Bone Deep

10

Captain Luv waited for his victim in the parking lot of the Grand Union supermarket where she worked. He had met her at the checkout counter, flirted with her the first time as they waited for a supervisor to fix her register, then returned over a period of months, each time to her checkout line, each time exchanging a smile and a few words. Seductions like this took time but he was in no hurry. He heard other employees talk to her, learned tidbits about her life, gathered an impression bolstered by fragmentary facts, and in the process became a familiar face to her, one that she would connect with a smile and a friendly word.

In the past few weeks he had intensified his routine. He came by the supermarket almost daily, driving the extra miles to Ridgefield just to see her and put in his few minutes at her register. He began to buy more groceries so that he could have a longer time with her, abandoning the food in the shopping cart when he was out of her sight in the parking lot. He considered it a small price to pay for seduction, cheaper than flowers and restaurant meals, and worth the cost because thus far he was untraceable. Whatever romance he had kindled in her was not the kind she would mention to her friends. No one had ever seen them together. Their relationship was a secret between them, one completely unspoken and indeed not even fully recognized by her. But Captain Luv knew of her fantasies. That was his calling.

In the past month he had begun to ask her advice about food, how to cook certain vegetables, which meats kids might like, establishing himself as a man who did the cooking, a devoted father caring for children with an eye to their nutrition, a responsible man coping, but barely, with duties of single parenthood but lost with the mysteries of fennel bulbs and short ribs. His very selection of produce made him interesting to her. He was game but ignorant, willing to take risks, but manageable ones, domestic chances. She was also a single parent-a fact he had ascertained during his research period-and before long they shared a moment or two daily confiding their mutual love of their kids, the frustrations and exasperations-and plain hard work-of raising them alone.

By the time Captain Luv made his initial move, she felt she already knew him. She could not have said precisely how, but they had become friends. When he failed to come shopping for a week at a time, she found herself vaguely unsettled that he was not there, wondering if anything had happened to him or his children. When he reappeared in the market, he waved to her while still among the aisles and she found that she could hardly wait for him to appear before her, his latest purchases in hand, each slightly and intriguingly out of the ordinary. "Hi, Denise," said Captain Luv, smiling warmly. "It's nice to see you again."

"I thought you'd given up eating for a while," said Denise. Her pale gray eyes were slightly hooded by the folds of her eyelids, giving her a coy and coquettish look. It was what had attracted Captain Luv to her in the first place, the suggestion of an easy, indiscriminate seductiveness on her part. He had quickly realized that the eyes were not the mirror of the soul in this case, and that Denise was shy and naive, but by then it did not matter. He had decided to have her, eventually, and Captain Luv did not give up easily. "I had a little problem at home," said Captain Luv, the smile fading into concern. "With the kids."

"Oh, are they all right?" Denise asked, her voice quickened with concern.

"Oh, yeah, it's nothing physical, it's just… I don't always know how to deal with their-emotional problems. Especially my daughter. It's just hard to do it all alone sometimes."

"I know," said Denise. "I know."

"Do you ever have that problem with Charlie?" Luv asked, knowing that she would be impressed that he remembered her son's name. It was an idea she had given him several months before, mentioning her difficulties parenting a boy without a father figure. She would regard his problem as one she could sympathize with, not a mirror image of her own.

"Oh, yes. It's very difficult. They need a parent of the same sex, I don't care what you say." Luv sighed in pain and frustration.

"I could really use someone to talk to," he said.

Denise glanced at the small line growing behind him, several of them already beginning to look impatient about so much conversation. She wished they would go away and let her talk to this sweet and troubled man.

"Sometimes I think I can't just keep doing it alone," Luv said. "They're wonderful kids and I love them so much, but I have to ask myself, am I doing absolutely all I can for them? Am I doing it right?"

"You are," Denise said, longing to touch his hand. "I know you are." He smiled the saddest smile.

"It makes me feel better just to talk to you about it," he said. He offered her his wistful smile, knowing the effect it would have.

The first woman in line behind Luv had unloaded as much of her groceries as would fit on the conveyer belt. She stood with can in hand, wavering impatiently over the belt, waiting for Denise to advance the column. The customers behind her were stirring restlessly.

"I–I get off work at eight," Denise said, half whispering. "If you're around, we could talk some more."

"I'd like that," said Luv, feigning happy surprise. "That would be great."

"Can you manage with the kids?"

"I'll get a sitter," said Luv. He started to move off with his bag of groceries, then paused to shyly waggle his fingers at her. Glancing self-consciously at the other customers, Denise lifted a hand in response and gently moved her fingers. The warmth she felt after he left sustained her through the day.

She came out of the store in the gathering twilight to find Luv waiting for her beside his car. She had put on a light sweater over her uniform although the weather did not require it. She felt paralyzingly shy. Ten minutes spent in front of the mirror in the employees' washroom had only made her wish she were prettier, and she had been forced to remind herself that this meeting was not about her. He would not care if she were a beauty queen, he wanted to talk about his children. It was the thing she liked best about him-he was such a devoted parent, and like her, he felt so besieged by the cares and uncertainties of the task. So few men seemed to love their children the way he did. She could tell that he was sensitive in a way she had long ago stopped trying to find in a male.

Denise was certain that she was doing the right thing, she knew she could trust him, but still she felt that little chill of doubt as she approached him in the dusk. He smiled broadly, brightening the whole parking lot, she thought, as she came close, but then he looked away, una le to o her eye, and she realized that he felt as shy as she did. It was comforting.

"I thought we could get a cup of coffee at the diner," he said, gesturing to the south a few hundred yards. "Is that all right?"

Denise was relieved that he wanted to go someplace public, someplace close. "That's fine," she said.

"Would you rather take two cars?" he asked, simultaneously holding open the passenger door of his car for her. "If you'd feel more comfortable that way." Denise was amazed at his consideration. It seemed that everything he did was right and she knew that he was as uncomfortable about the awkwardness of this first meeting as she was. She felt uneasy around men who were too smooth, too sure of themselves. His diffidence was charming. She didn't know what to say so she simply slid into the front seat of his car.

Luv did nothing that night but talk to her. They discussed their children and their lives for close to two hours, sipping coffee and lingering, reluctant to leave each other.

Finally Luv glanced at his watch and said, "I didn't realize it was so late. I told the baby-sitter I'd be back in an hour and a half. I've got to get back to the kids." Denise guiltily realized that she hadn't given a moment's thought to her own teenaged daughter waiting at home for her.

After the first hour he had taken her hand in his and said, "I have a confession to make. I didn't tell you this right away because I know how it's going to sound and I had to be sure you'd understand. It's…

It's weird."

She looked at him expectantly. It was hard to imagine anything about him that wasn't good.

"I told you my wife is gone but that isn't really true," he said. "We're divorced, but she still lives with me and the kids. She's emotionally unstable, it's a chemical imbalance, the doctors say, and she's on medication, but-the thing is, she can't live on her own. She's not really crazy, I mean I don't think she'd ever hurt anybody-do you understand at all what I'm saying?"

Denise nodded but in fact she understood none of it. His explanation whirred past her ears.

"If we turned her out of the house-well-this is hard for me to say, this is the mother of my kids-but hell, she'd be a bag lady inside of a month. She can't function without the medicine, she won't take the medicine unless someone is there to supervise, she can't afford to hire anyone-and the kids love her. I want them to love her, she's their mother." He sighed heavily. "I just don't know what else to do. It would be like killing her, in a way, if I told her to go away. She wouldn't understand it either. She gets confused, she doesn't really understand what has happened to her, she thinks-She just doesn't live in reality." He put his face in his hands. "It's so exhausting," he said.

Denise touched the back of his hand with her finger.

"It drains me," he said, his voice cracking with emotion. "She's a weight, a millstone-but what else can I do?"

He removed his hands from his face, looked Denise in the eye, pleading for compassion. "What else can I do?" he asked again.

"Nothing," she said, thinking he was the best man she had ever known.

"You must help her."

When they had finished in the diner at last, he drove her directly to her car and waited beside her as she unlocked it.

"This was wonderful," Luv said. "It felt really good talking to you."

He had gotten past his shyness in the diner and now he looked at her all the while as he talked to her, smiling directly into her eyes.

"Yes," said Denise, feeling her own shyness returning now that he stood next to her without the restaurant's table between them. There seemed to be such a power to his physical presence now. "I felt the same way."

She wondered if he might try to kiss her and she decided she would let him if he did, but after a brief pause in which he seemed to be struggling with himself, he offered his hand instead.

"Good night," he said. He spoke the words as if they were a caress in themselves. His flesh was warm and soft and Denise felt that she should have removed her own hand sooner, but she did not want to. He broke away at last and returned to his car. When she was behind the wheel and her engine was on, he waved and drove away. Denise watched him go with such a tumult of emotions that she did not know exactly what she felt, except that it was all good. Even the disappointment that he had not kissed her was good. It was too early to do so and she was glad that he had realized it, even if she had not. Besides, she did not need his kiss to know that he liked her. It was obvious in the way he looked at her, in the way he showed her respect. Denise knew she would see him again, even if he did not yet know it himself. She would see to it.

As she drove home, she realized that she knew him only as Lyle, she had no idea what his last name was. But then she knew very little about him really. He had not talked about his job, he had not talked about himself much at all, except to tell her how he felt about his children-and his wife. Ex-wife. She realized belatedly and with some surprise that most of the conversation had been about herself. She had spoken with uncharacteristic candor and bitterness about her ex-husband, a thing she almost never did in the presence of a man although she was quick enough to detail Larry's shortcomings with her girlfriends. She had told Lyle things that astounded her in retrospect. It had been like talking to a therapist, he had been so encouraging, so interested. The two hours had flown like five minutes-it did not bother her at all that she didn't know his last name, she told herself.

She was so absorbed in replaying the conversation in the diner that she never noticed the headlights in her mirror that followed her all the way home and pulled to the side of the road when she turned into her driveway. She did not see the man she knew as Lyle watching her go into her house.

Luv whistled softly as he noted the pattern of lights going on and off in Denise's house. Her bedroom was on the second story, her daughter's room just across a hallway. That made the use of her house unlikely. Not impossible, surely, for he liked a challenge, but not probable. Which meant another motel. Not the same one as with Inge, not so soon, but there were others, many others. There was a drop of several feet into a flower bed from her window, but since she was not married there was no need for an emergency escape route. Still, it was always good to be prepared. It was one thing to take risks, quite another to work in unnecessary ignorance. The one was exciting, the other stupid, and he was already skirting too close to danger at the moment. Inge's body was still in the trash bag in the trunk of his car.

He had to find a new burial site and he was waiting until it was a good deal later to start his search. Luv should have taken care of it earlier, he knew, but life had intervened, he had gotten busy with other responsibilities. He could not be Captain Luv all the time, much as he might be inclined to be so.

He had another hour or two to kill before it was safe to drive the back roads and search the woods, so Captain Luv went looking for a bar. He might find another victim and he could squirrel her away for future use.

They were everywhere, all of them waiting for him. "Luvvv is where you find it," he sang. "Don't be blind, it's all around you, everywhere."