living alone.â
âEspecially when youâre not used to it,â she said. âThough youâd think I would be by now.â
She smiled with some sadness and I tried to think of something to say and couldnât, and she went to get my supper. As I ate she cleared and set tables for breakfast, and I pretended not to watch her. Then she brought my check, and I paid it, and we spoke a minute more about the warm temperatures starting and how soon we would be complaining. Then we said good night.
My two years of marriage had not been good ones. My wife had had an affair with a man she later married, something she still didnât know I knew. Other than my attraction to Audrey Birdsong, the onlywoman I found myself drawn to was Julie Aspenall, and that had been going on a long time. I had been with Lee when he first saw her at the Crown King Bar, up in Crown King, and if he hadnât approached her, I would have. It was possible that she knew that. There had been an afternoon, once, close to Christmas, a year after my divorce, when she and I ran into each other at the Cave Creek Trading Post and went next door together to the Mexican restaurant. She showed me her purchases: an old Indian drum for Travis, and so on.
It was dusk when we walked out to the parking area, and she gave me a hug good night and kissed me. The hug wasnât unusual for her but the kiss was. If you were lost in the desert, you would remember your last glass of water for a long time. But it wasnât just that, and I wanted to think that it wasnât any kind of just for her, either. Not that anything had or would come of it. I wasnât the kind of person to wreck a friendâs marriage, were that possible, and it wasnât. The Aspenalls were happy, at least happier than most married couples I knew. It was just that having a warm, reciprocal connection with a woman didnât happen to me often and it stayed in my mind.
I sat in the Rock Springs Café parking lot, thinking that the restaurant was about to close; soon Audrey would be coming out to her car, and I could ask if sheâd be interested in getting together. But the idea of waylaying her made me uncomfortable. If I wanted to ask her out, I should call her, I thought. That was normal behavior. When I got home I would do that, I told myself, yet ten minutes later, at home, I looked up her number, wrote it on a slip of paper, and left it on my kitchen counter. I would wait until the Jody Farnell investigation was over, I decided. I didnât have time for a date now, anyway, which was true, and not just an excuse. Or at least not only an excuse.
chapter thirteen
NATE ASPENALL
J ODY SLEPT DEEPLY . I would get up in the night and stand at the foot of the bed to make sure she was breathingâthe comforter rising and falling, the sound of her breath going in and out. It was around New Yearâs when I started doing that. Maybe I felt I had a right to, since I was taking care of her and since I was patient in terms of what I was hoping would happen between us. Her hair was dark against the white pillowcase and I would put my hand on it, or else I would rest my palm on the slight rise of her breasts under the bedclothes.
I dared myself, I suppose you could say. There was a getting-away-with-something quality to what I was doing, there in the silence, with just the two of us alone in the darkness. I could smell the soap she used, I was standing so close, and I imagined using it on her someday, her asking me toâ Come shower with me, Nate. Letâs be naked together . I believed she would let me do that and more, once she was ready, in whatever way she defined that word. Meanwhile I had this private experience of her, which I would never tell her about, no matter what happened between us. It wasnât hers to know.
Whatever form of sex occurred between two people, there was another, private side that nobody admitted to. That was my belief. It was
âEspecially when youâre not used to it,â she said. âThough youâd think I would be by now.â
She smiled with some sadness and I tried to think of something to say and couldnât, and she went to get my supper. As I ate she cleared and set tables for breakfast, and I pretended not to watch her. Then she brought my check, and I paid it, and we spoke a minute more about the warm temperatures starting and how soon we would be complaining. Then we said good night.
My two years of marriage had not been good ones. My wife had had an affair with a man she later married, something she still didnât know I knew. Other than my attraction to Audrey Birdsong, the onlywoman I found myself drawn to was Julie Aspenall, and that had been going on a long time. I had been with Lee when he first saw her at the Crown King Bar, up in Crown King, and if he hadnât approached her, I would have. It was possible that she knew that. There had been an afternoon, once, close to Christmas, a year after my divorce, when she and I ran into each other at the Cave Creek Trading Post and went next door together to the Mexican restaurant. She showed me her purchases: an old Indian drum for Travis, and so on.
It was dusk when we walked out to the parking area, and she gave me a hug good night and kissed me. The hug wasnât unusual for her but the kiss was. If you were lost in the desert, you would remember your last glass of water for a long time. But it wasnât just that, and I wanted to think that it wasnât any kind of just for her, either. Not that anything had or would come of it. I wasnât the kind of person to wreck a friendâs marriage, were that possible, and it wasnât. The Aspenalls were happy, at least happier than most married couples I knew. It was just that having a warm, reciprocal connection with a woman didnât happen to me often and it stayed in my mind.
I sat in the Rock Springs Café parking lot, thinking that the restaurant was about to close; soon Audrey would be coming out to her car, and I could ask if sheâd be interested in getting together. But the idea of waylaying her made me uncomfortable. If I wanted to ask her out, I should call her, I thought. That was normal behavior. When I got home I would do that, I told myself, yet ten minutes later, at home, I looked up her number, wrote it on a slip of paper, and left it on my kitchen counter. I would wait until the Jody Farnell investigation was over, I decided. I didnât have time for a date now, anyway, which was true, and not just an excuse. Or at least not only an excuse.
chapter thirteen
NATE ASPENALL
J ODY SLEPT DEEPLY . I would get up in the night and stand at the foot of the bed to make sure she was breathingâthe comforter rising and falling, the sound of her breath going in and out. It was around New Yearâs when I started doing that. Maybe I felt I had a right to, since I was taking care of her and since I was patient in terms of what I was hoping would happen between us. Her hair was dark against the white pillowcase and I would put my hand on it, or else I would rest my palm on the slight rise of her breasts under the bedclothes.
I dared myself, I suppose you could say. There was a getting-away-with-something quality to what I was doing, there in the silence, with just the two of us alone in the darkness. I could smell the soap she used, I was standing so close, and I imagined using it on her someday, her asking me toâ Come shower with me, Nate. Letâs be naked together . I believed she would let me do that and more, once she was ready, in whatever way she defined that word. Meanwhile I had this private experience of her, which I would never tell her about, no matter what happened between us. It wasnât hers to know.
Whatever form of sex occurred between two people, there was another, private side that nobody admitted to. That was my belief. It was
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