CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Two days after he returned the box to the attic, Payne called Cathy for a date. She arrived at six and stayed until a little after midnight. They ate, talked, did the dishes, watched a film Cathy had missed never heard of, Somewhere in Time, a box-office bomb that the critics had hated, but Cathy fell in love with Christopher Reeve and the hotel and the nostalgia and the sense of loss. Afterward she cried. They talked and had a drink or two and she left. She kissed Payne goodnight and then she left.

The next night, he went to her apartment. She shared a couple of rooms in a decaying part of town with another girl who was fortunately on vacation for two weeks and currently camping out somewhere between Ogallala, Nebraska and the Mississippi River. They had the place to themselves.

After a dinner of thick steak and fresh salad, they listened to quiet music on Cathy’s CD player and talked some more. It was silent except for the music, something subdued and harmonious and romantic, especially in dimmed lighting, especially in an apartment with a beautiful woman who curls on a couch and watches you move across the room to pour another drink, her eyes misty, her smile tender. Whose breasts press invitingly against the fragile linen of her blouse. Whose smile is invitation.

Payne had drunk more than usual that night. He wasn’t drunk—not quite. He had carefully stayed on the sober side of that thin line. Instead of feeling pleasantly relaxed, however, he felt oddly tense, nervous. The feeling increased as the evening wore on, transforming from a light and wholly accountable first-date sort of jumpiness when he raised his hand to knock on her door, to an intense, discomforting sense of something desperately wrong when she leaned against him where they sat together on the couch and he smelled her perfume and the light lingering fragrance of the shampoo in her hair and felt the warmth of her breath against his neck. She laid her hand on his leg and scratched her fingernail lightly against the taut fabric.

The room flooded with heat. Payne was not naive. He was not sexually innocent; certainly he was not a virgin. And Cathy was attractive in every way he could imagine. She was beautiful—and he wanted her. He wanted to draw her even closer, wanted to touch and whisper and love.

Instead he stood suddenly and strode to the door. A clock on the wall chimed midnight as he reached for the knob. The witching hour.

In a fluid movement, Cathy rose and was beside him.

“Payne,” she said. Her voice rose barely above a whisper. She tilted her head up and kissed him on the lips, a kiss warm with affection yet tinged with disappointment. He reached for her. One arm held her tightly against him. He felt her hips against his. His other arm hung stiffly at his side. The fingers clenched and unclenched along the seam of his jeans.

Payne felt suddenly and inexplicably fatigued, as if half of him had just won an exhausting endurance race but the other half—the darker half—was about to break away and begin running again. He broke away.

“Thanks,” he said. “For the dinner. I wish I could stay but I...I’ve got to leave.”

“Don’t...,” Cathy began. He placed his finger against her lips, feeling their warmth and moistness. He wanted to feel them again pressed against his own. He almost kissed her. Something flickered behind his eyes—a fleeting image too evanescent for him to consciously absorb. Inside of him, the pull away from her intensified.

“I know,” he said. “But I have to. Okay?”

“Okay,” she answered, her voice dropping.

He nodded and moved toward the elevator at the end of the hall. The elevator doors slid open just as he reached them, as if they had been waiting for him. She watched him. He hesitated before stepping in.

For a moment, he almost turned back to her, then he entered the shadowy interior of the elevator. He seemed to favor one leg.

In that final moment of hesitation, though, he looked over his shoulder and smiled at her and raised a hand in a twist that seemed a wave. Or a gesture of dismissal.

“Call me, okay?” She waved back. The elevator doors slid shut with a quiet whoosh and Payne was gone.

When Payne arrived home and pulled his car into the drive and killed the engine just outside the garage still crammed with Aunt Emilia’s trash, Nick’s windows were dark. Wheeler was either out or asleep, Payne decided. He walked slowly around the house to the front door, enjoying the coolness of the evening, wishing that Nick would stick his head out a window and invite him over for a talk.

He wanted to talk.

He needed to talk about the evening even though nothing had happened. Especially, perhaps, because nothing had happened. He climbed the steps to the front porch carefully, wondering why he was coming in through the front door when he usually used the kitchen door. He glanced to the side and fought off an impulse to sit in the glider and swing, swing, swing through the darkness and the coolness.

His leg still pained him. It had started as he got into the elevator, a knife-sharp hitch in his hip that now made his foot scuff the worn planks of the porch. It had made the trip home a minor version of hell, pumping up and down on the accelerator to change speed with the erratic night-time traffic, and now it made him limp noticeably. His hand curled tightly against his leg for balance.

He stared at the glider as if daring it to creak its way through the night, propelled by a ghost or the wind or whatever. It remained still. He forced his curled fingers open and pressed his palm flat against his thigh and planted his feet flat against the porch and shifted his weight from his good leg to his bad until both bore him equally. The hitch disappeared. He unlocked the door, reaching awkwardly across his body with his right hand and pulling the key from his pocket, as if to prove his control over his muscles. When he stepped into the house, it was with his right foot first, his hip swinging smoothly now and without pain.

He hurried through the living room and down the hall to the kitchen, switching lights on as he passed. The house was still; it seemed to be waiting. The planking in the hallway creaked when he stepped onto it from the living room rug. Creeeeeak—like something out of The Fall of the House of Usher.

“Shut up,” he said. No reason to spook himself by thinking stupid things like that.

In the kitchen, he poured himself a glass of ice water from the refrigerator and pulled a chair over to the telephone. He lifted the receiver and, without hesitating an instant, he dialed Cathy’s number. He sat back, tapping a finger against the headset as it rang once, twice, three times, four.

“Hello.” Her voice sounded tired, sleepy. He sat up straight and pushed his glass away, sliding it smoothly across the white counter.

“It’s me.”

There was a pause.

“Yes.” Her voice was cautious, but he thought he detected a hint of something more—hope, forgiveness, maybe more?

“Look,” he said in a burst, “I’m really sorry about tonight. I guess I just didn’t feel like myself. Headachy, tired. You know how it is sometimes.” Lame lame lame dumb dumb dumb his internal censor chanted as he spoke.

He was gushing, he knew, the words spilling out of his mouth before he heard them in his mind. He hated doing that. He hated people who did it. His hand tightened on the receiver, knuckles white, as he glared at the white ceiling and clenched his teeth until the muscles in his jaws stood out in garish relief against his skin.

She was speaking now. He had missed something but at least she wasn’t mad. She sounded relieved, not at all tired.

“…sometimes. I get like that after the audits. It’s just part of life, I guess.”

“Yeah,” he said, trying to cover the fact that he had missed part of what she said. “But I’m sorry anyway. Everything was so nice, the dinner and the music and everything. How about....”

Before he could say tomorrow night, the receiver screeched. A fire-burst of static drilled through his head. With a yelp, he jerked the receiver away. Even after the sound stopped, his ear whistled and buzzed like a manic power saw. Beneath the ringing he felt twinges of real pain, physical pain that bore inward toward his brain. He gingerly put the receiver next to his other ear. Holding it was awkward, but at least he could hear clearly.

“…did you say?” she was saying. “I didn’t hear you. Some kind of interference on the line.”

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“There was some static here, really loud. My ear is still ringing.”

“Nothing like that on this end, but it serves you right for behaving like you did. Even Ma Bell thinks you were a cad.” She laughed and it took any sting out of her words.

He laughed with her. It felt right.

“I guess it does, at that. I behaved like a real jerk and my telephone is trying to let me know.” He whistled that idiotic doo-di-doo-doo theme from Twilight Zone and they both laughed again.

“Anyway, how about”—he hesitated, moving the receiver an inch or so away from his ear—“tomorrow night?”

“I’d love to.” The softness of velvet.

“I’ll cook up something special for dinner, I owe you that much. We’ll watch a film or something, and then....”

“And then…whatever. Sounds good. See you then.”

“See you, Cathy. Good night.”

When he hung up the receiver, he stood for a few moments with hand still on the receiver. He grinned boyishly at the sterile white wall.

He felt good.

He stretched, twisting his torso at the hips in a cross between a toe-touch and a stationary jumping-jack. He reached out with his right hand, fingers extended and straight, tendons knotted and strong beneath the skin. His ear stopped ringing.

He felt good, all right. Damn good!

He slept deeply that night, so deeply that he did not remember dreaming. Even though he tossed on his bed and wrapped himself in the light covers and was drenched with sweat for most of the night, he did not wake until the alarm rang in the morning. He didn’t remember dreaming at all.