Read Tied to the Tracks Online
Authors: Rosina Lippi
Tied to the Tracks (41 page)
“You’re talking about somebody who cut her hair and dyed it blue on a whim, to shock me.”
“Hair grows out,” Fran said. “Nice and easy and gradual, it comes back, no matter what you do to it. You can count on it, but you can’t rush it.”
“Ah,” said John, a little confused but also intrigued.
“So get to work, and call me back when you two have got things fixed up. Believe me, I’ll be waiting by the phone.”
John’s house was beautifully furnished, comfortable, well laid out, preternaturally neat, and so unlike Angie that she could hardly imagine living here. If that ever became an issue, a prospect that suddenly seemed less likely, especially after she found the suit bag hanging on the back of the bedroom door with the words
Grant-Rose wedding
on the slip.
That’s what you get for snooping,
she told herself, and sat down on the bed. Then she picked up the phone and dialed her own cell number again.
she told herself, and sat down on the bed. Then she picked up the phone and dialed her own cell number again.
“So how long does it take you to drive across town?” she asked when John answered.
“Missing me, are you?”
“I’m about to start looking through drawers, just so you know.”
He gave a sharp laugh at that, more surprise than worry. “Your phone rang.”
“Wait, don’t tell me. Apples or Peaches.”
“Peaches,” John said. “You never told me how much your mother likes me.”
Angie closed her eyes and lay back on the bed. “She’s a sucker for a pretty face. So what did you two talk about?”
“She had a story to tell.”
“The one about how when I was five I gave a kid down the block a bloody nose when he tried to kiss me?”
“No,” John said. “I see some thematic similarities, but no blood was shed in this particular story.”
“So tell me.”
“It seems I’m a pair of pants hanging in your closet.”
“Shit.” Angie bit her lip. “Turn off the cell phone, would you? And get over here.”
Much later Angie said, “Do you think it’s twisted of me that I like it when you get mad? Because let me tell you Harvey, that was spectacular.”
John was lying on his back, eyes closed. “God help me, I’m starting to like you calling me that. What do you think that means?”
“Wait,” Angie said. “Are you going to tell me you’ve got a crush on Tony?”
He grabbed her and she shrieked and struggled and then gave in. “Okay, okay. Whoever Miss Zula was thinking about when she put Harvey Carson on the page, it wasn’t you.”
“Good.” He let her go, which was a little bit of a disappointment, though the way he was looking at her was promising. “Now what’s this about me being mad?”
“You forget to be polite,” Angie said, running her fingers over his sweaty skin. “You stop thinking, and all the gloss comes off, and things get . . . interesting.”
“So are you saying I was too rough? Because if I hurt you and you liked it, that would be sick.”
“Christ no, you didn’t hurt me. You’ve got that analytical gleam in your eye, and now I’m sorry I raised the question.”
“So tell me,” he said, still grinning, “are things less than stellar when I’m not angry?”
“You’re fishing for compliments.”
“I repeat, when I’m not angry—”
“You fuck like a god, regardless of your mood.”
That made him laugh out loud. “Okay, I deserved that.” He turned away to take care of the condom, which made Angie remember why Win Walker had been in such a sour mood at the Hound Dog.
She said, “We need to talk.”
John groaned and swung his legs out of bed. “Yeah, we do. but I was hoping to get you into the shower first.” He looked at her over his shoulder. “That would be the first stop on the tour of my adolescent fantasies.”
“A girl in the shower?”
“A girl in that shower,” he said. “Hot water and soap and a girl, all together.”
“So how old were you when you got to try that out?”
He grinned at her. “Thirty-six.”
Angie sat up. “You’re kidding. That’s a virgin shower?”
“As far as I’m concerned it is. My great-aunt Helen lived here for the last twenty years, you know. She was a sweet old lady but proper, and she had ears like a bat.”
“When did she die?”
He cleared his throat, looked away. “Last summer.”
For the last year John had lived in this house whenever he could get away from Princeton, and for most of that year he had been engaged to Caroline Rose. Had Caroline declined an invitation to join him in the shower because Rob and Kai were down the hall, or had he never asked?
“What was the plan, anyway?” she asked. “Was Caroline going to move in here, or . . .” Her voice trailed away when she realized she didn’t really want to hear the answer. John was going to tell her anyway, she could see that.
“She was supposed to move in this week,” John said. “Or at least I thought she was. Her sisters still think I’m going to move into Old Roses. I don’t know what Caroline was actually thinking, which I suppose should have been my first hint.”
He rubbed his knuckles over his jaw and the bristles of his new beard made a hushing sound.
“Is that what you needed to talk to me about?”
“In a way. Caroline wrote me a letter.”
Angie pulled her knees up to her chin. “Okay. Go ahead.”
She listened, her head tucked forward as he read what couldn’t have been more than fifty words, and still Angie wished the lights were out; she wished they had had this conversation on the phone. She didn’t know how she was supposed to react. Except that wasn’t exactly true.
Mangiamele,
she told herself,
you are such a fake. You don’t want to say what’s on your mind because you have never known a man, no matter how open-minded, how liberal, how smart, to take such speculation with a shrug
. If a woman left for another man, that might be a relief or a tragedy, but the guy whose wife left him for another woman was the butt of the joke. In a town like Ogilvie, how would this play? Angie closed her eyes, trying to imagine it, and then, slightly nauseated, opened them again.
Mangiamele,
she told herself,
you are such a fake. You don’t want to say what’s on your mind because you have never known a man, no matter how open-minded, how liberal, how smart, to take such speculation with a shrug
. If a woman left for another man, that might be a relief or a tragedy, but the guy whose wife left him for another woman was the butt of the joke. In a town like Ogilvie, how would this play? Angie closed her eyes, trying to imagine it, and then, slightly nauseated, opened them again.
You don’t know this for a certainty,
she told herself yet again.
So shut up.
she told herself yet again.
So shut up.
“I have to admit,” he was saying, “I’m at a loss. I don’t know how to read this.”
So John was clueless and Caroline was cowardly, and what a great combination that was.
“What do you think?”
He was standing at the window that looked out over the garden, his back to her, oblivious to his nakedness or the picture he made. He had the build of a rower, his arms and shoulders and neck broad and strong. She could count his vertebrae, trace the flexing muscles in his back, the sun-bleached hairs on his long legs. His hips were narrow, his buttocks perfectly round and pale as milk compared to the rest of him, the color of toast.
Turn around,
she wanted to say.
Come here. Touch me.
Angie closed her eyes and counted to three until the tide rising in her subsided.
Turn around,
she wanted to say.
Come here. Touch me.
Angie closed her eyes and counted to three until the tide rising in her subsided.
“You know Caroline much better than I do,” she said.
He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Bullshit.”
That took her by surprise. “Huh?”
“Bullshit. I’m missing something obvious. I know I am, for the simple reason that I always do, as you have pointed out to me before.”
Angie cleared her throat. She said, “Let me read the letter, then.” Not that it would be of any help, but it would buy her some time. She took the letter from him and ran her eyes over Caroline’s strong handwriting, but she was really weighing one statement after another and dismissing each in turn. When she was done, she put the letter down on the bedside table.
John had come back to bed and was stretched out beside her, his head propped on his arm.
“A few ideas come to me,” she said. “But first let me ask you. Does it matter?”
“Does it
matter
?”
matter
?”
“She’ll be here tomorrow—” Angie glanced at the sky outside the window. “She’ll be back here
today,
and she’ll . . . explain.” And then, in response to his blank expression: “I just mean—”
today,
and she’ll . . . explain.” And then, in response to his blank expression: “I just mean—”
“You think there’s some simple answer to all this?”
“I think there’s no sense in anticipating trouble. We’ve got enough of that as it is.”
“Christ, I wish she had got that letter I wrote. The way things stand, I have no idea what to think. Rob took this as an indication that she wants out.”
Angie shrugged. “Sure, you could read it that way.”
“If that’s the case,” he said slowly, “then I’ve got to wonder why. Do you think she could be—” He stopped, and Angie could almost hear the words in her head:
in love with somebody else
.
in love with somebody else
.
“Angry—about you?”
She wanted to bury her face in the pillow, because the urge to scream or laugh or both at once was almost overwhelming. Luckily John’s mind and his attention were elsewhere. And he was trying, and so she made an effort and calmed herself down so she could listen.
“I’m drawn to women who are hard to read, I always have been. But I’m learning, because I can tell that you’re not saying what you’re thinking, right at this minute. Are you?”
His voice had gone slightly blurry, as if he were drunk or near sleep. There was resignation in his expression, and that cut her to the quick.
Angie pressed herself against him. She put an arm across his chest and her face against his neck and she kissed him, softly, on the underside of his jaw and then on the mouth. She kissed him again, trying to apologize without words for the things she couldn’t say. He caught her wrists and flipped her over on her back and kissed her back.
“John,” she whispered. “I can’t explain Caroline to you, but I can tell you about me, and how I feel about you. That will have to be enough for right now.”
He rubbed his face against hers, caught her lip between his teeth and kissed her, breathed into her. “You’re what I want,” he said, and then he pulled away from her. “You, and a shower.” He caught her wrist and drew her along with him.
The tub was ancient, huge, a luxury boat with paws for feet. An awkward shoulder-height shower arrangement had been added in the sixties, but this bathroom was the first thing John had remodeled after his aunt died. He kept the tub, updated the shower hardware, and added a pale linen curtain that could be drawn around the entire circumference.
They stayed there until the hot water was gone and they were both exhausted and Angie was as soft and loose and open as an overblown rose. John wrapped her in towels and rubbed her dry and then tucked her into bed next to him. She was almost asleep, breathing deeply, when she suddenly roused herself enough to roll out of the towel and drop it by the side of the bed.
“Skin,” she mumbled. She pressed herself against him, and slipped away into sleep. John stayed awake for much longer, every sense focused on her textures and smells and the sight of her. He had brushed his teeth and lost her taste: salt sea, milky sweet. He thought of spreading her open with his hands, taking his fill, swallowing her whole, and then pushing himself, all of himself, inside her while she whispered in his ear and undulated around him, hair like floating seaweed, her body suckling insistently, come and come and come. When he woke she would be next to him. Angie in the night. Angie in the morning. He let himself relax and slip down, follow her down and down into sleep.
The plan was, Angie would leave first and walk back to Ivy House while John went his usual route to campus. Standing in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, she listened to him talk about the day ahead, things that might happen when Caroline came back, how he would deal with each possibility. She was oddly calm, at ease with him and herself, though the potential for disaster was tremendous.
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