Deadly Beloved(11)

“That I have a deal for them.”

“That we’re going to invite them here,” Sarah corrected him. “That we’re going to give a party and they’re going to be allowed to come.”

“And you really think that’s going to be enough.”

Sarah inched forward on the counter and into Kevin’s hands. In her mind she could see Molly Bracken’s face over the broccoli at the Food Emporium, eyes getting wider and wider, smile getting more and more eager. Even the dark roots of her hair had seemed to pulse, as if an electric generator had gone off inside her head, as if at any minute she would start to glow.

“Yes,” Sarah said now. “It will be enough. It will be enough for the women, and they’ll make it enough for the men.”

“You can be a sexist little bitch,” Kevin said.

Sarah twisted herself against him. Her clothes had begun to feel too tight, too hot. Everything was too hot. They had made love for the first time on the first day they had ever met, that day at Margaret Delacord’s parents’ lawn party—and that was thirty years ago, for God’s sake. People didn’t do things like that then. People didn’t steal magnums of champagne from the open bars at post-deb receptions and get drunk on the floor of four-car garages in a thick envelope of summer heat. People didn’t forge weekend permission slips and sneak away from college dormitories to spend night after night in cut-rate motels, making the sheets burn with sweat and cigarette ashes. People didn’t stop planning and scheming and hoping and studying just to give themselves over to the moment. At least, people like Sarah didn’t.

“Sarah?” Kevin said now.

Sarah got her hand under his shirt and stroked the hair on his chest. She pulled at his shirt buttons until they came undone.

“I love it that you stopped wearing undershirts,” she told him.

“Everybody stopped wearing undershirts,” he shot back.

The next thing she knew, he had lifted her up off the counter and put her down on the floor. She could feel the cool smoothness of ceramic tiles against her back. Her red jersey polo was gone and she couldn’t remember it coming off. The air conditioner was turned up high and she was freezing. She felt pliant and stiff at once, like folded meringue.

“Jesus Christ,” Kevin said. “Are we really going to get away with this?”

“Yes,” Sarah told him.

Then she pulled off her skirt by herself and threw it over her head.





5.


BY THE TIME PATSY MacLaren had finished her errands and arrived in West Philadelphia, it was noon. The back of the Volvo was now loaded with packages wrapped in plain brown paper. Patsy’s thin silk blouse was damp with sweat across the shoulder blades. Out on the street, people were moving slowly. College students were walking around with their shirts unbuttoned and their blue jeans cut off high on the legs. She was only a few blocks from the University of Pennsylvania. This was not Philadelphia’s best neighborhood. She would have gone somewhere else if she had had a choice, but she hadn’t. She circled one block and then the next. She found a high-rise parking garage and turned into its entry lane. The man in the little glass booth was half asleep. Patsy had to honk the horn to get his attention.

The man in the little glass booth was used to people just driving through. All you had to do coming in was take a ticket. It was going out you had to talk to somebody about, so that you knew what you owed and you could pay. Patsy waited patiently while the man readjusted himself, shifted from one foot to the other, slid back the little glass window, leaned out. Then she said, “Do I have to get a special ticket for all day? Or do I just settle that when I come out?”

The man in the little glass booth blinked. He was old—so old, Patsy wondered if he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. She leaned closer to the driver’s side door so that he would be sure to see her. She stuck her head out the window so that she could be sure he would hear.

“For an all-day ticket—” she said again.

“You can’t have an all-day ticket,” the man interrupted her. “It’s already noon. You won’t have been here all day.”

There was a certain logic in this. Patsy counted to ten in her head. “Is that a rule?” she asked him. “To get an all-day ticket you have to come in in the morning?”

“It’s not a rule,” the man said. “It’s just common sense.”

“But if it’s not a rule, I could buy an all-day ticket now,” Patsy pointed out. “There wouldn’t be any reason not to.”

“Sure there would be a reason not to,” the man said. “It wouldn’t make any sense.”