November Road. Lou Berney

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ differently with Mackey. He wished that Seraphine had said, You’ve heard wrong, mon cher, Carlos has no quarrel with Mackey. But now all Guidry could do was shrug. Weights and measures, simple arithmetic. Someone might have seen him with Mackey tonight. Guidry couldn’t risk it. Why would he want to?

      He took the redhead back to his place. He lived fifteen floors above Canal Street, in a modern high-rise that was a sleek spike of steel and concrete, sealed off and cooled from the inside out. In the summer, when the rest of the city sweltered, Guidry didn’t break a sweat.

      “Ooh,” the redhead said, “I dig it.”

      The floor-to-ceiling view, the black leather sofa, the glass-and-chromium bar cart, the expensive hi-fi. She positioned herself by the window, a hand on her hip, weight on one leg to show off her curves, glancing over her shoulder the way she’d seen the models in magazines do it.

      “I’m wild to live high up like this someday,” she said. “All the lights. All the stars. It’s like being in a rocket ship.”

      Guidry didn’t want her to get the wrong idea, that he intended to have a conversation, so he pushed her up against the window. The glass flexed and the stars shimmied. He kissed her. The neck, the tender joint between her jaw and ear. She smelled like a cigarette butt floating in a puddle of Lanvin perfume.

      Her fingers raked his hair. He grabbed her hand and pinned it behind her. With his other hand, he reached up under her skirt.

      “Oh,” she said.

      Satin panties. He left them on her for now and lightly, lightly traced the contours beneath, two fingers gliding over every subtle swell and crease. At the same time kissing her neck harder, letting her feel his teeth.

      “Oh.” She meant it this time.

      He pushed the elastic band out of the way and slid his fingers inside her. In and out, the pad of his thumb on her clit, searching for the rhythm she liked, the right amount of pressure. When he felt her breathing shift, her hips rotate, he eased off. The muscles in her neck tightened with surprise. He waited for a few seconds and then started again. Her relief was a shiver of electricity running through her body. When he eased off a second time, she gasped like she’d been kicked.

      “Don’t stop,” she said.

      He leaned back so he could look at her. Her eyes were glazed, her face a smear of bliss and need. “Say please.”

      “Please,” she said.

      “Say pretty please.”

       “Please.”

      He finished her. Every woman came in a different way. Eyes slitted or chin thrust out, lips parted or nostrils flared, a sigh or a snarl. Always, though, there was that one instant when the world around her ceased to exist, a white atomic flash.

      “Oh, my God.” The redhead’s world pieced itself back together. “My legs are shaking.”

      Weights and measures, simple arithmetic. Mackey would have made the same calculation if his and Guidry’s roles had been reversed. Mackey would have picked up the phone and made the same call that Guidry made, without question. And Guidry would have respected him for it. C’est la vie. Such was this particular life, at least.

      He flipped the redhead around, hiked up her skirt, yanked down her panties. The glass flexed again when he thrust into her. Guidry’s landlord claimed the windows in the building could withstand a hurricane, but that remained to be seen.

       2

      Charlotte imagined herself alone on the bridge of a ship, a storm raging and the sea flinging itself over the deck. Sailcloth ripped, lines snapped. And toss in a few splintering planks for good measure, why don’t we? The sun bled a cold, colorless light that made Charlotte feel as if she had already drowned.

      “Mommy,” Rosemary called from the living room, “Joan and I have a question.”

      “I told you to come eat breakfast, chickadees,” Charlotte said.

      “September is your favorite month of autumn, isn’t it, Mommy? And November is your least favorite?”

      “Come eat breakfast.”

      The bacon was burning. Charlotte tripped on the dog, sprawled in the middle of the floor, and lost her shoe. On the way back across the kitchen—the toaster had begun to smoke now, too—she tripped on the shoe. The dog twitched and grimaced, a seizure approaching. Charlotte prayed for a false alarm.

      Plates. Forks. Charlotte put on lipstick with one hand as she poured juice with the other. It was already half past seven. Where did the time go? Anywhere but here, apparently.

      “Girls!” she called.

      Dooley shuffled into the kitchen, still in his pajamas, with the greenish tint and martyred posture of an El Greco saint.

      “You’re going to be late for work again, honey,” Charlotte said.

      He sagged into a chair. “I feel awful puny this morning.”

      Charlotte supposed that he did. It had been after one in the morning when she heard the front door finally bang open, when she heard him come bumping and weaving down the hallway. He’d taken off his pants before he came to bed but had been too drunk to remember his sport coat. As drunk as usual, in other words.

      “Would you like some coffee?” Charlotte said. “I’ll make you some toast.”

      “Might be the flu, I’m thinking.”

      She admired her husband’s ability to keep a straight face. Or maybe he really believed his own lies? He was a trusting soul, after all.

      He took a sip of the coffee and then shuffled back out of the kitchen, into the bathroom. She heard him retch, then rinse.

      The girls climbed into their seats at the table. Rosemary, seven, and Joan, eight. To look at them, you’d never guess that they were sisters. Joan’s little blond head was always as sleek and shiny as the head of a pin. Meanwhile several tendrils of Rosemary’s unruly chestnut hair had already sprung free from the tortoiseshell band. An hour from now, she’d look as if she’d been raised by wolves.

      “But I like November,” Joan said.

      “No, Joan, see, September is best because that’s the one month every year when we’re the same age,” Rosemary said. “And October has Halloween. Halloween is better than Thanksgiving, of course. So November has to be your least favorite month of autumn.”

      “Okay,” Joan said. She was ever agreeable. A good thing, with a little sister like Rosemary.

      Charlotte searched for her purse. She’d had it in her hand a moment ago. Hadn’t she? She heard Dooley retch again, rinse again. The dog had flopped over and then settled. According to the veterinarian, the new medicine might reduce the frequency of the seizures or it might not. They would have to wait and see.

      She found her lost shoe beneath the dog. She had to pry it out from beneath the thick, heavy folds of him.

СКАЧАТЬ