The Temporary Agent (4 page)

Seven

They’d met six months ago.

Tom had been drifting from place to place for five years but was looking, maybe, for somewhere to stop.

Stella was the only waitress at a converted railcar diner he’d gone to for lunch by chance.

A woman, from what he’d overheard as he ate, who seemed poised between a life that had ended and one that had yet to begin.

So they had that in common.

Every day for a week, while Tom reconnoitered Canaan Village and the surrounding towns, determining whether there were employment opportunities and looking for a cheap place to rent, he ate breakfast and lunch at that diner, and each time picked up just a little more information about the woman he couldn’t stop looking at.

He’d learned that Stella had never married and was fiercely independent. Though currently single, she had a loyal following: business owners and tradesmen and law enforcement officers—both local cops and state troopers from the Troop B barracks just north of town.

These men filled the diner to capacity and beyond every morning and every noontime, asking Stella how she was doing, sympathizing with her, offering advice, making jokes, complimenting her.

More than half of those men, Tom noted, wore wedding bands.

Tom couldn’t help but think of the suitors in
The Odyssey
—the unruly men jockeying for the hand of Odysseus’s queen as Odysseus was enduring his twenty-year journey back from Troy.

A number of these men—the more prominent business owners—had in the past encouraged Stella to run for a seat on the board of selectmen or even for state office.

Everyone in town, it seemed, knew Stella.

More important, everyone knew that she was smart.

Tom eventually learned that Stella had once owned what the locals referred to as an “empire”—a long list of properties, most located in Canaan.

Her first acquisition had been a failing women’s clothing shop, which began turning a profit within three months of her taking over.

She’d been all of eighteen at the time, using as a down payment on the business loan the money she had earned working nights during high school.

From there she just kept moving, taking bigger risks, but always gambling on herself.

She had a knack for being in the right place at the right time. By her midtwenties she had earned her real estate license and immediately focused on commercial properties.

While her intelligence and ambition were widely acknowledged, it was the fact that she had regularly invested in her community—buying up several retail properties and, as landlord, offering incentives for startup businesses to come in and create jobs—that had earned her the admiration of her neighbors.

And their interest in her running for office.

You could make a real difference,
they’d said.

It helped, too, that she was the daughter of a beloved state trooper captain and his obstetrician wife. Lifelong Canaan residents, long dead now.

One helped start your life, and the other protected it.

With her business savvy and deep roots in town, how could she lose?

And how could their small town not benefit?

By the time she was thirty, Stella had purchased and turned around dozens of troubled properties in town. She owned one of the historic homes in the heart of Canaan, leased a new Mercedes sports coupe every other year, collected luxury watches, vacationed—when she took time off—in northern France.

She had even acquired the only two auto dealerships in town.

Her empire was spreading.

But then the recession hit.

The dealerships—the last of her acquisitions—were the first of her assets to be lost.

And as the recession refused to ease up, everything that she had worked so hard for began to slip through her fingers.

A domino effect, each loss causing the next loss, which in turn caused the loss after that, and so on.

Now, at forty-five, bankrupt, she was facing the daunting task of just keeping her head above water in a still-suffering economy.

And did so by working the same job she’d held back in high school.

It was a job she was lucky to have, yes, she would be the first to admit that. But Tom knew that while this would be a less-than-satisfying arc for any person, it was even more so for someone like Stella Quirk.

The only property she’d held on to was located on Main Street—yet another investment once, as much for herself as for the town, with a mortgage that was currently upside down, and so dramatically that none of her creditors had taken it.

A modest storefront with a small apartment above.

The storefront was vacant, like too many other storefronts in town, and Stella had moved into the apartment above two years ago, when her home had been quickly—so quickly—lost to foreclosure.

A month after they started dating, Stella asked Tom to move in with her.

She’d never done anything like that before, she’d told him, had always been cautious with men.

It was her nature, but there was also the fact that everyone in town watched her so closely, and that a person—a
woman
—in her position had to be careful.

Should she one day actually run for office—and there were days back then when she had seriously considered doing that—her past relationships with men would, at best, become common knowledge, and, at worst, be held against her.

There were, she’d confessed, aspects of her sexuality—
appetites that she could not ignore, or at least ignore for long—that
she did not want in the spotlight.

By then, Tom had already been spending several nights a week at her place, the others in a cheap motel on the edge of town.

Cheap or not, paying for the motel room was just a waste of money, Stella had said.

Live with me, Tom. I don’t give a fuck anymore what anyone thinks. I don’t care if everyone knows.

It was obvious to Tom in the days after he moved in that Stella’s having a live-in boyfriend—and one so much younger than she—was the talk of the town.

He could see the resentment in the faces of her “suitors” whenever he passed them on the street.

He could see in their unsmiling faces their dislike for the grim-looking stranger who had come out of nowhere and gotten himself invited into Stella’s bedroom.

Such attention was not something Tom had wanted or needed, but what was left of Stella’s world had a gravity that he didn’t understand, but also didn’t doubt. He was pulled toward it, and into her.

And maybe, between the two of them, a new life would be possible.

He often wondered what would have happened had he not stopped for lunch that day six months ago.

He almost hadn’t, at that moment wasn’t particularly hungry, but how often does one see an actual railcar diner anymore?

And the town he had been passing through—Canaan—seemed to Tom like the kind of place in which a man like him might be able to come safely to a stop for a time.

Eight

The steam drifting with them as they moved from the shower to her bedroom smelled of green apples and lavender.

Tom knew no cleaner smell than that.

Scrubbed and naked, they stood in the middle of the dark room and embraced, Tom behind Stella, his arms around her waist, Stella with her arms reaching back, her hands on his lower back.

They were halfway between her bed, still unmade from this morning, and the tall window that looked out over the small back parking lot.

Tom occasionally saw her in that window when he returned from work.

Sometimes she would be dressed in black lace underwear, and sometimes she was undressed save for her string of pearls.

And other times, she would place both hands on the windowsill and brace herself as Tom took her from behind, the combination of their muted reflection in the glass and Stella’s potential exposure sending waves of heat running through her.

Tom was six feet, weighed 210. Stella had been with many men, a few physically bigger than he, but never one as powerful. She’d made a point of telling Tom this.

She’d also made a point of telling him that she had discovered long ago that she needed to be possessed—taken. So she had always sought out men she thought might play that role well, men who would control her behind closed doors and therefore allow her to privately surrender the respectability that was expected of her.

Pulling him against her, she whispered, “First time fast, second time slow, okay?”

Tom’s response was to kiss the back of her neck. She felt his beard brush her soft skin and the warmth of his breath.

She felt, too, his own need building.

“I don’t want you to hold back, Tom. I need you not to be able to.”

Locking his arms around her waist, Tom lifted her and carried her to the bed. She felt as if she weighed close to nothing, and the sense of being so small and vulnerable thrilled her deeply.

He moved quickly, decisively—she could do nothing to stop him.

The next thing she knew, her feet were on the floor again and she was bent over the edge of the mattress, Tom pressing her down into it with one hand, the other reaching between her legs, spreading them.

“Fuck me,” she said. “Like all the men in town want to. Fuck me like they all wish they could.”

Tom had never once been taken aback by this, even the first time such wild words had flown out of her. If anything, he rewarded her for revealing her darkness to him. Stella had fallen even harder for him because of this, felt suddenly safe in a way she had never before known.

No recrimination or embarrassment with Tom, no need to even explain or discuss afterward.

Their shared secret, one that, for her, bonded them.

Later, things went more slowly. On her back, his mouth on her, she experienced a full release. Her second orgasm was always significantly better than her first, which was why she preferred to get the first out of the way as quickly as possible.

The second one always washed away so much clutter as it broke inside her.

And each one that followed washed away even more.

How could losing everything be so bad if losing everything brought me this?

It was a thought that made some sense out of the senseless.

A belief that made bearable what she had for so long been unable to bear.

Finally, when Tom was on top, she watched his face as he rocked steadily above her. She was spent, all of her overwhelming and urgent desires burned off, so it was about him now, his pleasure, giving him the time he needed to build to his second climax.

She’d never known this, either.

She knew the signs, knew when he was close, and when she felt him about to let go, she pulled him down to feel the full weight of him pressing upon her, then whispered into his ears things that were for him, that sent him over the top.

As he came, she clutched at him, wrapping her arms around him, riding out with him the fierce storm moving through his body till he finally was still again.

“When the food arrives, should I answer the door like this?” Stella said.

Tom watched from the bed as she placed her cell phone back on her dresser and stepped in front of the ornately framed mirror mounted on the wall beside it.

She faced the mirror, her skin slick with sweat, most of it hers, some of it his.

“If you want to,” Tom said.

“Is that a dare?”

“If you want it to be.”

“You know I love dares.”

“Then it’s a dare.”

She smiled. “That might be pushing it.”

Tom smiled back and said nothing, watching Stella watch his reflection in the mirror.

Her eyes scanned the many scars on his muscular torso. Some were star-shaped and jagged, others near-perfect straight lines that ran for several inches.

Often as they lay together, Stella would absently trace the tips of her fingers over his long-healed wounds, moving from one to the next.

She had asked once how he’d gotten those wounds, but Tom had merely smiled and said, “You should have seen the other guy.”

A joke meant to deflect the issue. She had never asked again.

“Did they say how long till the food gets here?” Tom said.

“The usual fifteen minutes.”

“Enough time for us to shower again.”

“Actually, I want to tell you something.”

“Okay.”

She gulped down some water, sat on the edge of the bed, and faced him.

“So, I had a meeting today.” She paused, as if uncertain where to begin. “Ben says it’s time for him to sell the diner. And he asked if I would be interested in buying it.”

“Are you?”

“I don’t know. I probably couldn’t get a loan, but even if I could, a diner is a lot of work.”

“You do pretty much everything already. Ben barely comes in for more than an hour in the afternoon, right?”

Stella shrugged. “To be honest, I kind of like not being that . . . thing I used to be. There are advantages to being a failure.”

“No one thinks of you as a failure, Stella.”

“We can argue about that later. I mean, I can’t wait tables six days a week for the rest of my life, that’s for sure. And this might be a chance for me to start to rebuild things, maybe even get back some of what I lost. It might even be my only chance.” She paused again. “I have to tell you, though, I’m starting to really like this lack of responsibility. I just do my job and go home. My personal life is my personal life; my nights are mine.”

Tom understood what she meant by this, what it meant to be truly free of any and all responsibilities.

He’d spent years drifting, caring about nothing, having to worry about nothing.

Eating, sleeping, working, reading.

A man on his own, all the choices his.

That kind of life was always a safe bet.

“Does Ben need an answer right away?” Tom said.

“Not right away, but soon. I don’t have any money saved, so I wouldn’t even be able to come up with a down payment. The only reason I was able to bring the mortgage on this place current was because of the rent you pay me.”

“How much does he want for the business?”

“We didn’t get that far.”

“Maybe you should find out.”

“Why? Are you secretly rich?”

Tom shook his head.

“Damn it,” Stella joked.

“It would be better to know than not know, right?”

“My credit is shot, Tom. Beyond shot.”

“Mine’s not.”

“To be honest, I don’t think you have the kind of credit a bank is looking for. I mean, considering the way you’ve been moving around. It’s not like it used to be, when banks were begging people to borrow money.”

“Maybe I know someone who wouldn’t mind cosigning. As an investment.”

“I appreciate that, I really do. But I don’t even want to think about it now. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Not till I had thought more about it, anyway.”

“No harm in thinking out loud.”

She smiled. “Sure there is.” She took a breath, let it out, and said, “So work was okay for you today?”

“The day went fast enough,” he said. “Your errands went well?”

“Yeah, except I ran into pretty much every one of my regulars everywhere I stopped.”

“Ah, the suitors,” Tom said.

“Jealous?”

“Only when you want me to be.”

“Oh, I always want you jealous.”

She leaned forward and kissed him.

“You’re right, we should shower quick,” she said. “Food will be here soon.”

They were dressed—Stella in her silk robe, Tom in clean jeans and a T-shirt—when they heard the knock on the street door below.

“I’ll get it,” Tom said.

“Let me give you some money.”

“I’ve got it tonight.”

Before she could protest, Tom had unlocked the apartment door and was heading down the steep stairs.

Opening the street door, he saw the usual delivery kid, the one Stella always joked about greeting naked.

The kid had recently started eating at the diner several mornings a week, sitting at the counter, nursing a cup of coffee and picking at a muffin, quietly watching Stella.

Just another one of her suitors, as far as Tom was concerned.

He paid the kid, tipping him well despite the fact that doing so almost cleaned out the cash he carried, then headed back up the stairs and entered the apartment.

He found Stella standing in the hallway between the living room and the bedroom with an expression on her face that Tom did not immediately understand.

Or like.

He was about to ask her what was wrong when he realized that she was holding her cell phone to her ear.

She nodded. Then she said, “Hang on.”

Holding out the phone with one hand, she covered the mic with her thumb and said, “It’s for you.” She paused, then: “She said it was an emergency.”

Tom closed the door, handed Stella the bag of takeout with one hand, and took her cell phone with the other.

He had never given Stella’s number to anyone.

And of the few people from his past who might one day reach out to him, none were female.

So it was baffling enough that a woman was calling, but what really concerned him was that someone looking for him had called Stella’s phone.

Of course, Stella and he weren’t exactly a secret.

And the frequency of their communication by cell phone—not to mention the nature of the texts they sent each other—was a clear indication of their living situation.

And though his phone was shut down, the last time it had been active, it was occupying the same GPS coordinates that her phone currently occupied.

So Tom had a pretty good idea what to expect as he placed the phone to his ear and said, “Hello.”