For the rest of the day they talked about Palouse-country sunsets, black Labradors, Chinook winds, honest people, their hatred of bureaucracy, and fishing for steelheads along the Snake River. They did a comparative study of their high-school classes, laughed at yuppies, exchanged horror stories, and not once did they spoil it by mentioning anything even slightly classified.
They walked along the beach halfway to Cape May and back, smiling at three-year-olds playing in the surf, savoring the old, old couple who hobbled barefoot along the tide line, picking up shells, getting pissed off at kids playing their boom boxes too loud, watching the seagulls wheel and dive for garbage. Late in the afternoon the sun vanished behind storm clouds, and they turned around and headed back. It was nearly dark by the time they returned to Wildwood. Some drunken yahoos passed close to them, but Paul’s bulk and Betsy’s lack of fear convinced them to go elsewhere. They finally encountered Cassie walking along arm in arm with Marcus Berry.
“Christine got called back to D.C., and Jeff went with her. Some kind of military-spook shit,” Cassie said. “Some weekend, huh?”
It was starting to rain. They walked through the gaudy strip of businesses along the beachfront and found their way into an Italian restaurant with a decent seafood menu. Continuing their unspoken policy of not talking about work, they had a normal, healthy, totally inconsequential conversation over dinner, rambling from movies to sports to the relative merits of Macintoshes versus PCs.
Cassie insisted on picking up the tab. Fumbling in her belt pack for her wallet, she came up with a white envelope. She blinked at it in momentary surprise, then handed it to Betsy. “Oh, I forgot,” she said. “Before he left, Jeff asked me to give you this.” Betsy turned the envelope over in her fingers; it was blank and unmarked. She folded it in half and stuck it in one of the innumerable pockets in her hiking shorts.
“Let’s get home,” Marcus said. “We’ve got a bottle of Sovetskoe Champanskoe Vino on ice.”
“I can’t drink that stuff,” Paul said. “The sugars fire up my asthma something terrible. But you guys go ahead, I’ll drink a beer.”
Paul and Betsy talked asthma all the way back to the house until Cassie threatened to draw her service weapon and silence them if they mentioned it again. The rain began to come down in earnest and the wind kicked up; their clothes were not nearly warm enough now. They gathered in the house’s living room, poured three champagnes and one beer, and Marcus proposed a toast: “To being outside D.C.” They touched cups and Paul added, “To better days.”
More toasts followed. For a while they made a token effort to talk in a foursome, but the attraction between Cassie and Marcus was as obvious as that between Paul and Betsy. Cassie announced that she was going to the bathroom to take a shower and walked out of the room, casually flicking off the lights as she departed. A few moments later Marcus followed her, and they didn’t come back. Betsy found that her head fit naturally and comfortably on Paul’s shoulder, and Paul found that his long arm went nicely around her big shoulders, and as the evening went on, they found any number of other ways to get closer.
They made out on the couch for a long, long time, serenaded by an endless parade of thumping car stereos out on the streets of Wildwood, gradually making their way to first base, second, third… and finally they were naked together. Paul was not in any hurry, which was nice. Betsy let him know that she was ready. Paul excused himself sweetly, ran back into the bathroom, and fumbled through his shaving kit for some condoms. When he came back, he had lost his erection. Nothing they did would bring it back—even though he’d been stubbornly hard from the first moment Betsy had put her head on his shoulder. “Sorry,” he finally said, “just one of those things.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I’ve waited thirty years, I can wait a little longer.”
“Oh. Well… I’d be lying if I claimed I’d waited that long.”
“That’s okay. I don’t insist that everyone be as pure and innocent as little old me,” Betsy said.
“Well… considering the kind of people you’re hanging out with now, that’s probably a good policy,” Paul said.
Chapter Eighteen
What kind of man would act as an accomplice in a plot to frame himself for a brutal first-degree murder, in a foreign land where everything was stacked against him?