With an Extreme Burning (2 page)

He spent most of the morning in the garage, working on the white oak sideboard. He'd always liked to noodle with wood, and a few years ago he had decided to take up furniture-making. He'd made the mahogany armoire that was in the bedroom and then started on the sideboard for the dining room. Six months of intensive work. But the sideboard hadn't been turning out the way he'd envisioned it, and finally he'd lost interest and abandoned it. It had sat in a corner of the garage, hidden away under a tarp, until two weeks ago. He'd been out there looking for something to occupy his time, and found and uncovered it, and saw immediately where he'd gone wrong in its original design. He'd worked on the sideboard every day since, sometimes for five and six hours at a time. It was nearly finished. Laboring with wood was the only activity he'd been able to sit still for. He couldn't write, or read, for more than a few minutes; his normal powers of concentration were nil. When he was working with table saw and jigsaw and planer and sander, he could shut his mind down. His hands became independent entities, performing their appointed tasks with skill and precision. They didn't even seem part of him at times.

Shortly before noon he ran out of fine-grade sandpaper for the mortise and tenon joints he was fitting. He didn't mind; it gave him something else to do. He got into the Buick and drove downtown to Ace Hardware.

There was not much traffic on Main Street—officially Los Alegres Boulevard for the past twenty-odd years, but only newcomers and visitors called it anything but Main Street. Not many residents traded downtown these days; most preferred the air-conditioned malls on the east and north sides. There were more antique shops and trendy restaurants on Main than anything else, and they catered to the tourists who came to gawk at the Italianate Victorian buildings—wood, brick, and ironfront, most of which were well over a century old—and to walk along or ride on the river. Dix shopped here because he always had and because he preferred the old to the new in most ways and things. Katy had told him once that he was inclined to be stuffy on the subject of the past. His standard comeback was that he'd made his living for nearly twenty years on the study and analysis of American history and was entitled to wallow in the past if he felt like it. Besides, he said, dead people were a hell of a lot more interesting than most live ones he knew.

Not so funny, that remark, even then. Unfunny now.

He lingered in Ace, though he bought nothing more than a new supply of sandpaper. Outside again, he was approaching the Buick when a woman's voice called his name. He relaxed when he saw that it was Cecca. Francesca Bellini, Cecca to her friends. Pronounced “Cheka,” like the old Russian secret police—an Italian diminutive that had survived the transition from girlhood to adulthood. One of Katy's closest friends, one of his favorite people.

“Dix, hi,” she said. She caught both his hands in her small ones. “I thought it was you.”

“Out on an errand,” he said.

“That's good. That you're getting out, I mean.”

“About time I did.”

“It's good to hear you say that. Good to see you. You know, I almost called you on Thursday. I was showing a house on the Ridge and I thought, well, maybe you wouldn't mind if I stopped by for a minute or two.”

“I wouldn't have minded. Thursday was one of my better days.”

“Then I'm sorry I didn't call.”

Her eyes probed his face, as if trying to read it by the lines and creases. She had wonderful eyes—round, luminous, so black they were like polished opals. Her own face was unlined, even though they were the same age. He'd thought, when they were both seventeen, that she resembled a pocket-size version of Annette Funicello, and for most of that year he'd been passionately in love with her. Chet Bracco would no doubt have broken his jaw if he'd tried to do anything about it. Chet and Cecca: They were planning marriage even then.

“Dix,” she said, and stopped, and then said, “I wish I knew how to say how sorry I am.”

“You've already said it. And I really am okay, or will be pretty soon. As soon as school starts.”

She squeezed his hands. “I'm on my way to the Mill to meet Eileen—lunch at Romeo's. Why don't you join us?”

He wasn't ready for that. Eileen Harrell was a determinedly cheerful woman, another of Katy's close friends, and the restaurant would be crowded … no, not yet. “Raincheck, okay? I've got a nearly finished sideboard waiting for me.”

“You're working on that again?”

“Yes.”

“I'm glad. That armoire you made is lovely.”

He smiled and nodded.

“Well,” Cecca said, “I'd better run. Let's not be strangers.”

“We won't be.”

Another squeeze, and she was hurrying away from him. He watched her until she crossed the street to the Mill's entrance. He thought again, as he had several times over the past four years, that Chet Bracco was a damn fool for cheating on a woman like Cecca and then walking out on her. The thought stirred a vague anger, and this surprised him. Maybe he
was
starting to come out of it, to feel again. Old feelings, old sympathies, for others besides Katy and himself.

Even with the doors up and the fan going, it was stifling inside the garage. Ten minutes at his workbench and he was soaked in sweat, his mouth and throat parched. A cold beer, he thought. Maybe something to eat, too; he was almost hungry. Another hour or two out here, as long as he could stand the heat, and then his afternoon fifty in the pool. By then it ought to be time to get ready for his evening with Elliot.

He was taking a bottle of Miller Draft out of the refrigerator when the telephone bell went off.

He'd forgotten again to put on the machine. Two rings, four rings, six rings … and his feet carried him across to the counter and the phone.

“Hello?”

Breathing.

The tormentor again. Twice in one day—escalating it.

You weren't supposed to provoke people like this; you were supposed to be calm, rational, so they wouldn't think they were getting to you. But he'd had enough. Too much. “Listen, damn you, don't you understand that I lost my wife recently? Don't you have an inkling of what that's like? Don't you have any decent human feelings? If you don't stop bothering me, you'll regret it. I mean that. Stop bothering me!”

He would have hung up then, banged the receiver down. Almost did. He was just starting to take it away from his ear when the voice jumped out at him.

“Don't hang up.”

The words were sharp, commanding, but the voice had an unnatural quality, as if it were being electronically altered or filtered. It made Dix's scalp crawl.

“So you can talk after all,” he said. “All right. You want to say something to me finally? Go ahead, say it.”

“I want to tell you about your wife.”

“… What?”

“Your wife. I want to tell you about her.”

“You don't know anything about my wife.”

“I know something you don't know.”

“The hell you do.”

“Oh yes,” the voice said. “She was having an affair. A very torrid affair. For a little more than three months before she died.”

“That's a goddamn lie!”

“It started on May second, at two o'clock in the afternoon, at La Quinta Inn in Brookside Park. After that, usually twice a week. Monday and Friday afternoons, when you thought she was studying with Louise Kanvitz. That is what she told you, isn't it?”

Dix's larynx seemed to have undergone a temporary paralysis. He made an inarticulate sound.

“The usual meeting place was a motel. Not always the La Quinta; different ones in different locations. Once in a field off Lone Mountain Road. And more than once in her car, in the backseat, dog-fashion.”

You son of a bitch! he thought. But he couldn't say the words; he was like a mute trying desperately to speak.

“Shall I tell you some of the other ways she liked to do it? No, I'm sure you already know most of them. I will tell you who her partner was. You'd like to know that, wouldn't you?”

Lies, lies!

“I was her partner,” the tormentor said. “I'm the man who was fucking your wife.”

The verbal paralysis left him all at once. Words came spewing out like vomit. “You sick lying bastard how can you do this to me what kind of man are you—!”

He was shouting into a dead phone.

TWO

Cecca said, “
Condoms
. And not just one—a whole package.”

“What kind?” Eileen asked curiously. “Not french ticklers?”

“Eileen, for God's sake. Not so loud.”

“Oh, nobody's paying any attention to us. It's too noisy in here anyway.”

Which was true enough. Romeo's at noon on a summer Saturday was always noisy. Poor acoustics and babbling tourists. Still, Eileen's voice carried. And usually at the wrong times, when she was making one of her more uninhibited comments. I should have waited to talk about this, Cecca thought. Someplace private. But it was too late now.

Eileen said, “It could have been worse, you know. It could've been drugs you found.”

“I know that. Amy's always been dead set against drugs; I count both of us lucky on that score. But condoms … I didn't think I had that to worry about either.”

“Mothers always want to believe their daughters are virgins.”

“Naive, huh?”

“The protective instinct. Was the package opened?”

“No. Why do you ask that?”

“Maybe Amy's carrying it just in case. Maybe she hasn't had occasion to use one of the things yet.”

“That's possible,” Cecca admitted. “She hasn't had a steady boyfriend in months.”

“Planning ahead. Very mature, if you ask me.”

“Yes, but my God. She's only seventeen.”

“Uh-huh. How old were you and Chet when you started doing it?”

“What does that have to do with this situation?”

“Seventeen, right?”

“We're talking about Amy, not me.”

“Kids are sexually active a lot younger these days. You know that.” Eileen devoured part of her bacon cheeseburger. Chewing, she said, “I can guarantee that neither of my kids is a virgin. I wouldn't be surprised if Bobby started when he was twelve or thirteen. He's a handsome little devil, if I do say so myself.”

“Boys,” Cecca said, “you have boys, not girls. It's not the same thing. Girls get pregnant.”

“Not if they carry condoms in their purses.”

“Eileen, this isn't funny. Not to me, it isn't.”

“I know, honey.”

Eileen reached across the table and patted her hand. The gesture was maternal and her expression was serious, but even at her gloomiest, Eileen seemed to be on the verge of a wink or a chuckle, if not one of her bawdy laughs. It wasn't that she was frivolous or insensitive; it was just that she looked at the world with a positive, sometimes wryly humorous eye. Her self-assessment, which she was fond of quoting to people she'd just met, was that she was “a big brassy blonde who loves life and doesn't give a hoot who knows it.” Even a sudden disaster like poor Katy's death hadn't dampened her spirits for long, although she'd cried as hard as Cecca had when they first heard about it.

“What would you do if you were me? Ignore what I found, or talk to Amy about it?”

“Probably ignore it.”

“You wouldn't want to know if your daughter was sexually active?”

“I don't think so.”

“Ignorance is bliss?”

“Her right to privacy, too, even if she is under age.”

Cecca picked at the remains of her Cobb salad. “I keep telling myself the same thing. But I still want to know.”

“So what's stopping you from asking?”

“Amy's finally quit blaming me for the divorce; we have a good relationship again. I don't want to do anything to rock the boat.”

“You mean she might think you were snooping.”

“I wasn't snooping. I really did bump her purse off the table by accident. But what if she doesn't believe it?”

“Mmm,” Eileen said reflectively. She finished the last of her burger, licked her fingers, wiped a spot of grease off her chin, and permitted herself a ladylike burp. “Have you ever talked to her about the birds and the bees?”

“Once seriously, when she was thirteen. I've tried since, but …”

“Awkward?”

“Awkward.”

“You used the mother-to-daughter approach, right?”

“What other approach is there?”

“Woman to woman. Casual, chatty, the way you and I talk. If she's been doing the deed, and you don't make her feel threatened about it, she'll either tell you straight out or let something slip. At least you'll know how she feels about sex at this stage of her life. And you won't have to mention the condoms at all. She'll tell
you
about carrying them, if she wants you to know.”

Sometimes Eileen amazed her. She could be so cavalier, downright flighty at times; and then she'd come up with a perfectly wise, practical suggestion like this. Funny how someone could be your close friend for thirty years and you still didn't have a clue as to how her mind worked.