Bone Deep

3

With Jack away for two weeks in the summer to be with his father, Karen and Becker spent their evenings in a grateful peace. It was surprising to find themselves suddenly without the burden and pleasures of caring for an eleven-year-old, and for the first few days there was a sense that the tranquillity of the house was a fraud, a cruel trick that would be suddenly reversed, leaving them off balance and embarrassed. But they both soon adjusted to childlessness and turned to each other in deeper and warmer ways. Karen had suffered from Jack's absence when he was younger, feeling nervous and deprived of his love as well as his presence. She had not trusted the elements or the fates to keep him warm and dry and safe and healthy without her moderating influence. She had resented the time her ex-husband spent with the boy, mistrusted his ability to nurture and parent, feared that his influence would woo her son away from her. As Jack grew older, she had come to relish the two weeks as relief, respite, an island of tranquillity in the year-long effort to do the impossible job of raising a child without error.

Becker and Karen would do the dishes by hand rather than use the dishwasher, because it was a way to prolong the mealtime, and afterwards they would sit next to each other on the sofa, listening to music, sipping wine, and talking. The wine was a recent innovation. She had read that people who drank a small amount of alcohol dailyother factors being equal-were less prone to heart attack than teetotalers. Although neither of them was even a casual drinker by nature, Karen had instituted a glass-of-wine-aday regimen, like it or not. Becker's glass frequently saw him through dinner and well into evening, but Karen had come to meld into the ritual, feeling the wine warm and soften her in places that had spent the day as clenched as a fist.

Karen was Associate Deputy Director of the FBI in charge of Serial Killings and her days were fraught with tension.

"I'll bet I'm the only associate deputy having her feet massaged right now," she said contentedly.

Becker smiled at her and gripped the outer edge of her foot between his thumb and finger. She winced and then hummed in that mixture of pleasure and pain peculiar to massage.

"It's your hands," she said. "You have the best hands."

"It's your mind," he said. "You want to think I have the best hands."

"Are you saying I'm easy?"

"I'm saying you're the best," he said. He ran his thumb stiffly lengthwise on the center of the sole of her foot and she jerked so violently her foot jumped from his lap.

"Yikes," she said. Then, grinning: "Do it again."

"That one's done," Becker said, shifting her feet in his lap and starting on the other. He began by just running his hand over the length of her foot, letting her skin respond to the warmth of his touch. She closed her eyes and moaned again.

"I think something's up with Tee," he said. "Why do you say that?"

"I just have a feeling… Certain things he was saying, way he was saying them… I told you about the lady with the bone in her yard?

Well, I think Tee might be having a thing with her. Or would like to.

Or has been offered the chance. Some combination there."

"What makes you think so?"

"If you knew the police were coming over to investigate something-would you greet them in shorts and a halter?"

"With my thighs? Don't be silly."

"There's nothing wrong with your thighs. You have most excellent thighs."

"No wonder your hands have to be so good," she said. "You're blind… and bless you for it. How old is this woman?"

"Young thirties. Two kids, Tee says."

"Sort of standard issue for around here. Maybe a little younger than most. But to answer your question, no, most women wouldn't wear an outfit like that to greet the cops. It's certainly not that hot."

"That's what I thought."

"How did she look?"

"Okay, if you like that kind of look."

"What look is that? And do you like it?"

"Thin. Too thin, really. If she raised her arm you could see her ribs, that kind of thin. Small-breasted."

"The slut," she said, grinning. "Why was she raising her arm in the first place?"

" I didn't find her all that attractive. Tee does, I think."

"I remember seeing one of my ribs," Karen said. "It wasn't recently, but I remember it."

Becker slid his hand up her side, feeling her ribs with the tips of his fingers.

"Still there," he said. "And fine ribs they are, too."

His hand came to rest on the side of her breast. He left it there.

"You've got a lousy sense of direction," she said. "Keep it up."

"After I've finished your foot," he said, pulling gently on each of her toes in turn. They had made love most nights that Jack had been gone, flowing naturally and warmly into the act as a natural continuation of being together. The feet, the talk, the touching, were all part of it.

"Did Tee say anything about this woman?"

"Not really. I thought he was going to, but then he just Clammed up."

"I've never known Tee to clam up," she said.

"I don't mean he was quiet, he just didn't want to go any farther on the subject. You know, as much as I like Tee, it's getting to be kind of a strain being with him sometimes. We have this way of talking to each otherit's not really to each other, it's sort of at each other, if you know what I mean. We seem to be trying to top each other all the time.

It's fun-but it's exhausting. I wish we could just relax and really talk sometimes."

"Maybe the two of you need a break. This is your vacation-why don't you go rock climbing?"

"Don't feel like it."

"You love it."

"I never loved it, I did it because I was afraid of it."

"It looked like enjoyment to me."

"That grin on my face was just a grimace of fear… I don't want to go if you can't come too. It wouldn't be any fun without you."

"John, you have changed so much."

"That's what Tee says."

"Why, do you think?"

"You don't know?" he asked. "It's you. Simple."

"Is it really?"

"You made me talk to you."

"I didn't make you."

"You taught me. Or maybe you just made it safe enough to allow me to talk to you. Maybe our work helped."

"Our work? Being in the Bureau? It doesn't make any of the rest of them talk, God knows."

"I mean, we've been scared together, and we've admitted it. And survived it. Maybe sharing the big fears have made it easier for me to share the smaller ones."

She sat up and put her arms around his neck.

They made love a little earlier than they had expected, and a little longer.

Afterwards, Becker held her in his arms as he drifted off to sleep. His last conscious thought was that after years of inner ton-nent he had found peace at last, and the reason was in his embrace right now. He had loved women before but none of them had released him from himself as much, none had brought him family or permitted him to be an alternate John Becker.