Crooked Hearts (26 page)

He woke up cold and alone. It wasn’t morning—the room was still dark. Sitting up, he spied Grace in front of the window, holding the shade back to look outside. She threw a glance over her shoulder when he put his feet on the floor, but she didn’t speak. Following her lead, he crossed to the bureau in silence, uncorked the whiskey, and took a small swig from the bottle—the maid service at the Bunyon Arms had forgotten to put out glasses. He studied Grace while the cheap liquor warmed in his belly, noticing that she was back to rubbing her arms again in the sleeves of her yellow dressing gown. He took another sip of whiskey and went to her.

“Have a little snort,” he offered, holding out the bottle. “It’ll do you good.”

“No, thanks.” She smiled briefly, eyes flicking nervously over his naked body, then went back to staring out the window. He set the bottle on the sill. When he put his hand on the nape of her neck, she bared her teeth and dropped her head back. “This isn’t funny anymore,” she said tightly.

He went behind her and began to massage her shoulders. “Well, it is, sort of. When it’s all over, you’ll look back and—”

“No, I won’t.
You
will, but I won’t.”

He smiled to himself, thinking what a funny girl she was: she knew all about Spanish fly, but nothing, apparently, about touching herself. Must be the Catholic upbringing. He crossed his arms around her waist and she leaned back, warming him. Her body was beginning to feel as natural to him as his own. “Anything I can do for you?” he murmured neutrally, nuzzling her hair.

He waited patiently. A whole minute passed before she whispered, “Yes,” in a voice so soft he could hardly hear it. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

Her robe felt like warm water on his skin. He tugged at the lapels, uncovering her breasts. “Ah, Gracie, you’re so … pretty,” he said inadequately, caressing her, softly squeezing.

“Reuben, you don’t have to say—things.”

He put his cheek next to hers. “Do you think I don’t mean it?” Her pretty round breasts were so full his hands could barely cover them. He liked the way her nipples looked, sticking out between his fingers.

“I don’t know,” she sighed.

“I think you’re the prettiest girl I ever saw.” His hands trailed down to her stomach. “Look at this beautiful belly button.” He tickled it gently, playing with the tiny whorls. “And look at this pretty hair.” He made a comb of his fingers and separated the crisp curls with it. Grace made a sort of grinding noise and let her head fall back against his shoulder.

“Open your legs a little,” he said huskily. She sidled her feet a few inches apart, and he sleeked a finger down her soft, wet sex, opening the velvety wings. She reached out for the window rails and held tight to either side, moaning. He kept his touch gentle, even when she began to rub her cheek against the bristly whisker stubble on his jaw, deliberately abrading her skin. His name on her lips made him crazy; she said it over and over, until the syllables ran together and became meaningless. His own control was teetering, so he slipped his fingers inside her, thinking that would end it sooner for her.

But she surprised him by twisting in his arms to face him. “Take me to bed. Don’t you want to? I want it to be us. Not just touching, but—you and me, Reuben.” She Wound her arms around his neck and stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. “Let’s make love in bed.”

It sounded good to him. He picked her up and carried her to the bed.

She wanted him facing her, both of them sitting up, their legs wrapped around each other. He came into her gently, watching a host of fascinating expressions flicker across her face. “Is it all right if we kiss?” she whispered. For some reason that made him laugh. She smiled back, and they drifted into a slow, tender mouth-caress that became, for him, as arousing as anything they’d done all night. He had her silky breasts in his hands, and she mumbled unexpectedly against his lips, “Do you
sand
your thumbs?”

“What?”

“Nothing—don’t stop.”

Without breaking the kiss, they started a deep, slow rocking. He didn’t see how they could get any closer. He held her bottom in his palms and raised her while she hung onto his neck, gasping her pleasure into his mouth. He felt her stomach muscles harden—felt himself getting much too close to the verge. He dragged his mouth away and went still, desperate for a distraction.

“For God’s sake, Reuben—”

“Honey—”

“I want you to!”

“No, but—”

“I think you could put out the fire—once and for all—”

He held her tight to make her stop. “Think, Grace,” he pleaded. “You don’t want us to make a baby. That’s not what you want to do.”

“Oh, my dear.” She cupped his face in her hands, and the sudden sad tenderness in her eyes startled and confounded him. “My sweet Reuben. I promise you, we can’t make a baby. It’s not possible.”

He was burning for her, but he made himself say doggedly, “You can’t always go by what day of the month it is, sweetheart.”

“I know that.” She touched his lips lightly with hers, murmuring, “It won’t happen. Believe me. Love me, Reuben, make love to me.” Her mouth opened and she slipped her tongue between his lips, tickling the roof of his mouth.

His hold on her tightened and she fell back, back, pulling him on top of her, twining her legs around him again. “Yes,” she kept saying to everything he did. “Oh, God, Reuben. There, right there, right—yes.” Then she said a couple of words a nice Catholic girl shouldn’t know, and it tumbled him over the edge. He hooked his hands around her shoulders and pumped into her, his jaws grinding, body hunching, suffering the force swelling and gathering inside until he couldn’t hold anymore and he exploded. He called out her name in the intense heat of the moment, pounding into her helplessly. It went on and on, and when it was over he wanted more. Impossible; there was nothing left. How could he be this empty and feel this complete? Grace had her face turned to the side; her wild hair hid her expression. By slow degrees all his muscles gave out, and he sank down onto her as gently as he could.

She wasn’t moving. No idle, exhausted hand stroked his back, no grateful lips nuzzled his skin. He rested for a minute, listening to her breathing, which was soft and steady. Then he rolled to his side, taking her with him.

With their heads on the pillow, foreheads touching, he had to confess. “I, uh, sort of forgot about you at the end there, Gus. Was it okay? Did you, um … did you …” She just stared at him with her eyebrows raised, not helping. “Did you come?” he asked bluntly.

She seemed to think it over. Then she smiled a slow, lazy smile, sexy and mysterious. “Maybe. I’ll let you know in a minute.” She snickered at his tortured-sounding groan and burrowed deeper into the crook of his arm.

He grinned up at the ceiling, hugely relieved. He knew a satisfied woman when he felt one, and Grace had that sack-of-potatoes heft to her that meant all was well. “It was good, wasn’t it?” he gloated. In fact, it had never been better, at least for him. Maybe he’d absorbed some of the Godfather’s aphrodisiac, he thought whimsically. From her skin to his.

Grace caught his hairy thigh between her knees and gave it a squeeze, at the same time she pressed a kiss to his left nipple. “My shtarker,” she said on a yawn.

He chuckled. Some kind of strange, exhausted energy was filling him; he felt like talking—he had a hundred things to say. But when he looked down, he saw that she’d already fallen asleep, with her head on his shoulder. He kissed her, and whispered something he’d never said to anyone before. But he was safe. Even if she heard, she wouldn’t understand what he’d said, because he’d whispered it in a foreign language.

13

Nobuddy ever fergits where he buried a hatchet.

—Kin Hubbard

H
IS FIRST HINT WAS
the smell—a fresh, raw, grapey stab to the nose that made him afraid, at first, that a bottle of wine had burst. Maybe the Gewurztraminer from that phony Swiss vintner in Monterey he’d never trusted anyway, he had time to speculate in the second it took to pull the key out of the lock and push the door wide open. Even then, with the proof of it in front of him, around him, even behind him on the back of the door, Reuben’s brain couldn’t take it in.

Catastrophe.

He registered the broken, upended furniture and the ripped curtains, the crockery in pieces on the kitchen floor, the sofa spilling its cottony insides out on the slashed rug, the smoking remains of his desk— they must’ve burned it when they couldn’t open it. Finally the significance of the plum-colored stains on every wall penetrated the barriers of confusion he’d thrown up for protection, and he knew it was gone, all gone, every bottle in his collection. His Rieslings and Chardonnays, his Hermitage Syrahs, the Rülander Auslesen—smithereens. Madeiras and sherrys and muscats, pooling in fruity puddles at the bottom of the stairs. Sauvignons, the Trentino Gewurztraminer, all the Beaujolais, the Pinot Gris, the Pinot Noirs, all the Cabernets—gone, all gone, everything smashed to fragments against the four walls of his apartment.

His knees felt weak; he’d have sat down on the floor, except there was broken glass everywhere. He stumbled forward and saw the note pinned to the newel post.

Dear Reuben,

We are very disappointed on account of you having turned out to be a snake and a liar. I personally am deeply hurt, having thought you were on the square. My brother Jefferson says you are lower than snail slime, and I feel likewise. The boys think you don’t deserve a warning, but I am a benevolent person. Here is the warning: If we see you again, we will kill you.

Sincerely yours,

Lincoln Croaker

He pulled his watch from his pocket and flicked it open. Eleven o’clock. The time they’d agreed on for the payment was ten. One thing you could say about Lincoln, he was a stickler for punctuality.

Thinking about what else would’ve gotten smashed if he’d been on time—his head, for instance; many of his bones—finally got Reuben moving. He took the stairs two at a time, and saw without surprise as he passed his bedroom door that they’d trashed that room, too. The bathroom was the least vandalized, probably because everything in it was nailed down; the Croakers had contented themselves with shattering the mirror over the sink and pulling the toiletries off the shelves. In fear and dread, he closed the w.c. lid and stepped up on it. The heavy enamel cover over the water tank looked undisturbed. He shoved it sideways and peeked inside. “Yes! Stupid, ignorant bastards, blockhead sons of bitches,” he muttered, full of gladness and belated wrath as he reached in and pulled out his most precious possession: his bottle of Dom Perignon Premiere Cuvee, 1882. Perfect and unscathed. And taped next to it were the two twenty-dollar gold eagles he’d stashed here long ago for emergencies.

Closer inspection of the debacle of his bedroom revealed that Lincoln and the boys had exercised uncharacteristic restraint when they’d sacked it: everything Reuben owned was in shreds, while everything of Grace’s was perfect. He found the traveling case Henri—
Henry,
rather; Henry the non-husband—had sent Grace with her clothes, and stuffed it with a hasty selection of skirt, shirtwaist, underwear, stockings, and shoes.

Downstairs, he found an unbroken pencil amid the wreckage, and wrote a note to Mrs. Finney on the back of an untorn envelope. He put one of the twenty-dollar gold pieces inside, and set it on top of the newel post. With a last doleful look around—brief, though; if he lingered, he was afraid he’d burst into tears—he said good-bye to the house he’d lived in for almost a year, a record for him, and walked out.

Nobody suspicious-looking was loitering around the Bunyon Arms. Nobody
Chinese
and suspicious-looking, that was; the denizens of this neighborhood looked more or less unsavory at all times, though less so at this early hour than they would later on in the day. The same white-haired clerk was manning the front desk, with the same diligence and attention to detail. Reuben walked past him without disturbing his rest, and went upstairs.

“Who is it?” called Grace when he tapped at the door.

Various corny, flirtatious answers occurred to him. Since he didn’t know her mood yet—she’d been dead to the world and unwakeable when he’d left—he answered prosaically, “Reuben.”

The key turned in the lock. He waited, but the door didn’t open. After a few seconds, he let himself in.

She was all the way across the room already, busy at the washstand, splashing and washing, wringing and drying. She had her yellow-robed back to him, and she threw a quick “Morning” over her shoulder without turning her head enough for him to see her face.

“Morning,” he hazarded, setting the traveling bag down on the bed. “Brought you some clothes.”

“Oh? I was wondering mfpgwhg.”

“Pardon?”

She took the wet towel away from her face. “I wondered where you went,” she said to the wall, and went back to splashing.

“Ah. Well, that’s where I went, all right. Home to get you some clothes.” The rest was too painful to speak of yet; he’d tell her in a minute. He stood with his hands in his pockets in the center of the room, watching her repetitive-looking ablutions, pondering his next conversational sally. Nothing seemed safe enough; even “How are you feeling?” was freighted, if you thought about it, with meanings and implications and complications he didn’t care to get into right now.

Maybe he’d dreamed last night. That would explain why Grace was treating him with all the warmth and friendliness of a bus conductor. He was dying to know what the night had meant to her, if anything. It had meant something to him, although he hadn’t had time to figure out exactly what. The most amazing part was this extremely strange
gladness
he had inside. His world had just gone to hell: he had nowhere to live, five American and who knew how many Chinese men were trying to kill him, his possessions had shrunk to twenty dollars and a bottle of champagne—and yet he couldn’t remember, drunk or sober, ever being this happy. His body and mind felt right with each other for a change, and his spirit, whatever that was, felt comfortable. He was a contented man.