Small Town

She picked up the little rabbit, touched the smooth stone to her cheek. Was she losing her mind or was the cornmeal disappearing from its bowl? There did seem to be less of it than the last time she’d looked.

She kissed the creature, informed it that it was a little pig, and put it back in front of its dish.

He’d bought a bunch of bananas the other day, and they looked ripe enough to eat. She peeled one, and it was just right, ripe but firm. She closed her lips over the end of it and savored the feel of it in her mouth, then got an idea. She ate that banana and peeled another one.

When he got out of the shower she was waiting for him in the bed. “I’ve got something for you,” she said.

“I’ll bet you do.”

“It’s a banana,” she said, “and I hid it.”

“My goodness,” he said. “Now where could you possibly hide something like that?”

“I think you should look for it,” she said, “and if you find it you get to eat it. But there’s a catch.”

“I was afraid of that. What is it?”

“You’re not allowed to use your hands.”

And what an inspiration that turned out to be. He didn’t stop when the banana was gone, didn’t stop after her first or second or third orgasm, and how could you count when one sort of rolled over into the next, and finally he was lying on top of her, his cock buried inside her, bigger than the banana, firmer than the banana, oh God sweeter than the banana, and he was kissing her, and his mouth tasted of pussy and banana, and if they could synthesize that combination everyone would want to pour it over ice cream, and he was fucking her with a lazy rhythmic roll of his hips, taking his time, taking his time, and she looked into his eyes and they were looking back into hers, and she couldn’t help herself, she couldn’t help herself, and she took his big hands and put them at the sides of her throat.

“Oh, yes,” she said softly, and pressed his hands tighter against her throat. “Oh, please, yes.”

He awakened to the smell of coffee brewing.

It was the perfect aroma to wake up to, and in fact you could use the coffeemaker as an olfactory alarm clock if you wanted, loading it up with coffee grounds and water, and setting it to start its brewing cycle when you wanted to get up. That had always struck him as too much trouble, but here was the perfect solution: have someone sleep over, and let her wake up before you.

And bring you coffee in bed, which she did a moment later.

She was dressed, and looked beautiful. “I went out for the Times,” she said. “It’s a holiday weekend, so it’s smaller than usual. It only weighs ten pounds.”

She’d been about to wake him, she said, if the smell of the coffee hadn’t done the job. His interview with Matt Lauer was due to air in ten minutes. Meanwhile here was the Book Review section.

They sat on the couch with separate sections of the newspaper. The TV was on and tuned to the right channel, with the sound muted until the show came on. He tried to read a review of the latest offering by a South American magic realist, then tried to read Marilyn Stasio’s crime fiction column. But his mind kept wandering away, imagining the reviews Darker Than Water might get. Would they like it? Would they hate it? Did it matter?

And there was Matt Lauer, wearing the same jacket he’d worn the day before. He put the sound on, set the paper aside. His interview would probably be later on in the show, but he wanted to watch the whole program.

Beside him, Susan leaned gently against him, and he put an arm around her, drew her close. Jesus, a new game, Hide the Banana. How’d he get so lucky?

And then he remembered how she’d taken his hands and put them on her throat, how she’d kept them there, pressing them to her. Please, she’d said, as if begging.

He sensed something unpleasant, some unthinkable thought, hovering just out of sight, just out of reach. He took a breath and willed it away and made himself pay attention to what Matt Lauer was saying.

thirty-seven

Channel-surfing, Buckram happened on Matt Lauer, interviewing a terrorism expert on parallels between the Carpenter and the demento with the mail-order anthrax. The most striking point of similarity, he thought, was that so far nobody had managed to catch either one of them. It had been almost a year since Mr. Anthrax started spreading his powdered cheer, long enough for him to have slipped everybody’s mind, including, apparently, the fucking Bureau.

He stayed with the show, though, muting it during the commercial, and the next segment paired Lauer with John Blair Creighton, the writer, whom Buckram had seen last at Stelli’s. The guy had been on top of the world that night, and he looked even happier now, happier than anyone had a right to look on a Sunday morning.

Right off the bat, he found out the reason. Somehow he’d missed hearing that the DA’s office had thrown in the sponge and dropped charges. Nice for Creighton, he thought. Had to feel good if he was really innocent, and had to feel even better if he wasn’t.