Shakespeare’s Landlord

Chapter Six

I was on my way into the house to shower after my morning workout at Body Time-Marshall’s assistant had opened the gym this morning, to my relief- when I saw Marcus Jefferson and a little boy. My hair was wet with sweat and big dark patches spotted my gray T-shirt and shorts. I was about to unlock my front door when I heard someone call my name.

“Good morning, Lily,” Marcus said from the sidewalk. It was the first time I had ever seen him smile, and I understood the attraction he has for Deedra. Marcus is well-muscled and tall, the color of coffee with one tablespoon of milk. His brown eyes have a golden cast. The little boy looked even more attractive, smiling and immaculately dressed, with long, curly eyelashes and huge dark eyes.

Though I longed to go right inside and get in the shower, out of courtesy I strolled down my driveway to the sidewalk and squatted down in front of the child.

“What’s your name?”

“Kenya,” the boy said with a beaming grin.

“Kenya, that’s a nice name,” I said. “How old are you?” I supposed I was asking the right questions, since Marcus and the child both seemed pleased.

The boy held up three fingers. I had to repress a shudder at seeing how tiny those fingers were. The terrible vulnerability of children frightens me so much, I am leery of liking one. How could I ever be vigilant enough to protect something so frail and precious? Yet other people don’t seem to share this terror, are foolish or defiant enough to have children and expect those children will live to adulthood without being harmed.

My face had gone wrong, I could tell. The child’s uncertain eyes and faltering smile recalled me to my senses.

I yanked my lips into a grin and very gently patted the boy’s shoulder. “You’ll grow up to be a big man, Kenya,” I said, and rose to my feet. “Is this your son, Marcus?”

“Yes, this is my only one,” he said proudly. “My wife and I have been separated for a few months, but she and I agree that I should spend as much time with Kenya as I can.”

“You must have worked four to midnight,” I said, pretty much at a loss for conversation topics.

Marcus nodded. “I came home and got some sleep; then I got Kenya from his mom before she left for work-she works at the welfare office.”

“So, what are you two going to do today?” I asked politely, trying not to look at my watch. Thursday mornings, I have to be at the Drinkwaters’ at 8:30.

“Well, we’re going to McDonald’s for breakfast,” said Marcus, “and then I think we’ll go to my place and play Candy Land, and maybe we’ll watch Barney. That suit you, sport?”

“McDonald’s, McDonald’s,” Kenya began to chant, pulling on his father’s hand.

“I better take this boy to get some food in him,” Marcus said, shaking his head at the boy’s impatience. But he was grinning at the same time.

“I guess,” I said, “you couldn’t have him here, with Pardon being the way he was about the apartments being adults only.”

“I had Kenya over one time, and Mr. Albee let me have it,” Marcus said, watching the child trot down the sidewalk. “I’m wondering what the next owner will do. Would you know who that’s going to be?”

“No,” I said slowly. This was the second time the subject had come up. “No, I have no idea. But I’m going to try to find out.”

“Let me know,” Marcus said, and raised a hand in good-bye.

“Cute kid,” I said, and watched the young man trot to catch up with the little boy before I turned to go into my own house.

Mel and Helen Drinkwater have me in once a week for an all-morning cleaning job. They are both in their fifties and work, he as county supervisor, she at a bank, and they are not messy people. But they have a large old house and their grandchildren, who live down the street, come in and out several times a week.

Helen Drinkwater is a woman who likes things done exactly to her taste, and she has a room-by-room checklist of things I should accomplish in the three and a half hours I am there. At first, Mrs. Drinkwater actually tried to get me to check things off the list and leave a checked list in each room, but I wouldn’t. In fact, as I was learning the Drinkwater house, the list was helpful, but it would have felt like a paint-by-numbers kit if I’d checked the little boxes.

Mrs. Drinkwater (I have sworn never to call her Helen) hadn’t said a thing. I’d left the list in the exact middle of the room each time I’d cleaned the house the first few visits.

Then Mrs. Drinkwater had left a pile of dirty clothes by the washer with a note asking me to “pop these in the washer and dryer for me.” The first time it happened, I had fumed and done it; the second time, I left a note myself, which said, “Not on any of my lists,” and after that, Helen Drinkwater had not added to my duties.

The two-story turn-of-the-century family home looked especially pretty in the clear, warm morning light. The house is pale yellow, with white trim and dark green shutters, and it is set far back from the street. Of course, a house like this is in the oldest surviving section of Shakespeare, and it has at least half an acre of woods behind it, which the Drinkwaters have left untouched.

This morning, I had a lot to think about. Marshall had said he was separated from Thea, and he’d said it as if that was significant to me. As I scrubbed the second-floor bathroom, I wondered if Marshall still had that spark of feeling for me after last night. The few times in the past I’d felt more than calm acceptance of a man, all I’d had to do to make him run was to tell him what had happened to me. Except one man, who’d gotten so excited that he’d tried to force himself on me. I’d hurt him, but it had taken time and a struggle. After that, I’d been ready to try martial arts, which has turned out to be the most pleasurable element in my life.

These thoughts tapped at my consciousness like raindrops hitting the sidewalk, thoughts that were significant but not wholly engrossing. I was also thinking about the Drinkwaters’ bathtub ring, and what to do with the comic book I’d found behind the toilet. So it wasn’t until the floorboards downstairs creaked a second time that I came to attention.

I became absolutely still, the sponge in my hand held motionless an inch from the surface of the sink. I was looking into the mirror over the sink, but I was not seeing myself. I was trying to make sense of the floorboards.

The Drinkwaters always leave the kitchen door unlocked when they depart at 8:15, knowing I will be here at 8:30. I lock it behind myself when I get here, though daytime burglaries are unknown in this section of Shakespeare.

Someone had gotten in the house in that fifteen minutes.

I shut my eyes to listen harder. I tried to pull off my rubber gloves without making a sound. I set them in the sink. He’d not yet started up the stairs; I could improve my position.

There wasn’t time to take off my shoes. I stepped silently out of the bathroom, trying to remember where the creaking boards upstairs were. If I could flatten myself against the wall at the beginning of the hall, which leads off at right angles from the stairs, I would be ready to strike when the intruder reached the top.

I crept closer to the stairs, flexing my hands to loosen the muscles. My heart had begun pounding heavily, and I felt a little light-headed, but I was ready-I would not be afraid; I would fight.

I should relax; I felt the tightness of my muscles; it would slow me down… so many things to think of.

He was on the stairs.

My hands clenched into fists and my leg muscles were hard and tense. My blood pounded harder through my heart.

A little noise, like material brushing against the wall. Very close.

Then there was a tiny sound I couldn’t interpret. I felt a frown pull my brows together.

Had it been something metal?

And another creak of the stairs.

Surely-the creak had been from a lower step?

I shook my head, puzzled.

The next sound was from even farther, off the steps entirely, all the way into the kitchen…

Getting away, the son of a bitch was getting away!

I flew down the stairs, ignoring something white as I pelted down, rage lifting me out of myself so that I barely felt my feet touch the floor. But I heard the slam of the back door as I came through the kitchen doorway, and though I was only seconds behind him, it was enough for the intruder to conceal himself in the woods in back of the Drinkwaters’ house.

I stood in the door for a minute or more, panting. For the first time, I understood the phrase “spoiling for a fight.” Then common sense prevailed and I retreated, locking the kitchen door behind me.

I suffered an immediate reaction to the adrenaline my body had pumped into my blood to prepare me for action; at every step, I felt my flesh sag on my bones. With a terrible reluctance, I went to see what had been left on the stairs. A spotless white handkerchief was tented over something about halfway up. I reached out slowly and pulled off the handkerchief.

Shining in the sun pouring through the stained-glass window at the landing was a set of cheap metal toy handcuffs. By them was a plastic gun.

I sank onto the stairs and buried my head in my hands.

Three days ago, my past life had been a secret, or so I’d thought.

Now Claude Friedrich knew about my misfortunes. I’d told Marshall. Who else knew?

The life I had so carefully constructed was falling apart. I tried to find something to hold on to.

And I recognized, once again, the bleak truth: There was nothing but myself.

I searched the house. I talked to myself the whole time, telling myself that after it was searched and safe, I would finish cleaning it, and I did. It was a tremendous relief to leave the house and return to my own. I called Helen Drinkwater at work and told her that on my drive to work, I’d seen a suspicious man at the edge of the yard.

“I think you shouldn’t leave it unlocked even for the fifteen minutes before I come,” I said. “So either I have to get there while you’re there, or you need to give me a key.” I could feel the woman’s suspicions coming over the phone line, along with a tapping sound. Helen Drinkwater was tapping her teeth with a pencil. Mrs. Drinkwater doesn’t actually like to see me; she just likes to enjoy the results of my having been there. Before this morning, that had suited me just fine.

“I guess,” she said finally, “you better come earlier, Lily. You can just wait in the kitchen until we leave.”

“I’ll do that,” I said, and hung up.

The vicious game played with me today would not be repeated. I lay down on my bed and thought about the incident. It could be that the intruder had not known I could hear the little sound of the boards creaking; perhaps he’d just anticipated that I’d start down the stairs at some later time and find the cuffs and gun. Of course the intruder hadn’t planned on any kind of confrontation; that was plain from the way he’d rabbited out the back door. But somehow, it made a difference whether or not the intruder had intended me to be aware of his presence before he left the house.

I would have to think about it. Maybe ask Marshall.

And that brought me upright on the bed instantly. I slapped myself on the cheek.

Marshall was on the edges of my life; he had probably left it completely after our conversation the night before. I won’t start to think of him as part of my life, I promised myself. He’ll go back to Thea. Or he’s completely gone off me, since I told him about the scars. Or his common sense will tell him he doesn’t need someone like me.

After that, I swore off thought for the day. I ate a hasty sandwich, then left the house.

I have two clients on Thursday afternoons, and I felt it had been a very long day when I left the last one, a travel agent’s office, at 6:30. The last thing in the world I wanted to see was Claude Friedrich at my doorstep.

You’d think he has the hots for me, I thought sardonically.

I parked the car in the carport and walked around to the front door instead of entering by the kitchen door, as I usually did.

“What do you want?” I asked curtly.

He raised his eyebrows. “Not very polite today, are we?”

“I’ve had a long day. I don’t want to talk about the past. I want my supper.”

“Then ask me in while you fix it.” He said this quite gently.

I couldn’t think of what to do, I was so surprised. I wanted to be alone, but I would sound peevish if I told him to go away-and what if he didn’t?

Without answering, I unlocked the door and walked in. After a minute, he walked in behind me.

“Are you hungry or thirsty?” I said, fury just underneath the words.

“I’ve had my supper, but I’d appreciate a glass of tea if you have some,” Friedrich rumbled.

Alone in the kitchen for a moment, I put my arms on the counter and rested my head on them. I heard the big man’s footsteps sauntering through my spotless house, pausing in the doorway of my exercise room. I straightened and saw that Friedrich was in the kitchen, watching me. There was both sympathy and wariness in his face. I got a glass out of the cabinet and poured him some tea, plonking in some ice, too. I handed it to him wordlessly.

“I’m not here to talk about your past. I’ve had to check up on everyone connected to Pardon, as you can understand. Your name rang a bell… I remembered it, from the newspapers. But what I’m here to talk about today… a client of yours was in to see me,” Friedrich said. “He says you can verify his story.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Tom O’Hagen says he came in from playing golf on his day off, Monday, at about three o’clock.”

He waited for my reaction, but I had none to give.

“He says that he then went over to Albee’s apartment to pay his rent, found the apartment door ajar, looked inside, and saw that the area rug was rumpled up, the couch pushed crooked, and no one answered his call. He left his rent check on the desk right inside the door and left.”

“So you’re thinking Pardon may already have been dead at three o’clock.”

“If Tom’s telling the truth. You’re his corroborating witness.”

“How so?”

“He says he saw you going into the Yorks’ apartment as he came down the stairs.”

I thought back, trying hard to remember a perfectly ordinary day. I hadn’t known until I was coming home from my night walk that it would be a day I needed to remember in detail.

I closed my eyes, attempting to replay that little stretch of time on Monday afternoon. I’d had the bag in my hand with the supplies the Yorks had wanted me to put in their apartment, anticipating their return. No, two bags. I’d had to put them down to fish out the right key-poor planning on my part. I remembered being peeved at my lack of foresight.

“I didn’t hear anyone walking across the hall, but I did hear someone coming down the stairs, and it may have been Tom,” I said slowly. “I was having trouble getting the right key separated from the bunch on my key chain. I went in the Yorks’ place, put down the bags… put some things in the refrigerator. I left the other things out on the kitchen counter. I didn’t need to water the asparagus plant because it was still very wet, and the shades in the bedroom were already open-I usually open them for the Yorks-so I left.” I replayed locking the door, turning to leave…

“I did see him! He was walking away from Pardon’s apartment to go to his own and he was hurrying!” I exclaimed, pleased with myself. Tom O’Hagen isn’t my favorite person, but I was glad I was able to verify his story, at least to some extent. If it had been Tom I’d heard coming down the stairs, and then I’d seen him again leaving Pardon’s in the two or three minutes I’d spent in the Yorks’ apartment, surely he wouldn’t have had time to kill Pardon. But why would Tom have been upstairs? He has a ground-floor apartment. Deedra? Nope. She’d been at work.

“I hear you know Marshall Sedaka,” Friedrich said abruptly.

The comment was so unexpected that I actually looked at him directly.

“Yes.”

“He was down to the station this morning, talking to Dolph Stafford. Dolph tells me he inherits that business now that Pardon Albee’s dead. Pardon had a lot of irons in a lot of fires.”

I raised both hands, palms up. What of it?

“No one here knows much about Marshall,” Friedrich commented. “He just blew into town and married Thea Armstrong. No one could figure out why some man hadn’t snatched Thea up years ago, her being so pretty and smart. Marshall got lucky, I figure. Now I hear he’s moved out of the house, got himself a little rental place on Farraday.”

I hadn’t known where Marshall was living. Farraday was about three blocks away. I reached in the refrigerator, got out a container of soup I’d made over the weekend, and put it in the microwave.

It was a long two minutes until the timer beeped. I propped myself against the counter and waited for the police chief to go on.

“Pardon Albee was killed by one hard blow to the neck,” Friedrich observed. “He was struck first on the mouth, and then got a crushing blow to the throat.”

I thought of how strong Marshall is.

“So you’re thinking,” I said as I ladled soup into a bowl, “that Marshall dumped Thea for me and killed Pardon Albee so he’d own his business, now that he doesn’t have Thea’s twelve-thousand-dollar-a-year salary from SCC?”

Friedrich flushed. “I didn’t say that.”

“That’s the only point I can grasp from all this. Could you tell me any other implication I might have missed?” I stared at him for a long moment, my eyebrows raised in query. “Right. Now, here’s something real. Investigate this.” I held out the handkerchief, plain white, with a design of white stripes of different widths running around the border. Inside the handkerchief were the bumpy shapes of the gun and the handcuffs.

“You want to tell me about this?” Friedrich said.

Briefly and, I hope, unemotionally, I described what had happened at the Drinkwaters’ that morning.

“You didn’t call us? Someone was in the house with you and you didn’t call us? Even if you were all right, what if they took something of Mel and Helen’s?”

“I’m sure nothing was taken. I know everything in that house, and nothing was out of order. Nothing was rummaged through, or moved out of place, no drawers left open.”

“You’re assuming that these items were left by someone who knows about what happened to you in Memphis.”

“Isn’t that a logical assumption? I know you’ve found out. Have you told anyone?”

“No. It wasn’t my business to do that. I did call the Memphis Police Department a couple of days ago. Like I said, I remembered where I’d heard your name-after I thought about it awhile. I’ve got to say, I’m kind of surprised you didn’t change it.”

“It’s my name. Why would I change it?”

“Just to avoid anyone recognizing it, wanting to talk about what happened.”

“For a while, I thought about it,” I admitted. “But they’d already taken enough away from me. I wanted to keep at least my name. And then… it would have been like saying I had done something wrong.” And I glared at Friedrich in a way that told him clearly he was not to comment. He sipped his tea thoughtfully.

I wondered if Pardon had known the truth about my past. He’d never even hinted as much to me, but he had been a man who liked to know things, liked to own a little piece of the people around him. If Pardon had known, surely he would have hinted around to me. He wouldn’t have been able to resist it.

“So, did the Memphis police send you a report of some kind, something on paper?” I asked.

“Yes,” he admitted. “They faxed me your file.” He put his hand to his pocket, asked me if he could smoke his pipe.

“No,” I said. “Where’d you leave the fax?”

“You think someone at my office has spread this around? You yourself haven’t told anyone in this town about what happened to you?”

I lied. “I haven’t told anyone. And whoever left these on the steps at the Drinkwaters’ house knows I got raped, and knows the circumstances. So the knowledge had to come from your office, as far as I can tell.”

Claude Friedrich’s face darkened. He looked bigger, tougher, mean. “Lily, maybe someone has known since you moved here. Maybe they’ve just had the good taste not to mention it to you.”

“Then they lost their good taste with a bang,” I said. “You need to go. I have to work out.”

He took the handkerchief, handcuffs, and gun with him when he left. I was glad not to have them in my house anymore.

Normally, I don’t work out on Thursday nights, especially when I’ve already gone to Body Time in the morning. But the day had been one long accumulation of fear and anger, interrupted by the boredom of everyday work. I needed to do something to relax my shoulders, and the punching bag didn’t appeal to me. I wanted weights.

I pulled on a pink spandex shorts and bra set, covered it with a flowered T-shirt, grabbed my workout bag, and drove to Body Time. Marshall doesn’t work on Thursday nights, so I wouldn’t have the emotional strain of seeing him while he was still trying to digest what I’d told him.

Derrick, the black college student who picks up the slack for Marshall in the evenings, waved a casual hand as I came in. The desk is to the left of the front door, and I stopped there to sign in before going over to the weight benches, unzipping my gym bag as I walked. There were only a couple of other people there, both serious bodybuilders, and they were doing leg work on the quad and calf machines and the leg press. I knew them only by sight, and after returning my nod, they ignored me.

The rest of the building was dark-no light in Marshall’s office, the doors closed on the aerobics/ karate room.

I stretched and did some light weights to warm up, then pulled on my weight-lifting gloves, padded across the palm and with the fingers cut off at the knuckle. I pulled the Velcro straps tight.

“Need me to spot?” Derrick called after I’d done three sets. I nodded. I’d done twenties, thirties, and forties, so I got the fifty-pound dumbbells from the rack and sat on one of the benches, lying down carefully with a dumbbell in each hand. When I felt Derrick’s presence at my head, I checked my position. The dumbbells were parallel with the floor and I was holding them down at shoulder level. Then I lifted them up and in until they met over me.

“All right, Lily!” Derrick said. I brought the dumbbells down, then back up, fighting to maintain my control. Sweat popped out on my face. I was happy.

By the sixth repetition, the lift had begun to be a struggle. Derrick gripped my wrists, helping me just enough to enable me to complete the move. “Come on, Lily, you can do it,” he murmured. “Push, now.” And my arms rose yet another time.

I put the fifties on the rack and got the fifty-fives. With a great deal of effort, I lay down on the bench and struggled to lift them; the conventional wisdom at the gym is that the first time is the hardest, but in my experience, if the first time is really difficult, it’s likely all the succeeding lifts will be tough, too. Derrick held my wrists as my arms ascended, loosened his grip as my arms came down. I lifted the fifty-fives six times, my lips pulled back from my teeth in a snarl of concentrated effort.

“One more,” I gasped, feeling that treacherous exhaustion creeping through my arms. I was so focused on making my lift that until the dumbbells were triumphantly in the air, I didn’t realize that the fingers helping me were ivory, not black.

I held the lift until my arms collapsed abruptly. “Going down!” I said urgently. Marshall moved back from the bench, and down came the weights, though I managed to stop short of dropping them from a height. I made a controlled drop, letting my bent arms hang down either side of the bench and releasing the dumbbells so they hit the rubber mat without rolling.

I sat up and swung around astride the bench, so pleased with my set that I overcame the anxiety of seeing Marshall for the first time after my true confessions session. Marshall was wearing what I thought of as his working clothes, a tank top and exotically patterned muscle pants from the line of exercise clothes clients could order through the gym.

“What happened to Derrick?” I asked, reaching for my gym bag to extract my pink sweat towel.

“I’ve been cruising all over town looking for you.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Have you been here all evening?”

“No. I got here… oh, thirty or forty minutes ago.”

“Where were you before that?”

“At my house,” I said, an edge coming into my voice. If anyone had been asking but Marshall, I would have refused to answer. The big room was very quiet. For the first time, I noticed that we were alone.

“Where’s Derrick?” I asked again.

“I sent him home after your fifty set. Was anyone at your house?”

I stared at him while I patted my chest and face dry.

“What’s your point?” I asked.

“Lily, about an hour and a half ago, someone came in Thea’s back door while she was in the living room and left a dead rat on the kitchen table.”

“Yuk,” I said in disgust. “Who on earth would do something like that?” Suddenly, the dime dropped. “You think-” I was so outraged, I was sputtering for words, and my hands tightened into fists.

Marshall sat astride the other end of the bench; he reached over to put a finger to my lips. “No,” he said urgently. “Never, I never thought so.”

“Then why the questions?”

“Thea… she has this…”

I’d never heard Marshall flounder before. He was acutely embarrassed.

“Thea thinks I did it?”

Marshall looked at the blinds drawn over the big front window, closed for the night. “She thinks it might be you,” he admitted.

“Why?” I was bewildered. “Why on earth would I do something like that?”

A flush spread across Marshall’s cheeks.

“Thea has this idea that we’re separated because of you.”

“But Marshall… that’s just crazy.”

“Sometimes Thea is-crazy, I mean.”

“Why would she think that?”

Marshall didn’t answer.

“You can go back and tell Thea-or I will be more than glad to do it myself-that I had an unwelcome visit from the chief of police, at my home, until right before I left to come here. So I have what you might call a golden alibi.”

Marshall drew a breath of sheer relief. “Thank God. Now maybe she’ll leave me alone.”

“So explain. Why would she think you two separated because of me?”

“Maybe I mentioned your name once too often when I was talking about karate class, or people who work out here.”

Marshall’s eyes met mine. I swallowed. I was suddenly, acutely, aware that we were alone. I could never remember being alone with Marshall before, truly alone in an empty building. He reached out and flicked the light switch, leaving us only in the light that came through the blinds from the street. It fell in stripes across his face and body.

We were still sitting astride the bench, facing each other. Slowly, giving me plenty of time to get used to the idea, he leaned forward until his mouth touched mine. I tensed, expecting the flood of panic that had marked my attempts to have a close relationship with a man during the past few years.

The panic didn’t come.

My mouth moved against Marshall’s, welcoming. He slid closer, his legs going under mine until I lifted mine to wrap around him, my feet resting on the bench behind him. My arms went around his back and his hands were behind my back, pressing me to him.

Maybe it was the unexpectedness of it, maybe it was the unthreatening setting, or maybe it was because I had known Marshall as a friend first, but suddenly what had been so difficult became easy and urgent.

Marshall’s hand lifted my T-shirt over my head. He had already seen the scars: I didn’t have that moment to fear. I pulled off his tank top, my hands shaking. His tongue moved in my mouth. My hands ran over his torso for the first time. He pulled up my athletic bra and my breasts popped out; his tongue found a new target. I made an anguished little sound as a part of me I’d thought was atrophied came surging back to life. My hands conveyed my urgency, and after a moment, I stood, still straddling the bench, to work down my spandex shorts. He kissed my stomach as I stood before him, and then his mouth slid lower. In seconds, I rested one knee on the bench and turned to take my shorts off, and I heard cloth rustling in the darkness. Then bars of light fell across Marshall’s heavily muscled bare body. In a few moments, Marshall was kneeling at the end of the bench while I lay back on it, filled with him, and the words he was whispering made me very happy, and everything worked beautifully.