Dublin Noir - Ken Bruen [19]
Drifting, Lowe smiled at the thought. How long before she’d known all about him—ten days, maybe? Two weeks? From his high school varsity letters and his dropping out of b-school, to his twenty years at the bank and his promotion, five years ago, to manager of the back-office—he’d told her everything. To which she’d nodded and looked into his eyes and said next to nothing about herself.
Not that Margot was the silent type. When it came to crude humor she held her own with the other clerks. She toned it down a little for him: some deferential teasing— subtle flattery, really; jokes about the size of the trades they were processing—how any one of them would make a nice lottery prize; and, inevitably, her favorite game—what if. What if you could go anywhere … do anything … start all over again? What if you knew then what you know now? What if you won the lottery?
Her daydreams were of travel—first class all the way. “And none of this nature shite, thank you—it’s cities only. Trees are fer parks, and animals fer zoos or eating.”
Lowe’s fantasies were more modest, but Margot coaxed him along.
“Would’ve gone easy on the pitching in middle school— saved my arm for later.
“Wouldn’t have majored in accounting.
“Would’ve traveled more—London maybe, or Paris.”
And then, on another Thursday, she’d coaxed him farther. Even as the words left his mouth, Lowe knew there was no going back.
“I wouldn’t have married so young, I guess … or maybe not at all.” His face burned and his eyes bored into the carpet. Margot didn’t answer, but when he looked up she was staring at him.
From his bubble, Lowe could see that sex was inevitable after that. Which isn’t to say that he wasn’t surprised when it happened, or that he didn’t nearly burst an artery when he saw that hard white body for the first time. A word had popped into his head then, something from high school English—what was it?
It was a Tuesday and there were accounts to balance and Lowe thought she’d be working late. He was surprised when she appeared in his doorway at 5:00, coat on her arm.
“I’m through those accounts and if there’s nothing else, I’m off,” she said. Disappointment hit him like a sandbag. Margot looked at him and at her watch. “You want a coffee before I go?” she asked. It blunted his upset a little and he nodded. But when they got to Water Street, Margot headed not for Starbucks but for a taxi. Lowe followed.
“There’s a place uptown you’ll like,” she said, and she said nothing else for the rest of the ride. The place was a sleek hotel in Murray Hill, where the desk clerks dressed better than Lowe. They nodded at Margot as she crossed the lobby. The room was large, and Margot kept the lamps off and opened the drapes and let the city light in. She pulled her shirt over her head and stepped out of her shoes and skirt.
“Look all you like now, Jimmy,” she whispered. “Fer as long as you like.” Alabaster. That was the word.
Her body was limber and smooth in a way that his wife’s had never been, even before the kids. Every time was better than the time before, and every time left him gasping and starving for more. The mattress was on the floor when they came up for air. Margot hit the minibar and brought back tumblers of John Jamesons. Lowe hadn’t been quite sober since.
Things moved quickly after that. Margot whispered in his ear—talk of what if and lottery tickets. She had it all worked out, and she had a friend in Europe—a Mr. Flynn—who knew useful things like how to launder money and how to get new passports. She made it sound so simple. One trade, identical to thousands of others in the system, except that it was fake. But there’d be nothing fake about the payment the system would wire out.
“Dead simple,” she’d said, and she was right.
Leaving his family was easier than he’d expected, too—at least at first. As images of Margot filled his head,