Kiss Of Evil

34

Christmas morning breaks silently over Lake Erie; milk-glass sunlight struggles first through thick lavender clouds, then splays like a wash of yellow tempera along the ragged shoreline that stretches from Ashtabula to Toledo.

At ten-thirty, as per their arrangement, Paris is sitting in Beth’s kitchen, watching her make breakfast. Melissa is in her room, trying on her new Christmas clothes. And blasting some God-awful music.

“So,” he begins, trying, and failing, to sound conversational. “You guys got plans for New Year’s Eve?” He used the word guys, hoping Beth and Melissa were going to do something together, thereby indicating that Beth did not have a date.

“Missy is going over to Tina Manno’s house. I guess Jessica’s mother is putting on a pretty big spread for the kids. I heard she was even hiring a rock band.”

“Wow,” Paris says, stoking a tiny ember of hope in his heart. “That sounds like fun.”

“You can actually say that after watching that group the other night?”

Paris laughs as Beth places a plate of eggs, home fries, and toast in front of him. He takes a bite of toast, remains silent for the moment. But the next question is in his eyes. There is no need to say it out loud. Beth puts down the butter knife. “I have a date, Jack.”

The words ping around his heart for a moment or two, leaving welts. “Oh, okay. Anyone I know?” He tries to float it as a small joke, but it sinks.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you torture yourself?”

“It’s not torture. It’s… conversation, that’s all.”

“Okay,” Beth says.

Paris furrows onward, heart first. “Somebody from work?”

“Nope. I met him on the Internet, actually.”

“What?” Paris drops his fork.

“You asked, right?”

“You’re kidding.”

“Jack, you want to know where I met him? I met him on eharmony, an online Christian dating service, okay? Is that safe enough?”

Paris throws his hands skyward. “Safe? Are you nuts? Do you want to know how many people I’ve locked up who’ve gone to church every Sunday of their lives?”

“How many?” Beth asks with a smile, one that Paris knows she uses when she is trying to break the tension in what will certainly become an argument. An argument they are no longer authorized to have. It works.

“A lot,” Paris says. “It’s just that-”

“It’s just that you love your daughter very much and you want the very best for her.”

Paris would add Beth to that list, but doesn’t. “Well, yeah. That. But I-”

“And that is why Melissa adores her father,” Beth says. “She knows.”

Knockout punch. Paris doesn’t even bother getting off the emotional canvas. “Okay. Just be careful, all right?”

Beth salutes him, then gives him a hug. “Missy loved her present from you, by the way. She thought it was cool.”

He had returned the perfume and gotten her a gift certificate to Abercrombie amp; Fitch, hoping it was still in the realm of cool for girls his daughter’s age.

Beth leaves the room for a moment, then returns, a gift-wrapped shirt box in hand. Missy’s gift to him. He takes the box, opens it. There, inside, is a white Calvin Klein dress shirt, spread collar. A very nice tie as well, clearly his weakest suit when picking out dress clothes.

But, also in the box, is a smaller box, something that looks like a jewelry case. Paris glances at Beth, knowing that she broke the rules. The shirt may be from Missy, but whatever is in the leatherette jewelry box is from Beth.

“No fair,” Paris says. “I thought we had an agreement.”

“Just open it, Jack. You’ll understand.”

“But we agreed,” Paris says, feeling like an idiot for not having the brains to have brought a contingency present for Beth in case this happened.

“I know,” Beth says. “But if you’d just open it, you’d understand.”

Paris opens the small, square jewelry box to find a pair of beautiful silver cuff links.

Beth says: “It’s a French cuff shirt. Completely useless without cuff links, right?”

After an early dinner at his mother’s-the usual belt-loosening holiday spread that includes a primi piatti of homemade gnocchi, followed by a main course of roast capon, followed by warm hazelnut biscotti-Paris spends the remainder of the day reading the Web Cam for Dummies book Carla had given him, addressing it in a manner in which he addresses most technical material, that being with one perfectly glazed eye. At eleven, with the book tented over his eyes, he falls asleep on the living room couch.

Usually, whenever he pays a visit to his ex-wife’s apartment, he has the standard dream about Beth, one where she spends a pleasant day with him, laughing and touching and hugging, only to say good-bye forever at the end, breaking his heart anew every morning. But this time he doesn’t dream about his ex-wife and their long-cooled love affair.

This night he dreams about a beautiful young woman with burnished bronze hair.