Silent Prey

CHAPTER
13

"What's wrong?" Lily asked.

Kennett rolled toward her and put an arm under her head. "I feel like an invalid when we do that. I mean, nothing but that."

The forward double berth was wedge-shaped, shoved into the bow of the boat. Kennett was lying on his side. He reached toward her face in the near-darkness, touched her at the hairline with the pad of his index finger, drew it down her nose, gently over her lips, between her breasts, then up to gently tap each nipple, then down around her navel, over her hipbone and down the inside of her thigh to her knee. She was still warm, sweating.

"We're not… compelled… to do it," Lily said.

"Maybe you're not, but I am," Kennett grumbled. "If I couldn't make love anymore, I'd feel like a goddamn vegetable."

"You just wanna be on top," she said, trying to make a joke out of it. When he didn't respond, she said, "You've got to listen to Fermut."

"Fuckin' doctors…" Fermut, the cardiologist, had reluctantly agreed that Kennett could resume his sex life "as long as your partner does the hard work."

"Listen to him," Lily said, gently but urgently. "He's trying to save your life, you dope."

"Yeah." Kennett turned his head away from her, his hand scratching at his chest.

"You want a cigarette, right?"

"No, that's not it. I was just thinking… it's not the doctors. It's me. When I get turned on and my heart starts thumping, I start listening to it…"

"Then we oughta quit. Maybe only for a few weeks…" Lily said.

"No. That'd be worse. It's just… Christ, I wish one thing-just one goddamn thing in this world-was simple. Just one thing. I gotta get laid, but if I get laid, I can't help thinking about my heart, and that can mess up getting laid. Then with you on top all the time, and me just laying there like a dead man with a hard-on, I start thinking, what's it like for her? It must be like necrophilia, screwing me."

"Richard, you idiot…"

"Christ, I'm glad I met you," he said after a while. "I couldn't believe you were in there, working for O'Dell. I kept thinking, she can't be just working for him, a woman like that, there's gotta be something else going on here."

"Oh, God…" Lily giggled, an odd, pleasant sound with her husky voice.

"Sorry 'bout that," Kennett said, touching her again. "I wonder what O'Dell does for sex? Fly out to Vegas and get a couple-three fat ones in the sack? I wonder how long it's been since he's seen his dick? He's so fat I don't think he can even reach it anymore…"

"C'mon…" Lily said, but she giggled again, a big woman giggling, and that set Kennett off, laughing.

And then: " 'Course, things must've been different with Davenport."

Lily cut him off: "Shut up. I don't want to hear it."

"Probably hung like a Shetland pony…"

"You wanna get bit?"

"Is that a clear offer?"

"Dick…"

"Hey. I'm not jealous. Well, maybe a little. But I really like the guy. This whole business of bringing him to dance with the media, that's pretty bizarre, and it's working. You think he'll get in the sack with Barbara Fell?"

"I don't know," she said, crisply.

"He seems like the kind of guy who'd be looking around," he offered.

"Pot and kettle."

"Hey-I didn't say it was bad. I just wondered about him and Fell. That's a match made in hell."

"She's very attractive."

"I guess, if you like the type," Kennett said. "She looks like a biker chick who fell off the Harley one too many times. Why'd you put him with her? Some kind of psychological compulsion to bury your sexual history?"

"No, no, no. We just needed somebody who knew Midtown fences…"

"Yeah, but Davenport's supposed to be a talking head."

"He's never a talking head. Even when he's talking. The guy has more moves than you do, and you're the sneakiest, shiftiest…"

"… crookedest…"

"… most underhanded asshole on the force. Besides, he had to do something to get the media to talk to him."

"I suppose." Kennett's fingertips slipped along her thigh again, her skin soft and slightly cool from evaporating sweat. "We'll either have to get a sheet to cover up or figure out some way to warm up the place again."

Lily groped for his groin and said, "Oh, Jesus. Are you sure? Dick…"

He rolled into her, his arm around her, pulling her tight. "That's the word, all right. Dick."

"Be serious."

"All right. How's this: I really do need you; it's the thing that keeps my heart going…"

Much later, when he was sleeping, she thought: They can all make you feel guilty; it's what they do best…