The Snow Falcon (44 page)

“What do you think, Coop?” Craig Saunders said, halfway through some discussion Coop hadn’t been following.

“About what?”

“Jesus, about the game, weren’t you listening?”

“Sorry.” He shrugged and started to get up, deciding to go to the men’s room and splash some water on his face.

“Coop, are sure you’re okay?” Susan said, her expression creased with concern.

“I’m fine. I’ll just be a minute.”

In the men’s room he looked at himself in the mirror. He did look kind of strained. He splashed water on his face, which did nothing to relieve the churning, queasy sensation in his stomach, and straightening up from the basin, he examined himself again while he dried his face with a towel. He took the ring out of its box, turning it in the light. He wondered how Susan was going to react when he showed it to her. He didn’t know if he should ask her to marry him first, then show her the ring, Or let her see it first, then ask her. He couldn’t decide.

He’d practiced what he would say. He’d tell her he loved her, which he’d never said before. Then he’d tell her he always had and that he had something to say, and would she please just listen to him for a minute because he wasn’t sure how to say it. Then he’d launch into how he knew she’d loved Dave in a way she might never feel for him, and that he understood that and respected it and didn’t want to take Dave’s place but hoped she might feel for him in a different

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way. He’d talk about Jamie and how he wanted to be a friend to him and maybe someone Jamie could talk to, even though he wouldn’t be his real dad. Then he’d lay out the kind of future he saw for them in Little River, building up to the big moment.

Suddenly it all sounded confused in his mind, and he knew that come the time, he’d probably forget all about it and just stumble over whatever words he could find. He took a deep breath and put the ring back into his pocket. As he made his way back to the table, the band started up again, and before he got there, he saw Pete Kowalski ask Susan to dance. He didn’t know if he could stand to wait any longer and thought about just cutting in, but then Linda made a prompting sound in her throat.

“How about making a woman feel she’s not just a piece of the furniture?”

“Sure, it’d be my pleasure.” He offered his arm and led her to the dance floor.

“Things on your mind, Coop?” she asked as they found a space.

He shrugged and glanced toward Susan and Pete. “You know,” he said, feeling Linda studying him.

At the end of the song, he took Linda back to their table. He turned around, expecting to see Pete and Susan coming back too, but they were dancing to the next number. Linda raised her eyebrows at him and smiled.

“Relax, Coop, she isn’t going anywhere.”

He lost sight of them among the press of people, and when the music ended, Pete came back alone and said Susan had gone to the ladies’ room.

“Think I’ll have a beer,” Coop said, avoiding Linda’s eye. Excusing himself, he made his way to the bar. A few minutes later Susan came looking for him. He asked her if she wanted a drink.

“Okay, that would be good. I’m thirsty with all this dancing,” she said.

“How about a beer?”

“A soda’s fine.”

They stood at the bar, where there were fewer people, and Coop tried to think of a way to ask her to take a walk with him. Now that he had the chance, it seemed like an odd request, as it was so cold outside. He felt in his pocket for the ring, wondering if he ought to ask her right there in the hotel, maybe out in the lobby, where it

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was quiet. He imagined somebody passing by and overhearing them and decided it was a bad idea.

“You’re quiet tonight.”

He realized she’d spoken. “Am I?”

“Is everything okay?”

He twirled his beer bottle in his hand, trying to think of what to say, and found himself suddenly tongue-tied. “I guess there is something on my mind,” he said at last.

She waited for him to go on, watching his face with her wide green eyes.

“The thing is, I sort of wanted to talk to you,” he continued.

“Okay,” She said hesitantly. “Here I am.”

Coop looked around. “Not here. Can we go outside for a while?”

“Outside?” Her eye went to the door.

He heard the uncertainty in her tone. He drained his beer, and as he did, the band came to the end of a song and one of the musicians announced that he wanted everyone up on the floor forming lines. It was a tradition for everyone to join in at this point in the night, something that had started years before and become a kind of symbol of town unity. The guy on the stage was waving people up and directing them to join this line or that, calling out to stragglers at the back. Somebody called for Coop and Susan to hurry up.

Susan shrugged, smiling sympathetically. “Guess we’ll have to talk later.”

The music started. Coop tried to keep his eye on her through the throng of people. In the end he resigned himself to waiting until this dance had finished. He thought he might as well get into the spirit of things, look as if he was having a good time.

The dance finally ended, and people headed back to their tables. Coop looked for Susan, but instead he saw Miller signaling to him from the door. Coop shook his head, believing he had to be jinxed.

“I’m all yours,” Susan said, appearing at his side. Then, seeing his expression, she followed his look. “Is that Miller?”

“I better go see what he wants,” Coop said reluctantly.

“Go ahead, I’ll be fine.”

He told her he wouldn’t be long and made his way to where Miller was waiting.

“This better be good,” Coop said.

IMMHHB|j|BB|

RACHEL WAS SITTING IN HER DARKENED room, looking out the window. On the bed were the clothes she’d worn to meet Michael, strewn where she’d found them when she got home. Most of the rest of her things had been pulled out of drawers or torn from hangers in her closet. She’d tidied some of it away, but the sight of everything scattered about, and what it must mean, had dealt her a tricky blow. She didn’t know how to feel, and couldn’t muster herself to think of a way to deal with the situation.

She heard Pete’s truck pull into the drive and saw the lights go out. He must have sat out there for a while, because it was ten minutes or so before she heard the door. Then it was another five before she heard his tread on the stairs.

She didn’t look around, but she could sense him in the doorway.

“Where’ve you been?” she asked.

“I went for a drink,” he said.

There were currents in his tone. He was uncertain about what he’d found, she thought, or maybe he wanted to be, and maybe he was afraid, too. She felt sorry for him then. He was angry, too, she felt that.

He came into the room and sat down heavily on the bed. His weight made the springs creak. It was an old mattress. Once, she’d hoped they could get a new one, a whole new bed. Pete had said he’d miss the old one, that they’d had a lot of good times in it. Well, that was true enough, but it had been a long time ago.

He breathed beery fumes. She thought he wasn’t going to say

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anything and was starting to imagine he’d fallen asleep, but then she realized he was only thinking.

“Don’t you wanna know about your clothes?”

She let his question hang for a while. She could virtually see it in the air, the words all spelled out for her to examine. Even now she thought that if she said the right thing, he might let it slide. He might just choose to believe whatever she told him. She turned around to face him.

“They’re new,” she said.

He looked at her as if she was crazy. She might have been imagining it, but she thought he looked as if he couldn’t believe it. He shook his head.

“No kidding? I guessed that.” He got up abruptly and started to look for something, and when he didn’t find it right away, he started to toss things around the room. He picked up her dress and threw it at her.

“You think I don’t fucking know that?” he yelled.

The dress had wrapped around her neck. She thought he’d wanted it to be something more solid, maybe a chair or something heavier. He was panting like a thirsty dog. Rabid animals got thirsty, she remembered hearing somewhere. He was looking at her out of pained angry eyes, and she felt sorry for him again.

He saw something on the floor and picked it up. He held it right in front of her face with a flourish. “See! You see what this is? It’s a goddamn receipt is what it is.” He opened it up. “It’s for the dress. Sixty-five dollars for a dress!” ‘

He balled it tight, as tight as he could, and threw it at her from a foot away. It hit her below the eye, and she was surprised how much it hurt. It was like a slug. If it had hit her in the eye, it could have done some real damage.

He found another one on the floor. He must have thrown them there earlier when he was going nuts looking through her closet.

“This one’s for the shoes. Thirty-six dollars for shoes.” He held up one of her new black pumps. The heel and the whole style made it obviously a shoe for going out in, a shoe for maybe meeting somebody in a restaurant.

He threw it across the room at a picture, and when the picture didn’t break, he went over in a rage and ripped it off the wall.

“What the fuck for? Just tell me that!”

“Pete—

“Don’t fucking ‘Pete’ me!”

His cry was full of rage and anguish. It changed the way she thought, shook her out of some lethargic state she’d sunk into. She suddenly saw what ought to have been obvious a while ago. Now that it was in front of her, she couldn’t understand how she’d missed it. He’d lost a little of his mind. He was literally slightly crazy. She was glad the kids weren’t at home.

It had happened slowly, she thought. He’d always been a little tense. She’d understood early on in their marriage why he’d been a bully at high school. He was basically insecure. He had no self-respect—that was something his dad had beaten out of him a long time before. He thought he was no good.

She got up and went to him. “Listen, Pete—

He shook her hand off violently. “Why did you buy the clothes, Rachel?”

“Look, I can take them back,” she said. “It was a stupid thing to do.”

She knew she couldn’t return them, but she just wanted to say anything that would calm him down. She was concerned now, not for herself, but for him. She should have seen what was happening to him. The business failing had sapped away his self-confidence little by little, changing him.

He took her by the shoulders and put his face up close to hers. He stank of beer.

“I want to know why you spent all that money on clothes,” he said.

He seized her arm and dragged her across the room. His grip was hurting her, digging into her flesh. He pulled her along like a floppy doll, and then he bent down and picked something up. She didn’t know what it was until he shoved it in her face.

“How much did these cost?” He rubbed the material of the panties between his fingers, leering in a way that frightened her.

He shoved them back in her face, grinding them into her as if he were trying to rub out her features. She opened her mouth, struggling to get away, and he shoved them down her throat, pushing until she gagged.

“Who were they for, huh?” He was yelling, spitting. “Do they look good on you? Do they feel good? Tell me!”

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She tore herself away from him, sputtering, pulling the panties out of her mouth.

“Please, Pete! Nothing like that happened!”

She wanted to calm him down. She had to get him on an even keel. She had to help him see it was okay about the business, that everything was going to work out. She wouldn’t leave him, she couldn’t. Because if she did, there was no telling what might happen.

He shook his head. He shook it back and forth, back and forth. As he did, he came toward her and she stepped away.

“Put them on,” he told her.

“What do you mean?”

He picked up the panties and threw them at her. “Come on, I want to see them on you. I bet they feel real smooth, huh? Sexy, I bet. Put them on.”

“Pete,” she pleaded. “Don’t do this. Let’s just calm down here—

“I said put them fucking on!”

She stopped, shocked rigid. She could see the thick vein in his neck pulsing, and the one in his forehead standing out. His hand shot out so fast she didn’t have time to move, and the sound of him hitting her face was loud in the silence of the room. Her head snapped around and tears sprang to her eyes. She turned back to him, tasting blood.

“Put them on,” he said quietly.

Slowly she undressed. She fumbled with the strap on her bra. He stood in front of her and watched her every move. There was nothing sexual in his gaze, just anger. She felt humiliated and caught sight of herself in the mirror, her hair disheveled and blood on her lip, her attitude cowed. Finally she put the panties on and stood before him with her arms across her breasts.

She knew what would happen next. She tried to stop him, tried to tell him that if he did this, they might never get past it. It was no good, though, and after a while she just lay there and endured him raping her. She knew what it was all about. It was about him proving himself. She cried into her pillow while he lay on her and brutally fucked her, and she wondered if things would ever be right again.

COOP HAD BEEN GONE FOR AN HOUR, AND Susan was feeling tired. The place was emptying out a little, and there were fewer people dancing. She caught Linda’s eye across the table. “I think I’m going to leave soon,” she said.

“Isn’t Coop coming back?”

“Maybe he got caught up. I’ll have a look by the station house.”

Outside, she paused by the door. She wrapped her coat tight, took a deep breath of icy air, and looked up at a clear sky. She thought about Coop, recalling his distracted manner during the evening, then his asking her to take a walk outside. She wondered what that had been all about.