Nameless Dame, page 20
I must have been holding my breath as Quince spoke because I exhaled, at this point, in stunned relief.
“When Coolican peeked through the shattered window, he saw Custard’s green truck taking off west on 116. Coolican tried to chase after him but couldn’t keep up in his old Corolla. That’s when he called here looking for Bobby. It was just after you called. I told him you were probably having Bobby pick you up.”
I slumped in my chair.
“Coolican was spooked and had driven out to a retreat he has north of Jenner and asked me to come for him because his Corolla was spurting oil.”
“So you drove out there?”
Quince’s pacing came to a stop. “Yes.”
“And he wanted to stop at the River Rose.”
“He thought Custard might be inside. His truck was parked outside, but Custard wasn’t in there.”
“He was driving with Sabbatini and me.”
“That’s what we heard. We tried to reach Bobby on his cell, but he must have had it turned off.”
Dmitri’s small head bobbed back and forth, trying to follow our conversation.
“What did you do after that?” I asked. “How come you didn’t come back here last night?”
“I was freaked out,” she said. “I went by the resort where Dmitri was staying in Rio Nido and rented a room. Then I took a sedative and checked out. Any more questions?”
I shook my head.
At this point, Milosz woke up and began wailing.
“I’ll get him,” Quince said.
“No, I will.” I followed Quince into the baby’s room and relented, watching her deftly handle the diapering chores, cooing at Milosz throughout the process. It was hard to feature her as a killer.
“You’re good at that,” I said.
Without looking up, Quince responded, “I have three younger sisters.”
Dmitri was standing by the door, thumbing a text message, when we returned. He smiled at the baby in Quince’s arms. “You look good with a baby, my dear.”
Quince smiled and sniffed at Milosz’s head. “I love the way he smells.”
Dmitri gave me a half bow and said, “Very good to meet you, Mr. Boyer. I’m off.”
I shook the Russian’s hand. “One question before you leave.”
“About Mr. Cust?”
“No, about your colleague here.”
“My former colleague.”
“I resigned, Augie.”
“Right. Now, Mr. Lermantov, tell me why Vlady from the River Rose called me last night, terrified that Quince was out to get him.”
“He said that?” Quince cried in alarm.
“Well, he was mistaken. He has Russian nerves,” said Dmitri. “The only danger this woman presents is for men who fall in love with her.”
“You sound as if you speak from experience.”
“No comment.”
I was getting tired hearing about the irresistibility of these women. First Ruthie and now Quince. It seemed as absurd a notion as love at first sight, a condition to which I’d recently fallen victim.
Quince handed Milosz off to me as Dmitri gave her a hug. “Don’t be a stranger, my dear. We will expect a visit from you when you come through Reno.”
I shook hands once more with the Russian and was glad to see him leave.
After we set up Milosz in the corner with a fleet of small trucks, Quince and I took a long look at each other. She leaned against the wall beside a framed broadside of a poem by Robert Hass. I read the poem’s title—“The Problem with Describing Trees.” I’d have no problem describing the way Quince looked. God, her legs were lovely in her short skirt, her eyes wistful, her lips cutely scrunched in an expression of contrition. The problem began if I tried to describe how I felt about her.
I bit my lower lip. Was she the killer? I figured not. It didn’t add up. Even the world’s best con artist could not fake the terror I saw in her eyes on the night of the flying arrow. Still, I didn’t trust the woman. She smiled at me, barely parting her lips. Could I hold her responsible for the fact that I couldn’t resist her? What tempts him
is on the far side of a window
he’s unwilling to close.
Showering with the Enemy
After I watched Quince heat a bottle and feed and burp the boy, with a clean diaper draped over her shoulder, she said, “You look like you really had a hard night. Why don’t you take a shower, Augie? Then we can talk.”
It was as if the woman had hypnotized me. Maybe she had. I’d like to think it was my weakened condition that left me vulnerable. That I’d been going for days with little sense of my bearings. “Take off your clothes,” she said in calm, even tones.
I just stood there as she lifted Milosz into his high chair and wrapped a Velcro bib around his neck. My mouth fell open as Quince fed the boy stewed apples and graham crackers.
“Just get into the shower.”
I hung my head. I stank. My clothes were smeared with blood and probably vomit.
“I don’t even have a change of clothes here,” I said. “Everything’s at Coolican’s.”
“I’ll lay out some of Bobby’s clothes for you. They’re loose enough that they should fit you.”
Two minutes under the hot water, and I heard the bathroom door open. Next thing I knew, it was the door to the shower. Quince stood there naked. After the initial shock of flesh, it occurred to me that the woman might be hiding a knife. Was this my Psycho moment? I stood still in the steam, under the steady blast of hot water, trying to see more than I could see. Hard as it was to do, I forced myself to focus on Quince’s eyes. Were the large, green, smiling orbs filled with treachery or simply amused by the absurdity of the moment? I couldn’t decide. I took in the rest of her. The small, melon-shaped breasts with rosy nipples, thick and rounded as fresh berries. The slender flanks and smooth belly. The trimmed tawny brown of her bush. The long taper of her legs leading to the small feet, and the nails painted a pale fuchsia that nearly matched her nipples. The sight of her small feet gave me pause, as I remembered Yevtushenko’s wild assertion.
“Is there any hot water left?” Quince asked.
“Where’s Milosz?”
“In the playpen,” she said, and reached for my cock.
I pushed her away, feeling my breath constrict.
“Can’t I give you a little pleasure?” Quince asked.
“I don’t trust you.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m not one of your clients,” I said, noticing how the tufts of her bush had become matted under the shower.
“And I don’t want anything from you,” she said, “but you.”
“That’s quite a lot.”
“Just share what you want,” Quince said, smiling at me sweetly.
With that, I relaxed and Quince grabbed hold of me. Before I knew it she was working me into a lather. I suppose I could have protested. Absent all will, I might have cried, “Rape!” But then she bent over, and with no trouble at all, I slipped inside her from behind. We went at it for a good five minutes until she came, or pretended to, and I most definitely shot my wad, just as the water turned cold. Quince let out a little squeal and was gone.
Showering with the enemy is not all it’s made out to be. As I toweled off, more confused than ever, I noticed a clean pile of clothes sitting on a wicker stool just inside the bathroom door. I panicked at first when I didn’t see my dirty clothes. What had happened to my keys, my phone, my wallet? Had the last vestiges of my identity been pilfered? But then I saw the contents of my pockets in a small plastic bowl by the sink. It may have been a food bowl for a pet, but it reminded me of the little bowls they provide to clear your pockets at airline security. I wondered if what I had just experienced with Quince constituted a strip search. Had I already been through security, or was I still on my way?
Half dry, I stood naked in front of the mirror, trying to assess whether Quince had been through my wallet. Although nothing looked amiss, she’d clearly perused it. Not much to learn aside from the fact that I’m a peasant and a type O positive blood donor. Perhaps she uncovered a few scraps of paper with local phone numbers scrawled across them. Nothing she probably didn’t already have. My phone had little to offer since my lousy service didn’t pick up calls in West County.
It was time to dress. I regarded with suspicion the pile of Bobby Sabbatini’s clothes that had been set out for me. Before slipping them on, I smelled the boxer shorts and T-shirt to make sure they were clean. A faint fragrance of lavender. Then I pulled on a pair of Sabbatini’s drawstring Sufi pants, printed with a pattern of gestural markings in red and black, reminiscent of a handsome Robert Motherwell print. Next, I fastened fat buttons into the stretched-out buttonholes of a threadbare Guatemalan shirt, a refugee from the 1960s. This wasn’t the type of shirt police detective Bobby Sabbatini wore, even in his leisure. Hard to imagine the man had once been legendary for his sartorial splendor. Now he did his shopping at hippie thrift shops. There were no socks, only a pair of rubber-soled huaraches that fit my feet surprisingly well. I had to admit the duds were comfortable. I regarded myself in the mirror. The bruised, cubist nose. The discoloring, a marbled blue and black around the eyes. The look of a stunned animal. I might have been a prisoner of war in a third world country, or a peasant holy man stoned by a gang of bandits.
When I walked out to the living room, Quince was all smiles. She’d traded her skirt for tight jeans patched at the knees and an embroidered peasant blouse. She’d kicked aside her flip-flops and was sitting on the old mohair sofa with a couple of issues of Poetry magazine in her lap. That suggested another level of enemy infiltration.
I greeted Milosz, who was happily sequestered with a handful of Matchbox cars in the playpen. He chuckled at the look of me.
“You look refreshed,” Quince said. “Would you like me to make you some breakfast?”
I wanted to say no. I wanted to say, “Fuck you.” I wanted to fuck her again, properly. I wanted to change back into my old dirty clothes, gather my belongings, and hop into my rental car. I wanted to get the hell out of Northern California before it killed me. But, alas, I was hungry. Once I ate, I told myself, my energy and curiosity, and maybe even five cents of courage, would return.
“Sure,” I said, “feed me.”
Roadkill Bacon and Eggs
“I can make you a three-egg omelet. There’s a very nice Gruyère here, with a side of wild boar bacon. Blossom and I had some of that yesterday morning. One of their friends brought them a hunk of smoked roadkill boar. It’s really good.”
“Sure, knock yourself out.”
I sat down at the kitchen table and flipped off my huaraches.
Quince smiled at me. “You know, you look more like Bobby in those clothes than he does.”
That comment struck us as funny and we both laughed a little sheepishly.
A moment later, Quince brought me a cup of coffee. “Milk? Sugar?”
“Just milk.”
“There is no milk. Well, just one baby bottle left for Milosz.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“So I’d know how you liked it.”
I sipped at the black coffee and watched how deftly Quince handled the small knife, paring and dicing the shallots, cutting wafer-thin slices of the Gruyère for the omelet.
I found the smell of the gamey, roadkill bacon a bit repellent, but it didn’t discourage my appetite when the plate was set in front of me.
Quince sat down across the table with nothing but coffee. I ate a moment in silence. The born-again wife popped up to pull a couple of slices of rye toast from the toaster. I watched her butter them on a small, chipped Fiesta Ware plate.
“You want jam?”
“If I say yes, is there going to be any?”
“There’s orange marmalade.”
“Fine.”
Quince, digging in the fridge, stuck her arm out to show me another jar of preserves. “Fig,” she called.
“Yeah, bring that one, please.”
Even though Quince was playing my wife/slave, I still felt like the indentured one. I had to hand it to her, she was master of quite the range of personas—Appalachian ex-con, hired wife, kleptomaniac corporate witch, sexual adventurer, and now some sort of bohemian sophisticate. For all I knew, she was barely scratching the surface. The frightening part was that she appeared to be totally in control.
“How’s the omelet?”
“Good.”
“The bacon?”
I left the question open and watched Quince corral a nervous smile. Which role was she in? I winked at her. “How come you’re not having anything to eat?”
“I thought I’d serve you first. But you haven’t told me what you think of the bacon.”
“It’s surprisingly palatable.”
“You’re damning with faint praise.”
“Well, I’m not exactly an expert on roadkill bacon, but from what I can tell, it doesn’t taste like it’s been poisoned.” I smiled at her.
“Are you trying to make some sort of point, Augie?”
I nibbled on my toast and then pushed my plate aside and faced Quince. “Who the fuck are you?”
Quince left her mouth open a second so I could see her pretty white teeth and the bright tip of her tongue. “Or as we used to ask,” she said, “how well do you need to know a person you fuck?”
“That was quite an accidental fuck.”
Quince put a hand to her crotch. “That’s what they all say.”
I felt myself go hard again and Quince could tell. At first I crossed my legs and then rearranged myself in my chair.
Milosz, a country not heard from for some time, dropped a Matchbox car out of the playpen and started squawking.
“Would you mind getting that for him, Augie?” Quince asked, knowing that in order to oblige, I’d have to aim my hard dick into the middle of the big room. I demurred and Milosz kept screaming. Quince flashed me a lascivious smile and then hustled over and picked up the little car.
Of God and Love
Once Milosz was purring again, Quince turned to me. “You remember what Rumi said about God and making love?”
“No, I’ve forgotten.”
Quince made little quote marks with her fingers. “‘The way you make love, is the way God will be with you.’”
“That’s quite a theory.”
“I subscribe to it thoroughly.”
“I’m in no position to doubt it.”
Quince came over and planted her full lips on mine. In a lick, she was down to her panties and began peeling off my Sufi pants. I sat on a wicker chair and Quince climbed atop me. To my amazement, she was already swampy damp.
“You don’t go in for a whole lot of foreplay, do you?”
She nodded. “I guess I won’t be getting a lot of foreplay from God.”
“Pity.”
Off we went. I closed my eyes and opened my senses to the pleasure. Then a rogue thought wandered through my craw.
“I take it you’re clean,” I said, a fuck and a half too late.
“Clean as you are.”
“Good,” I said, “I’d hate to think of God giving you the clap.”
At one point I opened my eyes and was surprised to see Quince’s eyes opened wide, even as she worked vigorously to get over the mountain. There was no love lost in this fuck; we were cruising simply on the power of lust. I had a desire to hurt Quince. When she stuck her fingers in my open mouth, I bit them. When she stuck them back in, I bit them harder. I yanked hard on her hair, which each time seemed to send her into fresh rapture. I took hold of her narrow waist and hauled her up and down on my cock. She seemed to be going out of her head but still hadn’t come, as far as I could tell.
I’d been well trained not to finish before my mate, but with Quince I didn’t really give a damn, and, with a few more long, hard strokes, I let go, and made a point of groaning directly into Quince’s left ear.
The wife was not going to be left behind, and rallied mightily to reach the summit. Her come scream was earsplitting. Not only did it set off Milosz on a crying jag, but it raised Blossom from her slumber. She came running in in her nightie, her chestnut hair mussed into a wild ring of fire.
“What the fuck are you two doing?” she hollered.
“Three guesses,” said Quince, rising and falling a final time on what was left of me.
I looked at the large orbs of Blossom’s breasts through her sheer nightie, the nipples hard as bullets. She shook her head, angrily, and hustled to the playpen to collect her baby boy. “You guys were supposed to be babysitting.”
“Isn’t this what you did when you babysat, Blossom?” Quince asked.
“What are you talking about?” the true mother and wife shouted.
“I always brought my boyfriend along.”
“Yeah,” Blossom agreed, “but not in the same room with the baby.”
“Do you think he’s been scarred for life?” Quince asked.
“Fuck you, Quince,” Blossom said.
As she climbed off me, Quince whispered in my ear, “Good thing you didn’t finish without me, or God would come quick whenever he fucked you.”
Plenty of Milk
Blossom took Milosz into her bedroom to allow us a little space to pull ourselves together. I counted that as an act of kindness and hurried to get dressed as Quince dawdled.
“You in a rush?” she asked.
I shrugged and watched Quince pull on her tight jeans. That done, she put on water for another pot of coffee. I followed her to the stove. It was strange to walk behind her because I could feel my body gravitating toward her. I wanted to put an arm around her shoulder, to hold her close for a moment. Somehow, I kept myself from doing that. I opened the refrigerator and stared at a door filled with nutritional supplements, shelves of covered Tupperware containers, and two large glass bottles of organic milk.
