Straits of Fortune - Anthony Gagliano [60]
“What’s this all about, Jack? You should have stayed at Krome.”
“I should have stayed in New York.”
“You can’t go back to your apartment. For sure they’ll have sent a man out there by now. You know how it works after that.”
“I know. Anyway, I have a few stops to make first.”
“Where do you think your little girlfriend is?” She gave the word girlfriend a nasty twist when she said it.
“I’m not sure. Probably somewhere in South Beach.”
Susan sat staring at me, and judging by the expression on her face, I would say she considered me too far gone to reason with. She was right, but it wasn’t just Vivian I’d be looking for. I would be looking for Williams, too.
She stood up and stretched her arms over her head and made a half turn to her right so that her joints made a cracking sound. Even under those conditions it was hard not to notice the shape she was in. Her arms looked strong, but the triceps weren’t straining to break the skin. Under her jeans the slight bulge of her quadriceps told me she had kept at the wind sprints I’d prescribed for her. Those and a weight workout once a week had been all those legs of hers had required, that and trying to kick me upside the head whenever she had the chance.
“What are you looking at?” she asked.
“I did a good job on you.”
“Let’s go,” she said. “I want you out of here in twenty minutes.”
“Where are we going?”
“Come with me into the bedroom.”
“Thanks, but I don’t have the time right now. How about a rain check?”
Susan didn’t dignify the remark with an answer.
I stood up and followed her down the hallway. So great is the sensitivity of men that they will notice a woman’s ass even on their way to lethal injection. I had always considered the fact that I’d never made a pass at Susan one of my greatest accomplishments as a human being. Now I was wondering if I’d been ill.
By the time I reached the bedroom, Susan was already standing before the open door of her closet. I glanced around the room. There wasn’t much to look at. A red futon mattress against the wall, the sheets swirled and swept into a whirlpool at the center of the bed. There was an old-style rocking chair that sat with the air of a departed mourner facing the louvered windows, and along the other wall there was a white dresser with framed photos across its entire length. Unpacked cardboard boxes lined white walls hung with a few diplomas and official-looking certificates, and everywhere the air of loneliness kept at bay by a life of haste. Susan’s place was not so much a home as it was a pit stop between the office and the car. It was hard to believe she had lived here for as long as she said.
I watched as she tugged a pair of black trousers and a white dress shirt from their hangers. She turned and tossed them to me without a word, as though she were throwing them out the window. I felt the anger coming off her, and mixed with that anger was something else, maybe frustration. I caught the shirt and pants and laid them across my arm like a valet.
Without looking at me, Susan moved next to the dresser and began rummaging through a bottom drawer, and I began to think of the time when I’d had a drawer like that in Vivian’s place and what that drawer had meant and what it had not meant. She came up holding a pair of briefs and a pair of white sweat socks and threw them my way with the air of a woman glad to be rid of things not her own, as though the clothes were visitors who had overstayed their welcome. I caught the briefs but bungled the socks. When I straightened up, she was looking at me, and when I looked at her, I could see that the tears were on their way back.
“You can take a shower in there,” she said, pointing at the door to the bathroom. The door was as white as the barren walls and blended into them like snow on snow.
“Whose clothes are these?” I asked.
“My boyfriend’s. Ex-boyfriend, I should say.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“A lawyer at the Justice Department. About a week ago, he stopped calling. Turns out he forgot to tell me he was married.”
“How’d you find out?”
“His wife was nice enough