Butcher

39

Cape Girardeau

It took them an hour and seventeen minutes to get from the door of Sharon Kamen's motel on the outskirts of Bayou City to the home where Dr. Tatum lived. He was very old and quite ill. She never found out what else he was suffering from other than acute emphysema and didn't care to have his illness diagnosed. She was inside the home five minutes tops, and when she came back to the truck her face looked ashen. Bloodless.

“Let's go, please,” she said, and slammed the passenger-side door.

“You wanna go by the hospital next?"

“Sure, fine."

“That didn't take long."

She didn't say anything, put her head against the seat, facing away from him, and began sobbing bitterly.

He thought he really had a dandy effect on her. Ray fought the impulse to touch or console her, focused his mind on the rainy streets and dangerously stupid Cape motorists, and kept his mouth shut.

Finally she brought herself under control. “You know,” she said, blowing her nose and trying to smile, “it's funny. I'm not a crier normally. I don't tend to cry much. You caught me in a slump.” This struck her as absurd and she laughed. “It's all so impossible.... I don't know. That man in there is a dying invalid. His wife said Dad hadn't been to see them and suddenly it seemed as if there was no hope. I know something's happened—I know it has.” She blew her nose again.

“Hey, I understand,” he spoke quietly. “But your dad looked to me like the kind of person could handle himself. Don't jump to any conclusions yet. This is only the beginning. The fact he didn't get to the Tatum house doesn't mean anything bad."

“Okay."

Three stops later, midafternoon, the weather having warmed up and the rain having slackened, Meara still sat in the truck, waiting. Ever since this lady got into his pickup that morning he'd been self-conscious about how dirty the interior of the truck was.

He started to get out and stretch and saw her coming out of the building, striding toward where he was parked on her long, gorgeous legs, and she took his breath away with the flawless geometry of limb and the artwork of pore and follicle. But he was beginning to realize there was more than beauty that made her so intensely attractive to him.

“Hey, listen,” she said, in a bossy, businesslike tone, as if she'd read his mind, “this is really taking way too much of your time, Ray. Please take me to a taxi and I'll make my own way back, huh? You've been super, but this is fine."

“I'm not going anywhere,” he said. “Where to next?"

“Oh, well,” she said, letting a lot of breath out as if in disgust. When she inhaled deeply, Meara couldn't help but watch her chest push the sweater out and fill it. Why was he doing this to himself?

Again, Sharon was uncomfortably aware of his attention, and the last thing she needed was someone coming on to her. She was smart enough to know, however, that she was a woman who was capable of unconscious provocation and this was the sort of routine interpersonal moment she dismissed. She knew things by taste, background, and instinct: how to appear warmly feminine, for instance, without crossing the line and becoming unduly provocative. She also knew the reverse, and she could chill a man without half trying. With her concerns about her father, the kind of look Meara had given her virtually negated all his kindesses to the moment. She about tore the raincoat off in her haste to pull it around her, and to hell with what he thought.

He felt, appropriately, as if he'd acted like a boorish pig, and it was clear she was going to end up hating him if he didn't get his act together. He could hear words coming out of his mouth, something about Sikeston and Anniston. Bertrand. Dr. Syre. Just words in a businesslike tone. He couldn't get his mind right, and glanced at her again.

Ridiculously, she could feel herself responding to his gaze. Ludicrous. It angered her and she felt soiled sitting in his filthy, moronic truck with its country and western music on the radio. She felt tired, too, and vulnerable, and her breasts were quite sensitive under the blouse and sweater, as if he'd reached across and touched her. She didn't understand or welcome the feeling, rejected it wholly, trying to keep it out of her eyes and keep the heat out of her face.

“I don't care which,” she said, reading his thoughts and telling him “no way” with her mind, tone, and body language. She did everything but print No Chance in the accumulated dust on the dash.

“Let me study on it a minute,” he said, guilelessly, in what he thought sounded like the voice of a man strangling on his own lowbrow thoughts. “It's—uh—you know, hard...” Hard. Jesus. “Hard to know—” He was closer to her than he had been. How had he accomplished that? Ray was behind the wheel and she hadn't moved. Maybe it only seemed closer.

To him she smelled like flowers in a springtime garden. He was getting drunk on her and it was hard ... hard to breathe. He cracked a window. He knew she read all of this somehow, on the wavelength where a woman's intuition operates, and he imagined her recoiling as if she'd seen a snake slither out of the glove compartment. All of this in a half second, and at least he had the wit to sense he'd conducted himself rudely, and with a woman looking for her missing loved one. He wrenched his thoughts out of the absurdly adolescent male fantasy.

“Charleston's out of the way. Let's head back this way,” he pointed, “and we can swing on back through East Prairie and Bayou City."

“All right,” she said icily.

“We could go to Sikeston, back down sixty-one to Kewanee, and swing back through New Madrid, then take you back to the motel. You want to do that?"

“Okay, let's try Sikeston,” she said, “and we can see how it goes from there.” Sharon pushed all thoughts away but those of her father's whereabouts.

How many contacts would it take before she generated a single positive lead? Quite casually, a hideous thought intruded, and she realized a very frightening portal had been unlocked inside her mind. The crushing fear that something was terribly wrong returned and wrapped itself tightly around her.

The pickup truck smelled of leather, oil, Ray's aftershave, and something she couldn't place. She guessed it was her own anxiety.

Sikeston proved to be the reverse of Cape; everywhere they went, Aaron Kamen had already been there. When she left the last location she was exhausted, and they went back to Bayou City directly.

She thanked Meara, he said he was glad to help, and they each left it at that. She went inside and took two showers, one hot and one cool, crawled into bed, found an easy-listening station on the fm, turned the music down to enough of a murmur that it could compete with the cowpokes ramrodding the eighteen-wheel longhorns down Highway 80, and fell fast asleep.

Meara sped away from the motel and within minutes was knocking on Rosemary James's mobile-home door. Her friend Brenda opened it and nodded a bored hello, screaming “Rosie” down the length of the trailer. “You got company!"

“Hi!” she said, coming out of the bathroom, her hair wrapped in a towel. “What a nice surprise. What are—” He shut her lips with a hard kiss, pulling her with him, laughing, as they moved down the hallway to the bedroom.

“Tell Brenda you'll see her tomorrow."

“Brenda, I'll see you tomorrow,” she called out, and Brenda was running her mouth about something, but the door was shut, and they weren't listening, concentrating on touching each other with heat and urgency, as he locked the door and eased her back on the bed.

Maybe forty, forty-five seconds later he said, “Sorry about that."

“Raymond,” she said, and changed the sheets. They undressed fully, cuddling in the bed together. Before long her body curves and warmth had heated him up again and she felt him stiffen and enter her.

They made love oddly, at least for them, him tucked into her from the back, and then he was spent and pulling his Levis and boots back on, telling her adios.

Rosemary's neck ached from trying to kiss him over her shoulder and she said to him as he went out the door, “Come again any time,” actually one of her funniest remarks, while she rubbed her neck and followed him out.

Meara was surprised to find Brenda still sitting in the living room, working a crossword puzzle.

“I'm just leaving,” she said, without looking up.

“Don't go on my account,” he murmured, saying to Rosemary, “Later,” and kissing her good-bye. She stood in the doorway until the truck was out of sight.

“Don't that beat all?” Brenda sneered.

“That's my love life for ya,” Rosemary said, half smiling. It was her day to think of funny things. “A pain in the neck and a pain in the ass."