Late Rain (3 page)

They were married three weeks later.

Corrine had been Buddy’s first and only real rebellion against his Uncle Stanley’s influence and plans for him, and she’d worked hard to make sure Buddy’s loyalties were divided, but though Corrine might have gotten Buddy, in the end it had not been on her terms. Stanley Tedros had monkey-wrenched her plans. She’d gotten worried that Buddy had been on the verge of caving in to Stanley’s plans that he marry a nice Greek girl. Corrine had done everything she could think of, but Stanley was immune to her charms and continued to stonewall her, and Corrine eventually had to jettison the MGM-scale wedding she’d envisioned and push Buddy into an on-the-run elopement and honeymoon in Hilton Head.

Stanley had countered by giving them a house as a belated wedding present, forcing Corrine to once again downsize her desires and trash the blueprints for the place Buddy had promised to build for them and then manufacture some enthusiasm and appreciation for the two and a half story that mimicked one of three possible floor-plans in a subdivision named White Pine Manor, full of young professionals in west Magnolia Beach.

Corrine swallowed her resentment and went into full wifeymode whenever Buddy and she were around Stanley, but it didn’t seem to do any good. She couldn’t get Stanley to buy into the package. He might pretend to for a short time, but inevitably he would begin to torment her, taking small potshots, tossing out insinuations that always threatened to become the Judgment Day accusation or revelation that Stanley, biding his time, was happily waiting to deliver.

The drumming of the shower stopped. A couple moments later, Buddy stepped into the bedroom with a towel knotted at the waist. He moved to the bureau and mirror and picked up a comb. Corrine asked him if he’d left her any hot water.

“Plenty to go around,” he said.

“Good. I want to take a long, hot bath.”

Corrine finished undressing. She caught Buddy looking at her in the mirror. He raised his eyebrows and smiled.

“You could talk to him again,” Corrine said. “And try a little harder this time. Maybe if I wasn’t there, he’d listen.”

“He’s right, you know,” Buddy said, running the comb through his hair. “You’re too high-strung.”

“That’s not the problem here, Buddy.”

“Ok, ok,” he said. “I’ll talk to Stanley first thing in the morning. Give it another try.”

“Don’t forget what James Restan said about the stock options.”

“I know, I know,” Buddy said.

Corrine dropped the clothes she had bundled in her arms. She wasn’t in the mood, but Buddy was the only thing she had to work with right now.

She turned and pulled down the covers on the bed. Buddy unknotted the towel at his waist and followed his bobbing erection to her.

He’d put on weight in the last five months, a good fifteen pounds thickening his waist, and it was just starting to show up in his face too, blunting his features so that Buddy appeared to be exactly what he was: a thirty-two-year-old boy who was edging his way into early middle-age, one of those men whose eyes and smile were always at odds with the rest of his flesh.

Buddy climbed into bed and over her. “Oh Corrine,” he said. “You’re the last word on lovely.”

Corrine closed her eyes and a moment later felt Buddy’s lips on hers, gentle at first, then increasingly insistent, Buddy, like all the men she’d known, impatient to move those lips down her neck to her breasts where need eventually betrayed them. Long ago, Corrine had discovered a simple truth: all men want the tit. And she had come to understand the power that truth bestowed.

Corrine arched her back. Buddy mouthed and sucked and dropped a hand between her legs.

“Oh honey,” Buddy said. He worked two fingers inside her.

Corrine let herself slip into the sequence of practiced responses that would result in a believable orgasm on her part, Buddy moving inside her now, Corrine murmuring encouragement, lifting her hips and letting them fall with each thrust, Buddy’s weight pressing on her.

Corrine kept her eyes closed.

Along the way, she began thinking of Stanley Tedros.

She could see him on the back of her eyelids, an image that slowly sharpened and came into full focus with the clarity of a Polaroid photo developing.

A funeral home. Stanley in his casket. Arms crossed on his chest. A carnation in the lapel of his omnipresent brown suit.

Stanley dead. She could see it. Absolutely and once and for all.

Corrine felt Buddy’s breath coming in shorter and shorter bursts on the side of her neck and then something else, a tremor from deep inside her that followed its own demands, and she was suddenly wet, Corrine squeezing her eyes tighter, carrying the image of Stanley in his casket with her as Buddy moved in and out and said her name over and over again, her body suddenly taking over, running ahead of her and crashing in an orgasm that was every bit as histrionic as the one she’d been preparing to fake for her lawfully-wedded husband.

THE AFTERNOON LIGHT WAS CLEAR and unsparing and reminded Ben Decovic of the lighting at a line-up. It set its own terms, requiring you to look closely, and then waited for the rest of you to catch up and recognize who or what was suspect.

Decovic U-turned the cruiser at the county line and approached the city limits and a sign reading

WELCOME TO MAGNOLIA BEACH, SC

“The
Other
Myrtle Beach.”

More boomtown boosterism.

The sign was new, the brainchild of the Magnolia Beach Tourist Bureau and City Council. The same one was planted at each of the city’s compass points, the slogan duplicated on the home page of the city’s website as well as on the borders of the brochures and flyers funneled through hundreds of travel agencies across the country.

He’d heard someone say the bureau and council were working to fund a series of commercials to be run on the major networks.

He’d been living and working in Magnolia Beach for ten months.

At the time, it seemed as good a place as any to start over.

Decovic followed Ocean Drive into North Shore, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods. North Shore had yet to be trammeled by the development mania. It was hit and miss middle class, most of the houses built in the forties and fifties with generous lots by current standards and filled with magnolia, pine, and live oaks. The neighborhood reminded Ben of a radio station whose signal wavered in and out of focus. He drove past blocks of homes maintained in a time-warp Norman Rockwell respectability, bordered by others sliding toward a low-rent destiny straight out of Erskine Caldwell.

The light followed him.

His fingers twitched on the steering wheel. He reached up and adjusted the visor.

What’s there and what’s not, he said to himself. Keep the line between each clear. That’s all for now. Enough for now.

He glanced down at his left hand and the pale blue ink smudge on the inside of his wrist.

Decovic passed a scattering of home-based small businesses. A welding shop. Florist. Lawnmower repair. Sewing and alterations. Second-hand clothes and used appliances. A corner grocery. A bait and tackle shop.

He was the first to respond to the call from the Bull’s Eye.

Edwin, the owner, was waiting for him outside in the oyster-shell parking lot. Flanked by a couple of muddy pickups and pampered muscle cars, he waved at Ben and then glanced back at the bar’s entrance. True to its name, the entire front of the building was haphazardly papered in fading shooting-range targets, most of which were trembling or flapping in a steady ocean-laced March wind.

“The problem here, Edwin?” Ben said.

“See for yourself.” Edwin ran his hand over his head and stepped away from the door.

The inside of the Bull’s Eye was steeped in a murky light. Next to the cash register a cheap plastic boombox cranked out early Metallica. Ben nodded at the regulars lining the bar. Most returned the greeting, but a couple made a point of turning their backs.

“Down there,” Edwin said, then ducked behind the bar to serve up new orders.

A man circled one of the small tables fronting the long pool table and the cues racked on the north wall. He was wearing a gray sweatshirt and brand new blue jeans, the square cardboard tag still attached to the right rear pocket. His off-white athletic shoes were untied.

Ben cleared his throat. The man paused in his circling. Ben put him in his early forties, the eyes a decade ahead of him. They were dark brown and blurred by an afternoon of boilermakers, their corners a stack of weather-worn wrinkles.

Amidst the empties on the table were a black disposable lighter, a box of wooden kitchen matches, and five complimentary matchbooks from a local pancake house. Hanging on the top rung of one of the chairs was a black baseball cap with the front brim awkwardly scissored off.

“For all intents and purposes,” the man said and then sat down. He set his hands on the table. His fingertips were blistered and bright red.

Ben waited for him to continue, and when he didn’t, Ben asked his name.

“Ronald.” He lowered his head and pulled over the kitchen matches. He lifted the box to his ear and shook it as if he were about to roll a set of dice.

“Ronald what?”

“Fill in the blank,” he said. He looked up at Ben. “Come on. Nothing to it. Think hamburgers and then tell me what kind of parents would do that to their own offspring.”

Ben, caught off-guard, smiled despite himself.

“There you go,” Ronald said, nodding at Ben. “I saw that.”

“Take it easy,” Ben said.

After three tries, Ronald got one of the wooden matches lit. Its tip sputtered, then flared. Ronald touched it to his left cuff.

“What exactly is going on here, Ronald?”

“What’s going on,” he said, looking up at Ben, “is I’m trying to set myself on fire, but I can’t get this sweatshirt to catch.” He shook his head. “I mean, go figure. All the synthetics they use in these, you’d think they’d go right up.”

Ben let his hand drop near the baton on his belt. He wondered where Poston was. He’d confirmed he was running backup.

Ronald twisted in his chair and shouted in the direction of the bar, “Edwin, there was no need to call the cops. If I’d got the sweatshirt going good, I’d have taken it outside.”

Ben moved quickly with the cuffs. Ronald lowered his head and tried to palm one of the matchbooks. Ben leaned over and pushed them all into the center of the table.

“Protect and Serve,” Ronald said. “What’s that mean exactly by the end of the day?”

“What’s that have to do with the matches, Ronald?”

He shook his head and smiled. “Some things can’t be helped. You ever think about what it means to say that?”

“Not sure I’m following, Ronald,” Ben said.

Ronald tilted his head, making a show of furrowing his brow and studying Ben. He seemed disturbed by what he saw. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re not following me. You’re already ahead of me. I see that now. You better watch your step.”

“That sounds like it might be a threat.”

“Maybe it was meant as a warning, maybe a sign of concern.” Ronald paused and looked at the ceiling. “You know, the easiest person in the world to fool is always yourself.”

Edwin called over that Poston had just pulled into the lot.

“What rhymes with ambulance?” Ronald said.

“That’s enough,” Ben said.

Ronald looked at the matches Ben had pushed to the center of the table. He nodded once, then said, “If I was a Buddhist monk, a couple gallons of high-test, and we’d be talking
Holy
.”

Poston cleared the door, quickly looked around, and then hustled in Ben’s direction. “I’m sorry, man,” he said. “I radioed in, but all the closest available units were tied up. A tractor-trailer overturned on 17.”

Poston’s face was flushed as if he’d been exercising or out in the sun too long. That and the buzz cut and the clear, untroubled blue eyes made him look even younger than he was. Poston was less than a year out of the academy. He hadn’t lived or worked long enough to cast a shadow yet.

Or to have to live in one, Ben thought.

“I got here as soon as I could,” Poston said.

“It’s ok. Everything’s under control, right, Ronald?” Ben leaned over and pulled him to his feet.

“It’d be nice to think so,” Ronald said.

“You want me to take him in and run the paper?” Poston said.

“He’s all yours,” Ben said.

“His name’s really McDonald?” Poston said.

Ben nodded, then filled him in on the charges.

“He tried to set himself on fire?” Poston said. “Jesus. Why would anyone want to do that?”

Ronald smiled at Ben.

A moment later, he lifted his cuffed hands and pointed at Ben’s chest.

“You’re missing a button, Officer,” he said. “Third one down from the neck. Center of your chest. There’s nothing there.”

FURNITURE WAS Corrine Tedros’s revenge.

For now, it was the best she could do to get back at Stanley and his unwavering ideas of home and character.

She couldn’t push it further than that. Stanley Tedros kept maintaining her marriage to Buddy wouldn’t last a year and a half, and even though Corrine had soldiered through fourteen months with Buddy and he was as pliable and clueless as ever, Stanley’s pronouncement was still quietly unnerving. It was like thinking you were alone in a dark room and then suddenly getting tapped on the shoulder.

Corrine checked the living room clock against her watch. King Street Furniture had promised to deliver by noon. They were close to an hour late.

She had ordered a new loveseat and two matching wing chairs and three new lamps. Corrine wanted them in place before Stanley swung by this evening.

She was determined to never let the house even come close to a home.

Corrine could already anticipate Stanley’s disorientation and disdain when she led him to a seat in the living room, Stanley who had not redecorated his home in over forty-five years and who prided himself on never throwing anything away because he could never be sure he wouldn’t find some use for it. Stanley, all immigrant thrift, sacrifice, and no-nonsense, exquisitely uncomfortable in his nephew’s and wife’s house because with the furnishings constantly changing he was never able to get his full bearings or give anything even close to his blessing to the lives within its walls.