“Really? No kidding? My pop was a cop, too!”
“Yeah?” He didn’t tell her he was already privy to that information, as well as quite a few other tidbits about her she’d probably rather he didn’t know.
Unable to nod, she bobbed eagerly. “Chief of police of Desert Palms, California. How ‘bout your mom?”
“Strictly a homemaker-like every other mom I knew.” He shrugged without looking up. “That’s the way it was then. I didn’t know anybody whose mother worked outside the home.”
“Yeah,” said Eve, “me, too.” She paused, and when he glanced at her he saw that she was looking into space, smiling and remembering. “It seemed like she was always busy, though. And I don’t mean housework. She was into so many things-our schools, community organizations, charities and churches-I don’t know what all. And when she was home, she was always into something-gardening, redecorating, remodeling, you name it. Didn’t leave much time for us kids. And since Pop’s job had him gone most of the time, we were on our own most of the time. I guess that’s why we were so close…” Her voice trailed off. Jake, glancing up, just caught her fleeting look of wistfulness.
He said gruffly, “My dad was gone most of the time, too, but to tell you the truth, I didn’t really notice. It was sort of like…that was the way things were supposed to be. You know what I mean? A clear division of labor and responsibility. I think my mom must have raised us to expect it My sister and I always just took it for granted that Dad was working out there, and Mom was here, with us. I never once heard my mom ask anything more, or utter a word of complaint. I took her for granted,” he muttered, staring at his plate.
But he was thinking, not of his mother, but of the woman he’d married, and how unhappy he’d made her. Thinking that his mother wasn’t the only person he’d taken for granted.
Eve picked up one of the bottles of beer and unscrewed the top, bringing him out of the mire of past regrets. She offered it to him, but he shook his head and gestured at his half-empty plate. “Maybe later. Don’t want to ruin a good thing.”
So she tipped the bottle to her own lips, and with the notion of taking people for granted fresh on his conscience, it occurred to him how awkward it must be for her, wearing that collar, to do a simple thing like that-tilt her head back and swallow. He motioned toward her with his head, and thinking that she wouldn’t even be able to do that much, said in a voice made gruff with guilt, “Why don’t you take that thing off? If somebody catches us together, we’re busted anyway. Might as well be comfortable while you can.”
She gave a funny little feline growl as she anchored the beer bottle between her crisscrossed legs, a sound that reminded him of the actress-he couldn’t think of her name now-who used to play Catwoman on the old Batman television series. He wondered if she had any idea how sexy it was, as she laughed softly and murmured, “You make it sound like an assignation.”
She lifted her hands to the straps that fastened the collar together. Already in the act of reaching out to help, Jake paused, then decided to ignore the warning bells and claxons of every pitch and tone that were sounding inside his head. She moved her hands out of the way, giving over the task to him. The fastenings were simple-why were his fingers so clumsy?
“Tell me, Jake,” she said softly, watching him across the narrow chasm between them, her eyes full of laughter and a strange, dark glow. “What does it take to make you laugh?”
He hesitated for a long time, vibrating like a high-tension wire and fighting to hang on to his self-control, before he replied solemnly, “You make me laugh.”
“Oh, yeah…” Her voice was husky. “I can see that.”
“I’m laughing on the inside,” he said, absolutely deadpan.
Mercifully, at that moment, the two halves of the collar separated in his hands. He eased them and himself gently away from her, leaned back and laid them aside.
But if he’d expected the retreat to a safer distance to ease the strain on his willpower, he was out of luck. If anything, the wider perspective only made things worse. He was struck, for example, by the naked vulnerability of her bared neck, like the stalk of some delicate Sower-a buttercup, maybe, or a wild primrose. He thought it seemed too fragile to support her head and the jaunty, childlike tousle of her straw-colored hair. Yet he knew there was nothing fragile about her body. He remembered the graceful arrangement of muscles in her back…the silky-firm resilience of her flesh beneath his fingertips…
“So,” she said on an exhalation that was both a celebration of freedom and a sigh of pleasure, raking supple fingers through her hair, “you don’t go home to your parents’ for Thanksgiving?”
“Haven’t for a while,” said Jake gloomily. He was staring down at the plate in his lap, thinking that he was rapidly losing interest in its contents. He heaved a small and, he hoped, inaudible sigh. “When I was married we did. My wife saw to that. Family was important to her-probably because she didn’t have any to speak of. Only child…parents were both dead.”
“So,” said Eve, as she had once before, “she only had you.”
He snorted, utterly without mirth. “Did she?”
“Stop that.” She shook her head and leaned toward him, forearms resting on her knees, both hands encircling the bottle of beer. In a tense voice, she said, “You’re not being fair.”
He said nothing, but waited in wary silence for her to explain. After a moment, not looking at him, she lifted the bottle and took a sip. Her movements were quick and jerky-almost, he would have said, angry. She swallowed, still looking past him, then muttered under her breath, “Or she wasn’t.”
“Oh?” he said very quietly, for it was a subject, and they were feelings, he seldom if ever allowed himself to touch upon. “How do you figure that?”
She made a hissing sound, impatient and angry. He could feel himself shoring up his defenses even before she drilled him with a look and fired. “Look-this guilt trip you’re on-didn’t it ever occur to you that your wife wasn’t being fair when she put the entire responsibility for her own fulfillment on to you?”
“That’s not-” he began, withdrawing behind his bulwarks.
“Any of my business…I know,” she finished for him in a gentler tone. “And you’re thinking I don’t exactly qualify as an expert on marriage and divorce. But I have been in a lot of relationships, and I’m a terrific observer of other people’s, and I do know that human beings are so complex, and their needs are so different, that it’s just not possible for one person to provide everything another person needs. A woman in the happiest of marriages still needs her girlfriends. Still needs challenges, goals, mental stimulation, spiritual nourishment. No man could possibly fill all those needs, even if he devoted all his time and energy to the job. It’s just not possible.”
“All his time and energy?” Jake said bitterly. “How about none? I was gone all the time. And when I was home, I was wrapped up in my work-especially the last few years. Are you saying I bear no responsibility for making my wife happy?”
“Of course not.” Eve gestured impatiently with the beer bottle. “Obviously you can’t mistreat or neglect somebody and expect them to be happy in spite of it. I don’t know how to explain. It’s…complicated.” She subsided, momentarily defeated, then drew breath and blurted out, “All I’m saying is, your wife needed to get a life. If she’d had one, maybe she’d have been able to share and understand yours.”
In the silence that followed her unpardonable outburst, Eve sipped beer and listened to the echoes of her own words. Get a life. I used to have a life, she thought, and was suddenly as lonely and wretched there with Jake in that cozy little space as she’d been out on the edge of the marshes, hearing the call of the wild geese at sunset. I want my life bock.