The Dearly Departed (28 page)

“Is there a guest room?”

“Yes there is. A loft. Why do you ask?”

“You might sleep better if there's another person in the house.”

“You'd do that?” He swallowed with the effort of his insincerity. “After all that's happened between us? After the way I treated you?” His right index finger was jabbing the radio's scan button. Emily Ann reached over and smoothed his knuckles. He knew then: The polite and politic thing to do was to act as if he liked her, to utter nothing that would stem this wave of sympathy. Sunny had been telegraphing this all evening, with every reprimanding glance, every time he sounded like the disdainful employee, the frustrated campaign manager. So as Emily Ann caressed his knuckles, he answered with a sickly smile meant to convey something approximating a sexual response.

If it had been the real thing and not a charity seduction, he'd have pulled the Beetle over to a dark spot and, at the very least, kissed her. Luckily, she didn't look too eager. He'd buy a little time—plead back roads and bucket seats; wait and see how things progressed back at his father's house.
His
house. Maybe he'd like it. Maybe she had hidden talents. She was a full-grown woman, at least on paper, who had hinted at past affairs and satisfied boyfriends. He could turn the lights off and pretend she was someone else.

They'd do it, and she'd return to New Jersey. He'd keep in touch, chipping away at the five hundred free minutes on his calling plan. Talking was good. Women loved that. With four states separating them, he could propose future weekends without delivering: “. . . as soon as my father's affairs are in order,” or, “. . . as soon as I feel I can leave my sister alone.” He sensed that Sunny was endorsing exactly this; that it was possible, with one act, to raise Emily Ann's spirits and save himself from a lawsuit. He guessed that her many allusions to the friendship they'd enjoy when the primary slithered to its unsuccessful end meant this: They'd fuck. The time had come. He'd send Emily Ann home happy. Well, “happy” was probably too optimistic; he'd send her away feeling something other than vengeful and litigious.

What he hadn't counted on was a disloyal penis that knew the difference between work and play.

Emily Ann didn't mind, except for what it said about her desirability and her failure to arouse Fletcher. He'd been polite enough to blame the deaths, his fatigue, and the psychologically unwise choice of employing his father's bedside condoms.

“I think you're being polite,” she said. “I think it's me. You can't stand me, so not only am I fooling myself, but I'm breaking my campaign celibacy pledge.”

“I
do
like you,” said Fletcher.

“I can tell when someone's heart isn't in it,” said Emily Ann.

“Maybe it's the employer-employee thing,” he said. “Even if it doesn't apply anymore, it's still a powerful construct. Or it could be that all those months of restraint, and finally—”

“Is it my body?” she asked.

“No! I like skinny. Skinny's good. It's very . . . sinewy.”

“I meant this.” She managed to find some pinchable skin on her inner thigh.

“You're not saying that there's, like, an extra ounce of fat on your entire body? Tell me that's not what you're saying.”

“Okay,” she said obediently. “I'm not.”

“It's not your fault,” he tried again. And then cheerfully—the end in sight—“Maybe next time. On a return visit. I know you have to get home to withdraw formally from the race and close the office. Otherwise, if you didn't have to rush back, I'd take another whack at that celibacy pledge of yours.” She was sitting at the edge of the bed, her back to him, affording him privacy to get something started by himself. “Especially,” he chuckled, landing a dopey kiss on her neck, “if we were at a cheesy little motel instead of in bed with the ghost of my promiscuous father.”

Emily Ann's spine and shoulder blades, just visible in the moonlight, produced an honest twinge of something in Fletcher—residual campaign camaraderie, he guessed. He pondered his options: Offer a drink. Offer a ride back to town. Point out the stairs to the guest loft.

Finally, Emily Ann murmured, “I never said I had to rush back.”

It might have been minutes later, or hours, when Fletcher woke to hear, “I never really felt comfortable interrupting people's meals to shake their hands. I mean, I wouldn't want to shake hands with anyone while
I
was eating.”

“Em?” he said thickly.

“I hated most of what I had to do, which is why I wasn't heartbroken to call it quits. And do you know the moment I knew I wasn't cut out for this? When we were at that drawbridge and the lights started flashing and you grabbed the campaign literature and said, ‘Do you believe our luck? C'mon. Let's go. We're going to be stuck here at least fifteen minutes.' And while you were cheering for the bridge to go up, I was praying for the boat to make it through so I wouldn't have to jog through traffic and try to canvass people who didn't even want to roll their windows down.”

“I hated it, too,” said Fletcher.

“I didn't know I'd hate it this much. Or how bad our numbers could be. Or that it would be so humiliating,” said Emily Ann.

Fletcher reached over and patted the closest bony rise. “Yeah. That part sucks. I'm not a gracious loser, either.” He rolled over to his side and murmured—a childhood echo, unplanned and involuntary—“Get some sleep, hon.”

He woke in his usual state of unaffiliated arousal, which dissipated as soon as he remembered his trouble of the night before. Emily Ann was not in his bed. He listened for sounds of human presence and heard a low murmur coming from the TV. “Em?” he called.

And then she was in the doorway, dressed in his white shirt, unbuttoned just so, legs bare, like a coy sleepover from central casting.

“Did you get any shut-eye?” he asked.

“I couldn't.”

“Sorry about that. Was I tossing and turning?”

“No. You didn't move a muscle.”

“Oh,” said Fletcher. “And sorry about, you know—last night.”

“It's not your fault. It was a terrible idea under these conditions.” She gestured to take in the room, the house beyond, the ghost of Miles Finn. “Just let me say, I don't think any less of you. And I'm really sorry I said that thing last night when we were driving out to the ice cream stand.”

“Which thing?”

“That I thought you'd never responded to me in any way because you were gay. I wish I'd never said that. Because now you'll think that
I
think—”

Fletcher sat up. “Jesus! I'm not gay. Is that what you thought the problem was?”

“No. It never occurred to me once things got started. I think last night was clearly my fault for having mentioned homosexuality at all, so I wanted to strike it from the record.”

Fletcher remembered his long-term goal: to send her away entertaining affectionate thoughts about her champion and admirer, Fletcher Finn. He sighed and said, “Let's forget it, okay? I always have trouble on the first date, so how could it be your fault? Really. We should have left it at ice cream and conversation.”

“What about the kissing on the deck when we first got back here? Are you sorry about that, too?”

“I had no problem with that,” he said.

“I think what we're both feeling is that we should have waited, just like our mothers always told us to, instead of jumping into bed on what amounts to a first date.” She lifted her arms and arranged them behind her head in a manner meant to be, Fletcher guessed, both balletic and crotch-exposing. “Although one could argue that we've spent hundreds of hours in each other's company, so this was, in fact, long overdue.”

“One could argue,” he said, his words ending in a yawn. When he didn't continue, Emily Ann ran her hands up and down her arms and shivered dramatically.

“Cold?” asked Fletcher.

“A little.”

He might have offered her the warmth of his bed; he might have jumped out from under the covers and taken over the task of briskly massaging her arms. He might have said something flattering, romantic, or binding. He yawned again, then said, “That's the main difference between men and women: You're freezing, and I'm sweating under one flimsy blanket.” He pointed behind her, toward the outer room. “There has to be a thermostat out there somewhere. You can turn it up if you want to.”

Emily Ann said, “Here. You'll want your shirt back. Sorry to have borrowed it without your permission. And if you'll be so kind as to give me a ride, I'd like to go back to my motel now.” She unbuttoned the shirt in a manner that was anything but flirtatious, balled it up, and threw it in the direction of the bed.

“Are you mad?” asked Fletcher.

“No, I am not mad.”

“You're acting mad. You just finished saying it wasn't my fault.”

She answered by striding over to her underwear and yanking it on as if weren't lacy, scanty, and virtually transparent. “For your information,” she continued, “your problem was not last night. That only made you a touch human. Your problem is not knowing how to act the next morning. I should have expected as much, since I've spent hundreds of predawn hours in your presence. I'd forgotten that no conversation is possible until you've spoken into the microphone of a drive-through McDonald's.”

Fletcher wondered why he hadn't noticed her underwear the night before. It suggested there were attractive parts beneath the lace of the bottom and the padding of the top. If she could dress and undress this easily—if she could argue and debate as she adjusted her various straps and checked her moles—then he could, too. It was now or never. He slipped out from under the covers, stretched slowly, frontally, before turning back to make the bed.

“Do you always do that the second you get up?” Emily Ann asked.

“Do what?” He smiled confidently.

“Make the bed.”

“Oh. I guess so.” He picked up last night's boxer shorts—patterned all over with license plates—from the floor. “How about breakfast?” he asked.

Emily Ann sat down on a plaid ottoman and shimmied her long, narrow shoes onto her feet. “I'm not stupid, Fletcher. I know you're working overtime to ingratiate yourself. But I'm not so needy that I have to spend time with a man who doesn't notice when I parade around his room stark naked.”

“I noticed! I most certainly did notice. Why do you think I got out of bed? To level the playing field. Up till then I was respecting your wishes—to take the sex issue off the table. Temporarily, anyway.”

“I see. Well, consider the issue off the table. Permanently.”

“I didn't mean permanently. I meant until we get to know each other better.”

She walked toward him, but only en route to the night table for her earrings.

“What if I could find some bagels?” he asked.