"Good People" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sakey Marcus)

5

HE FLOATED ON THE EDGE OF DREAM, the world blurry, as something rubbed against him. Drifting, body here, consciousness there, sensations rolling through him. Skin against his own in a slow wriggle, neck to ankles. He could smell Anna, the faint homey hint of musk. The night air was pleasant, and he’d kicked the blanket off hours before. The sheet was soft as bathwater.

Tom mumbled sleep moans, thought about opening his eyes, didn’t. He felt her back against his chest, a gentle dancing touch, warm and complete where she moved, cool and wanting where she pulled away. The press and arc of her bottom. A heat growing inside, familiar and forgotten. He didn’t know what time it was, hadn’t opened his eyes to check, but it seemed late, somewhere in the lonely hours of the night when the world disappeared. She moved again, arched against him, and this time his moan wasn’t from sleep. He felt himself taut in his briefs, rigid against the curve of her.

Tom opened his eyes.

Anna’s head was turned to the ceiling, her features faint against the dark, eyes just a glimmer of reflected light. He saw her smile; then she pressed backward again, the cleft of her ass grinding against him.

He reacted automatically, wrapping an arm around her, cupping her breast in his hand, warm through the thin T-shirt she slept in, the nipple hard against the roughness of his thumb, and heard her gasp, and it was enough to pull his head all the way back to reality. Habit kicked in, a calendar check. If they managed to conceive tonight, a star would lead wise men to their apartment.

He blinked, groaned as she moved against him, then said, “Baby, it’s not time, it won’t work.” His voice thick and heavy with sleep.

In the dark of the room he saw her flash those teeth again, perfect white teeth, and then she said, “Shhh.” Spun against the mattress, his arm still draping her, her lips coming to his neck, his chin, his cheek, her breath sticky in his ear as she said, “I know,” and then she was pushing him back, sliding one slim thigh over his hips, ghostly in the dim light, body arching, the T-shirt riding up to reveal pale skin and a dark tangle of pubic hair, her fingers tugging at his briefs, her hand electric, the best thing he could imagine until he felt the wetness of her and slipped inside.

He moaned and thrust upward, resting his hands on the curve of her hips and forgetting about calendars, about rhythms and schedules and optimal ovulation windows.

When at last they were both spent, when she’d collapsed against his sweat-drenched chest and he could feel the pounding of her heart like some trapped and delicate bird, he said, “Wow.”

She laughed through her nose and said, “Yeah.”

“I mean, wow.” He shut his eyes tight, then opened them, blinking.“Jesus.” His head felt light, his arms strong. The edges of the curtain were drawn in white light. Dawn must have come while they were making love. “It’s been a long time.”

“Are you kidding?” Anna nuzzled against him, leaving little kisses on his shoulder. “We’ve had more sex in the last year than since we were, like, twenty-two.”

“Yeah. But. You know what I mean.”

She hesitated, and for a second he was afraid that he’d hurt her, that she’d taken it as a rejection. Then she smiled, a wry sort of thing, and said, “Yeah.” She put her head on his shoulder, yawned. “Nice.”

“Yes,” he said. “It is.” With his arm wrapped around her shoulders he collapsed into sleep.

HE WOKE WITH ONE forearm flung across his eyes to block the light. Before anything else came the memory of her atop him, and he smiled. Yawned, stretched, shoulders popping. Looked at her side of the bed. The pillow was empty, the sheets in disarray.

Tom rose, snapped off the rain machine on the night table, sat on the edge of the bed with his feet on the floor. Eleven A.M. He didn’t sleep that late often. But then, he’d happily trade a couple hours of daylight for her to awaken him like that. Plus, it wasn’t every night you found $370,000 and a dead body.

The thought sideswiped him, and his eyes came the rest of the way open. Jesus. Had everything last night been real? He stood, pulled on yesterday’s jeans. Opened the bedroom door and started down the hall.

Most weekend mornings he found her in the living room with a cup of coffee and a stack of envelopes, a pen behind her ear. They had an arrangement: He cleaned the bathrooms, she handled the bills. But the couch was bare.

“Babe?”

They’d planned to turn the spare bedroom into a nursery, but all the books said not to do things like that in advance, that it would only add pressure, remind you of the thing you most wanted but did not have. Good advice, except that all they ended up using the room for was scattered storage, a kind of dump for boxes and photo albums that only telegraphed that the room was in transition, served to remind them anyway. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t at the stove, either, or at their kitchen table. Maybe she went to get bagels.

He opened the drawer, rummaged through it. The spare keys were gone. He went out the front and down the stairs. The door to the bottom unit was unlocked, and the air still had an acrid undercurrent of smoke. “Anna?”

Quiet, from the other room. “In here.”

She sat on the dresser, wearing a Columbia College T-shirt and a pair of his boxer briefs, one leg tucked beneath. Her hair was loose, and she played with a lock of it, twisting it in her fingers as she flashed an unconvincing smile. “Hi.”

“Hi.” He crossed his arms, leaned against the door frame. “What’s up?”

She hesitated. “I was just thinking about him.”

“What about him?”

“I don’t know. Not him, really. More that he died. That someone died, right there.” She gestured toward the bed. “It’s weird, you know?”

He nodded. Waited.

“I mean, we never knew him. And now he’s gone. Yesterday he was alive, and now he’s just… gone.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Maybe he was a really good guy, and we never knew.”

“Maybe he was a complete bastard,” he said. She glared, but he shrugged. “He certainly didn’t go out of his way to be friendly.”

“I guess not. I’m just feeling strange about it.” Her expression suggested she was referring to more than Bill’s death. He looked at the bed, the sheets rumpled. Last night he’d asked the police if they were taking the sheets, and one of them laughed, said no, he didn’t figure Bill would need them anymore. “Yeah.”

Taking the money, he’d been buoyed by the insanity of it. By the way it could be set against years, against dreams, like time and hope had been transmuted to paper. It wasn’t money they were claiming; it was life. Who didn’t want more? Now, though, standing in the abandoned bedroom, he found everything seemed less clear.

Then he had a thought. Felt himself smiling.

“What?” She cocked her head. Smiled back, curious. “What?”

“I know how to cheer us up.”

“CAN I OPEN MY EYES?”

“Not yet.” Tom leaned forward, passed the cabbie a twenty. “Keep the change.” He opened the door, then put a hand under Anna’s arm. “Easy. Slide out.” He stepped to the curb, guided her beside him, then spun her south, facing down the strip of glittering window fronts. Saturday afternoon, and Michigan Avenue was jammed. On the opposite corner, a good-looking kid danced to a boom box beside a sign reading “Grad Student Discos for Dollars.” A crowd of tourists ringed him, snapping pictures and clapping. “Okay. You can look.”

Anna took her hands from her eyes, looked down the strip of shops. “The Mile?” She cocked her head. “We’re going shopping?”

“Ooooh yeah.”

She laughed. “Do you think we should?”

“Why not?”

“What if it turns out he has a family?”

“Then we’ll return it. But I think we’re entitled to a couple grand. Call it a finder’s fee.”

She shaded her eyes and looked down the row of stores. He could see her thinking about it, deciding. Then she turned back to him, said, “One question.”

“What?”

“Where do we start?”

It was a surreal experience, carrying five grand in his front pocket with the full intention of blowing it. Peeling off the first bill was hard, instinct kicking in to ask what the hell he was doing dropping six hundred on a leather jacket for her, three hundred on sunglasses for him. But by the time he stacked five bills on the counter for two pairs of heels, he was getting the hang of it. And when she leaned out of a Neiman Marcus dressing room wearing a twelve-hundred-dollar Carolina Herrera cocktail dress and a wicked smile, her finger crooked in invitation, he felt right at home. He stepped into the tiny room and pulled the door shut behind him, the two of them fighting first giggles and then moans as they made love against the mirror.

Afterward, laden with bags, they wandered over to State Street. There was a half-hour wait at the Atwood Café, but he slipped the hostess fifty, and suddenly they were sitting at a primo table in the corner of the patio. He started to order a beer, thought better of it. “You have any champagne?”

The air was sweet with spring, sun shimmering off the windows of cabs and the graceful flutes of bubbly. He sighed, closed his eyes and breathed it all in. “Now, this is living.”

“I could get used to it.”

He laughed. “Don’t get too used to it. At this rate we could burn four hundred grand pretty fast.”

She winked at him over the rim of her glass. They ordered and ate, chatting about nothing. After he’d scooped up the last bite of his salmon and washed it down with the last sip of champagne, he leaned back, crossed his ankle over his knee. “Times like this I wish I hadn’t quit smoking.”

“Times when you’ve dropped five grand in two hours?”

“If I had a nickel, right?” He ran his hands through his hair. “You want to talk about it?”

“No, I think it was good you quit smoking.”

“Smart-ass.”

She twisted pasta around her fork, stabbed a shrimp. Popped it in her mouth and chewed slowly. Shrugged. “What’s to talk about?”

“Just want to make sure you’re okay with everything.”

“I feel pretty good right now. A shopping spree will do that for a girl.” She set her fork on her plate, dabbed at her mouth with the napkin. “This was fun. But shopping sprees weren’t the reason I wanted to take it.”

“I know. Just thought I’d lighten the mood.”

“No, I’m glad you did. But…” Anna leaned forward, put her hand over his. “Tom, I want to try again.”

“For a baby?”

“Not a baby, a child. People talk about wanting a baby like it’s a puppy. I want the whole thing. To raise a child together.” She paused. “Don’t you?”

“Yeah, of course. It’s just…” He shrugged, stared out at the sidewalk. “I don’t know. It’s been rough. I mean, it’s not that I don’t want a kid. I do. It’s just it seems like so much work right now. The shots, the waiting, the appointments. Plus…”

“What?”

He hesitated. Watched two cops come out of a deli, coffee in their hands. One of them said something that made the other laugh.

“What is it?”

He turned to look at her. She was squinting against the sun, her hair lit gold, and he felt a wave of love for her, one of those moments when he was really seeing what he had, instead of taking it for granted. “This is going to sound silly, but I had fun today. And last night too. It felt more like it used to. Before.”

“The sex.”

“Sure, but not just that. I mean all of it. The feeling that we’re in it together, that it’s us against the world. Partners in crime.” He laughed. “Literally, now.” Her hand was warm against his, and he traced the edge of her index finger. “I guess I feel like the fertility stuff has just stressed us out so much. What if we didn’t go for IVF again? What if we thought about adoption?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. “We talked about that before. After everything we’ve been through…”

“There are a lot of kids out there.”

“There really aren’t,” she said. “You know that. There are a lot of older kids, but not a lot of baby-babies. The process can take a long time, if it happens at all, and meanwhile, the odds of me ever being able to get pregnant keep declining. And I don’t want to go all Madonna and adopt from another country. It seems like it could put too much on them when they grow up.”

He played with his spoon. “I just don’t want to lose you in all of this.”

“I know what you mean. I do.” She squeezed his hand. “But things are different now. So much of the problem between us had to do with money.”

“You think?”

“Are you kidding? We’ve got three credit cards maxed, a fourth on the way. The mortgage. We work sixty hours a week. Add all the fertility stuff on top of that? Yeah, it had a lot to do with the money.”

He rocked his head back and forth. She had a point. Every time things hadn’t worked out, every procedure, every visit to the clinic, some part of him was punching buttons on a mental calculator. Now that wouldn’t be a worry. They could pay their bills, get themselves even, and still have maybe three hundred grand, enough for as many tries as it took. It would help. “It’s not just the debt, though. I’ve missed…” Tom held an empty hand up. “Us.”

“I know.” She shrugged. “I know. But now it can be different. We can make a point of it. Only now we won’t have to worry about anything. No bills, no panic that it’s a waste. Besides.” She leaned forward. “Imagine holding a child in your arms. Our child, yours and mine. Can you imagine how beautiful she’ll be?”

“She?” He smiled. “I thought we’d worked this out. You’re having a boy.”

“No chance. You’ll be a complete sucker for a little girl, and I like seeing you squirm. Now,” she said, and leaned back. “Pay the nice lady. I want to go home and try on my new dress.”

“I’m just going to end up taking it off you again.”

Anna cocked an eyebrow. “Why do you think I’m putting it on?”