Baby Please Don't Go: A Novel (9 page)

“I’m not that special, Natalie,” he said.

“Don’t be stupid,” she said. She leaned forward and kissed him full on the lips.

It was like feeling himself reaching for the beer, the line of coke. Without thinking about it, he put his arm around her and pulled her closer. She reached over and took his hand between hers. He hugged her and kissed her neck, then straightened up and slid away a few inches.

“Sorry,” Lock said. “You know it’s not that I don’t crave you. But I think you’re determined, and you’re the kind of person who goes hard for what she wants. I don’t blame you for that, but I don’t want to get run over.”

“I don’t hurt people, Lock. I’ve been hurt enough to know what that feels like.”

“I can’t help thinking that part of you wants me because I can help you with your divorce and custody case,” he said.

She let go of his shoulder and slid away. After a long moment, she said, “I don’t even know what to say to that. You…do you think I married Witt for his money, and now I’m using you to get away from him? If that’s what you think, maybe you were right. Let’s just wait until the divorce is final and then we’ll see what happens with us. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you to come over.”

She went to stand, but Lock put a hand on her arm. “It’s not that. But I have to be careful, Natalie. We have to be careful. I don’t want to lurch ahead because I have you all mixed up with a dream of mine.”

“What’s the dream?”

“Having a family. Like we’ve talked about. That’s what I live for, and I came pretty close, once, a long time ago. I told you about that, and someday I plan to make it happen. And I will. So I’m almost defenseless when it comes to vulnerable women in need. Almost.
I know that. I’m alert for that.” Lock shifted on the sofa. “Want to hear something funny? Years ago, I was in love with a woman pregnant with another man’s child. He was basically out of the picture, and I got the idea that I had to have them as my family. I was going to marry her. I started taking care of them—the woman and the unborn child. I signed up for a million-dollar life insurance policy to protect my wife and the baby. Even before that baby was born, I was protecting them. Who does something like that? It wasn’t even my child. Hilarious, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s not funny,” she said. Lock rose. Natalie reached out and took his hand. “I’m glad you came over. If you really think it would be better to have someone else handle my case, it’s okay. I trust you. Just pick up the phone when I call, okay? We can have that much.”

“I will,” Lock said. “I will.”

Under the blackness of night, beneath leafless oaks and maples, Lock drove down a long gravel driveway pocked with shallow ditches and loose stones. He parked his car and walked up a flight of stairs to the rooms he rented on the second floor of a fieldstone carriage house.

Twenty minutes later, after reviewing his mail and pouring himself a glass of refrigerated spring water, he lay down on his bed and pictured the snake slithering up Natalie’s thigh. He dozed off that way—for how long, he didn’t know—until the phone rang.

He answered it.

A hang-up call. Was it Natalie? No, he decided. Not her. That wasn’t her style. Probably just some telemarketer autodial.

Lock tried to fall asleep again, but he wasn’t tired. He rolled over onto his side.

He was glad to be alone with his thoughts of Natalie. He was in lust, not love—he knew that much about himself. Besides Dominique, he’d never met a woman so attractive and so aggressively interested in him. Images of Natalie filled his head. He couldn’t relax. He got up and looked out the window. A bright moon illuminated the ring of trees around the carriage house, and he could see some of the frozen pond beyond a stand of trees.

It was barely snowing, but the weather report predicted accumulation of half a foot. This was the coldest November in forty years, they said, with nighttime temperatures in the teens and single digits for a week straight. Snow would be great. Lock loved it when it snowed. An early November storm. When it snowed, everything got quiet, especially in the woods. He recalled when he was about ten years old, laying on his back in a neighbor’s front yard under a huge holly tree, bundled in a thick wool coat, letting a heavy snow slowly cover him. White silence. What a pleasure to be warm in the snow. What a pleasure it would be to be with Natalie.

Lock turned his back to the window and surveyed his apartment, then stacked logs in the woodstove. He shivered. The carriage house had oil heat, but he paid for that. He took advantage of the free firewood the landlord provided and kept the woodstove burning as much as he could throughout the cold months. He crumpled several sheets of newspaper and stuffed them under the logs. He struck a match and the pages ignited, the nascent blaze beginning to roar. He huddled close, practically sitting on top of it, but he was still cold. Natalie ran a chill through him he couldn’t shake.

The problem was, he knew, she’d lit a fire in him, too.

Usually, when something was amiss, Lock needed to get singed before he got the message. He was a slow learner. This time, though, it was going to be different, and almost definitely worse.

Lock turned on a light and read from an overdue library book—a biography of Shakespeare. He’d never read a Shakespeare play in his life, despite trying in high school and even after college, and he saw this as a significant failing, but he just couldn’t penetrate the syntax. He thought that reading about Shakespeare might be the next best thing to actually reading Shakespeare.

He had reached the last few pages when the phone rang again.

“Hello?”

Another hang-up call.

That telemarketer, or maybe some idiot with a wrong number.

Thirty seconds later, there was a knock at the door. Lock didn’t get many unannounced visitors, and he hadn’t heard anyone climbing the steps. He got up and opened it.

Natalie. Standing there in a tight sweater dress.

“Hello, Lock.”

Earlier, she hadn’t been wearing any makeup, but now she was. She used it subtly and to good effect. Her eyes appeared larger than they had only a few hours before.

They stood there and looked at each other.

“I called you, but you didn’t answer like you promised,” Natalie said, smiling. She dialed a number on her own phone, and the answering ring came from her jacket pocket. “You left your cell phone at my house,” she said.

He checked his pocket, and then looked at the charger plugged in by his reading chair. No phone. He shook his head and smiled. “Dumb of me. Sorry. Come in, you must be freezing.”

Lock looked down past the hem of her coat. She wore sandals. Her toe rings glistened with tiny droplets of melted snow. She wiped her feet on the mat, kicked off the sandals, and sat on the couch near the stove.

“Tea?” Lock asked. He was almost on autopilot. Despite his reservations earlier, now that she was here, in his home, all he wanted was to make her comfortable, to get her to stay.

“Tea would be—oh!” An ember leaped out of the wood-burning stove and onto a nearby pile of newspapers. Natalie rose without hesitation, scooped up the burning papers with her bare hands, and tossed them into the stove.

Lock made tea and they sat together on the sofa, enjoying the fire. He thought,
This is better than ‘just talk.’ Not talking makes it easier, somehow. Probably because this is something there’s no way to talk ourselves out of. Sometimes talking just confuses things.

He set his tea down and kissed her, just once, lightly, and then sat back on the couch. She smiled and laid her head on his shoulder, and they watched the fire dance and spark for the next hour, speaking only a little, and only about unimportant things.

11

The next morning, Lock got to the office at 7:30. Besides the overnight emergency coordinator, he was the first person in. He had had a cup of coffee, but he hardly felt he needed it. For the first time in a week, he felt well rested and content.

He sat at his desk and checked his email. There was one from Natalie, and it was just a smiley face. He beamed and deleted it, then emptied the trash folder, too. The day went by quickly, despite the fact that he couldn’t wait to get home and call her. A couple of his colleagues commented on his mood. Apparently he had been smiling, something he didn’t do much, and even humming as he worked. Toward the end of the day, there was another email from Natalie. “I’m going to be at your carriage house tonight at nine o’clock. I’m bringing a late dinner, so don’t eat much.” He sent a quick “OK” and deleted both emails.
This is happening
, he thought.
Whatever this is.
He felt suddenly free, like he could step out of the window and fly. He knew the feeling intimately. It was the end of resistance, a giving in, and it felt wonderful.

Lock went to a meeting with his sometimes-friend Ivan after work. When he chose a folding chair near the back, he thought,
Deck chairs on the Titanic
, and he laughed.

Ivan said, “Something funny?”

Lock looked at him and grinned. “Yes, something is funny.”

As she climbed the stairs to his apartment, Lock stood on the landing and watched her.

She walked past him into the living room. A fire blazed in the wood-burning stove. The light from the flames flickered on the plants and caused shadows to dance on the walls.

Natalie had on a long sweater, khaki jeans, and a navy blue thermal sweatshirt. No make-up this time.

He asked her if she wanted tea.

“Green, if you have any left,” she said, sitting on one of two cushions on the floor in front of the stove. Lock opened a box and spooned loose green tea leaves into an oriental cast-iron teapot in which he’d already boiled water. He brought a tray with the kettle and two mugs and put it between them on the hardwood floor.

He sat on the other cushion. Natalie sat cross-legged with her eyes closed in an informal lotus position.

“This is perfect,” she said, opening her eyes and looking around. “The darkness and cold outside, the light and warmth in here. The tea, your plants, you.” Blues played softly in the background.

Lock poured tea into the mugs and handed one to Natalie, who took it and held it in both hands. They both faced the fire.

“Roads slick?” asked Lock.

“Not too bad, plus, I’m a good driver. Cautious and defensive. Never had a real accident.”

“Can’t say the same. Once I was drunk and didn’t brake in time for a car stopped at a red light. Smacked her pretty good and she went to the hospital in an ambulance, complaining of neck pain. I learned through my insurance company that she wasn’t hurt seriously, though. Plenty of poor judgment from me, anyway. But that’s in the past.”

She nodded, and Lock thought she was thinking of things she had done in the past she wasn’t proud of. Maybe marrying Witt was one of them.

“I’m surprised you don’t have any potted trees in here. Plants, but no trees.”

Lock shrugged. “It’s like a birdwatcher not keeping birds. I mean, maybe they do, or some of them, but I always thought it was about looking for them in the wild, and the surprise and pleasure of finding them.”

“Like going on safari instead of going to the zoo.”

“Something like that.”

Natalie took a long sip and set the mug down on the tray. “Do you have any favorites around here? In the woods out back?”

“Nothing special, lots of cedar,” he said, “but I like walking back there, especially this time of year. It’s peaceful.”

“Let’s bundle up and take a walk. Moon’s almost full, and it’s snowing.”

Lock looked out a window. It hadn’t been snowing when he’d arrived home earlier. There wasn’t much snow, but she was right. “That sounds great. Too bad there’s not more snow. I like the way it smells, and the way it crunches under your feet.”

Natalie smiled. “Edwina likes the smell too. Until she mentioned it, it never occurred to me snow had a smell. Do you have an extra coat or something for me?” she said. “My sweater won’t do for long outside.”

“I’ll go get something, hang on.”

Lock could hear Natalie taking their mugs to the kitchen while he found a wool trench coat in the closet. They met in the living room and he helped her put on the coat. Lock looked down and remembered her sandals.

“Wait,” he said. “What about your feet? You’re going to need some boots.”

“We won’t be out long, it’ll be okay.”

“You sure?”

She nodded and Lock shook his head and laughed.

“Plan on a short walk, then,” he said.

Outside, Lock ushered Natalie around the side of the garage that he rarely used, though it was included in his rent. They walked between a large stack of split wood and the garage. He steered her toward the stand of frozen trees behind the carriage house.

Natalie took his gloved hand in hers. Then Lock made a decision that would change everything. He shook his hand free, but only for as long he needed to remove his glove and jam it into his jacket pocket. He took her hand. He heard her laugh, and, still moving through the woods, she turned and hugged him, squeezing hard. She immediately let go and continued walking. She was strong, despite being so slender and light. He knew that with Natalie, there would always be more than meets the eye.

A couple inches of snow had accumulated, and her feet were glistening.

For the first time in Natalie’s presence, Lock was totally relaxed. As they trudged in the moonlit woods, she held his hand tightly.

A moment later, they arrived at the small pond, frozen over and dusted with new-fallen snow. Lock put his arm around Natalie. She reached out and put her arm around him, too. They stood there, watching the November night.

“Whose woods these are, I think I know,” Natalie recited, “his house is in the village, though. My little horse must think it queer, to stop without a farmhouse near.”

Lock grinned. “So I’m your little horse?”

“I saw White-Mane on your mantle. Sweet of you.” She hugged him.

He didn’t resist.

“Still not warm enough,” Natalie said, her breath condensing and visible in the moonlight. “I want heat.”

He put his arms around her and held her.

“That’s better,” she said. “That’s better. Now I’m warmer out here in eighteen degrees than inside next to the fire.”

She turned and looked across the pond, ringed by a silhouette of trees. She moved to the bank and tested the ice with her foot.

“Solid enough,” she said. She made an effort to simulate skating on the ice in her bare feet, but the pond’s surface wasn’t slippery enough. The ice cracked, and she laughed and scooted back to the shore.

Natalie took his head in her hands and pulled him to her mouth.

Inside, on a blanket thrown hastily on the floor in front of the fire, Natalie sat naked and cross-legged behind Lock, her arms wrapped around his chest.

He exhaled slowly and broke what had been a long silence.

“This feels right, Natalie,” said Lock. “This is perfect.”

“I know.”

“The only thing missing is a bunch of little kids making a racket in the next room, and us yelling at them to settle down.”

“That’s not that far off,” she said. “We’ll have to plan. We have to be smart.”

“And patient.”

“I hate that. I want what I want when I want it.”

“Of course,” he said. “Instant gratification. That’s the real root of all evil.”

“I thought money was the root of all evil.”

“That’s what they say, but money is usually used to facilitate instant gratification, so I stand by my statement.”

Natalie poked Lock in his side and reached around and tousled his hair. “I was poor growing up and there wasn’t anything I wanted more than the security that comes with money, and now that I have it, it’s the last thing in the world I care about.”

“Easy to say when you have it, though.”

“True enough,” she said.

“But you’re not ready to march out into the world without a dime in your pocket.”

“No. No one would. And Witt owes me. He owes me according to the law, and he owes me because it’s the right thing to do, to pay the girls and me so we can live happy, healthy, comfortable lives. It’s just a question of me figuring out what to do.”

“What’s there to figure out?” he asked. “You’ve got a good case.” He turned around and looked at her.

“Not good enough. With his lawyer, he’ll probably get fifty percent custody. Maybe more. How am I going to live without seeing my girls every day?”

“He’s a jerk, but he’s not that bad of a father,” Lock said. “Unless he’s still drinking and driving. Divorce is hard, and a lot of things are going to change for you.”

“He
is
a bad father,” she said. “He doesn’t hit the kids or anything, but mostly he ignores them. That might be worse. He just wants them around because he thinks they’re his property.”

“Well,” Lock said, “that may be true, but the court won’t take that as evidence of anything.”

“I know. But if Witt got caught doing something stupid again, it’d be different.”

The look in her eye made him study her closely. “Something you want to tell me?”

She took a deep breath. “What if something would happen?” she began. “What if some girl was to identify Witt as the man who flashed her someplace? Indecent exposure. Something that wouldn’t look too good for him in court. That would take the wind out of his sails. I don’t owe him any allegiance. The prick had me followed.”

“With good reason.”

Natalie glared, then grinned. “Anyway,” she said, “with an indecent exposure charge, even if he can get out of it, he won’t want to go to court. He’d want to settle.”

Lock shook his head and said, “You can’t frame him. First, it probably wouldn’t work. The courts see this kind of stuff all the time. Also, as much as I don’t like the guy, he has a right to see his kids as long as they’re not in danger or not being neglected.”

She sighed, frustrated. “But he
shouldn’t
have the right,” she said. “Do you think he’s not still drinking and driving? Witt’s not going to change just because CPS came to the house.”

“You still need proof.”

“I just keep thinking that if I don’t have some sort of plan, I might end up visiting my own kids every other weekend or something. I know he has rights as a parent, but I also know that right now he’s thinking up some plan to screw me. So what am I supposed to do? I play fair and I lose. I don’t play fair and I’m a bad person.”

“As of right now, I don’t know what to tell you,” Lock said. “I wish I did.”

“Primary custody’s all I want. He can have lots and lots of visitation. I don’t care. I know the kids need a father figure, not that he’s much of that. Plus, the girls are with me most of the time as it is, so he—or they—won’t be missing anything.”

He held her and touched her hair. “I know it’s scary, and the truth is, you might not get what you want. All I can recommend is you let the courts handle it. No matter what people say, most of the time family court judges do the right thing. Just make sure you get a lawyer, a good one.”

“Oh, I did. I forgot to say. He says pretty much the same things you do, which sucks.”

“How’d you find him? How do you know he’s any good?”

“He’s my friend’s friend, and he’s an aggressive lawyer, too. He helped her get primary custody in a tough situation, so I think he’s pretty competent.”

“Okay. As long as you think he’s taking you seriously and not seeing you only as someone who’s generating revenue for him.”

She sighed again. “I’m changing the subject. Make love to me again.”

Lock put more wood in the fire and they lay down in the warmth it shed.