Death by the Book - Lenny Bartulin [40]
He had suspected the possibility, but hearing it surprised him. Now that it was clear, all of his assumptions shifted around a little, suddenly uncomfortable and awkward, like distant relatives at a wake. Durst flashed in his mind like a hazard light.
‘Runs in the family, then?’ said Jack.
‘What?’
‘Playing around. Six-figure imaginations and you guys still go for the one-dollar thrills.’
‘Excuse me?’ Annabelle straightened up.
A little blood rushed to Jack’s head. Who was he getting angry at? He looked at Annabelle, tried to see what her face revealed, but could not afford the entrance ticket. Truth was, Jack was the only one-dollar thrill round at Cumberland Gardens.
‘Celia must be a chip off the old block,’ he said, fiddling with the lighter in his pocket. ‘I saw your ex-husband leaving the sparkle shop the other day. Or are they just good friends?’
Annabelle opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She stood frozen, her lips slightly parted, soft and full. Jack almost went over and laid one on her. But as her face darkened, he realised now was probably not a good time.
‘I’ve got to send some faxes,’ she said. She crushed her half-smoked cigarette in an ashtray. Glass in hand, she walked out of the kitchen.
Jack looked around. The house was silent. A strange feeling overcame him: it was as if he were looking at himself through the window. Standing there, in somebody’s house, somebody he did not know. As though he had broken in, but now had no idea what he wanted.
He walked out into another hallway. From a nearby room on his left he could hear the beeping of office equipment. The door to the room was open. He went over and stood at the entrance. Annabelle was flicking through a small pile of paper.
Kasprowicz’s study: a warm cocoon of timber, leather and books. A gas heater burnt red through fake logs. There was a chess board set up on a small table in front of it, a couple of deep sofa chairs on either side, perfectly aligned. Jack scanned the bookshelves, thick with brown, black and maroon spines, all carefully lined up, every edge flush with its neighbour. He wondered if they had ever been taken down. White lace curtains filtered damp light in through a tall bay window, just behind a dark-stained desk that looked big enough to live in.
Annabelle sat behind the desk in her father’s thickly padded, green leather chair. She was turned to her left, feeding a page through the fax machine. Her eyes were wet but her expression gave nothing away.
‘Kass went to hospital the other night,’ said Jack. ‘After getting more ashes in the mail. Thought he was having a heart attack.’ He walked into the study, half-closing the door behind him.
‘We’ve all got to go sometime.’
‘True. But we don’t need help to get there.’
‘Everybody needs help.’
Annabelle stood up. As she reached for her glass of Scotch, Jack grabbed her wrist and drew her to him. She did not resist.
13
JACK SUSKO HAD NEVER FUCKED in a four-thousand-dollar leather chair before. Not with the wind whipping cold rain against the window outside and the mid-afternoon light discreet and a fake-log fireplace keeping his kidneys warm. He guessed it was just one of those days and decided not to think about it too much. Better to wallow in the after-glow. To think was to let the future in and Jack was in no hurry to get there any time soon.
So he went through everything again in his mind, tried to separate events into distinct moments: stretch them out, prolong the pleasure. They had kissed hungrily. They had ripped each other’s clothing off. Jack had even forgotten about his ten-odd stitches, until he lifted his arms as Annabelle pulled off his shirt and felt a hot tightness there and groaned with the pain. She had kissed around the wound, her warm hands against his hips. ‘You’d better sit back,’ she had said. ‘Let me take care of everything.’
Jack turned and watched a naked Annabelle Kasprowicz walk back into her father’s study, a bottle