But having a mate gave a person a great deal more to lose, and Aaron was uneasy. "Suki," he said, "d'you remember last night, when we were sitting on the couch—?"
"The front desk bell?" she said. Their eyes locked in the mirror. She kept brushing her hair; with each stroke her eyebrows lifted just a tiny bit, then fell.
"There was a mess out in the office. And yesterday ... somebody called a couple times. Asked for you. Hung up."
The brush dropped to her side. She turned around. "You didn't tell me."
"I didn't see the use," he said. "But now—there can't be secrets now."
She bit her lip, the upper one. Her eyelids came down to shade her unlikely blue eyes. "I have to leave," she said.
"No you don't"
"Sneak out of town, go far away."
"I want you here."
"So everybody's life gets turned upside down?"
"My life," Aaron said, "you just turned it right side up."
"No," she said. "It isn't fair."
"Fair?" he answered, and opened up his arms. "Come here, Suki."
She moved to him, lay down on the rumpled bed. Knees and ribs and tummies found facets and locks tike puzzle pieces. Her face against his chest, she said, "If we weren't making love last night—"
"I would've answered the bell, and who knows what the hell would've happened."
She nuzzled his neck with her chin. "Making love," she said, "sometimes it really does stop the world."
He ran his hand through her thick black hair, undid the careful brushing. "Sometimes it really can."
Chapter 43
On Key Haven the door clicked shut, and Ivan Cherkassky sneezed. It was a clipped sneeze, abashed and joyless, stopping short of real release. He covered his scooped-out face with his hand, then reached for his handkerchief and fussily wiped his nose.
When the ritual was over, Tarzan Abramowitz said, "Katz."
"No," said Cherkassky testily. "The dog. Allergic."
"Katz," the shirtless man said again.
"Dog!" insisted the boss.
"The name," said Abramowitz, starting once again to pace, easing into it the way a sprinter loosens up. "Same name as reservation. Same name as at hotel."
"Ah," Cherkassky said. Cautiously, like a small plane at a busy airport, he cut across the path of his goon's accelerating step. He settled himself on the very edge of the living room sofa. "Perhaps is common name."
"Or perhaps they spy on us," said Abramowitz. "Dog so bad needs water three hundred meters from home?"
Cherkassky considered. His paranoia was not of the jumpy sort; he was not prey to sudden delusory panics. His anxieties, rather, were the result of rigorous constructs whose careful architecture made them all the more obsessing. He was building such a construct now.
His new neighbors—they'd been probing and intrusive from the start. Weirdly observant; gauchely open, even for Americans; intrigued that he was Russian. They showed up at the edge of his life and seemed, like germs, to be testing the membrane for a way inside. Why?
"If they spy on us," he reasoned, "is probably because they work with girl."
Abramowitz closed the circle. "And if they work with girl, then probably is same Katz from hotel."
Cherkassky pulled on his pitted face. "But hotel," he said. "Too public. Many people. I don't like it we go to hotel unless we know for sure."
Abramowitz was pacing hard now, fists swinging near his knees. He loved momentum, not details. He said, "But we will never know for sure unless—"
"The old Katz," Cherkassky interrupted. "This is how we will know for sure."
"But—" said Abramowitz.
"He wants to spy on us," Cherkassky said. "We'll let him."
"Let him?" The voice was squeezed and shrill.
"Let him," said Cherkassky. "Good and close we'll let him spy."
Lieutenant Gary Stubbs dunked his donut in his coffee then watched the coffee run back out of the shiny little chambers in the dough.
"Dave," he thought aloud in the direction of the young man behind the counter, "why would a guy who is not simple or obviously insane go into a park full of mangroves with a shovel and a wagon?"
Dunkin' Dave adjusted the angle of his paper hat, wiped his hands on his turned-down apron. "To bury something."
"Wagon's empty," said the cop.
"Well, then to dig something up," the donut man suggested.
"Wagon's empty when he comes out, too."
"Couldn't find it maybe."
"Find what?" asked the cop.
The man behind the counter shrugged. "Or maybe changed his mind."