Page 38 of The Undead

The Volvo smelled stale and hot inside, as if I’d packed it full of impotent anger. I rolled the windows down and let it bleed out into the sky. The drive home was short and uneventful. After I turned the car off, I sat in it for a while listening to it tick like a bomb, then grabbed my sack and went inside. I remembered the alarm, this time. I turned the goddamn thing off and kicked the door shut.

Maggie jumped, surprised, and turned to look at me. She’d just gotten home herself, it seemed; she was still taking off her earrings, which had been the second thing to come off her body when she reached the door. The first—her shoes—lay halfway across the room next to her purse. We looked at each other like a pair of idiots for a few minutes, neither one saying a word, and Maggie turned away and started unbuttoning her blouse.

I dropped my sack and walked over to her, turned her by the shoulders to face me, and cupped my hands around her face. Her blue eyes got wider, but not any more welcoming.

“How’s your hangover?” she asked neutrally. She hadn’t stopped unbuttoning her shirt, but there wasn’t anything seductive about it. She looked bored and irritated. “Let go, Mike, you know we’re supposed to have dinner with Carl tonight.”

We were? I blinked. Maggie had an infallible memory for dates, something I never could master; she’d probably set it up five months ago, and Carl would probably never show, and she’d never understand why he’d forgotten. She frowned a little and shook my hands off her shoulders. The blouse slid off. She turned away from me, heading for the bedroom, hands busy at the button of her skirt.

She’s walking away, I thought numbly. Do something. Doanything.

If I were in the movies, I’d grab her, kiss the hell out of her, and throw her on the bed. In the movies, of course, women were never out of the mood, and the male actors never had to feel that silent, hating rejection pierce through their flesh. When she turned off, Maggie turned OFF, no middle ground, and forcing her into anything was more likely to get me hurt than get me off. It wouldn’t have reached that point, of course. I couldn’t have raped my wife, whatever some lawyer might have called it.

I followed her, though. I sat down on the edge of the bed and watched her strip off the skirt and the pantyhose and the bra. She shot me a quick glance as she yanked on a pair of blue jeans and a sweater.

“What are you doing?” she asked. It wasn’t a warm question, but it was a question.

“I was going to ask you the same question,” I murmured. She looked away, pulled the tie off the end of her braid, and began loosening her hair. It fell out in rich gold ripples, like wheat fields in the wind. “God, Mag, do you know how I feel? What’s going on here?”

“I don’t know. You act like a psycho, Mike, and you askmewhat’s going on? You’re sneaking around like some paranoid, you know. You look at me like I’m from another fucking planet.” She sat down at the dressing table, picked up her brush, and started attacking her hair, hissing and cursing when it snagged. Her hands were trembling. I got up and took the brush away from her; I took her hair and began slowly stroking the bristles through it, easing the tangles. Her shoulders were as tense as wire. “What are you thinking, Mike?”

“I’m thinking,” I said quietly, “how much I love you. Do you believe that? That I love you?”

She looked up, and the impact hit me in the pit of my stomach. Maggie’s lips smiled, then faltered into a still, tense line. I dropped the brush and just watched her, going to one knee next to her. We weren’t touching, maybe because we both knew that would be a lie.

“I’m in trouble, Mikey,” she finally said, very softly, a lost little girl. Her eyes flooded with tears, but they didn’t fall, just covered her eyes like a hot silver shield. Her long fingers trembled spasmodically and clenched on her knees. “I never meant it to go this far. I never meant for you to be hurt. Can you believe that?”

I just looked at her.

“There isn’t anything I can do yet. All I can do is wait him out. If I make a move right now; I don’t know what he’ll do, and I need time …” Maggie’s voice faded out into a gray whisper. She looked down. The tears fell and shattered on her hands. One caught on the diamond crowning her wedding ring and trembled there. It melted liquidly down the gold and disappeared. “Trust me. Please trust me.”

I felt a wild, despairing urge to laugh like some melodrama villain.Trust? Trust has no place in this, madam. You are found out.

I didn’t laugh. I reached out to her and took her hand. The tear slid between her fingers and serpentined down her palm; it spread out over my skin and sealed us together. Tears, blood, sweat, semen—cement between lovers.

The wall wasn’t so absolute, after all. I felt it crack between us, and something showed through to illuminate the shadows. Maggie’s eyes glowed fiercely with it, a desire that went beyond the sensual play of sex. A desire that made me ache all over with need and want. I wanted Maggie, not Maggie’s body, not the sweet slide of moving flesh—I wanted thatfire.

Love was a pale word for it.

“Nick …” Maggie whispered. I let go of her hand and touched her lips with fingers salted with her tears. She kissed them, and I could fed that same ache in her, the ragged dark need. My fingers moved to slide up her smooth cheek, to rest over the sharp arch of her cheekbone.

“I don’t want to hear about Nick. You know what I want.”

She sat in silence, staring at me. The intensity of her expression, the hunger, the hope, made me fed lightheaded.

“I’ll never leave you, Michael. Never.” Maggie’s voice was even and final. I felt the wall shatter between us in an explosion of anguished relief. “And you’d better never leave me, you bastard.”

“Do you think I could?” I asked her. She got up and walked with decisive choppy steps to the door and swung the door shut. “What the hell are you doing?”

She leaned against the door for a minute, not looking at me. I felt a wave of utter despair and fear. She’d changed her mind. She couldn’t stand to look at me.

“I want you,” she said then, still without moving, “to make love to me. Now.”

Maggie turned around and leaned against the wall, posing in a relaxed cover-girl attitude that was obviously deliberate. For the first time in what seemed like a long time, she smiled that slow, wicked smile, and I felt something surge in response. Her hands grabbed the bottom of her sweater and lifted it in one smooth move over her head.

“Maggie?” I murmured, delighted and horrified. She unzipped her jeans, stepped out of them, and tossed them in an untidy pile next to her sweater. She crossed to me completely naked. “This is crazy”

“Isn’t it?” She smiled. She leaned forward and put her lips on mine. I was still kneeling, she was stooping, and somehow her breasts seemed to fit naturally in the palms of my hands. Our mouths opened hungrily, damply. She slowly pulled away. I didn’t feel the slightest urge to get up, not yet. There was something left to say.

---