He made his way past the casino, the trade center, through the deserted plaza, following the signs to the dock. It was darker here, even more deserted. The loading zone for the ferry had a low roof, or one that felt low because it was dark metal, and was walled with metal mesh. The floor was concrete and the light from the river shone at the far end like a beacon.
It was not the most inviting space he’d ever stepped into. There was an ominous sense to it, an industrial grunge and emptiness that made Matt feel vulnerable.
That was about to get worse. Matt was all the way down the abandoned dock before he realized that the end wall, the one facing the river, was also made of metal mesh. It was actually a gate, presumably to keep people off the dock before the ferry was tied up.
But the fact remained that it made a closed box. Anyone who was assaulted here would be trapped. There was nowhere to run, except all the way back to the street entrance.
Which was a pretty long sprint. Matt was not in his physical prime on that night, not by a long shot.
He fitted his fingers through the mesh, glanced once over his shoulder at the encroaching darkness, then watched anxiously for the arriving ferry. His heart thudded in his ears.
To his relief, it wasn’t that far to the other side of the river, though the current was clearly strong in the murky water. The little boat left the opposite dock, turned and immediately was tugged on an angle by the river. Its course was corrected, its lights cutting like blades across the dock where Matt waited. Its engines churned and it came closer. He swallowed nervously and silently urged the ferry to hurry.
Matt was so fixed on the ferry that he never saw them coming.
He barely heard the stealthy whisper of a boot on concrete before he glanced over his shoulder and took a blow right in the face.
He stumbled and came up fighting, but there were at least three of them, it was dark and he was drunk. He swung, missed, took a hit to the gut and fell against the mesh, stunned by the pain. His head spun and he wondered whether they would kill him, what he could or would do about it.
Then he felt fingers in his pocket. Once they had his wallet, they spared him one more hit, presumably to make sure he couldn’t chase them. Matt fell to his knees, held his aching gut and vomited on the concrete. His assailants’ footfalls echoed on the concrete, their shadows dissolving like wraiths mingling into the greater darkness.
Matt knew he could never identify them and didn’t much care. He’d had fifty bucks and a couple of credit cards that could be replaced. They were welcome to the lot of it.
Because he wasn’t quite dead yet. That fact suddenly held more promise than he might have expected.
* * *
Leslie turned over the envelope from the Christmas card that was still in her hand, eying the elegantly cursive handwriting. It was so unabashedly feminine, so flamboyant, so unlike her own practical script. She listened, but the house was silent.
She was unlikely to be caught by Annette in any nefarious deed.
It was dark in the bedroom, the only light falling from the lamp on one nightstand. Leslie reminded herself how much she loved the color of this shade, of how it turned the bulb’s harsh glow to a warm golden light that seemed to encourage the sharing of secrets, the exchange of intimacies.
She and Matt had made love in this light once. The memory came quickly, as bright as quicksilver, filled her with heat and was gone. Filled with yearning, impatient with herself for wanting what it seemed she could not have, Leslie fingered the card inside the envelope.
What had gone wrong between them?
Was the answer inside this envelope?
There are people who can read other people’s mail without a qualm, much less a second thought. There are people who think that their own objectives are so overwhelmingly important that nothing else matters. Leslie had worked with these people. She was related to these people.
She was not one of these people.
She was a medievalist: she had sipped of the cup spilling with the wisdom of the greatest theologians of the western world. Leslie was quite certain—though the citation eluded her in that precise moment—that Thomas Aquinas had written about the wickedness of reading missives addressed to another person in his
Summa Theologica
. Maybe it was part of his treatise on the Just Price, that there was no just price for nosiness.
Or maybe it had been Gregory the Great in his
Moralia
who had weighed in on the issue.
Either way, Leslie knew that her reading this letter, which had never been intended to slide beneath her gaze, was plain wrong. There was no middle ground. The right choice, the only choice, was to replace the letter where she had found it, unread.
Still, Leslie wanted to know. And under the circumstances, she could justify her desire to know, perhaps even her
need
to know.
If not her right to know.
People talk about having a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other: Leslie’s devil had always gotten short shrift. What else could be expected when the angel was a saint, none other than Bernard of Clairvaux, founder of the Cistercian Order? Leslie had written her doctoral thesis on Bernard’s interpretation of the Song of Solomon, and she knew far too much about how ol’ Bernie’s mind had worked.
That’s what Matt had called him: ol’ Bernie. There had been three of them in the marriage for a while, but since one had been dead for a good eight centuries and the other two had been gloriously alive, it hadn’t been an issue.
Leslie could feel the thick card inside the envelope. It was slippery, as if it was glossy on the outside. It would be rich with ink and shiny with foil, some splendid confection to celebrate the Yule.
If nothing else, she reasoned, she deserved to know the woman’s taste.
The devil in her managed to whisper that she should go for it before Bernard—in his hair shirt, no less—took a swipe at him with a bishop’s crosier and sent him scampering. Leslie could almost see the founding force of the Cistercian order smiling at her with beatific satisfaction at his success in saving her from herself.
From her inevitable feminine weakness. Susceptibility to temptation was the price of being the lesser vessel, of being no more than a little woman, at least in terms of medieval theology.
Maybe ol’ Bernie had been having a chat with Dinkelmann before he stopped by here.
Come to think of it, Leslie had always thought that ol’ Bernie was a bit proud of himself. It’s not much of a tribute to your brilliance or even your piety to be successful when you’re born with a silver spoon in your mouth, is it? Bernard had been born noble, with every advantage, and it wasn’t so amazing in a feudal society that he had turned advantage to advantage.
He’d had charisma in spades, too, which never hurt.
And really, he had stunk at obedience and humility, two of the monastic big three, though he’d apparently been good with chastity. One for three doesn’t give a very compelling performance review. He hadn’t been much for retiring from the world to contemplate the glory of God, either. Nope, anytime there had been a dust-up over theology or pretty much anything else, ol’ Bernie had been right in the thick of it, slinging words around like arrows and having the time of his life.
He’d been nothing if not articulate, as well as a prolific letter writer: it had taken multiple secretaries to keep up with him. Only an unappreciative skeptic would wonder how the great man had reconciled his active engagement in politics with the monastic ideal of retreat from the world of men to better contemplate the divine mysteries.
Which was a long way of saying that maybe ol’ Bernie wasn’t the best possible source of advice in this situation.
* * *
Leslie pulled Sharan’s Christmas card out of the envelope before she could change her mind. There was a cartoon reindeer on the front, standing on its hinds, Christmas balls hanging from its antlers and a martini in its paw. A sprig of mistletoe hung over its head and it was winking, the other paw on its hip in an expectant pose. It had long eyelashes, so presumably was supposed to be female.
She flipped the card open and blinked at the caption:
“Wanna spread a little festive spirit, buckeroo?”
That wasn’t encouraging. Mae West as a reindeer.
On the other hand, Leslie needed only to glance at this to recall Sharan’s flirtatious sense of humor, or the fact that she was an artist.
Or the fact that she was sexy and provocative.
What did Leslie’s Christmas cards say about her own personality? They were usually embellished with holly or something equally predictable, red and green and white, always had a culturally-sensitive, non-denominational message like
Happy Holidays
or
Seasons Greetings
. They were safe and inoffensive and utterly boring.
She suspected only now that what they said to the recipient was not much at all. “Here’s another card from an unimaginative, dutiful person. Look inside for a deeply personal message:
Best of the Season—Matt, Annette and Leslie
.
‘Boring’ was not the most reassuring adjective to be applying to herself right now. Impatient, Leslie read the letter written on the inside of the card.
Matt—
Great to hear from you, as always. You must be relieved that the trial (ha ha pun intended!) with your father is almost done. When you lose the case, that will call for a drink—or six! Let me know and I’ll have one for you, just to do my share.
Or you could come here and drink with me.
Hey, have you finished that book yet? I’m still waiting to read it. Sometimes fiction, like art, is the only way to present the truth. I know you’ll do a great job with it. Mr. Wordsmith, that’s always been you! Remember?
Best to Leslie and Annette.
love, Sharan
Leslie had always loathed people who used a lot of exclamation marks, on principle alone. The enthusiasm lacked a certain dignity that she thought written notes should have. That Sharan had made a little heart for the ‘o’ in ‘love’ wasn’t exactly adult either.
Those items, however, weren’t the most troubling things about this note. In several short sentences, Sharan had revealed that she knew a great deal more about Leslie’s husband than Leslie did.
Like, just for example, the fact that Matt had intended to lose the case, something Leslie had learned only after he had done so and she’d seen his smile of satisfaction.
(It had been, come to think of it, a very Bernard-like smile, a smug smile. It had been a smile that Leslie would never have expected to have seen on her husband’s face, and one that she would be happy to never see there again.
She might get that wish, actually.)
And there was another example. A book? Sounded like a novel. Leslie didn’t know anything about Matt writing a novel.
He’d never said one word about it. She knew he liked to write, and he had worked for years on a compilation of anecdotes about Boston’s history, but a novel? That was news.
It wasn’t welcome news, not by a long shot.
Leslie had always believed that sharing secrets was the most powerful flavor of intimacy in the freezer case. It takes trust to share your most hidden thoughts and desires, more trust even than it takes to share your body.
So, it shook her to learn that she hadn’t been the recipient of her husband’s trust. What else hadn’t he told her? What was the book about?
And most importantly, where was it? Oh, that devil was back, all frisky from finally having one triumph. Leslie considered temptation for about three seconds before she shook her head.
She shoved the card back into the envelope. She had her limits and they had already been surpassed by a long shot. She went downstairs and put the card back precisely where it had been before the Chief had called.
Don’t ask how she knew its exact location, wedged between Matt’s books and invisible to the eye.
Let’s leave her some pride.
* * *
Matt lay on the concrete against the mesh gate and closed his eyes against the pain. He could have done without that last kick to his gut. He wondered whether he had broken a rib—or had one broken for him—then jumped in shock as the metal grate abruptly slid back.
“What happened to you?” The ferryman cussed under his breath when Matt looked up. “No, wait, I know. Those kids!”
He helped Matt to his feet and gave him a critical look. “Jesus, don’t you have the sense to not come down here alone so late?”
Apparently, Matt was hale enough to get a lecture.
“You’re going to have a helluva shiner, mister. You wanna call the cops?”
“What’s the point? I can’t identify them.”
“Well, there is that. And it’s late.”
Matt forced himself to take a step and when he didn’t fall flat on his face, he walked slowly to the bobbing ferry. “Let’s just go to Algiers,” he suggested, wincing as he took a seat in the little interior lounge.
The ferryman watched him with a frown, then shook his head. “Looks like you drank all your sense away.”
“No, it was gone long before today.”
He smiled ruefully, and the ferryman half-laughed. Matt shoved a hand through his hair and wondered if things could get worse. The ferryman bit back something he had been going to say, then shook his head and went to do his job.
The ferry had a pleasant hum, a vibration that slid through Matt and soothed him in an unexpected way. All too soon, they were docked and Matt opened his eyes to find the ferryman beside him.
“I’m giving you a ride home, so’s I can be sure you make it,” he said gruffly, covering solicitous concern with a tough crust.
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
And so it was only moments until Matt found himself in front of the house that must be Sharan’s. The address matched the one he knew. Even now, he could see that the clapboard house was painted a bright color, maybe yellow, and that there were plants crowded in the windows and in pots on the veranda. The lights were out though and he hesitated to knock on the door and awaken her.
That was when he saw the wicker settee in the sheltered corner of the porch. Perfect. He went straight to it, took off his shoes and placed them neatly beneath the settee. He sat down and let exhaustion roll through him.