat-soaked cheeks in long, dark strands that resemble seaweed. She even does a little shake, as if trying to flick away excess water.
“Whoa,” she says. “That was a bad one.”
I sit on the edge of the bed, tempted to ask her what she was dreaming about. Was it Calvin Whitmer and his sack-covered face? Or was it something else? Maybe Lisa, bleeding out in the bathtub. But Sam keeps looking at me, knowing something is about to happen.
“Jeff and I are going away for a few days,” I say.
“Where?”
“Chicago.”
“Are you kicking me out? I can’t afford a hotel.”
“I know,” I say, keeping my tone calm and even. Nothing I say can upset her. That’s vital. “You can stay here while we’re gone. Kind of like a house sitter. Maybe do some baking, if you feel like it.”
“I’m down with that,” Sam says.
“Can Jeff and I trust you?”
A pointless question. Of course I don’t trust her. It’s why I’m going to Chicago with Jeff in the first place. Leaving her behind is my only option.
“Sure.”
I remove the cash I had stuffed into my pocket right before coming into the room. Two rumpled hundred-dollar bills. I hand them to Sam.
“Here’s some walking-around money,” I say. “Use it for food, maybe go to the movies. Whatever.”
It’s a bribe and Sam knows it. Rubbing the bills together, she says, “Don’t house sitters also get some sort of fee? You know, for looking after the place. Making sure everything’s fine.”
While she frames it as a perfectly reasonable question, it doesn’t keep the betrayal I feel from stinging like a slap. I remember Sam’s first night here, how Jeff flat-out asked if she had come seeking money. She denied it, and I had believed her. Now I get the feeling that’s the only reason she’s here. Everything else was just a means to that end.
“How does five-hundred sound?” I say.
Sam appraises the room. I can see her doing the math in her head, weighing the potential value of each object.
“A thousand sounds better,” she says.
I grit my teeth. “Of course.”
I leave to fetch my purse, returning with a check made payable to Tina Stone and post-dated for the day after Jeff and I are scheduled to return. Sam says nothing when she sees the date. She simply folds the check in half and places it with the cash on the nightstand.
“Do you still want me here when you get back?” she says.
“That’s up to you.”
Sam smiles. “It really is, isn’t it?”
On the plane, the solo business traveler next to me kindly agrees to switch places with Jeff, allowing us to sit together. During takeoff, Jeff grabs my hand and gives it a gentle squeeze.
After landing and checking into our hotel, we have an entire afternoon and evening alone together. Gone is the awkwardness of two nights ago, when Sam’s absence was as noticeable as a missing pinkie finger. We stroll the downtown blocks around our hotel, the tension from the past week thawing in the breeze blowing off Lake Michigan.
“I’m glad you came along, Quinn,” Jeff says. “I know it didn’t seem that way last night, but I mean it.”
When he reaches for my hand, I gladly take it. It helps having him in my corner. Especially considering what I intend to do.
On the walk back to the hotel, we’re both taken with a dress in a boutique window. It’s black and white, with a cinched waist and a skirt that flares outward like a Fifties-era Dior.
“Right off the Paris plane,” I say, quoting Grace Kelly in Rear Window. “Think it will sell?”
Jeff stammers, Jimmy Stewart-style. “Well, see, that depends on the quote.”
“A steal at eleven-hundred dollars,” I say, still Grace.
“That dress should be listed on the stock exchange.” Jeff drops the charade, becoming himself again. “And I think you should buy it.”
“Really?” I say, also turning into myself again.
Jeff flashes that widescreen smile. “It’s been a rough week. You deserve something nice.”
Inside the shop, I’m relieved to learn the dress’s price tag is slightly less than my Grace Kelly estimate. Discovering that it fits brings more relief. I buy it on the spot.
“A dress like that deserves an occasion to match,” Jeff tells me. “I think I know just the place.”
We dress for dinner, I in my new frock and Jeff in his sharpest suit. Thanks to the hotel concierge, we’re able to get a late reservation at the city’s hippest, most crazy expensive restaurant. At Jeff’s encouragement, we splurge on the nine-course tasting menu, washing it down with a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Dessert is a chocolate souffle so divine that I beg the pastry chef for the recipe.
Back at the hotel, Jeff and I become different people. Buzzed on wine and our foreign surroundings, we’re flirtatious and sensual. I kiss him slowly while unknotting his tie, the stubbled silk winding around my fingers. Jeff takes his time with my dress. I shiver as he inches the zipper lower, my back arching.
His breath grows heavier when the dress drops to the floor. He grips my arms, hurting them just a little. There’s lust in his eyes. A wildness I haven’t seen for ages. It makes him look like a stranger, dangerous and unknowable. I’m reminded of all those rough and tumble frat boys and football players I had slept with after Pine Cottage. The ones not afraid to yank off my panties and flip me over the bed. The ones who didn’t care who I was or what I wanted.
My body trembles. This is promising. This is what I need.
But then it’s gone, the mood falling away with the same ease as Jeff’s tie slipping from my hands. I’m not even aware of its passing until we’re on the bed and Jeff is inside me, suddenly his usual maddeningly conscientious self. Asking me how I feel. Asking me what I want.