The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime by Today's Top Authors (10 page)

“Acid.”

“You were going to pour acid on the box lock?”

“Or the hinges.” She shrugged. “Sometimes there's more than one way to do something.”

He sighed. “Sometimes I wish there was no way to do what I want.”

Asked: “Which is worse, regretting what we can't resist, or regretting what we wish we'd dared?”

“What are we talking about?” she said.

“How we got here.” As he draped the black tie around his neck, she wondered if his cheeks gave a soft scratch of straight-razor-shaved stubble. He walked like he was following the curve of a noose until his back was to the huge mirror and hers was to the desk. Said: “What comes next?”

The clock gonged the quarter hour.

“Why does the opera end at midnight?”
Why am I whispering?

“Because everybody wants tomorrow to be a party.”

“Is that what you want?” she said.

Realized how he looked at her
then
had
changed
how he looked.

Suddenly he'd gone from
Lon Chaney
to
werewolf
and
I
—

—she thought—

I can be his silver bullet
.

The werewolf never wins.

Maybe this can all be a movie. So maybe whatever I do, want …

“You make me want to say something corny,” he told her.

“Like what?”

“Your dress is made out of stars, but the light inside you is dazzling.”

They stood staring at each other.

“
Wow
,” she finally said. “But you're not a sentimental guy.”

“
Corny
is one thing Bernard Davis
the third
is not.”

“So what would Bernard Davis
the third
say at a moment like this?”

The fireplace crackled.

He said: “
Come here
.”

“Make me!”

“What—
no
, I mean: I was saying what Bernie'd normally say.”

“Oh! Me, too.” Her tongue wet her lips. “This is no normal moment.”

“I knew we'd agree on something.”

“Is that what you're looking for? Agreement?”

“You came here to get the diamonds, right?”

“And to get away free.”

“No such thing,” he said. “You pay for what you do and you pay for what you want. The best you can hope for is that those two things join up. But that's rare magic. So rip the best deal you can out of what you got.”

“Spoken like a true rogue.”

“I feel like I want to be in a truthful mood.”

“Really.” Her heart pounded against its cage of ribs.

Her voice said: “What else do you want?”

Erin took a step toward him. Heat from the fire baked her bare back. Shallow breaths made her gown rise and fall, rise and fall. Scents of musk perfume. Roses. Burning wood. Lemon polish that had turned the slab of a desk into a brown-mirror dance floor for reflected flickering flames.

She heard herself say: “We're both after the best deal, right? For me, that means getting what I came for. For you, that means treasure.”

“What treasure?”

“A memory worth more than law or silver or diamonds.”

A fate better than murder
.

They stood so close they could see only each other's faces.

Whisper from her: “What would a truthful rogue do here? Do now?”

His hands. Floating up from his sides like he was going to clap. Or strangle. She couldn't move. Could barely breathe. Her parentheses of hair brushed aside as molten steel bands circled her neck
oh!
so softly became warm fingers cupping her face …

… as he leaned close …

… as her eyes closed …

She felt the kiss.

Not at all like that first kiss stolen with her silent blessing by a boy who blew away in the Great Winds that came with the Depression.

Not at all like the wet slobbers from the drunk college frat rat who bumbled his first attempt at
doing it
with Scholarship Girl and then a half hour later almost passed out before he could contribute the pain of Erin making sure she didn't die a virgin.

And not at all like the angry peckings that accompanied
always with the lights off
bedroom events with Mister Mistake who turned out to have
zero
intention of leaving the wife he neglected to disclose to Erin.

No, not like any such kiss. Like …

Lips burning moist melting to fly MORE
kiss.

Couldn't help it, she realized:
This is a man I could kill
.

Their eyes blinked open. She saw the smear of her ruby on his lips.

He whispered: “You sure you know what you're doing?”

She said: “Show me.”

Stood before him with her hands at her sides.

Waiting.

Trembling
.

He lifted the gown's black straps off her white shoulders. Let go. The sequined garment fell. Fireplace heat glowed her bare breasts. The straps slid down her loose arms, the gown brushed past the black garter belt circling her hips, fell to a crumpled nothing around her shoes. No panties.

She filled his eyes and he whispered:
“Jesus!”

Heard her whisper back: “No.
Me
.”

She grabbed the black ribbon circling his neck, pulled him to her parted lips as his hands circled her hips, pulled her closer, his grip sliding up her sides along her stomach to cover and cup
oh!

Like dancers they moved, for her backwards, stepping out of/on the black dress as he fought free of the tuxedo jacket. She threw away his black tie but he stayed kissing her mouth her cheeks and she ripped open his white shirt, him shrugging it gone
black undershirt
and he stops, leans back—

—they're staggering in front of the roaring fireplace—

—and he pulls off the black undershirt
muscled lean
drops it. She arches her back, guides his face to her heart his hands fill
squeezing
as he kisses her
there
then
there
his lips suck in
oh!
electricity jolts up her spine to tingle her tongue.

They bump into the desk, her left leg his right then somehow she's sitting on that hard wood as he's stepping away, kicking off his shoes.

Stands back to the fire, facing her.

He drops his pants.

Watches quick breaths slide in and out of her smeared ruby lips.

Off come his boxer shorts.

Even in the flickering shadows, she saw all of him.

He stepped toward the V made as she felt her knees move apart.

Stopped.

A shy grin as he told her: “I want to take off my socks.”

Laughing
, both of them, as he hopped on one leg, then the other. Stepping to her barefoot, her nylons crackled sliding along the outside of his thighs. He pushed himself as near to the desk as all the laws of physics allowed, his hands plowing her hair as his eyes devoured her.

She whispered:
“What about my stockings?”

“Leave them on.”

Kissing her as she leans back onto the wooden desk, as he climbs on there, too, as his weight presses to her, covers her as her hands stretched up behind her along the desk wood—

Knocked her purse—

—and the white honeymoon towel of acid tubes—

—off the desk.

Erin heard glass
crack
. Acid hiss. Volcano chemical clouds billowing up from the floor vanished in heat from the fireplace, vanished in smells of burning wood, of roses, of musky perfume salty sweetness and
them
.

Her right hand brushed the stack of white towels.

Brushed the hiding place of her gun.

She gripped his shoulder blades and he kissed her cheek, her neck, oh
there
and
there
,
yes
filling his mouth with her
yes
kissing her heaving breastbone
down
kissing her belly button and
What is he doing?

Standing on the floor at the end of the desk grabbing her waist pulling her along the sweat-slick wood, her high heels off the edge of the desk, her knees curl up and back and he's with her but he's down there kissing and
oh! NEVER READ ABOUT THIS IN ANY BOOK
oh oh
OH!

Erin grabbed his skull, pulled him onto the desk as she heard herself say:
“Kiss me, kiss me!”
and he does, pressing her against that hard wood his right hand sliding down her side …

She rolls sideways.
Don't knock over the stack of towels. The gun.
He's on his back,
straddle him
and after all the yesterdays of awkward or ignorant or counterfeit or mechanical moves, she knows
how
for this triumph and she's atop him
fill me
her stockinged legs knelt bent along his chest, his hands caressing her breasts her hips, try to kiss
can't stop gasping
, she rises curves tall over him hears their
clap clap clap
of flesh sees—

—in the huge wall mirror—

—
them on the desk
—

—them,
me, yes, me, yes
LOOK
: his face gasping like he's in pain.

Reflections in the dark wood of the desk alongside the white towels,
them
and fireplace flames flickering and … and …

Nnnh!

Feel him buck beneath her fighting crying out shudder
taut
… He sinks onto the desk. She drapes over him, her right cheek pressing his, his breath panting in her ear, her hands pressed on the hard wood as strong arms circle around her back, hold her tight and she is right there, here,
now
.

The universe took a breath.

Let it go.

GONG
! sounds the clock.

Trapping her to him, he says: “I lied.”

GONG
!

What?

GONG
!

“I can't let you get away,” he says.

GONG
!

Slowly.
GONG
!

So he won't feel her doing it.
GONG
!

So he won't know until it's too late.
GONG
!

Her left hand glides above the dark-wood mirror of the desk.
GONG
!

Her fingertips brush soft fabric.
GONG
!

Find the gully between white towels.
GONG
!

Slide into cloth warmth.
GONG
!

Touch cold steel.

At the midnight
GONG
! Erin heard him say: “But now you should open the safe, then let me pick that lock so we can steal Bernie's diamonds and get ourselves gone.”

Greed

AMY HEMPEL

M
RS. GREED HAD
been married for forty years, her husband the cuckold of all time. A homely man with a notable fortune, he escorted her on errands in the neighborhood. It was a point of honor with Mrs. Greed to say she would never leave him. No matter if her affection for him was surpassed by her devotion to others. Including, for example, my husband. If she was home at night in her husband's bed, did he care what she did with her days?

I was the one who cared.

Protected by men, money, and a lack of shame, Mrs. Greed had long been able to avoid what she had coming. She had the kind of glee that meant men did not think she slept around, they thought she had joie de vivre. They thought her a libertine, not a whore.

She had the means to indulge impetuous behavior and sleep through the mornings after nights she kept secret from her friends. She traveled the world, and turned into the person she could be in other places with people she would never see again.

She was many years older than my husband, running on the fumes of her beauty. Hers had been a conventional beauty, and I was embarrassed by my husband's homage to it. Running through their rendezvous: a stream of regret that they had not met sooner.

He asked if she had maternal feelings for him. She said she was not sure what he wanted to hear. She told him she felt an erotic mix of passion and tenderness. If he wanted to think the tenderness maternal, let him.

When they met, he said, he had not hidden the fact that she looked like his mother, a glamorous woman who had been cruel to him and died when he was a boy. He had not said this to underscore her age, nor did she think it a fixation. She would have heard it as she felt it was intended: as a compliment, an added opportunity to bind them together. She would have been happy to be the good mother as well as the ultimate sensate. And see how her pleasure seeking brought pleasure to those around her!

A thing between them: green apples. Never red, always green. I knew when my husband had entertained Mrs. Greed because a trio of baskets in the kitchen would be filled with polished green apples. My husband claimed to like the look of them; I never saw him eat one. As soon as they would start to soften and turn brown, I would throw them out. And there would be the basket filled so soon again.

He told me he got them from the Italian market in town. But I checked, and the Italian market does not carry green apples.

What the green apples meant to them, I don't know, don't want to know. But she brought them each time she entered our house, and I felt that if I had not thrown the rotting ones out, he would have held on to every one of them. The way he fetishized these apples—it made him less attractive to me.

Mrs. Greed convinced her young lover, my husband, that she was “not the type” to have “work” done, but she had had work done. She must have had a high threshold for pain. She could stay out of sight for the month or more of healing after each procedure. She had less success hiding the results of surgery on her spine. She claimed her athleticism had made it necessary, claimed a “sports injury” to lessen the horror of simple aging. But she could not hide the stiffness that followed, a lack of elasticity that marked her an old woman who crossed the street slowly in low-heeled shoes. I watched her cross the street like this, supported by my husband.

Maybe that was why she liked to hear complaints about his other women, that they were spoiled and petty, gossips who resented his involvement with her. Because he would not keep quiet about such a thing. At first, she felt the others had “won” because they could see him at any time. Then she saw that their availability guaranteed he would tire of them. They were impermanent, and she knew it before they did. So however much he pleaded with her to leave her husband, or at least see
him
more often, Mrs. Greed refused. It galled me that he wanted her more than she wanted him.

I listened to them often. I hooked up the camera to the computer when I was at home alone. For two hundred dollars I'd bought a hidden surveillance camera that was fitted into a book. I did not expect it to work. I left it next to the clock on the nightstand. I did not pay the additional seventy-five dollars that would have showed them to me in color. But the 90-degree field of view was adequate for our bedroom, and sound came in from up to seven hundred feet. Had this not worked so well, I would have stood in line for the camera that came hidden in a ceiling-mounted smoke detector.

Usually the things they said were exchanges of unforeseen delight and riffs of gratitude. But the last time I listened to them, my husband said something clever. Mrs. Greed sounded oddly winsome, said she sometimes wished the two of them had “waited.” My husband told her they could
still
wait—they could wait a day, a week, a month—“It just won't be the
first
time,” he said.

How she laughed.

I said to myself, “I am a better person!” I am a speech therapist who works with children. Parents say I change their lives. But men don't care about a better person. You can't photograph virtue.

I found the collection of photographs he had tried to hide. I liked that the photos of herself she brought to him were photos from so long ago. Decades ago. She wears old-fashioned bathing suits aboard sailboats with islands in the faded background. Let her note that the photographs of me that my husband took himself were taken in this bed.

Together, they lacked fear, I thought, to the extent that she told him to bring me to dinner at her house. With her husband. Really, this was the most startling thing I heard on playback. Just before the invitation, she told him she would not go to bed with the two of us. My husband was the one to suggest it. As though the two of us had talked it over, as if this were something I wanted! I heard her say, “I have to be the queen bee.” Saw her say it.

She would not go to bed with us, but she would play hostess at dinner in her home.

I looked inside my closets, as though I might actually go. What does one wear for such an occasion? The corset dress? Something off the shoulder? Something to make me look older? But no dress existed for me to wear to this dinner. The dress had to do too much. It had to say: I am the sexy wife, and I will outlast you. It had to say: You are no threat to my happiness, and I will outlive you.

*  *  *

Down the street from our house, a car waited for Mrs. Greed. I knew, because I had taken note before, that a driver brought her to see my husband when I visited clients out of town. Was there a bar in the back of this car? I couldn't tell—the windows had a tint. Maybe she would not normally drink, but because there was a decanter of Scotch and she was being driven some distance at dusk, maybe she poured herself a glass and toasted her good luck?

This last thought reassured me. How was it this felt normal to me, to think of her being driven home after a tumble with my husband? I guess it depends on what you are used to. I knew a man who found army boot camp “touching,” the attention he received from the drill sergeant, the way the army fed him daily. It was a comfort to him to know what each day would bring.

I felt there could be no compensation for being apart from my husband. Not for me, and not for her.

I knew I was supposed to be angry with
him
, not with her. She was not the first. She was the first he would not give up. But I could not summon the feelings pointed in the right direction. I even thought that killing her might be the form my
self
-destruction took. Had to take that chance. I tried to go cold for a time—when I thought of him, when I thought of her. But there was a heat and richness to what I conceived that made me think of times I was late to visit a place that my friends had already seen. When you discover something long after others have known it, there is a heady contentment that comes.

What I heard on the tapes after that: their relaxed relentlessness, impersonal intimacy, the air of resuming a rolling conversation that
we
had not been having. As though living in another dimension, a dimension I thought I could live in, too, once. Just take me there. Just teach me the new rules.

Watching them on camera I thought: What if I'm doing just what I'm supposed to be doing? And then I thought: I am.

The boys said they would give me a sign.

It was money well spent. With what I saved not needing to film in color, and knowing I would not need the standard two-year warranty, I had enough to pay the thuggish teens a client's son hung out with. The kid with the stutter had hinted he needed m-m-money. I will even give them a bonus—I will let them keep the surveillance camera hidden in the book after they send me the final tape.

Mrs. Greed does not live so far away that I will miss the ambulance siren.

And what to make of this? The apples my husband “bought,” the green ones from the Italian market that does not carry green apples—I ate one on the front steps of our house and threw the core into the pachysandra. The next morning the core I had thrown was on the top step where I had been sitting when I ate it. I threw it again, this time farther out so it lodged in pine needles alongside the road in front of our house. The morning after that, today, the core was back in place on the top step.

Boys.

I thought: Let's see what happens next.

We have so many apples left.