On a sudden impulse, she opened her mouth and screamed against the glass. It was a muted, restrained scream, however. Taking a breath, she opened her throat and tried again, but succeeded only in bringing on a coughing fit, forehead jouncing painfully against the glass with each spasm.
“You are hokay, Miss Victoria?”
Victoria straightened with a start. Consuela, their middle-aged, part-time housekeeper, stood at the top of the steps to the sunken living room.
“Yes, Connie. I’m okay.” Victoria’s hands and forehead had left oily smudges on the glass of the window. She wiped at them with the sleeve of her blouse.
Consuela’s expression was stern. “Nothing is wrong?”
“No.” Victoria picked up her wineglass from the coffee table, but it was empty. “I was just being silly.”
“I stay if you want.” But she was already wearing her old navy peacoat and carrying a purse that looked large enough to hold a week’s groceries.
“No, no,” Victoria said. “Go home. I’m fine, really. Just tired. I’ll see you on Wednesday.”
After Consuela had left, Victoria climbed the steps to the kitchen. She poured another glass of white wine from a bottle in the terra cotta cooler on the counter. Picking up the cordless phone, she carried it and the wineglass upstairs to her bathroom and set them on the rim of the big square tub. She started the water, adjusted the temperature, and poured in four caps of bubble bath. While the bath filled, she undressed and stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror on the dressing room door. A little doughy, she thought critically, twisting to look over her shoulder, and her butt was beginning to pucker a little. God, she was only thirty-five. What would it look like when she was fifty? Turning to face the mirror again, she hefted her breasts in her palms. Although they probably wouldn’t pass the pencil test, they didn’t sag too badly. She’d certainly seen worse at the health club. Much worse. She’d seen better too, though. Much better.
She stepped into the tub and slowly lowered herself into the foaming water. Settling back, she let the heat soak into her. She’d told Consuela there was nothing wrong, that she was just tired, and maybe that was all it was. After all, she hadn’t slept very well last night, after the argument with Patrick. She knew there was more to it than that, though. Fear clawed at the back of her throat. Damn Patrick. How could he have been so inconsiderate and insensitive? Didn’t he care? Didn’t he understand?
No, he probably didn’t understand, she thought. Sometimes she felt that the only person in the world who really understood her was Kit Parsons. Kit wouldn’t run out on her, abandon her like everyone else had. Would she?
Oh, stop feeling so goddamned sorry for yourself, Victoria thought angrily. Most people would think she had it made. A house in the British Properties, a closet full of clothes, a BMW convertible, and a husband who at least said he loved her. She was healthy—physically, anyway—reasonably attractive, and still relatively young. What more could she ask? Happiness? A highly overrated commodity, in her experience.
She reached for the wineglass, but it was empty. She should have brought the bottle.
The mixture of heat and alcohol had made her light-headed and loose-jointed, so when the telephone rang she almost dropped it into the water as she fumbled to answer it.
“Hiya, kid.”
“Hello, Kit,” Victoria replied, instantly recognizing Katherine “Kit” Parsons’ scratchy voice, ravaged by the almost two packs of cigarettes she smoked every day.
“Whatcha up to?”
“Nothing much,” Victoria said. “Taking a bubble bath and getting stewed on white wine. Patrick’s taking the five o’clock ferry to Nanaimo.”
“It’s not healthy to drink alone,” Kit rasped. “Want some company? I haven’t had a bath today.”
Victoria laughed. She was tempted, but said, “I don’t know, Kit. I’m really very tired. I think I’ll just watch a little TV and go to bed early.”
“Have you eaten? I could pick up a pizza or something. A video, too. We’ll just veg out. I’m not going to take no for an answer.”
“Kit, please. Not tonight. I wouldn’t be very good company.”
“All right,” Kit said, voice flat with disappointment. “But call me if you change your mind.”
“Yes, of course,” Victoria said guiltily and pressed the disconnect button.
As soon as she had disconnected she regretted not letting Kit come over. She could have used the company. Reaching out with her foot, she toed the faucet on. Hot water roared into the tub. Despite the rising heat of the bath, the familiar icy emptiness gnawed at her insides and the cold black tendrils of dread that always lurked just beyond the threshold of her awareness slithered into her mind. The flesh of her face grew stiff and numb. The numbness spread, invading her chest. Her heart pounded. She took an unsteady breath, and as she lifted leaden arms to pull herself out of the bath she saw the faint white lines across her wrists and recalled from years earlier the red blossoming into the bath water, frothing pink where the water from the faucet foamed, and her aunt Jane’s screams...
Victoria rinsed off with the hand shower, towelled herself dry, and, wrapped in a thick terry bathrobe, went downstairs to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator. The dinner Consuela had prepared needed only to be heated in the microwave, but even that seemed like too much trouble. She closed the door and poured more wine into her glass. Her head buzzed and she knew she would have a headache soon.
She keyed Kit’s number into the phone, but stabbed the disconnect button before the call was completed. It would not be a good idea, she knew, considering her mood and the amount of wine she’d drunk, to be alone with Kit tonight. In the four months Victoria had known her, Kit had never made any overt moves, but neither had she hidden her feelings, apparently satisfied to let things develop on their own. Victoria wasn’t at all certain how she felt about the situation. Not that it was a line she hadn’t crossed occasionally before, but she wasn’t sure it was a line she wanted to cross with Kit. Not now, anyway.
The doorbell rang, playing the opening bars of Beethoven’s Für Elise, which she had once loved but now loathed, thanks to that doorbell. Half hoping Kit had decided not to take no for an answer after all, Victoria went to the door.
It was raining again at five-thirty when Shoe nosed the Mercedes up against the door of the garage in the lane behind the peeling, wood-frame house on West 3rd between Balsam and Larch in Kitsilano. Retrieving his purchases from the back seat, he locked the car and pushed his way through the wet, unkempt jungle of the yard to the front of the house to check the mail. Rainwater dripped off the dark green leaves of the huge old magnolia that loomed over the front walk.
January Jack Pine sat on the porch, out of the rain, leaning on a canvas duffle bag, smoking a roll-your-own, and reading a tattered copy of The Portable James Joyce by the yellow light of the coach lamps on either side of the front door. He stood as Shoe climbed the steps. He wore a long Australian stockman’s coat fastened to the chin, but no hat or gloves. Shredding the cigarette, he brushed the remains off his palm into the front yard.
“You still got that spare bed?” he asked as Shoe peered into the empty mailbox. Shoe’s spare bed was a folding cot with a foam rubber mattress that he had used with a sleeping bag when he’d first moved into the house a year and a half ago.
“What’s the problem this time?” Shoe asked as he unlocked the door. Last winter Jack had stayed for a week when the water lines to his houseboat had frozen and burst, but it hadn’t been that cold yet this winter.
“Some damn kid rammed my house with a speedboat,” Jack said. “Put a hole the size o’ yer head in one o’ the pontoons. Damn near capsized, right there at the dock. Bernie Simpson, the salvage guy, he raised her up and patched the pontoon, but it’ll take a while for things t’ dry out.”
Jack