“He wants to see you,” she said.
“He’s here?”
She shook her head. “At home. I reminded him that he’d fired you, but he told me that unless I wanted to join you in the unemployment line to mind my own goddamned business. I dared him to fire me,” she added. “He just grumbled and told me to give you the message.”
“Did he say what he wants?”
“No. Maybe he’s changed his mind about firing you.”
“I’m not sure I’m likely to change my mind about being fired,” Shoe replied.
William Hammond sat in a cushioned wicker armchair beside the pool in the solarium of his Shaughnessy Heights house. The air was heavy with the odour of chlorine from the pool, the mustiness of damp earth and humus, and the cloying reek of tropical plants and flowers. Overhead fans rotated slowly and silently, keeping the inner surface of the glass walls free of condensation. The only illumination came from the underwater pool lights. Over the hiss of the rain on the glass, he could hear the soft splash of water as Abby swam lengths, switching every second length between the crawl, the breaststroke, and the backstroke.
Hammond lifted his glass, only to discover that it was empty—again. Pushing himself out of the creaky chair, he walked unsteadily to the mobile bar and fixed himself another Bloody Caesar. He could feel the alcohol fizzing through his blood, killing brain cells, corroding his liver. When had he started drinking so much? he wondered. Alcohol had killed Elizabeth, his first wife, as it had killed her mother. It ran in the family. Of course, living with that self-righteous, Bible-thumping bastard Raymond Lindell would have driven anyone to drink.
He remembered a time, not long ago, when he’d hardly taken alcohol at all. Why start now? The answer was simple. He drank because he no longer needed to be sober. Business required a clear head. What he did these days hardly qualified as business.
It had been different in the old days, he thought, slumped in his chair again and absently watching Abby glide through the water, doing the backstroke now. It had been fun then. He still remembered, like it was yesterday, the thrill of landing his first big shipping contract, the excitement of negotiating the purchase of his first company. There had been hard times, to be sure, but the hard times had just made the good times all that much better.
And Claire. He closed his eyes and tried to conjure up a picture of Claire Powkowski in his mind, but he couldn’t. She’d had pale blond hair, he remembered, coarse and brittle from being bleached too many times, washed-out blue eyes, and a crooked front tooth, but he couldn’t see her face. With a sudden rush, though, accompanied by a warm stirring in his loins, he remembered her breasts, white and pendulous, exquisitely soft and hot in his hands, and the hardness of her long, dark nipples, which she’d liked to have pinched and twisted harder than he’d at first been comfortable with.
Jesus, he swore under his breath as he realized with a shock that it had been fifty-five years since he’d lost his virginity with Claire Powkowski. He’d been twenty. She’d been what, thirty-two, thirty-three? He’d hired her to help him run a variation of the badger game on the petty officer in charge of the naval supply depot in the Port of Vancouver, where Hammond had been stationed as a clerk during the final years of the Second World War. She’d been one of the better-looking whores plying their trade in the port.
“Easiest money I’ve made in a long time,” she’d told him later. “I figure you got some change coming. I don’t live far from here. Why don’t you come home with me?”
“Not today,” he’d replied, annoyed by the slight quaver in his voice. Given the difference in their ages, though, he’d felt that it would have been too much like fucking his mother. “Did you get the address of the warehouse?”
She wrote it on a paper napkin and handed it to him. He folded it and put into his shirt pocket.
“This Petty Officer Millard,” she said. “He’s stealing from the Navy and selling it on the black market, isn’t he? You’re too young to be shore patrol, so I figure you’re cutting yourself in on his action. Am I right?”
He admitted she was.
“You got nerve for a kid,” she said. “Why don’t you come by the club tonight. I’ll fix you up with a girl more your age. She’ll do it for me as a favour.” She wet her lips and looked at him through lowered lashes, leaning forward and hunching her shoulders to give him a good look at the tops of her breasts. “She’s cute as a bug’s ear, but I know a trick or two she hasn’t even thought of yet.”
“I appreciate the offer,” he said. “But...” He shrugged.
“You’ve never been with a woman, is that it?” She smiled, because the answer was written all over his face. “Nothin’ to be ashamed of. Worst thing in the world, though, is two virgins doing it for the first time, all scared and nervous and not knowing what to do. The way they do it on those South Sea Islands, the older women teach the boys and the older men teach the girls.”
That wasn’t true and he’d known it, but in the end he had gone with her. And it hadn’t been at all like fucking his mother.
Damn, he thought. Not only was he drinking more these days, he was spending more time thinking about the past. That was a sure sign he was getting old. Hell, he wasn’t getting old; he was old. And there wasn’t a goddamned thing he could do about it.
Eschewing the ladder, Abigail Whittaker Hammond lifted herself effortlessly out of the pool, sleek as a seal, streaming water onto the tiled deck. She stood at the edge of the pool, breasts rising and falling with the slow, deep rhythm of her breathing. Peeling off her bathing cap, she fluffed her short, rust-coloured hair. A vein in her neck throbbed and Hammond imagined he could almost hear the powerful beat of her heart. At forty-eight, Abby was well muscled but not overdeveloped, with just enough body fat to keep her from looking stringy. Her bathing costume was three tiny patches of fabric, barely containing her high, round breasts and the mound of her sex.
“You might as well swim naked, for crissake,” he grumbled.
“I usually do,” she said. She picked up a bright beach towel and wrapped it around herself, tucking a corner between her breasts. Reaching under the towel, she removed the bits of her bathing suit, gathering them into her fist. The muscles of her forearm corded as she squeezed the water out.
Abby was okay, but Hammond wasn’t sure why he’d married her after Elizabeth had died. The company, maybe. Certainly not the sex. He tried to remember how long it had been since they’d had sex. Three months, at least, maybe four. It hadn’t been a particularly satisfying experience for either of them, he recalled. Although she had managed to get him erect by hand, as soon as she’d straddled him and tried to put him inside her, he’d wilted. He might have considered giving Viagra a try, if he really gave a damn.
“I’m going to get dressed now,” Abby said. “Are you sure you won’t change your mind?”
“I’m sure,” he answered curtly, annoyed that she’d asked. She knew he wouldn’t change his mind. She didn’t really want him to go with her anyway; it would spoil her evening. Not that he gave a damn about spoiling her evening, but opera made his teeth ache. Only thing worse was ballet, muscular homely women and queers in padded jockstraps. The symphony he could take or leave. He fell asleep most of the time anyway.
“Can I get you anything before I go?”
“No.”
She so surprised him when she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead that he almost flinched. She seldom showed him much affection these days. “I’ll say good night then. Don’t wait up.”
When she’d gone to dress, he got up and made himself another drink.
Was Abby really going to the opera? he wondered as he returned to his chair. Or was she shacking up somewhere with whomever she was screwing these days? He was