Tom had not been given a house key. Ida showed him where she kept one hidden for emergencies, under a flowerpot to the side of the house, next to the garage. But he thought it best to knock. The door of her bungalow in the quiet neighborhood of Highland Park swung open. She wore a long-sleeved pearl sweater that buttoned to the throat. A long, slim gray wool skirt reached down over leather boots.
Her naturally wavy shoulder-length auburn hair was rep-licated in her thick arched eyebrows. The eyebrows framed intelligent brown eyes set wide over smooth cheekbones. A narrow slightly crooked nose. And then-the generous lips teed up on that chin she got from the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.
With a firm grasp on the curious power of her physical presence, Ida Rain disdained wearing all but the barest touches of makeup on her unlined face.
How long could she go on like this. Renouncing age. One more brutal Minnesota winter. Two. Eventually she’d crash on the far side of forty, snowflakes would stick to the corners of her eyes and crack into crow’s-feet. She’d shed smiles and store hurt between the pages of her heart like pressed nettles.
But tonight her husky voice, like her hair, was gorgeous.
An editor to the core, she cut straight to the nut graph: “You didn’t really have battery trouble today.”
Tom grinned and spread his hands.
“You’re on to something, aren’t you?” She reached over and lifted his left hand and inspected it with a cool thumb and forefinger. “And you went out to celebrate.” She rubbed the tips of his fingers and came away with a light gray metal talc. She dropped his hand. It was her way of letting him know she’d suspected, and had now confirmed, that he’d been to the casino. The residue of the coin tray. He resented her knowing smile and cocked eyebrow. He’d forgotten to wash his hands.
“Sally, in the library, told me you snuck a file out of the building. Keith Angland. The bigmouthed cop. I talked to Wanger, and he said you were asking questions about him.
This has something to do with the federal building, doesn’t it?”
“What makes you think that?” he toyed.
“The timing.”
News was their inky Spanish fly. Curiosity itched in her voice. “You’re off your beat,” she probed.
“Just checking something out,” he said tightly.
She waited for more, and when she saw that it wasn’t forthcoming, said, “You’ll tell me first.”
“Of course.”
She nodded and with a brief knowing smile allowed a be-guiling tease to swing in her voice. “Just watch your step, Danny.”
They laughed at the same time, which they took as a good omen.
“I won. Get your coat. We’re going out to eat tonight. I’m buying,” said Tom.
Danny.
Going down for the third time, Tom had felt someone firmly take his hand. Ida. Quietly, they dated. Ida suggested that he try writing fiction to diffuse his funk about being transferred down to the burbs. Writing a novel was every reporter’s daydream, so he dusted his off and put a few more hours into two chapters about a private eye who had been a reporter. He gave his PI the name Danny Storey. Ida liked the character’s name but critiqued his story line as improbable and convo-luted. After a few discussions the two rough chapters disappeared into the desk drawer in her study in the four-season porch off the living room and were forgotten.
Except in her bedroom in the dark.
Calling him Danny was her foreplay spoof in bed. For all her powers of observation, she had no idea how deeply the name goaded him or how severely he had come to hate the boundaries of his life. How he resented needing her to keep his job.
Later, after dinner, after they returned to her house, she undressed in the ritual darkness. It was also in this darkness she moved her damn pistol around, like a pea under a shell-from her purse to the bed table drawer, sometimes even under her pillow. He waited and thought: she was the face of realism. Hold on to realism and it will save you from desperation. You will make do.
After you were with Ida awhile you lost your bearings.
Was she extremely beautiful or disfigured? Certainly she was old-fashioned, a Freudian machination straight from a Hitchcock film. Stylishly repressed, precise; the best-dressed woman in the office.
But in the dark…
Like a guerrilla army, she owned the night. Her queen-size bed rustled with satin sheets, the air was moist and humidified, there were lotions, knowing fingers. She’d evoked in Tom something his pallid ex-wife of twelve years could never comprehend. Something called good sex.
Then Tom and Ida had joined hands and skipped over the slim, but unforgettable, margin that separated good sex from great sex.
“Can’t we leave the light on?” he asked.
“Why?”
“I want to see you do things. In the dresser mirror.”
“No lights,” said Ida.
“Never?”
“Not tonight. Sometime, maybe.”
“When?”
“When you tell me what you’ve got going.”
“No. Oh.” Yes. Some light, faint slivers, eked through cracks in doors, glowworms of moonlight noodled between the drapes and windowsills. Just enough to make her out, subtle and expert. Silky smooth white muscle, rising. Tongue out. Red Joker’s grin.
“C’mon, tell me what you’re on to…” she whispered.
They practiced together, keeping up their skills. Grouping the thrills in tidy clusters. Better together in practice than they would be in real life because they were not each other’s first choice.
They took turns pleasing each other. When her turn came round, she sighed:
“Yes, Danny, yes.”
He held on. Shut his eyes. Pretended. She was Caren Angland and he could hit the jackpot and win the Pulitzer and he was someone else-the Danny of their closet rapture.
His orgasm flamed in deep space. Elated and sad and lonely, he held realism in his arms, and in a moment of pure hell, he knew this was as good as it was ever going to get.