The man shook his head and grinned the way you do when a story ends up just as it should. “Good for him,” he said. Then he let out a chuckle, his eyes like the ripples in the ocean. “Good for Poolie.” He put his hand on the armrest of his chair, and his body stilled. Mary rested her hand over his, feeling the rough skin of his knuckles.
Mary sat that way for a few minutes. Then she quietly stood and stepped out of the room, opening the door, then coaxing it shut again. The man’s smile didn’t change. His expression wasn’t altered. He would still look much the same the next day when housekeeping found him. He had died of a massive stroke in the night, a blood vessel bursting quietly and catastrophically in his brain.
Thirty-four
1989
Jake loved Mary the way many men had loved Mary: madly. They’d go to the dark end of the Sea Cliff parking lot, hidden from the bright, graceful swaths of light that crisscrossed the building’s exterior. He’d be waiting for her, leaning against his car, his arms crossed over his chest. She’d put the Blazer in park and stare out through the windshield, beyond which was a narrow walkway, a railing, and then a great plunging cliff where the earth seemed to be cleaved into ocean. He’d open the Blazer’s door and get in the passenger’s seat.
She would feel his hand on her thigh, feel his breath near her ear. “Let’s go somewhere,” Jake would whisper. He’d grown up poor but took pains to hide it; for him, fucking girls in parking lots held no nostalgic charm.
“No” was all Mary would say, her gaze still straight ahead. She’d unbutton her jeans, arching her back and lifting her hips to slide them off. She’d turn and kneel on the seat, and for the first time that night, she’d look at him. Then she’d lift her leg, move her body on top of his, and he’d reach for the lever that lowered the seat back.
If Mary had a weakness, it was pleasure. And as soon as he pulled off her shirt, as soon as she felt his hands on her bare back, as soon as she felt the warmth of him in the cold truck, Mary would bring her hand to his cheek, and for a few minutes, she would love him back.
And when it was over, when he relaxed against the seat, his breath quick and his body loose, Mary would slide off again. She’d pull her jeans up and put her sweatshirt back on, lifting the hood up to cover her head. Then she’d open the Blazer’s door, push it shut behind her, and walk toward Sea Cliff, her hands in her pockets, without a word of farewell.
Jake would watch her while she worked. He’d sit in his car in front of the hotel and stare at the front desk through Sea Cliff?’s broad sparkling windows as if Mary were something exotic and wondrous. As if she were on exhibit. Sometimes he’d sit there all night.
“I hope Greens Fees isn’t going all Fatal Attraction on you,” Curtis would say. Mary would glance at the spot where she knew he was, though the windows threw back only the lobby’s reflection. “You don’t have a rabbit at home, do you?”
And Mary felt her face twist, disliking the reference, disliking its irony.
While the morning was still new and black, Mary would leave Sea Cliff. And Jake would follow her home. She’d drive fast with the windows down, and she’d see him in the rearview mirror. This was what it was like, she supposed, to be tracked.
“Who’s that guy outside?” Hannah asked one morning, her mouth full of toothpaste. She was brushing her teeth for school and pulling back the metal blinds of the front window, the bathroom less than a dozen steps away. Jake was sitting in the parking lot below watching their building.
Mary walked over and peered out. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she muttered, as his eyes met hers. Then she stomped out of their apartment without another word.
Jake got out of the car as soon as he saw her. “Hey, baby,” he said.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her arms crossed over her chest.
He put his hands on her hips. She pushed them away. He brought them right back. “I just wanted to make sure you got home okay.” He nodded up toward Hannah, who was still looking out the window. “Is that your sister?”
“You can’t come here, Jake.”
“I just want to see where you live,” he said, trying to bring himself closer, trying to brush the hair away from her face. “Where you sleep.”
“Don’t do it again,” said Mary, then she turned and walked back up the stairs, her sneakers squeaking on the treads.
“Who was that?” asked Hannah, still standing by the window.
Mary shook her head, then let her eyes wander around the two small rooms that were their home. She looked at the worn industrial carpet of the living room. At the stained linoleum of the kitchen and the thin metal transition that separated one from the other. She let her shoulders slacken. This place was just for her and Hannah. “Just some guy,” she said.
Hannah looked back out the window. She was still holding her toothbrush, her lips rimmed with toothpaste. “He’s leaving.”
Mary crossed the room, picked up a blanket from the floor, and settled down on the couch, pulling the blanket up over her as she lay on her side. “Good,” she said, sliding her hands between her knees.
“He was cute,” Hannah said, as his car turned onto the main road away from the apartment.
“I’m sorry,” Jake would say, later that night. He and Mary would be in the Oak Room. His hands would be over her breasts, his chest to her back. “I shouldn’t have come today.”
“You’re not my boyfriend, Jake,” Mary would say, her eyes closing as he pressed into her.
Then Mary would feel her black skirt slowly slide up past her thighs. “I know,” he’d answer. “I know I’m not.”
For Christmas, he gave her a pearl necklace. On New Year’s, he gave her the matching earrings. Mary continued meet him before work. And when he would buy Mary something, she’d take it. She didn’t believe in gracious refusals; she didn’t care what it cost him or how he got it. He gave her pleasure and he gave her things and so he could be with her.
Then one day he picked Hannah up from school.
It was early in the morning, and Mary had just gotten home from work. The lights in the apartment were on, and Hannah was awake. “Hey,” Mary called, as she dropped her bag on the floor. “You’re up early.”
“Hi!” Hannah called back. She was in the bathroom doing her hair with the curling iron Mary bought her for Christmas. “Can you drive me today?”
Mary closed her eyes. “Can’t you just take your bike?”
“I left it at school,” Hannah replied.
Mary paused, her question coming slowly to her sleep-starved mind. “Then how’d you get home?”
Hannah leaned her head out of the bathroom. “Your boyfriend,” she said. “Jake.”
Mary arrived before him at Sea Cliff that night, waiting in their usual spot at the far end of the parking lot. Mary was already out of the Blazer when he arrived. When he opened his door, she looked right at him. “Hey, baby,” he said, his face cautious.