So leave the television off and think about Huston, he told himself. Try to figure the guy out. Get inside his head. Walk around inside his brain awhile.
But he was too restless to maintain the necessary focus. Ariel’s scent had gotten under his skin, seeped into his pores. And Bonnie’s wisecracks, her quick, easy sarcasm… God, how he missed the company of a woman. He missed the touch and scent and warmth of a woman. A woman’s kindness and playfulness. A woman’s soulful gaze.
He could go back and sit with Ariel awhile longer, tell her that police officers are men too. Not that she would need to be told. He had detected, or believed he did, a sweetness beneath the playacting. Something real. If she had green eyes instead of brown, he might have wondered if she was Huston’s Annabel.
Instead of making the turn onto 417 that would have led him home again—the place he knew he should have gone, the only place he truly belonged, where no harm could be done to anyone but himself—he continued straight for another quarter mile, then followed the signs to the interstate, and twenty minutes later parked his car across the street from Laraine’s Cape Cod. He hated himself for the weakness that kept returning him here, two nights in a row now; hated his inability to shake off the naive belief in change.
He silenced the engine and slipped a CD into the player. Norah Jones sang to him about darkness and shady corners, sang, “Hot like to burn my lips. I know I can’t win.”
A light from Laraine’s living room shone pale blue through the curtains. He told himself, She’s probably reading, maybe listening to music. She was a teacher of English at an Erie prep school, taught literature and creative writing. She used to read to him in bed. Now she reads to herself, he thought. Reads to herself and picks up strangers in bars.
Sooner or later, she would lift her head and glance out the window. She seemed to always know, always intuit when he was out there. He told himself he didn’t want it to happen tonight. He told himself he would listen to Norah sing four songs—only four—and then he would start the engine and drive home again. He told himself that was what he wanted to happen.
In the middle of the third song, the porch light snapped on. He drew in his breath, winced as the old ache deepened, felt the disturbance in his chest that was like a stone dropped into a very deep well. So, she had looked out and seen his car. And now the front door would be unlocked. Next she would turn out the living room light… There, the window went dark. She’s going upstairs now, he thought. She’s waiting there at the top but I won’t go in this time. This time I’m not going in.
Norah sang, “Truth spoke in whispers will tear you apart…”
When he eased the front door open and stepped inside, she was standing in profile at the top of the stairs, facing the bedroom, her hand on the banister post. She was a shadow in a darkened house, and he felt heavy with the darkness that had brought them both to this place, always brought them here, kept them always in this darkness. She went into the bedroom then without looking down at him. He leaned against the door. Go home, he told himself.
But he knew he would not. He would not have come into the house if he intended to go home. He pried off his shoes and locked the door. First he went into the kitchen, washed his hands with dish soap. Then he went up the stairs.
In the darkened bedroom, with the curtains drawn, as always, and with even the radio turned to face the wall so that its dim blue glow cast no light upon the bed, he eased himself down beside her, smelled her scent in the darkness, felt the hollowness engulf him. “How are you?” he asked. His voice was a whisper and whiskey hoarse.
She said nothing. After a minute or two, she rolled onto her side and faced him. He could not see her body yet, but he felt its heat and knew that she was naked, and he wanted to fall against her, wanted to pull her close and drive this ache from them forever. But all he did was to raise a finger to her face, trace the softness beneath her jaw.
She moved her hand against him, slid her hand between his legs, cupped her hand around him through his khakis. He told her, “We don’t have to do this.”
She said nothing. She always said nothing.