Paris Trout (31 page)

"
A drink?"

And he smiled and rubbed the rain off his cheeks.
"I'm surprised you would take a chance."

She offered him a seat on the couch and fixed him a
drink. She made one for herself too.

"Well, Mr. Seagraves," she said, "what
is on your mind?"

He sipped at the drink. The room, he noticed, had
been painted since his last visit. The windows had been washed, the
furniture moved to new spots on the floor.

"
I don't know," he said. "I happened
to think of you on the way somewhere else, then I saw your lights."
She watched him and waited. "I don't know why I stopped,"
he said.

She said, "Perhaps I reminded you of something
when I called this morning."

He took another sip, and with the taste of it still
in his mouth he began to tell her. "I am bothered by the case I
tried for your husband," he said. "Aspects of it have
transcended the courtroom and have not left me alone since."

"Which aspects?" she said.

"
The girl herself." It was quiet in the
room, and he drank again. "Somehow I've obligated myself to her.
The meaning of what has happened will not settle one place or
another. It moves, again and again, so I never know where to expect
her or when she will intrude on my thoughts."

He stood up and walked to a chair that was closer to
hers. "There was a moment today," he said, "when I
felt a remorse as strong as if I had shot her myself?"

She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand, her
elbow on her knee, and drank from her glass. He saw that she was not
going to answer.

"I remembered today that you warned me."

"
I warned you about my husband," she said.

Seagraves nodded. "He was in today, shortly
after I spoke to you."

She reached out at that moment and touched his hand,
the one holding his drink. She ran her fingers along the side of the
glass and then, cool and wet, across the back of his wrist. Her
fingers stopped there and settled.

"
Does it affect you that way?" he said. "Do
you think of her too?"

She shook her head no. He noticed her neck, the tiny
wrinkles at the bottom, the smooth rise to her chin. "Not like
that," she said. "I saw her alive, in the store. She'd been
bitten by a fox, and I took her to the clinic. It's not the same."

It was quiet.

"
During the course of the trial," he said,
"Buster Devonne asked for a payment for his testimony. We gave
him a thousand dollars — I gave him a thousand dollars — for what
he said."

She thought a minute. "It didn't help Paris."

"
No," he said, "it went against him as
hard as it could." Seagraves sighed. "He was convicted, and
punishment was handed down, and that ought to be it. But the child is
on my mind. The law dealt with this and moved on, and I'm still tied
to it."

"
Cut it loose," she said.

"I don't know how."

"
My husband is the connection," she said.

He thought for a moment, and she absently began to
follow the line of his watch with her fingers, teasing the skin next
to it. "I can't drop a client in the middle of appeals," he
said.

"Why not?"

"
It's unethical." He brought the glass to
his mouth and took a drink this time, not a sip. "You can't just
get rid of a client because you don't like what he did. Not after a
guilty verdict. The time for that is before you take the case."

"I got rid of him," she said.

"
That's personal, this is business."

She moved her fingers off his arm and sat back in her
chair. "We're all only one person," she said. "You
can't separate what you do one place from another."

"I have to," he
said. "I'm a lawyer."

* * *

THE NEXT TIME SHE went into the kitchen, he followed
her. There was a clock in the wall, seven-fifteen. He was already
late for the Kiwanis meeting. He leaned against the sink and watched
her make the drinks.

The wind was picking up outside and seemed to be
coming from the south.

"
Is it different now?" he said. "Living
alone?"

She smiled at him from the sink. "Do I miss
being half drowned in my own bathtub, you mean?"

"
I mean, are you still afraid of him?"

"
I have more time now," she said. "I
think about him."

"
Has he been back?"

She shook her head. "Not once since he moved out
. . ." Then: "He's afraid, too."

She handed him the glass, and at the same moment he
noticed the first feelings of intoxication. It felt like his brain
was waking up happy. "Of what?" he said.

She shrugged. "That he's poisoned."

"
He thinks you did it?"

"
That," she said, "but it's more than
that."

"
How long has he been believing he was
poisoned?"

"I don't know when it started. You don't notice
everything at once."

He thought of her new in this house, beginning to
notice her husband's peculiarities. He reached out and touched her
arm, about the same way she had touched his. She looked at his hand,
and for a moment nothing moved. Then she drank from her glass, then
she led him into the small room just off the kitchen and sat down on
the daybed against the wall. The shoes dropped off her feet. She
brought her knees up under her chin and hugged her legs. She took
another drink.

He sat down with her, kicking off his own shoes. The
only light in the room came from the kitchen and lay in a rectangle
across the floor. "I was glad to see you tonight, Mr.
Seagraves," she said. "You have a kind nature."

He did not answer for a moment. He heard her drink,
the ice cubes falling back into the bottom of the glass. She moved
her legs, and the skirt of her dress fell into her lap. She did not
seem to notice.

"
Somehow," he said, framing the words,
"there is a connection. You and I and Rosie Sayers are tied into
each other's secrets."

"
I told you my secrets," she said. "You
haven't told me yours."

"
I paid Buster Devonne," he said. "That's
a secret."

It was quiet a long time. They drank and stared out
the window into the branches of a black tree. The wind was blowing
harder now, everything outside trembled.

"
I told you about the girl," he said.

He sat farther back until he was resting against the
wall. She had not moved, and from his new position he saw the outline
of her legs against the light from the open kitchen door. The
straight line across the top of her thighs, the roundness underneath,
where the muscle lay. He thought of touching her there, underneath.

"
My darkest secret," he said.

She turned then and took the glass out of his hand.
She put it on the reading table beside the bed, along with her own.

"
The thing he did with the bottle . ..."

She waited.

"
I cannot get that out of my mind."

Still there was no answer.

"It aroused me," he said, and so it was all
out.

He could see her eyes now, the rest of her features
were lost in the dark. "That was hardly a secret, Mr.
Seagraves," she said finally.

"
Are you disappointed?"

He thought he saw her smile. Then her hand was
touching his arm and then his cheek. Her face came close, and he felt
the heat off her skin a moment before she pressed herself into his
neck. He thought she might be crying.

He began to rock her, as you might rock a child. "I
didn't mean I wanted to do that myself? he whispered. "I
wouldn't inflict that on a person .... " He moved back and
forth, smelling alcohol and shampoo, and she moved with him. For a
moment they seemed to be synchronized with the tree branches outside
the window, but then the wind suddenly died and the branches stopped,
and Seagraves kept rocking.

In the sudden calm his voice seemed louder. "There
are things like that buried in everybody," he said. "That
doesn't mean you want to act on it, just that it's there. We are all
flawed people."

She tugged at a button of his shirt then and laid her
hand on his stomach. Her face moved against his neck and she kissed
him once, softly, along the line of his jaw. His head slid against
the wall, and she followed it, kissing him again, moving herself over
him until his head was stopped by the bed itself. There was a sudden
coolness, and he realized she had unbuttoned his shirt, top to
bottom, and pulled it away from his chest.

She sat up, watching him. Her features were distinct
now, his eyes were more used to the dark. Her hand moved from his
stomach to his belt. There was another tug, and that was loose too.
She looked up from her work without a trace of a smile. She unzipped
his trousers,  as practiced at it as he was himself. He began to
sit up, to help her, but she put her hand against his chest and
pushed him back.

Then she was not touching him at all. She reached for
something out of his view. Her drink.

She brought the glass to her lips for a long minute,
and then put it back on the table. She leaned toward him again and
kissed the corner of his mouth. Her lips were icy at first, and he
tasted the liquor, and then they moved, slippery and cold and
opening, until her tongue was touching his teeth, and it was cold
too. Her fingers traced the line of his jaw, following the places she
had kissed, and settled behind his neck, pulling him up into her
mouth.

He felt his penis pushing against the opening in his
boxer shorts, and he moved a few inches against the bed, trying to
realign it. The vision of his penis coming through the opening struck
him as childlike and embarrassed him. And at that movement the head
found the crack and poked through, perhaps half an inch.

He tried to move again, but she wouldn't let him. A
hand on his stomach. She pulled back and stared at the opening in his
shorts. She put the tip of her finger in her mouth and turned it as
it came out, as if she were carrying something, carrying it down and
out of his sight, and then her finger was circling the ridge of his
penis, so softly he could not say exactly when it stopped.

She watched him growing and then touched him again,
at the mouth. "It's leaking," she said. He lay absolutely
still. She pulled away again, unbuttoning her dress. He did not try
to help. She leaned forward, and it fell away from her shoulders. She
pushed it over her  hips and lifted her legs, without effort,
and it was gone.

Seagraves was struck at her acrobatics.

He noticed then that her underwear was gone too, if
she had been wearing any. There was no brassiere. He felt her breasts
against his chest. He reached behind and touched the back of her leg,
feeling the round muscle, and followed it up until he reached her
bottom. The edge of his finger lay against pubic hair, and it was wet
and cool too. He whispered, "Let me out of my pants."

For a moment she did not move, and then she brought
her knees up and lifted herself off him while her hands followed his
ribs to his hips, and then his pants and shorts were coming off and
down. His penis felt like it was caught outside the elevator door on
the way to the top floor.
 

He whispered, "Oh," but she didn't stop,
and a moment later his shorts and trousers were down around his
knees. He tried to push them further, but she straddled him, holding
him still.
Pay attention
.
Her face began to drop toward him again, and a moment after he felt
the press of her cheek, he felt her fingers around his scrotum. She
used it to guide him inside her. A soft, insistent pressure that
would not let him move.

She held him in that way and slowly lowered and
raised herself, pulling back to watch his expression. Little bits of
light from the doorway caught in her eyes — the spark — and then
lightning lit the room, turning her white. The thunder that followed
shook the house. He jumped at the noise, and she squeezed him
sharply, stopping him, her own lowering and rising progressed without
change, unattached.

"Don't move," she said. "Not even when
it's time."

He started to answer, but she shook her head. There
was another roll of thunder, farther off, then more lightning.
Shadows danced over the walls and ceiling. A few minutes later she
closed her eyes and seemed to shake inside, a long time. And in her
shaking he began a shaking of his own. She held him, though — the
only still thing in the room — and he spent himself without the
distraction of movement, tracking its course as it came and passed,
the clearest the feeling had ever been.

When it was over, she pulled his pants the rest of
the way off; and his socks, and lay with him on the bed. The storm
came in waves, with quiet moments in between.

"
I never paid enough attention to the feeling
before," he said.

She did not answer right away. Then: "What is it
like?"