Kathleen’s house—the house she rented out—was not far from the airfield. A shabby two-story clapboard slumping on a patch of heat-brown grass. There was a living room and a kitchen downstairs, a bedroom upstairs under the low eaves. What furniture there was was musty and faded.
It was evening when she brought him here. From the houses clustered all around came the sound of laughing children and whizzing sprinklers and barking dogs and mothers shouting “Dinnertime!” through one screen door and then another. The light in the sky lingered—it was still only June—but the first cooler breeze of the day came in through the living room windows, stirring the thin curtains.
Upstairs, though, it was stifling. When they stood together in the cramped bedroom, crowded under the slant of the roof, Bishop could smell Kathleen’s sweat laced with her perfume. He liked the smell. He liked the sensation it gave him.
“You’re gonna need the air conditioner up here most times,” Kathleen told him. “It rattles a little but it works okay.”
Bishop looked out the window. He nodded slightly to himself. From here—and from the southern window downstairs too—he could see right into the living room of the house next door. That was the house Kathleen lived in with her husband. This was going to work out well.
He turned to her. He moved close.
“Any furniture of your own you want to bring in, go ahead,” she went on, lifting her face to his. “I can always store this stuff at my uncle’s place. I just keep it here in case the tenants want to use it. You can set the place up any way…” Her voice trailed off as Bishop studied her, studied the fall of her hair down her cheek, the contours of her full mouth. “Any way you want,” she finished finally.
Bishop let his gaze trail lazily up from her lips to her eyes, to her hairline, down to her eyes again.
“It’s just fine the way it is,” he told her.