Read Online Bad Desire by Gary; Devon - Free Book Online

teasing, laughing companionably all around, then moving on, leading her through the rough tide of his admirers, while she twisted around in his wake, saying, “Hi, Fran, save me a place. Yes, thank you, order for me, same as always.”
    The crowd scattered at the dining hall entrance. Henry signed the check, passed it back to the maître d’, then he winked at her and said, “This won’t take long.” As he turned to accompany the men to the locker room where the game would take place, Faith heard him say, “I’ll sit in for an hour and that’s all tonight.”
    It was then that Henry removed his watch, wound it with a twist of the tiny knob and returned the polished gold band to his wrist, all without appearing to notice the time. But Faith knew otherwise. When she leaned down to say good evening to the Kramers, who were still seated at their table, she, also, looked at her watch. It was twenty past nine.
    Oh, stop it, she thought.
    At ten-thirty, she saw him leave the locker room. In the lounge where she was sitting, the quartet had started up again after taking its second intermission. Fran Baudin, complaining of a cold, had gone home early; Faith had lost Jeannie Whitman in the crowd. The conversation around her had grown muted, rich with gossip. “Did you hear what happened to Carolyn MacRae last night?” “No—don’t tell me.” Faith tried to be polite, but was unable to concentrate on the tales of local intrigue. She excused herself and went to find her husband.
    The outer regions of the lodge were deserted that evening as she made her way through the smoking room, then the trophy room with its walls of mounted antlers, and out through the music room, moving quickly around the silent Boesendorfer. The lodge’s back entrance appeared at the end of the hall. Faith was headed toward it, past the dark, cavelike ballroom called The Cotillion, when a gust of wind blew from its vast interior, carrying with it flecks of confetti and a few tumbling curls of white and silver ribbon.
    In the spindrift of debris, she saw something tightly crumpled and green. Money, she realized. It must’ve fallen out of someone’s pocket. Hardly breaking her stride, she stooped to pick it up and saw—across the blackness of the dance floor—a service door swing open. In the sudden wedge of moonlight, the silhouette of a woman appeared for a moment before the door clapped to. Who was that? Faith wondered as she continued toward the lodge’s back door, but from somewhere in the darkness behind her came the long, silvery echo of a laugh.
    My God! That’s Jeannie’s laugh. Jeannie Whitman . Meeting someone! Quickly, Faith went outside and across the patio, hearing her heels strike the old clay tiles. She didn’t see Henry anywhere.
    The perfume of star jasmine hung on the air like scented beads and she could feel her linen dress relaxing with the night’s dampness. Before her, the golf course stretched for a thousand moonlit yards, but out over the Pacific, the clouds were heavy and rolling and black. No stars shone there. Leaning forward against the stone balustrade, Faith closed her eyes and breathed in the warm air. One of those treacherous spring thunderstorms was blowing in, maybe the last before summer, she realized as she opened her eyes. Every few minutes, a blue-white flash of lightning ran jaggedly along the horizon, silent, ominous. “I don’t like lightning,” she murmured to herself.
    Jeannie Whitman! My God, what gets into people? She has four children. Faith felt the beginnings of a profound loneliness settle over her. I don’t understand how people can do that to themselves. To take her mind off it, she loosened the wadded money she’d found, smoothed it out and examined the two ten-dollar bills in the moonlight. It was as if God had put the money there to stop her so she would find out the truth about her friend.