Mystery Dance: Three Novels (75 page)

“If we get to know each other, then we won’t be strangers.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” she said.

“Look, I just want to walk. No promises. Besides, I’m engaged.”

“Really? I thought you said you were gay.”

Engaged. He wasn’t sure where the lie came from. Maybe it was part of this new natural self, the true Jacob that had drawn courage from the interest displayed in her eyes. Maybe he was a stone liar deep in the real heart of himself. “Just once around the block. That’s all.”

“Let me tell the sisters. I don’t want them to worry, plus–”

“–if I turn out to be a maniac, they’ll have a good description to give to the police.”

“I don’t think you’re a maniac. You’re just nuts.” The smile went off like a photographer’s flash. “So tell me your name.”

For a moment, he almost said “Joshua.” His hand trembled. It wanted to be wrapped around the handle of a cold mug. His liver screamed at his betrayal. His entire body, his skeletal structure, his very cells, had been anticipating a long soft ride into oblivion, and now this other creature had come along and spoiled the fun.

“Jacob,” he said. “Jacob Wells.”

“A good, trustworthy name. Not at all the kind of name a serial killer would go by. I’m Renee.”

“That’s one of my favorite names.”

“Hey, don’t go corny. You were doing so well there.”

The turntable needle started its third trip through “Crimson and Clover.” The sorority sisters were looking over at them and bending their heads together, no doubt sizing up Renee’s prospects. They probably saw a guy doomed for the lower middle class who’d probably end up teaching English in elementary school and building birdhouses in his garage for fun. He wondered what their opinion would be if they’d have known he was in line to inherit seven million and a half or so.

“I was being sincere,” Jacob said, and for a moment, he felt outside himself again, as if he were still sitting at the bar watching a carbon copy perform. A little of the old fear returned, and he struggled to hide it. The room suddenly seemed oppressive, the noise and bright lights and strong aromas hitting him in waves. Even the crimson and clover over and over was making him reel.

“Something wrong?” Renee asked.

Jacob fought for control. Not here. Not when he was close to being human, a normal guy making a normal pass, hitting on a babe and sealing the deal.

He managed a smile. “Just wondering what your friends will say.”

“Back in a minute. I want to say bye.”

“I’ll meet you by the door.”

She left him and headed for the table where her sorority sisters had started on a third pitcher. He stumbled through the crowd, at times almost swimming in the sea of drunken people, and their laughter was as tilted and disorienting as carousel music. If he didn’t reach the door, he was going to….

He wasn’t sure. Explode. Start screaming. Fall to the floor and flop around in the sour beer and grime.

But then the door swung open and he was in the sun, or at least the shaded stairwell. Autumn’s brisk scents swept his head clear and he leaned against the concrete block wall until the trembling stopped. Had it been real, or had he imagined it all? How many beers had he downed this time? Had he blacked out?

The door opened and she emerged from the dimness, the chorus of “Crimson and Clover” leaking from the bar. “Around the block,” she said.

It had been real. He wiped his forehead, hoping she didn’t notice the sweat beneath his eyes. He took a slow breath of September’s sweetness and caught a faint, teasing whiff of her hair. The shampoo had the sort of scent he would use if he were a woman. Subtle and suggestive of the country, meadows and flowers.

They walked down the buckled sidewalk, talking of nothing, astronomy, what they did when all the students were at football games and the campus was dead, why Kurt Vonnegut was better than Ernest Hemingway. The best time to go to the library, the worst time to do laundry. They finished the block and turned left instead of heading back to the bar. She knew a small park near campus where there was a creek and some statues.

Talk turned to family. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” she asked.

“No.” It was the first real lie he ever told her. Besides that silly business about being engaged. And that his name was Jacob, not Joshua.

They didn’t spend the night together. She was honest about not sleeping with strangers. He was plenty satisfied with nothing more than a promise to get together sometime soon. The “soon” ended up being lunch the next day. Renee had to study for an exam and Jacob visited Ogre’s for old time’s sake, but his heart wasn’t in it. He could still walk a straight line by the time he headed home. By Monday, they were in daily contact and within two weeks were meeting on campus between classes. He had her over to his cramped apartment and one night she cooked dinner for him in the house she shared with yet more of her sorority sisters.

On a rainy night in November, while drinking wine in his apartment, she took his hand and kissed his lips in a different way than before. His hands went for her sweater and she helped him lift it over her head. She smelled like ripe fruit and warm honey, all the delights of the world, and he took great pleasure in exploring her soft folds and moist, secret places.

“Take it slow,” she whispered.

The only thing that could have made the moment better was if Joan Jett and the Blackhearts had been on the radio, performing their remake of the 1968 hit by Tommy James and the Shondells.

Crimson and clover, over and over.

They exchanged presents at Christmas, and he resisted the urge to spend a lot of money on her. Instead, he got her a leather-bound copy of
The Raven And Other Poems
by Edgar Allan Poe because it was precisely not the sort of romantic gift she might expect. She outdid him by slipping some photographs of herself under his front door. They had been professionally done in a studio and in them she wore nothing but silver tinsel and a smile. On the back of the envelope, she had written in magic marker: “The next best thing to being there.”

By spring semester, they had become a serious item without any negotiation. Jacob finally told her about his dad, who was a developer, county commissioner, and owner of hundreds of acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Jacob managed it without bragging and also without bitterness. Renee’s eyebrows had lifted at the mention of wealth, but she didn’t press him about it. They planned an Easter visit to her folks’ place at Myrtle Beach, separate rooms because her parents were conservative Catholics. That meant Jacob had to reciprocate by scheduling a summer visit to the Wells homestead.

He was ashamed of his father’s obscene wealth, especially since the corrupt largesse of the Reagan years had caused a social shift toward a lack of generosity. His mother was already dead, but he didn’t share any of the details with Renee. The last vestige of family dignity rested on the hunched shoulders of Warren Harding Wells, a man with a long memory and an even longer list of enemies. Some of the enemies even shared his genetic material.

The visit was short and unsuccessful. Jacob didn’t want Renee to see the family photographs, to learn anything about his past. They rented a motel room and met his father for dinner instead. Renee was fascinated with the Wells estate, the plantation-style house with the land stretching from ridge to ridge. Jacob gave her an abbreviated tour, veering away from the places that held his deepest memories.

The three of them sat down at the table, eating summer squash and wax beans from the garden raised by what his father referred to as “them damned Mexicans.” The old man was an abrasive piss ant as usual, grilling Renee as if she were only in the relationship for a free meal. Renee lost her appetite before Warren Wells could put the roast on the table.

During dessert, the old bastard had said to Jacob, “Joshua always had better taste in women. Too bad he went balls-up over a taco.”

“Who’s Joshua?” Renee, pale and anxious, reached for her wine and knocked over the glass.

Jacob dabbed at the spill. “An old friend from high school.”

Old Man Wells almost spewed his custard in laughter. “Don’t tell me you’re not over that yet?”

“I’m way over it.” He took Renee by the arm and ushered her from the table. “I’ll pay you back for the tab,” he said to the old man.

“Damned right you will. In blood.”

As they left, Renee saw the picture in the foyer. Warren Wells and wife, with two Jacobs. “Twins,” she said. “Which one are you?”

It took Jacob a moment to pick out himself in the photo.

“So Joshua’s your brother?”

“I don’t want to ever talk about him.”

In the car on the way back to the hotel, Renee said, “You’ll talk about it. Your father seemed a little harsh. I can’t imagine being raised under his roof.”

“Bringing you here was a mistake. I don’t know what I thought I’d prove. Maybe I was hoping to impress him for once.”

“By using me as your bauble?”

“Sorry. It was unfair.”

She reached over and squeezed his thigh. “I don’t mind being used by you.”

He grinned and tried a bad Humphrey Bogart accent. “Come to my room, then, sweetheart. I think we can arrange something.”

The summer passed in a sweat. Jacob worked as a clerk in a sporting goods store and she waited tables in a nice Italian restaurant. They spent almost every night together. Sometimes after making love she would tell about her past, the summer church camps she attended, her time on the high school swim team, the family’s car trip to Alaska when Renee had a terrible toothache that got worse in the cold.

Jacob stayed silent during those moments of sharing, in that wee hour of the night when secrets were thin and souls laid bare. He offered nothing, instead turning the conversation back to Renee. She accused him once of being frigid, but he tickled her into submission to prove that he was as sensitive as the next guy. Another time she said he was too mysterious to be trustworthy, and he ended that line of probing by kissing her until her lust was rekindled. She tried to question him about Joshua or his mother, but that turned him surly so she gave up.

The nights spilled into days and passed in a blur, as delightful and dizzying as a child’s merry-go-round. He would think, “So this is what being alive feels like.”

Somehow, he expected more, but he had no frame of reference, nothing with which to compare this experience. Certainly not his own past, having been raised in that large home that was as loveless as a mausoleum. He couldn’t name or even recognize what was missing, couldn’t identify the holes in his heart. He just knew he loved Renee and he felt greedy for admitting there was anything worthwhile beyond that.

If he focused all his attention on Renee, he could forget about Joshua and all the things Joshua had. Jacob found himself in the Izods and Dockers more and more often, with Renee’s encouragement and praise. The clothes fit him like a costume, and when the new semester started, he registered for more business classes, as if his father’s constant imploring had finally broken through the thick skull Jacob had always been accused of having. He slowed down on the drinking, too, and sometimes wondered who this new person was who had taken over his body.

They made a Labor Day visit to Myrtle Beach, a break from the rigors of senior year. Renee’s father made the suggestion that anyone thinking of settling down should have some form of long-term prospects.

“Settling down,” Renee said as they walked the beach that night. “Is that what we’re doing?”

He took her hand and stopped her, kissed the salt from her forehead. “I think we are.”

“Not this way, then. Down on your knees, boy.”

He knelt in the cool sand and held her hand and looked up into the second-loveliest face he had ever seen. The moon was full but was shamed by the brightness of her eyes, despite the thickness of her lenses. The surf whispered a thousand pieces of advice. “Will you marry me?

“You didn’t even need to ask.”

“You made me.”

“I’m still a woman, and don’t you ever forget it.”

He hadn’t. The wedding was held the June after their graduation. They spent the summer in Raleigh in his small apartment. Renee’s passion for cleanliness quickly put the place in order. Jacob was promoted to assistant manager in the sporting goods store and Renee was hostess at the Italian restaurant. For her, it was better money and she didn’t smell as intensely of garlic and oregano. For him, it meant a discount on golf clubs, the sport of future wheeler dealers. The summer passed like a dream, a perfect couple with the whole future waiting ahead, and they spent most of their free time together.

Except for one night in August.

Table of Contents

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DEAD AIR

(A short story from the mystery collection
Curtains
, which you read about at
Haunted Computer
. Eleven tales of murder and mayhem, with bonus tales from J.A. Konrath and Simon Wood. View it for
Kindle at Amazon
)

I leaned back in my swivel chair, my headphones vice-gripping my neck. The VU meters were pinned in the red, and Aerosmith had the monitor speakers throbbing. I turned down the studio sound level and pressed the phone to my ear, not believing what I’d heard.

“I’ve just killed a man,” she repeated, her voice harsh and breathless.

“Come again, sister?”  I said, pulling my feet off the console. My brain was a little slow in catching on. I was two hours into the graveyard shift, and the before-work beers were crashing into my third cup of cold coffee like Amtrak trains.

“I’ve just killed a man,” she said for a third time. She was a little calmer now. “I just wanted to share that with you. Because I’ve always felt like I could trust you. You have an honest voice.”

I potted up the telephone interface and broadcast her live to my loyal listeners. All three of them, I chuckled to myself. In five years at WKIK, The Kick, I’d come to accept my humble place in the universe. The only people tuned in at this hour were hepped-up truckers and vampire wannabes, the unwashed who shied from the light of day. I’d long ago decided that I might as well keep myself amused. And now I had a nutter on the line.