the dimming light. Abby helped me extract my bike from the taxi’s carrying rack. Walking to the house, I said, “What is there about the distribution to inspire worry?”
Her mouth slammed shut. All I heard were sounds of cicadas and tree frogs. If I was going to get an answer, I’d have to extract it gradually. The first thing she did inside the house was kick off her shoes.
We talked for three hours, stopping only to eat, pour more rum, and use the bathroom. I offered to close up the house and run the air-conditioning, but Abby insisted I keep things as I usually have them, twin ceiling fans at slow speed in the living room, single fans in the kitchen and bedroom.
Admiring my house plants, rearranging my furniture, occasionally wiping perspiration from her forehead with paper towels, Abby Womack related her history with Cahill. She had initiated the liaison after meeting him at a tax seminar. It had been a yearlong fling, with mid-week sex in a dozen different hotel rooms, friends’ apartments, even parked cars. Zack had rolled with the affair until Claire, after seven years of marriage, suddenly became pregnant. Unsure how to deal with the new development and the illicit relationship, Zack had waffled. In the end Abby had
ended things. “I didn’t mind busting up a shaky marriage. That was just business, as they say. But I wasn’t going to break up a family, good or bad.”
“This is a part of Zack’s life I knew nothing about.”
She looked away and said, “I knew I made the right decision when I left him. But all these years there’s been this half-full, half-empty feeling. I once called it the five-percent loneliness factor. How’s that for business jargon?” She laughed at herself and glanced over for my reaction. “I’ve been happy, in general. But my memory of Zack has been a perpetual rain cloud hovering a mile west of the picnic.”
I abbreviated the tale of my morning bicycle search. Then Abby wanted details, exact times, wanted to see the Rolex watch, wanted to know more about how I’d met Zack, and how often we’d been in touch, both over the years and recently. She asked for the exact wording of the call from Sloppy Joe’s, then asked if I’d write down a list of hotels I had called.
I was bothered by her reluctance to explain the equity placement. Hoping that the Mount Gay rum had inspired a loosening of professional ethics, I took another tack. I began telling her about the days when I first bought my house, when Zack and Claire, before the twins were born, used to visit five or six times a year. I suggested that, when the Eagles were singing “Life in the Fast Lane,” and every maniac on the island was acting it out, significant capital had only one likely source in Key West. Abby hemmed and hawed but said nothing. I pushed, perhaps too hard. She declined to identify the investors or to give details on how the investment task had been accomplished.
We both stopped talking, exhausted, booze-drunk but energy-sober. She walked to the kitchen to refill our glasses. I observed her figure, the tone of her thighs and calves, the prominent tendons at the backs of her knees and ankles. Without question, I understood the attraction Zack must have felt. But not his willingness to deceive Claire.
“So there’s a chance your lover included you in a criminal conspiracy,” I said when she returned to the living room. “Did you see that as a favor or an opportunity?”
She looked away from me. “Zack was a gentleman. I knew nothing about a conspiracy. I still know nothing … if there was one. I received a check drawn on a trust account and a copy of the trust agreement. All up-and-up.”
“But you knew.”
She turned back toward me. “Are you taping this?”
“Is Zack’s involvement in this conspiracy the reason you fear danger?”
“I don’t think the danger is coming from law enforcement, if that’s what you mean.”
“Why was he hired in the first place?”
She looked
Her mouth slammed shut. All I heard were sounds of cicadas and tree frogs. If I was going to get an answer, I’d have to extract it gradually. The first thing she did inside the house was kick off her shoes.
We talked for three hours, stopping only to eat, pour more rum, and use the bathroom. I offered to close up the house and run the air-conditioning, but Abby insisted I keep things as I usually have them, twin ceiling fans at slow speed in the living room, single fans in the kitchen and bedroom.
Admiring my house plants, rearranging my furniture, occasionally wiping perspiration from her forehead with paper towels, Abby Womack related her history with Cahill. She had initiated the liaison after meeting him at a tax seminar. It had been a yearlong fling, with mid-week sex in a dozen different hotel rooms, friends’ apartments, even parked cars. Zack had rolled with the affair until Claire, after seven years of marriage, suddenly became pregnant. Unsure how to deal with the new development and the illicit relationship, Zack had waffled. In the end Abby had
ended things. “I didn’t mind busting up a shaky marriage. That was just business, as they say. But I wasn’t going to break up a family, good or bad.”
“This is a part of Zack’s life I knew nothing about.”
She looked away and said, “I knew I made the right decision when I left him. But all these years there’s been this half-full, half-empty feeling. I once called it the five-percent loneliness factor. How’s that for business jargon?” She laughed at herself and glanced over for my reaction. “I’ve been happy, in general. But my memory of Zack has been a perpetual rain cloud hovering a mile west of the picnic.”
I abbreviated the tale of my morning bicycle search. Then Abby wanted details, exact times, wanted to see the Rolex watch, wanted to know more about how I’d met Zack, and how often we’d been in touch, both over the years and recently. She asked for the exact wording of the call from Sloppy Joe’s, then asked if I’d write down a list of hotels I had called.
I was bothered by her reluctance to explain the equity placement. Hoping that the Mount Gay rum had inspired a loosening of professional ethics, I took another tack. I began telling her about the days when I first bought my house, when Zack and Claire, before the twins were born, used to visit five or six times a year. I suggested that, when the Eagles were singing “Life in the Fast Lane,” and every maniac on the island was acting it out, significant capital had only one likely source in Key West. Abby hemmed and hawed but said nothing. I pushed, perhaps too hard. She declined to identify the investors or to give details on how the investment task had been accomplished.
We both stopped talking, exhausted, booze-drunk but energy-sober. She walked to the kitchen to refill our glasses. I observed her figure, the tone of her thighs and calves, the prominent tendons at the backs of her knees and ankles. Without question, I understood the attraction Zack must have felt. But not his willingness to deceive Claire.
“So there’s a chance your lover included you in a criminal conspiracy,” I said when she returned to the living room. “Did you see that as a favor or an opportunity?”
She looked away from me. “Zack was a gentleman. I knew nothing about a conspiracy. I still know nothing … if there was one. I received a check drawn on a trust account and a copy of the trust agreement. All up-and-up.”
“But you knew.”
She turned back toward me. “Are you taping this?”
“Is Zack’s involvement in this conspiracy the reason you fear danger?”
“I don’t think the danger is coming from law enforcement, if that’s what you mean.”
“Why was he hired in the first place?”
She looked
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