Betrayers(17)
“And you said?”
“No. Fan clubs ain’t my thing.”
“So then what happened with Zeller? After the sports show, I mean.”
“Christ, woman, how many questions you gonna ask? I told you, I got work to do.”
“Just a few more. Zeller call you up or what?”
“Or what. Showed up here a couple days later. Walked right in without an appointment, same as you did.”
Scoping out the place, she thought, to get an idea of how much James was worth.
“Said he was in the neighborhood, thought he’d stop by. Said he’d enjoyed meeting me at the show, figured maybe we could have a few drinks, get to know each other better. Tried to get me to change my mind about joining that goddamn club.”
“Hint around that it was a switch-hitters thing?”
“Not that time,” James said. “I told him I still wasn’t interested. He didn’t push it and I figured that was the end of it. And then bam, next week he shows up at the wedding reception.”
“How’d he know about it?”
“I don’t know, saw Nancy’s invitation, maybe—she had it on her desk. Dude’s got more balls than a basketball team, showing up the way he did, claiming I invited him. I never saw him come in. Must’ve been there awhile before I spotted him and threw him out.”
“Saw him one more time, right?”
“Couple of days later. Showed up here again like nothing ever happened. Walked right in—Nancy was out to lunch.”
“One last try to hook you into the club.”
“Yeah.” Some of the old fierce burn had come into James’s eyes. “Invited me to a meeting that weekend. Said the other guys were professional people or businessmen, all married men and none of ’em judgmental. Then he laughed like something was funny. Said, well, except one man who was but wouldn’t be.”
“Was but wouldn’t be what? Judgmental?”
“Fuckin’ double-talk.”
“All married men? Including himself?”
“What he said.”
“Give you any of their names?”
“No.”
“Tell you where the meeting was?”
“SoMa loft belongs to one of ’em. Said we’d watch some rare Super Bowl film one of ’em had, have a few drinks, have a good time—maybe experiment if we felt like it, but only one-on-one and strictly in private. All very discreet. That was the word he used, ‘discreet.’ We were standing over there by the door and he starts telling me all this and leaning up close, putting his hand on my arm and looking at me the way the little bugger did at the show. Plain as hell then where he was coming from.”
“You accuse him of being on the down low?”
“Damn right. Him and his buddies. He just shrugged, said did it matter if they were? I told him yeah, damn straight it mattered, and then I threw his ass out. I should’ve busted his head for him.”
“Too bad you didn’t.”
“You know the last thing the fucker said? Said he guessed he’d misread me. Misread me! All along he thought I was a switch-hitter like him!”
James had worked himself into a brooding rage by then, glowering all over his face. She wouldn’t get anything more out of him—lucky she’d gotten as much as she had. She slipped on out of there herself before he started venting his rage on her. The way he was sitting, rigid, staring back into his bitter memory, he didn’t even see her go.
6
When I came into the condo, Kerry was out on the balcony with the sliding glass door wide open. Ordinarily there wouldn’t have been anything unusual in that. We live in Diamond Heights, on the side of one of San Francisco’s seven hills, and on clear days and nights the balcony view is pretty alluring. But the day had turned even colder as night approached; the wind swirling in through the open door had an arctic bite. And she was standing out there at the railing with her hair tangled and streaming, arms folded, wearing nothing but a light sweater and skirt.
I went out to stand beside her. She looked my way, gave me a wan little smile. There was color in her face from the cold and her eyes were teary. Not from the wind; the unhappy expression in them said she’d been crying. That scared me. The first thing I thought of was her breast cancer, in remission now but always and forever a lingering fear.
“Hey,” I said, “what’re you doing out here?”
“Trying to decide what to do.”
“About what?”
“I’m glad you’re home,” she said.
“Me, too. Do about what? Kerry, you haven’t been to see your oncologist . . . ?”
“No, it’s nothing like that.”