“Morning,” he said.
Anxiety surfaced in her sleepy face, but lived only a moment. “I wasn’t sure…” she murmured.
“Sure about what?”
“Nothing.” After a second or two she sat up, holding the sheet to her breasts, looking about the room in bewilderment, as if amazed to find herself there.
“You all right?” he asked.
She nodded, settled back onto the pillow. Her eyes, lit by the sun, were weirdly bright, like glowing coins. He turned her to face him, laying a hand on her hip. A tear formed at the corner of her left eye.
“What’s this?” he asked, wiping it away.
Her expression was almost clownishly dolorous. She took his hand and placed it between her legs so he could feel the moistness there, then pushed into his fingers, letting him open her.
“Holy Jesus,” he said. “You’ll be the death of me.”
After she had gone, making another of her sudden exits, leaving before he could determine what she wanted or be assured as to what she felt, Shellane went down to the shore and rested against the old glacial boulder. His thoughts were images of Grace. Her face close to his. How she had looked above him, her hair flipped all to one side in violent toss, like the flag of her pleasure, head turned and back arched as she came. A presentiment of trouble, of Broillard and what he might do, called for his attention, but he was not ready to consider that question. He believed he could handle Broillard—he had handled far worse. The Mitsubishi warehouse in Brooklyn. The New Haven bank job. He recalled a mansion they’d broken into in upstate New York, going after an art collection. An old Nathaniel Hawthorne sort of house with secret rooms and hidden passages. A billionaire’s antique toy. The security system had not been a problem, but the house had been full of 18th-century perils they could never have anticipated, the most daunting of which was a subterranean maze. One man had been skewered by a booby trap, but Shellane had succeeded in unraveling the logic of the maze, and they managed to escape with the art. If he could deal with all of that, he could take care of Mister Endless Fucking Blue Stars.
He chuckled at the brutal character of his nostalgia.
Memories.
He had been hoping Grace would return, but several hours passed and she did not. Around noon, the blue Cadillac roared past the cabin on its way toward Champion, Broillard off to spend the afternoon at the Gas ’n Guzzle, and Shellane headed along the shore toward Grace’s house. He stood on the beach below the place for several minutes, uncertain about approaching. At length he climbed the slope and peeked through the picture window. She was sitting on the carpet with her back toward him, legs drawn up beneath her. Her shoulders were shaking, as with heavy sobs. He had not taken notice of the furniture before—ratty, second-hand stuff in worse shape than the pieces in his cabin. Clothing strewn on the floor. A plate of dried pasta balanced on the arm of the sofa. Piles of compact discs and magazines. Empty pizza boxes, McDonald’s cartons, condom wrappers. Your basic rock and roll decor. He went to the door and knocked. No answer. He pushed on in. She did not look up.
“It’s me,” he said.
She sat staring straight ahead, strands of coppery hair stuck to her damp cheeks.
“Come on,” he said, extending a hand. “Let’s get out of here.”
She did not move; her expression did not change.
He dropped to his knees. “What’s he say to you?” he asked. “That you’re ugly…stupid? That you don’t have a clue? You can’t believe that.”
A damp heat of despondency radiated from her. It was as if she were steeped in the emotion, submerged beneath it, like a statue beneath a transparent lake.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “You know things with your heart most people don’t have names for. I can tell that of you…even after just one night.” Though he believed this of her, though belief in her had been born in him, what he said rang false to his ears, as if it were a line he had learned to recite and had chosen to believe.
She began to cry again, silently, her shoulders heaving. Shellane felt incompetent in the face of her despair. He wanted to put an arm around her, but sensed she wouldn’t want to be touched.
“Is it guilt you’re feeling?” he asked. “About last night?”
He might not have been there, for all the attention she gave to him. He remained kneeling beside her for a short while and then asked if she wanted him to go.
It seemed that she nodded.
“All right.” He got to his feet. “I’ll be at the cabin.” He crossed to the door, hesitated. “We can get past this, Grace.”
Once outside, he recognized the idiocy of that statement. She was not going to leave with him—he knew that in his bones. Even if she would, he had no desire to drag her along through the shooting gallery of his life. Anger at Broillard grew large in him. Back at the cabin, he paced back and forth, then flung himself into the Toyota and drove toward town at an excessive rate of speed. He parked in the Gas ’n Guzzle lot and sat with his hands clamped to the wheel, telling himself that if he let go he would charge into the place and play an endless blue tune on Broillard’s head. Yet as he continued to sit there, he recognized that his battle to maintain control was pure bullshit. He was conning himself. Playing at being human. If he let go of the wheel, he would do nothing. He might wish that he would act, that he would lose it and go roaring into the Gas ’n Guzzle and drop the hammer on Broillard in the name of love and honor. But he would never risk it. Twenty years in the cold ditches of the underworld had left him at a remove from the natural demands and fevers of the heart. He supposed he had become, like his old crime partners, an affable sociopath who stood with one foot outside the world, a man whose emotions were smaller than the norm. And this being the case, wasn’t what he felt for Grace equally bullshit?
His anger dimmed and, without ever having left the car, he drove back to the cabin and sat on the steps, practicing calm, gazing out at the tranquil blue surface of the lake, the evergreens standing sentinel along the shadowy avenues leading off among them. Still as a postcard image. Soothing in its simple shapes and colors. He recalled how Grace had talked about it. He believed her view of the place to be romantic delusion, but wished he could share in it. The idea of sharing anything, after the years of solitude, filled him with yearning. But he knew he was incapable of it. Those shadows of Hiroshima burned onto stone, those parings of lives. That was him. A thin dark urgency was all that remained.
Mid-afternoon, and Grace had not appeared. Shellane started toward her house, but thought better of it and took himself in the opposite direction, hoping to walk off his gloom. The sun had sunk to the level of the treeline and, though a rich golden light spread throughout the air, the glaze of mid-day warmth had dissipated. His breath smoked; a chill cut through his windbreaker and hurried his step. He kept his eyes down, kicking at stones, at whatever minor obstructions came to view, manufacturing small goals such as kicking a fish head without breaking stride. He had gone almost a mile when he saw a figure standing among the trees about a hundred feet away. A naked man. Not wearing a stitch. Skinny and tall and pale. Judging by the man’s stillness, Shellane thought he must be waiting for someone. His second impression, based on no clear evidence, was that the man was waiting for him. A pinprick of cold blossomed at the center of his chest and he peered at the man, trying to make out his particulars. He felt as if a channel had opened between them, a clear tunnel in the air, and that along it flowed a palpable menace.