“I don’t have long,” I said. “I’ve got some laundry I need to do.”
“I’m glad you came,” she said. “I feel so awful.”
“About what?”
“About, you know—Lance and Steve and everything.”
“Don’t,” I said, trying to stretch out my legs. “I’ve forgotten it. It was all so stupid.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
“I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist,” she said, the flesh in the space between her eyes crimping suddenly. “He told me I was obsessed with you.”
“Obsessed,” I said.
“I told him about everything, Lance and everything, the big mistake I made . . . and do you know what he says?”
“That you should be admitted to a psychiatric hospital?”
“No, he says I should sleep with you.”
“The psychiatrist said that?”
“Yes. He says that an obsession is in the mind and once it is played out in reality it can no longer be an obsession.”
I wanted to ask her what it would be when it was no longer in the mind, but her skirt was shrinking. She mussed her hair and rustled in her seat and turned to face me, the skirt climbing up her legs. “Do you want to come talk to him?”
“Who? A psychiatrist?”
“Yes, he’d like you to come in. He wants to meet you.” She laughed nervously in her coffee-grinder voice. “I’ve talked so much about you.”
“Me? No. I don’t want to see a psychiatrist.”
She put her fingers lightly on my shoulder. “My marriage isn’t working, Baby. I made a mistake...”
I looked up the tall, green hull of a fishing boat called the Samurai Sunrise. “So what do you want me to do about it?”
She swatted me and smiled, squinting her eyes dreamily. “I want to sleep with you, Silly.”
“Sleep with me?” I said.
“I love you.”
“No, you don’t, Bonnie. I read your diary.”
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“You shouldn’t have lied to me.”
“I keep my lives separate,” she said. “The diary was my dirty life.”
“I don’t believe you. Anyway, you’re married.”
“Just once,” she said. “I need it. He won’t know. He’s off at a bar. He’s seeing another woman. We’re getting a divorce. I need it, Baby. I need you...”
I took her back to Dewy’s beach bungalow. I didn’t care about her one way or the other—but I wanted revenge on Jebets for stealing her from me. And she looked good. Nature had built Bonnie for rolling in the sheets, that was it, and there was no sense wasting her. We stopped along the way and bought a bottle of strawberry wine. The streets were puddled in fog. The fog swept in from left to right in a cold steady flow .The streetlights glowed in lacy blobs like odd little suns in the mist.
We parked down by the Yacht Club, just past the old Santa Clara Hotel. The lot was nearly empty. A tiny, Asian-looking man was rummaging through a trashcan. Two hooded figures in black moved like phantoms down through the alley. Across the street the ocean riffled and roared with a babbling noise in the background like the laughter of nuns on a forbidden picnic.
“This is a nice little place,” she said, looking around and setting her purse on the bamboo couch. “A beach hut. It’s so romantic.”
A flea bounced spectacularly out of the carpet and receded again. “It’s not mine,” I said, pouring two glasses of the foamy, sweet Boone’s Farm Strawberry wine. I noticed she was shivering and lit the little wall furnace, filling the cottage with the smell of burnt lint and gas.
“I’ve got to get back pretty soon,” she said. “He’ll be looking for me.”
I turned off all the lights, and we kissed for a while. Her mouth tasted like brussels sprouts, and she seemed slightly heavier around the hips. “I want to do something for you,” she said, taking my wrist hungrily.
I followed her into the bedroom, flinging off my shirt and socks. Her skirt dropped to the floor. One of her crumpled stockings rocketed past my eyes. Our jaws met in a sliding, heated, teeth-clashing moan. I felt her hot flat thigh, and kissed her neck, and bit her tiny earrings.
“Put this pillow under me,” she said. “Oh, yes.”
Now someone was knocking on the door.
“Forget it,” Bonnie moaned.
I kissed the cup of her throat, the crease of her arm. The knocking insisted, louder with each series. Then a few very pronounced thumps and a familiar voice that boomed: “BONNIE! I know you’re in there!”
Bonnie leaped back against the wall. I fell and banged my forehead on her knee.
“It’s Steve,” she cried.
“Jebets,” I said, wild-eyed, rubbing my head.
“Let me in!” cried Jebets, with a few more slams on the door panel.
“How does he know you’re here?”
“He must’ve followed us. He must have been looking in the window.” She cowered in the corner, the sheet drawn up over her breasts.
“Hey, I know you’re in there,” bellowed Jebets, “and if you don’t let me in I’m going to break down the fucking door.”
“Don’t let him in,” gasped Bonnie.
I scrambled up and snapped on the lights. Clothes were everywhere, draped over the dresser, hanging from doorknobs. A pink sock dangled from the lamp shade. Bonnie crouched in her corner, a frozen Chihuahua grin on her face. I pulled on a pair of pants.
“You did this on purpose,” I said.
“He’ll kill us if you let him in,” she said.
A fist hit the door and the wood cracked. “Bonnie, you stinking two-timing whore—let me in there...”
“Just a minute!” I shouted amiably, reaching under the bed and sliding out the shoe box. Bonnie’s eyes bulged as the tissue paper fell away from the gleaming revolver. I made a quick expert check to see if it was loaded. It was.
Jebets drummed the door with his fist and pieces of wood began to fly.
“I’ll kick it in,” he announced.
“It isn’t my door,” I said.
“You little shitbird,” he said. “I’m gonna tear you to pieces.”
“I’ve got a gun,” I warned, standing two feet from the door, “and I’m poised to fire.”
Bonnie was behind me now, wrapped in a sheet. “Shoot him, Baby,” she said.
A huge stick of varnished wood came spinning out at me as he struck again. “Stop or I’ll shoot,” I said. “I swear to God, Jebets, I’ll shoot.”
“Shoot him, Baby.”
He