Tenderness (15 page)

“Can I get out and stretch my legs?” she asked, startling him, bringing him back sharply to this place, the park, the van in which he sat.

“Why not?” he said, finally. They were surrounded by deep woods, had driven at least a half mile in from the highway. If she tried to flee, he could easily outrun her.

She disembarked from the van, pausing and stretching, her breasts straining against the blouse as she raised her arms. She made her way to a picnic table, pine needles crunching under her sneakers, and sat down, chin in her hands, contemplating the pond. She looked—sad. More sad than scared. A good sign. He wanted her to become comfortable with him.

He sat down across from her. Had to pin her down now, obtain information.

She looked up at him expectantly, waiting, as if knowing that the time had come to answer questions.

He wondered how to begin.

To his surprise, she began for him:

“Don’t you remember me?” she asked.

“Why should I remember you?” he countered, cautious, not wanting to admit anything.

Disappointment in her eyes. “That day by the
railroad tracks? A long time ago?” Sighed, “Maybe too long ago … I was just a kid.…”

He realized that he had nothing to gain by denying meeting her, that, in fact, he had to find out how much she knew about the events of that day.

“Yes, I remember,” he said. “It was around your birthday, wasn’t it?”

She smiled, the child in her appearing once again. “That’s right. My mother forgot it and you were very nice. We had a good talk. Then the motorcycle guys came along. I thought you were very brave. You told them to leave me alone.” Shaking her head in fond remembrance.

“What else do you remember?” he asked. And was immediately angry at himself. The questions might spark a memory that was better left undisturbed.

She shrugged, at ease now, leaning forward, spreading her arms along the table.

“I remember that it was a beautiful day and I felt bad after I ran away from that place. I wanted to go back the next day to see if you were still around. Crazy thought, right? I never got there, though. My mother and I left town that same night. She got a job over in New Hampshire. We always leave places in a hurry.…”

He bowed his head in grateful relief. She did not remember the girl, could not link him with
Alicia Hunt. She didn’t represent a threat to him after all.

Sighing, glancing around, she said, “It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Know what?”

“What?”

“I’m starving.” Looking toward the pavilion.

Following her gaze, he saw an old man wheeling a white pushcart across the park road, stopping at water’s edge.
HOT DOGS
,
ICE CREAM
,
POPCORN
, announced signs on the side of the wagon. The old man unfurled a candy-striped umbrella that shaded the wagon from the sun.

“You didn’t have any breakfast, did you?” he said.

She smiled. “See, you’re still being nice, Eric.”

Saying his name for the first time. He realized he had not heard his name on a girl’s lips since Alicia Hunt. Who smelled of lemons, whose dark hair clung to her cheeks. He tried to picture this girl with dark hair.

They left the picnic grove and strolled by the pond, watching the swans floating like small icebergs as they moved away from the shore, having been abandoned by the teenagers, nowhere in sight now.

Walking beside her, he was convinced of her
innocence. He could let her go. Drop her off at the next town, give her enough money if she needed it for bus fare home, and go on to meet Maria Valdez, the Señorita. Feeling expansive, glancing at her almost with affection. Meanwhile, they could stay here awhile. Relax from the heat of the day. Maybe take a swim. He searched the shore, looking for a beach.

“What are you looking for?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” he said. “I just realized there’s no beach here.” Realized also how alert she was.

“That’s fine with me,” she said. “I never learned to swim. Always seemed like there were other things to do.”

The young couple who’d been feeding the swans were in a canoe now, gliding lazily on the pond. The girl wore a big white hat and sat languidly at the front of the canoe, her hand trailing in the water.

“Isn’t that beautiful?” the girl beside him asked. “That’s what I’d like to do someday. Wear a white hat like that and go out in a canoe. My hand in the water.” As if talking to herself, had forgotten all about him. “To live the life other people live …”

At the concession stand, she ordered two hot dogs, a Klondike bar and a Coke. The old man twirled his white mustache with one hand while
he handed over the order with the other. She loaded her hot dogs with mustard and relish but skipped the onions. He was content with a Klondike, still without appetite. Or, rather, he had an appetite for the fresh air, the green of the pine trees, the blue of the pond, the gray of the rocks. As if all the time in the facility he had been colorblind and his deprived senses had at last awakened after a long sleep.

He drank the air into his lungs as they made their way back to the picnic grove.

She ate voraciously, barely chewing the food before swallowing. He wiped away a dab of mustard on her cheek. She smiled her thanks while chewing. The ice cream was cool in his mouth and throat.

She guzzled the Coke, burped discreetly, smiled an apology.

“You don’t remember my name, do you?”

He sidestepped the question. “I thought you wanted to be anonymous.…”

“Not with you.” She swallowed the last of her Coke. “I told you my name was Lori, which is what everybody calls me but my real name, ugh, is Lorelei. My last name is Cranston. Like the Shadow …”

“What shadow?” She had the ability to throw him curves, keeping him off balance.

“An old radio show, years ago. But made into a
movie awhile back. ‘The Shadow knows…,’ ” she said, in exaggerated accents. “Anyway, the Shadow’s really Lamont Cranston, New York playboy. My mother sometimes calls me Shadow when I start driving her crazy, like telling her she shouldn’t drink in the morning.…” Sighing, she said, “But I like
Shadow
better than
Lorelei
and
Lori
best of all.”

“I promise never to call you Lorelei, okay?” he said, trying to match her light mood.

“Say it,” she said.

“Say what?”

“Lori.”

“Okay … Lori.”

“Okay if I call you Eric? Like I did a few minutes ago?”

He shrugged. “If you want to.”

“I want to, Eric.” And smiled, illuminating her face, eyes radiantly green, cheeks faintly blushing. If only her hair were black, her skin dusky like his girls’.

Her voice playful, she said, “You haven’t asked me why …”

“Why what?”

“Why I went to your aunt’s street every day …”

Caught by surprise, he improvised quickly. “I figured you’d tell me in due time,” silently upbraiding himself for overlooking such obvious
questions and for not having asked her name, either.

“Don’t laugh when I tell you.”

“I don’t laugh very much,” he said, realizing the truth of the statement as he made it, this sudden bit of knowledge disturbing him.

She took a deep breath. “I am fixated on you,” she announced.

“What do you mean, fixated?”

“Like, I get fixated on things once in a while. Not things, really, but people. Like you. When I saw you on television the day you got released, that’s when it happened. I remembered how nice you were that time near the railroad tracks, what a nice smile you have, and bang, I got fixated again.…”

But she hadn’t told him what fixated
was
, and he waited.

“Okay,” she said, as if suddenly reluctant to provide an explanation. Looking away, blushing slightly, she said, “Fixated means I need to kiss you. But a real kiss, I mean.” Pause …

“… our tongues touching …”

He didn’t know whether to laugh at this preposterous girl or get rid of her as soon as possible.

“I know it sounds ridiculous,” she said. “But I can’t help these fixations. Just let me kiss you and it’ll be over.…”

He could not kiss this girl. Maybe he could not
trust himself to kiss her. Despite her beauty, he was focused on Maria Valdez. Yet a part of him was curious about what might happen if he kissed her, if their tongues actually touched. All these years at the facility without a girl, only memories. Would there be tenderness in the kiss? Would it lead to something else?

“Okay,” she said briskly. “Forget it. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.…”

As she raised an arm to touch her hair, he noticed the scars on the inside of her wrist. Remembered similar scars on the wrists of a kid called Carmine at the facility who’d been put on a suicide watch.

He reached for her hand, turned it over to expose the scars.

“Did you try to kill yourself?”

“Maybe. I don’t really know,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “I didn’t want to live but I didn’t want to die, either. My mother …”

“Did she abuse you?”

“No, my mother has always been good to me. She never hits me. But she’s weak, sometimes. Tries to do the right thing, then has another drink and forgets what the right thing is.”

“Like forgetting your birthday, right?”

“My wrists had nothing to do with my birthday,” she said. “It was stupid, something I’d never do again. I was lonesome. My mother was off on a
binge with a guy who liked to slap her around after. My first period came, blood all over me, and cramps. I drank some whiskey left over in a bottle. Took some pills, tranquilizers, I found in the medicine cabinet. Discovered razor blades there, too. Got into the bathtub and looked at all that blood. My mother found me when she got home. Called 911. At the hospital, my cuts didn’t heal, a staph infection. That’s why the scars are still there.…”

“I’m sorry,” he said, the words surprising him as he spoke them.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

He never knew what to say to this strange girl, careless in the way she moved her body, sexy and innocent at the same time. He had a sense of time being wasted, precious time, with her here at the park. Disturbed, too, that he could not make up his mind about what to do with her. In the days before the facility, he’d always been decisive, with no doubts about his actions or what he must do to the girls, Harvey, his mother. Had his years out of circulation changed him, softened him? He sensed danger to all his plans if that had happened.

“Let’s feed the swans,” she said, leaping to her feet, as if she had sensed his mood and wanted to dispel it.

He bought a bag of bread crusts from the old
man and they tossed them to the swans. Their graceful movements, even as they scurried for the food, pleased him.

“Oh,” the girl said, her arm raised to throw another crust but the movement arrested, the bread dropping from her hand. “I remember something else about that day.”

“What day?”

“By the railroad tracks. The girl … you were with a girl that day, remember? I saw you walk into the woods with her. And awhile later, you came back out alone. Remember now? That’s when you saw me.…”

He was always at his best at moments like this, calm, languid, but his mind racing, thoughts sharp and clear.

“I remember now,” he said. “A girl I’d just met at the mall. She’d lost her wallet taking a shortcut through the woods near the tracks. I said I’d help her look for it. We retraced her steps.…” He was pleased that he had not lost his ability to improvise at short notice.

“Did she find it?”

She had doomed herself by remembering the girl and it didn’t matter now whether she was baiting him, playing a role designed by Lieutenant Proctor. She knew about Alicia Hunt, could link him with her. She had witnessed them together the day Alicia Hunt disappeared. In fact, he realized
sadly that Lori Cranston was completely innocent. Not even the lieutenant knew about Alicia Hunt.

“Did she find it?”

Her voice came to him as from a long distance, and he realized she’d had to repeat the question.

“What?”

“Did she find it? Her wallet?”

“No. We looked and looked.…”

“She wasn’t your girlfriend?”

“No. I’d only met her a few minutes before.…”

Eric was swept by an overwhelming sense of loss, knowing that he must do what he did not want to do. There would be no pleasure ending this girl’s life, no tenderness at all. There would be the usual risks. He would have to take extra precautions, be absolutely certain that he wasn’t being followed, hadn’t been seen at all with her.

Tossing the rest of the bread to the swans, a shower of crusts pebbling the water, he said, “Time to go.”

The sooner she died, the better it would be for both of them.

He tried to smile as she turned to look at him.

Why is he looking at me that way?

Almost gives me the shivers, his face suddenly
turning to stone, his eyes darkening, and his mouth drawn tight so that his lips become thin and bitter, like lines in a drawing.

Other times, his face is soft and his eyes mild and gentle, and he tilts his head as he looks at me, a kind of wonder in his eyes as if I am a rare specimen he’s never encountered before.

He doesn’t respond to me the way other guys do. I mean, when I move my legs or draw back my shoulders so that my top sticks out—like when I got out of the van and stretched my arms to test him—his eyes passed over me as if I was a mannequin in a store window.

Maybe it’s because he has been locked up since he was fifteen years old and has not led a normal life. But I wonder if his life was normal before that. I mean, he killed his mother and stepfather, for goodness sake. So his life couldn’t have been exactly like everyone else’s. I’ve heard about the scars on his body from the times his stepfather abused him and that wasn’t normal, either.

He’s a puzzle to me.

When he wiped that dab of mustard from my cheek, his touch was tender.

As he held my arm and looked at the scars on my wrists, his grip was firm but his eyes were gentle.

But he lied to me.

And the lie again reminds me of what that reporter
said, the rumors that he killed two girls. That’s hard to believe. Or maybe it isn’t.