He’s upstairs. He can’t say how he got here. Lainie is perched on the edge of the bed. He’s sorry to see that the apron’s coarse pragmatism has been replaced by a nightgown’s sheerness. She sits with shoulders forward, knees together, one leg kicked out to the side. This pose, too, she’s learned from movies. But is the sole of any starlet’s foot so dirty? Strickland continues toward her, upbraiding himself with each step. Accepting a woman’s lure is like taking an enemy’s bait. Lainie’s cunning: She waits, a shrewd shrug persuading a strap of the nightie to slip from her shoulder. He stands before her weak and worthless.
“I like it here,” she says.
Discarded clothing hunches on the floor like vermin. Perfume bottles are scattered in insect chaos. The blinds are crooked as if cracked by earthquake. He does not, in fact, like it here, nor does he trust it. Everything in this city is an elaborate feint toward civilization, a bluff regarding the safe superiority of their species.
“Baltimore,” she clarifies. “People are nice here. None of that phony southern stuff. The kids like their big backyard. They like the school. The stores are very impressive. And you like your job. I know you don’t think about it in those terms. But a woman can tell. All those late hours. You’re dedicated. I’m sure they appreciate you. You’re going to do great there. Everything is going to be wonderful.”
His bandaged left hand is in her hand. He can’t say how this happened, either. He hopes it’s the pills. Otherwise it’s his traitorous body flooding with the intoxicants of prospective intercourse. She settles his fingers on the slope of her breast and inhales to expand it, stretching out her neck. He examines the flawless skin and in its place sees the two puffy scars of Elisa Esposito. Elisa, Elaine. The names are so close. He finds himself tracing the imagined scars with his fingers. Lainie kittens her neck into his hand. Strickland has a pang of sorrow for her. She has no idea of the things in his head. His current thought, for example, that he’d rather like to chew her to pieces, just like the hidden piranhas in their sink.
“Does that hurt?” She sinks his cold, sewn fingers into her hot breast, just above her heart. “Can you feel anything?”
32
LAINIE SEES WILDNESS in him and welcomes it. For too long now, his best energy has belonged to the jungle. But there’s more at stake here in Baltimore than a military mission. She needs to remind him of that as often as she can. Timmy’s time-capsule question had knocked Richard off his rails, and he’d responded excellently, doling advice like a father should. Lainie knows she just needs to give him time. Soon he’ll be ready to talk to their son about what he did to the skink and how to be a good man. Because Richard is, despite his job, despite his fealty to General Hoyt, despite everything, good. She’s almost sure of it.
Progressive women’s magazines have instructed her not to offer her body as a reward, but what do they know? Have any of those writers and editors had a husband tossed into two different kinds of hell and come back alive? This is how it could be, is what she hopes their sex will tell him. We could be happy, normal. While she’s at it, maybe she can convince herself of the same. Maybe her job at Klein & Saunders won’t have to be a secret much longer. Maybe, if this goes well and he holds her tight afterward, drained and fuzzy-headed, she’ll tell him right then. Maybe he’ll even be proud of her.
His wildness, however, doesn’t last. Richard is easily embarrassed when his own body feels ungainly, and between the lumpish shucking of his clothes and his awkward positioning atop her, he retreats into the brow-furrowed ogre he’s been since the Amazon. She is purposely messy, her nightie half-open, one hand sunk into her tangled hair, the other gripping the coverlet, but he is flesh upon pistons, a tool for a task, and he enters her with syringe straightness. He thrusts without build, beginning at medium speed, not varying.
It is something, though, definitely something, and she crosses her ankles behind his back and digs her fingers into his biceps, and threshes her torso, not because it feels particularly good but to keep all of their parts in motion, for as long as she doesn’t lie still there’s a chance to see from fresh perspectives each moment, to believe that this act, as well as the larger act of their marriage, has yet to be resolved.
This takes energy and dedication, and it distracts her until she feels the warmth of Richard’s hand on her neck. She takes care to open her eyes slowly so as not to startle him. His face is wet and red, and his eyes, also wet and red, are fixed upon her neck, where his thumb is tracing a diagonal line down each side of her throat. She can’t interpret this but wants to encourage it.
“That’s good,” she whispers. “Rub me all over.”
His hand slides upward, over her chin, and covers her mouth with a smooth ease she doesn’t understand until she feels wetness roll down her neck. Against her lip, knuckle-hard, she can feel the wedding ring under a bandage. She tells herself to stay calm. He’s not trying to hurt her. He’s not trying to choke her. More wetness pools between her lips. She recognizes the taste. She refuses to believe it. She tastes it again and pushes her head sideways to break from his palm.
“Honey,” she gasps. “Your hand’s bleeding—”
But his wet hand slides over her mouth again. That’s what he wants—he wants her mute. He’s going faster now, the bedsprings shrilling and the headboard thunking in unexpected rhythms, and she presses her lips together to keep out the blood and breathes through her nose, and tells herself she can hold out until he’s done, because here is that wildness she wanted, and at heightened levels. Some women like this. She’s seen countless adventure magazine covers of helpless women in tattered dresses thrown about by Tarzanlike men. Maybe she can learn to like it, too.
His grip starts to slip as his body begins to hitch, and Lainie’s able to force her head upright. Richard is no longer looking at the two lines he’s been tracing in blood across her throat. His head is wrenched over his shoulder, neck muscles taut as he strains to see inside the closet. She feels his thighs shudder against hers and she lets her head drop back onto the pillow, feeling blood creep down both sides of her neck. It’s too confusing to think about. There’s nothing in the closet worth looking at, nothing at all. Just some crummy old high-heel shoes.
33
IT’S NOT EVERY night that Elisa makes it into the lab, and on nights when she does, eggs in hand, and finds the creature inside the tank instead of the pool, her heart breaks. This rouses her from selfish exuberance, reminds her that there is no joy inside F-1, not really. Yes, the pool is preferable to the tank, but what would be preferable to the pool? Anything, everything. The world is full of ponds and lakes, streams and rivers, seas and oceans. She stands before the tank on these nights wondering if she is any better than the soldiers who captured the creature or the scientists who keep him contained.
What she knows for certain is that the creature can sense her state of mind, even through metal and glass. His body-lights fill the tank with colors so intense it looks as though he swims in lava or melted steel or yellow fire. Elisa worries about the severity of these emotions. Has she only made his life harder to live? Before peering into a porthole window, she swallows down thick tears and masks her trembling lips with the most serene smile she can manage.