Shadow Traffic (26 page)

The next thing he knew her tongue was in his mouth, then he didn't think anymore, just felt her tongue. He wanted to close his eyes but kept them open, unable to resist the sight of Louise Leloch, bona fide Hollywood sex symbol, kissing him. He only wished he'd brought his camera so he could photograph her. Meanwhile, her tongue was making a series of complicated loops and probes all very skillfully executed, and he had to concentrate to be able to respond properly. He could hear her breathing, could feel her hands—finally he closed his eyes. But the moment he did, he saw an image of Sarah's face with that eternally hopeful, believing expression in her face when he proposed. Who was he kidding? He wouldn't be able to do this under these circumstances. Sarah was the only woman he'd been able to have sex with in almost five years.

He waited till one of her deep probes ended and then pulled away from her.

“What's the matter?” she said.

“I'm sorry, I can't.”

“What?” she said. “Are you kidding?”

“No, I can't. There's someone I love, so I can't. It's my fiancée.”

“Sweetie, I love someone, too. What do you think I've been talking about all afternoon?”

He shrugged, in spite of himself. Looking down, he was surprised
to discover that one of his buttons was missing from his shirt. She must have torn it while she was massaging his chest.

“You know how much I love Eric, right?”

“Yes,” he said, “of course I know.”

“I can barely say two sentences without talking about him. I mean, this was supposed to be my interview, but it ended up being all about him just like all my other interviews.”

He looked up from his shirt and saw that she was watching him closely.

“Well,” she said, straightening her own clothes, “this is a first. I thought you were going to say you were gay or had some kind of injury or something.”

“No, it's just that …”

“Don't say any more, OK?” she said, holding up one of her hands. “I heard you the first time. It was just a mistake I made—it's no big deal.”

“OK. Well, would you like me to finish the interview?”

“I'd like you to go now, Jaime, that's what I'd like.”

“All right then, if that's what you want.”

“And I don't want you to print that interview, all right?”

He looked at her. Something in her tone of voice frightened him, reminded him of her deep pockets and powerful connections.

“OK then.”

“I'd feel much better if you'd give me the tape right now. Then I think we could be friends and there'd be no more issues between us.”

He felt another jolt of pain at the thought of handing over the tape and closed his eyes again for a second. “Here,” he said. “Here's the tape.”

She couldn't help seeing the symbolism as she flushed the toilet. It was like flushing away another botched interview. Yes, another potential boost to her career floating away along with another bit of her self respect. Her record was intact—always a before the interview trip to the bathroom and always one after, where she had to deal with her weakness and ineptitude and now her fear that Jaime would try to find some way to sell what he heard and what happened between them. Another thing she'd have to try to explain to Eric, who'd be home before she knew it.

He was late—which she expected—but she wouldn't say anything about it. She was watching TV in bed when she heard the key turn in the door. Then she shut it off and jumped up to greet him, feeling like an oversized poodle—but she knew he liked her to be at the door the moment he arrived. Amazing how trained her ears had become that she could always hear the sound of the key immediately through the TV or music she was listening to—through anything. She was wearing a short black silk bathrobe the size of a miniskirt and a pink thong, both of which she'd bought at Frederick's of Hollywood. That was the way he liked her to dress around the house, like a Playboy playmate. He'd even said to her before they married, “if you're not wearing any underwear when I come home, that means you want me badly; if you're wearing a thong, that means you're persuadable; if you're wearing that fifties kind of underwear you used to wear when I met you, that means you have cramps, or something worse, and if I do you, you can consider it rape.”

She was standing in front of him in her “playmate pose” awaiting his next move, but all he did was kiss her half-heartedly. Not
even his usual “playful” spanking. He suspects something, she thought, turning to get him a drink.

“You want the usual?” she said.

“Make it a double.”

She saw Jaime's face again while she fixed his Scotch, and shuddered. She waited till it ended before she handed Eric his drink because she could never be sure he couldn't “see through” whatever expression she'd put on her face and know what she was really thinking—as easily as he'd read the headlines in
Variety
.

“Tough day?” she said, forcing herself to make eye contact, lest he wonder why she wasn't.

“Don't even ask,” he said, turning away from her. He looked tired. It would be another night when he wouldn't want her, and even though everything indicated it was her best day to get pregnant, she wouldn't say anything more about wanting a baby tonight, that was for sure.

She told him she needed to clean up some things. After all, they were going to L.A. tomorrow—and he bought it, or was too tired to care. She puttered around the living room and kitchen and in less than ten minutes heard him snoring. She knew she was supposed to go to bed herself then but drifted toward the picture window instead. She looked down at the soft, lemony-looking cars, as quiet as plants, as they moved along Park Avenue. She couldn't believe Jaime had rejected her. She felt she could have gotten pregnant for sure with him and with Eric's ego, he'd never question it.

She looked at the cars again. It would be quite a disruption if she jumped and landed among them. It would probably make
her immortal—Eric always said death was the ultimate publicity stunt for anyone under thirty (which she still was, or at least looked like).

She closed her eyes to picture her jump of death, but when she did, she saw herself jumping again, as a little girl, from the tractor into the hay below—a happy prisoner once more of her yellow world.

I would have stayed in the other place longer but the false teeth in the bathroom upset me. It was like walking along a beach looking for shells and suddenly seeing a dead lobster. A bad sign, a bad omen, so I knew I had to quit the house and go to the other I'd been considering on Silver Place. I couldn't even remember now why I hadn't gone there before and wondered what that said about me.

The outdoors was full of scares. Tried to keep my eyes closed as much as possible and find my way to Silver Place like a bat. It had taken weeks to learn about the house—its locks and security system—(I used to be a locksmith years ago). I even posed as a sewer worker, which was a risk since I lived nearby, but it worked! Found out it was a single-occupant house, the best kind for me, and that the lady of the house was planning an out-of-state trip to visit her daughter. Managed to find that out by chatting her up a bit. I also saw how I could get in from the cellar. Then one day I noticed her car was gone—twenty-four hours and counting—making her garage look like an enormous, empty mouth. It was time. I was on the main floor and it was as if I'd climbed to
the main floor of my memory, too. I saw the cab again, heard the conversation.

“Why are you driving so fast?” he said from the back seat. I could hear and see him again so clearly it was more like watching a movie, than a memory. I didn't answer him at first but he repeated himself.

“I'm thinking,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“I need to think.”

“Could you just slow down a little? I don't want your ‘thoughts' to kill me, OK?”

“That's what I'm thinking about,” I said.

I shudder now, as I should have then. It's odd—most bad memories are about the start of something or the end of something but this one was both. It was the end of my driving for Sun Cab Company and the start of my visit to this house and it was all decided that day. Because I certainly couldn't stay in my apartment after what happened with the passenger, who I knew would call about me. I thought that after I stopped answering the phone they would come to my home and so decided I had to go to others, which I'd been doing more and more often anyway.

I walked through the first-floor rooms quickly. It was like moving under water, with small life forms floating around me. Went into the family room and saw a blue reclining chair, a La-Z-Boy. I stared at it as if it might dissolve at any moment into a shattered reef of blue dots. Eventually I sat on it, turned on TV, watched it too until I saw an ad for Plavix. “Plavix saves lives,” the ad said. “If you save lives, why aren't you free?” I said to the TV. Then I shut it off.

When I'm in people's houses I don't steal or eat their food and rarely use their bathrooms, much less ever hurt anyone. I thought this and then I said it to myself on my La-Z-Boy, or her La-Z-Boy, to be more precise. Of course it'd give her an awful scare if she came home suddenly and saw me, but I'm very careful about that. That's never happened either. I've developed a sixth sense about when I should leave a house, almost as if the house warns me in advance. I'm really not a person who dreams of doing harm to anyone. Yet I've been told otherwise.

“OK, just stop and let me out now,” he said.

I heard him again in my mind movie.

“We're on a highway,” I reminded him.

“Just slow down right now, OK? Slow down or I'll call the police. I mean it,” he said, brandishing his cell phone like a little spear.

I lightened my pressure on the pedal, reducing the speed. But that only seemed to make him angrier.

“What's the matter with you?”

“It's my thoughts … what I'm thinking.”