The Ex

23

The next morning, a cab pulled to a halt at the curb where the taxi had picked up Molly and David the previous night. The sun hadn’t yet burned away the clouds and it was a softly lighted, hazy morning, not yet oppressively warm. Passersby on West Eighty-fifth stepped along with energy and enthusiasm; their posture and expressions were unlike the heat-intensified weariness they would display at the end of the workday.

Craig Chumley climbed out of the cab and slammed its door. As it drove back out into the stream of traffic, he put on the gray suit coat that he’d been carrying and straightened his tie. Then he drew a miniature aerosol can from his pocket, sprayed some breath freshener into his gaping mouth, and entered the building.

Deirdre’s doorbell worked only some of the time, so he ignored it and rode the elevator to the fourth floor, then walked down the hall and knocked on her door.

It took her a while to open the door. She looked delicious and prompted the familiar tightening sensation in his heart and groin. She was wearing makeup, and her red hair was arranged in its characteristically tousled look that quite correctly hinted at wildness in her nature. But she hadn’t finished dressing for work and was barefoot and wearing a green robe with a sash pulled tight around her slender waist. She was obviously surprised to see him at her door, and for a second she appeared annoyed.

But she quickly recovered and smiled, then leaned forward and pecked him on the cheek.

Chumley was mollified. She stepped back as an invitation for him to enter, then closed the door behind him as he stepped inside.

It was the first time Chumley had been in her apartment since he’d helped her move in. Things were still untidy from the recent move. There was a hodgepodge of furniture, most of it obviously secondhand, lined along the walls, as if Deirdre still hadn’t decided where to place it. Near the living room window was a small wooden desk on which sat a calendar, a phone, a blue mug stuffed full of pens and pencils, and a green-shaded banker’s lamp. Chumley could smell coffee, but she didn’t offer him any.

“This is a pleasant surprise,” she said, not exactly in a voice bursting with sincerity.

“I thought you might want to go out for breakfast before work this morning,” Chumley said.

Now she seemed pleased. “Sure. Sounds fine.” She was staring at him with those luminous green eyes, that pinpoint of something in them that intrigued him and suggested danger.

“We have things to talk over,” he said, as if he needed a reason other than personal to come here. As if he didn’t want to take her into the bedroom and mess up her makeup and hair and fuck her until they were both crazy. “The shipment of watches from Taiwan is coming in today.”

“Okay,” Deirdre said, “but you’re a little early. I haven’t been awake all that long. Give me five minutes to finish getting dressed.”

Chumley grinned. “I’d rather give you five minutes to get undressed.”

She smiled and wagged a finger at him as if he were a crude and naughty boy. “There’s a time and a place for many things. Morning in my apartment, before going to work, is neither time nor place for what you have in mind.”

“Don’t be so sure,” he said. “I might have something in mind that you’d like very much.”

She gave a backhand motion that seemed to brush him off, as if the matter had been settled. “Oh, I don’t doubt that in the slightest! But I have to finish dressing, and we need to leave. You know that.”

“I know that,” Chumley admitted.

He watched the sway of her hips beneath the green robe as she walked from the living room. It had been years since a woman had reached him as she had, had so excited him. She wasn’t a ripe and eager girl-only a few years younger than he was, would be his guess-but there was a sensuousness to her that was eternal.

“I won’t be long. Make yourself comfortable,” she called to him from what he assumed was the bedroom.

He considered walking back there to join her, then thought better of it. That would be pushing her too far. And she was right; they should tend to business. There’d be plenty of time for play later today.

The apartment was quiet except for the intermittent humming of traffic from the street below. Somewhere in the building water ran. There were very faint voices, a muted thump as if a shoe had dropped.

Chumley slipped his hands into his pants pockets and walked over to the window overlooking the street. Traffic had picked up and the sun had come out full strength and spoiling for a fight with the city’s air-conditioning resources. It was glaring off the windshields of cars and causing pedestrians to squint or shield their eyes. Summer was getting down to business, too.

Turning away from the window, he glanced in the direction Deirdre had gone, then began idly wandering around the living room. He knew so little about her, and he wanted to know so much more. He ran his fingertips over the threadbare back of an armchair, lifted a book, Astrology and Eros, to examine a slip of paper sticking out from between its pages. The paper was blank. He replaced it and carefully laid the book on the coffee table exactly as he’d found it.

He went over to the desk by the window, switched the green-shaded lamp on and off as if to test it, lifted the phone, and listened for a dial tone. As he replaced the receiver, he noticed that one of the desk drawers was open about four inches. He hooked a forefinger in it and gave a gentle tug. The drawer slid easily and silently on its runners. He opened it wider. Inside was a worn shoe box. He touched the cardboard lid, then began to lift one end of it to peer inside.

The floor creaked behind him and he knew she was in the room. Letting the shoe box lid drop closed, he shoved the drawer shut with his hip, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

But it slid closed just as easily as it opened, and made a noise as if it had been slammed. He turned around.

Deirdre was fully dressed now, wearing a green dress almost exactly the shade of her robe, and black spike high heels. Her face was a furious mask that shocked him.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Her voice was level but full of rage.

He was embarrassed at having been caught, but he was puzzled by the intensity of her reaction. After all, he’d only been nosing around to kill time, not removing pearls from a wall safe.

“I was, er, just looking around,” he said. “Passing time while I waited…”

“You mean snooping!”

Chumley wanted desperately to defuse this. “Hey, take it easy, Deirdre. I didn’t mean anything by it. I mean, I didn’t think you’d mind, considering what we are to each other…what we’ve…Hell, I’m sorry! I’m genuinely sorry!”

She let out a long breath and stared at the ceiling, then back at Chumley. She seemed calmer now, more in control.

“I’m sorry too,” she said. She ran her hand through her thick hair.

“Look, Deirdre-”

“It’s just that I’ve got this thing about people who snoop. Always have felt that way. It’s not because I have anything to hide.”

“Of course not. Never thought you did. I don’t even know what I was looking for…if I was looking for anything. I suppose I was curious because…well, I don’t know much about you, Deirdre. Not really.”

She stared hard at him. “All you need to know, I hope.”

Another tender spot, Chumley thought. He shrugged. “All right. That’s okay, I understand. You happen to be a private person. Hell, I admire that.” He was always on the defensive with her.

She seemed to have regained her composure completely now, as she crossed the room toward him, smiling apologetically. She kissed him lightly on the lips, surprising him.

“I really am sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have gotten so upset. Can you forgive me?”

“Easily,” Chumley said, relieved. “Let’s forgive each other.”

“Done!” she exclaimed. She kissed him on the mouth again, this time with more passion. “There! Sealed and delivered with a kiss, like so many things in life.”

Chumley licked a minty taste from his lips and grinned down at her. “You taste like toothpaste.”

She reared back and pretended to be offended. “You don’t like it?”

“Toothpaste never tasted so good,” he told her. He was off guard again, though. You couldn’t press certain women. Not women like Deirdre, anyway. And why should he press her? Why should he be impatient? “I’ll tell you what,” he said, “why don’t you take the day off? Enjoy the beautiful morning.”

“But why?”

“The morning’s my gift to you. If you feel like it, come in to work later.” He touched her shoulder gently. “I want you to, Deirdre. Really”

Her smile was wide. “If you’re certain, Craig…”

“I am.”

“Okay, but I will be into work later today I promise.”

“You don’t have to promise, Deirdre.”

She leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth again.

He didn’t mention toothpaste.

Almost everyone was seated for the ceremony at Halstadt Funeral Home in Brooklyn. David and Molly sat in one of the pews toward the back of the narrow, hot room, far away from Bernice, resting as if asleep in her coffin near the altar in the front of the chapel. Though it was still early, the chapel was warm, and David could feel perspiration at his white collar. He reached up and straightened his tie, turning his head slightly as he did so.

And saw Deirdre standing in the doorway of the chapel behind him.

He stopped breathing. What was she doing here? Why wasn’t she at work?

She was wearing a green dress and black spike heels, standing with her feet far apart so it pulled the material of her dress taut across her muscular thighs. She smiled at him.

He looked away. Swallowed, aware of Molly sitting beside him and staring toward the front of the chapel.

He couldn’t help it. He turned his head again to look back at Deirdre.

She was gone.

Not far, though, he was sure.

What was in her mind? What kind of trouble might she cause?

David decided he’d better see if he could find her and talk to her, try to prevent…whatever might happen if he didn’t.

He nudged Molly with his elbow. “Gotta get out of here for a few minutes,” he said. He smiled at her. “I’ll be right back.”

She nodded, perhaps assuming he was uncomfortably warm, or that he had to use the lavatory.

He stood up and excused himself as he slid past the knees of the mourners seated between him and the aisle.

The plushly carpeted, hushed main room and reception area of the mortuary was deserted. David looked around for Deirdre but didn’t see her.

He walked to one of three small rooms with quiet conversation areas, “consolation rooms,” he’d heard one of the mortuary employees call them.

In the first room was a woman trying to comfort a sobbing teenage boy. David withdrew awkwardly, then more cautiously stuck his head into the second room. It was identical to the first, with the same plush green carpeting, small traditional furniture, and a table with a coffeemaker whose glass pot was half full.

Deirdre was alone in the room, standing next to the coffeepot. She smiled at David.

He felt his anger surge as he entered the room. “Dammit, Deirdre, what are you doing here?”

“Calm down, David. And come here.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

As he stepped closer to her, she suddenly reached out and gripped his left wrist. He heard a distinct click, and was astounded to look down and see that she’d attached one of the bracelets of a bulky set of handcuffs.

He could hardly find words. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I came here to see you,” she said. Without warning she deftly moved behind him, twisting the arm with the cuffed wrist behind his back. She wrenched his free wrist around suddenly and attached the second bracelet so his wrists were cuffed behind him. He’d been paralyzed for a moment by her strength and decisiveness.

He felt an indignation that almost instantly became fear. What if somebody walked in on them? How could he explain? “Jesus, Deirdre, this isn’t the place-”

“Oh, it’s exactly the place,” she said firmly. She shoved him aside and closed the door of the consolation room. “And the time,” she said with a grin. She lifted the green skirt of her dress and he saw she was wearing nothing beneath it.

In a panic, he moved toward the door then stopped.

“You’re not going out there with handcuffs on, are you?” Deirdre asked. “Here. I’ll open the door for you.” She took a step toward it and extended her hand toward the knob.

“Wait!” David said, then lowered his voice. “At least lock it,” he said, motioning with his head toward the lock button centered in the doorknob.

“That would take away most of the fun,” she said.

She knelt before him and reached for his fly. As he tried to turn away, she clutched his testicles. She didn’t squeeze, but he knew she might. He stood still and she worked the zipper, then reached in with her other hand and found what she sought. She took him in her mouth.

“Ah, damn it, Deirdre, don’t.” His gaze darted to the door.

A minute later she stood up, laughing. “Apparently you don’t think this is such a bad idea at that, David.” She stroked his erect penis.

He knew she was determined and the smartest thing now was to get it over with, to let her satisfy herself. As she backed him against a wall, he offered no resistance.

In her spike high heels she was the right height to move in on him, raise herself slightly, then envelope him warmly. He felt a thrill he hadn’t expected as she plunged along the length of his erection, groaning sensuously. She was still for a few seconds, then began to grind her hips.

“You’re harder than I can ever remember, David. It’s sex and death. They go together, don’t they? Bernice is laid out there on her back in her coffin, so beautiful. Almost like a doll. Did you ever have sex with Bernice, David?”

“That’s sick, Deirdre!” He groped with his fingers at the flocked wallpaper behind him, strained against the handcuffs, then gave it up.

“Sex is the opposite of death,” she said, increasing the pumping motion of her hips. “But then heads is the opposite of tails. Sex and death are opposite faces of the same coin.”

“Deirdre!”

She slapped him. Hard. “Quiet, David! You don’t want someone to hear us and come in here, do you? Remember, I left the door unlocked.”

The grinding and thrusting of her hips became harder, violent. The handcuffs were clinking against the wall behind David. A stack of plastic foam cups next to the coffeemaker vibrated to the edge of the table then fell to the floor and rolled in a tight semicircle.

David looked away from the white cups, at the white ceiling, and was suddenly lost in everything but sensation. Deirdre’s hands clutched his upper arms as she lay her cheek against his, expelling short, hard and hot breaths, moaning.

He reached orgasm but she didn’t stop.

“Deirdre…”

“Quiet, quiet!” she whispered, and rested her forefinger across his lips. Its sharp fingernail cut into the tip of his nose.

He felt himself go soft inside her, and finally she pulled away and stepped back, smoothing her dress. She glanced in an oval mirror hanging on a wall and cocked her head to the side, touched a hand to her hair. She might have been alone in the room.

“Deirdre,” David said breathlessly, “unlock the cuffs.” He was desperately afraid again that someone would walk in on them.

Maybe even Molly! Come looking for him!

“The cuffs!”

Deirdre smiled at him in the mirror, then turned around. “I didn’t bring a key, David.”

“Oh, my God!”

Then she came to him and kissed his cheek. “I’m only joking. Do you really think I’d leave you here like this?”

“Yes,” David said.

She frowned and shook a finger at him. “David?”

“All right, no, you wouldn’t leave me like this. Unlock these, Deirdre, please!”

She moved around behind him and he heard the key enter the handcuffs, felt the sudden release of pressure as they clicked open.

He pulled his arms around in front of him and stared at his hands. They were quivering. Guilt tore at him. In a way, he knew, he’d aided her in what had just happened. He didn’t want to do this to himself or to Molly, but he couldn’t help himself.

Deirdre was standing by the door. “Zip your pants, David. And clean yourself up. This is kind of a place of worship, and cleanliness is the next best thing to Godliness.”

Without looking back at him, she walked from the room, leaving the door standing open behind her.

He rushed to the door and closed it.

Then he zipped his fly, straightened his shirt and tie, and opened the door again, slowly.

Deirdre was gone. The entrance area outside the consolation rooms was still deserted.

He managed to make his way to the restroom and followed her advice.

At Glory and Resurrection Cemetery, the morning sun was beginning to make the mourners uncomfortable despite the fact that they were gathered in the shade of a temporary canopy. Molly felt a rivulet of perspiration trickle down her ribs beneath the same navy blue dress she’d worn the previous night to the visitation. She didn’t like the idea of wearing the same dress, but it was the only dark outfit she owned that wouldn’t have been stiflingly hot.

Only a few dozen mourners had made the journey from the mortuary to attend the funeral. A short, gray-haired woman with puffy eyes had introduced herself near the coffin the night before as Bernice’s mother. She seemed to be benefiting from physical as well as psychological support from a lean, dark man with sunglasses, standing next to her and supporting her. Bernice’s uncle, if Molly remembered correctly.

The pallbearers had rested Bernice’s burnished steel casket on a bier. The grave was dug but covered with sagging, impossibly green artificial turf to spare those gathered the trauma of seeing into the yawning cavity in the earth that was about to receive Bernice’s body and claim it for the rest of time.

Molly wiped her eyes and leaned on David as the minister, a young, prematurely bald man with acne, finished the service with a prayer: “…shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

She didn’t remember anything else about the prayer. “Forever,” was all she could think about. Forever.

David hadn’t spoken at all during the drive to the cemetery and was standing motionless, as if lost in his own thoughts. Maybe Bernice’s death had affected him more than Molly had thought. Men were that way, keeping their feelings bottled and corked and then breaking down in private, as if grief and loneliness had to be synonymous. He’d missed the first part of the service in the mortuary chapel, and when he’d returned to sit beside her again in the pew, his face was pale and thoughtful.

The minister tossed a handful of earth onto the artificial turf, then nodded to the mourners as a signal that the funeral was over. With a sad smile, he moved toward Bernice’s mother to give final consolation.

David started to leave, but Molly gripped his arm and stopped him. He seemed startled for a second, which surprised her. Then he smiled down at her and looked all around him, as if coming out of a dream.

When the minister had walked away, she went to where Bernice’s mother was still standing with the slim, dark man.

“If you need any help,” Molly said to her. “I mean, with Bernice’s things. We live right downstairs from her apartment and we’ll be glad to do what we can.”

“That’s nice of you,” the mother-Iris, Molly remembered now-said. She might have had a slight accent, though Molly hadn’t noticed it the night before. Molly wrote their phone number on a slip of paper from her purse and gave it to her.

“She was on her swim team in high school,” Iris said. “Did you know that?”

“No,” Molly heard David say. He had joined them and now seemed himself again, free of his thoughts of death.

“We could have had an autopsy, but I couldn’t bear to think of that being done to her. She’s dead. She’ll stay dead forever, no matter why she died.”

“I understand,” Molly said. “I think you made the right decision.”

“In the water,” Iris Clark said, “she was a natural. Like a beautiful and graceful dolphin.”

“I’m sorry,” Molly said again, not knowing what else to say. The lean man might have been looking at her. She could see only her own twin reflections in his glasses.

He took Iris Clark’s arm, nodded to both Molly and David, then turned and led Iris to one of the waiting black limousines.

Molly felt David’s arm encircle her waist as they walked toward the last of the three limos.

“On her high school swim team,” Molly said.

“Freak things happen,” David said glumly.

Forever.

Molly began to cry.