Crooked Hearts (36 page)

They sat up at the same time and reached for each other. She put her mouth next to his ear and whispered, “Jonah Rubinsky.” A shivery tremor passed through him, and not just because her breath tickled. He said, “Grace Russell” into her ear, and felt her shiver in answer. Their arms around each other tightened. This was a closeness he hadn’t expected, and in some ways it was better than sex.

What was he saying? He pulled her head back and kissed her until they were both shaking. “Quick,” he muttered, “take your clothes off.”

“Oh, I want you to do it.”

“Okay, but help me, it’ll be faster.”

“You’ve got ’em half off already.”

They started fumbling with ties and laces and eyelet fasteners. Her simple flowered gown looked so easy, but it turned out to be mined with hidden traps and snares for the overeager, and her underwear was worse. “You do it,” he suggested again, and this time, in the interest of speed, she agreed.

“I’ve been going meshugge,” he told her while he watched, “looking at you every day, so prim and proper in your pretty dresses. And cursed with knowing exactly how you look under ’em.”

She wriggled out of her drawers and kicked off her last white stocking. “It’s your own fault,” she retorted, breathless, clumsy-fingered, coming up on her knees beside him. “You shouldn’t have been
jealous.”

Oh, what a sight she was. “You love saying that word, don’t you?” She practically smacked her lips over it.

“I do,” she admitted, “I dearly do. You have on way too many clothes.”

He was naked in half a minute. They came together for a hungry kiss, and tumbled to the sweet grass in a tangle of arms and legs, rolling and rolling. She landed on top, and stretched herself over him like a sheet over a mattress, trying to cover every inch. She took his wrists and pulled his arms over his head. “I’ve got you,” she gloated. “You can’t move.”

“Right, I’m completely helpless. What are you going to do with me?”

“Unspeakable things. Things for which there are no names.” She started with one he could name, a deep, stirring kiss, using her tongue and her teeth until he was squirming under her. “No moving,” she warned, sliding her stomach in lascivious figure eights across his belly. She put her knees on the ground for leverage, arched up, and offered him her breasts.

“I’m not allowed to move,” he reminded her.

“Just this once.”

Lifting his head, he slicked his tongue across one of her tasty little nipples, drawing a satisfying groan from her. She lifted up with her hips to capture his stiff cock between her thighs, and began a slow, excruciating squeezing in time with the soft suction of his mouth on her breast. Raw, rough passion clawed inside him; he forced his hands to be gentler on her, afraid he’d leave bruises. But it was time for a new game; at this rate, they wouldn’t last two more minutes.

Breaking her halfhearted hold on his wrists, he took her by the waist and pulled her up till she was straddling his middle. “I know something you like,” he said, running his hands along the insides of her thighs, following the lines of the taut tendons into her pubic hair. She was warm and wet; he watched her face, heavy with desire, teeth clamped over her bottom lip, while his fingers slipped and slid and his palm cupped her. She said, “Oh, mmm,” when he asked her if she liked it, and she threw her head back and wailed when he put his fingers inside her. Her exuberant, uncomplicated response laid to rest a fear he hadn’t even realized he was harboring—that she wouldn’t like this half as much without Wing’s drug in her system.

Thinking of the Godfather could still make his blood boil. Hot, leftover anger prompted him to ask, “Would you really have done this with Wing if I hadn’t gotten you out of there?” As soon as he said it, he was sorry.

She leaned over him, arms braced, letting her hair caress his face. “Maybe.” She bent lower and whispered against his mouth, “But I’d have imagined the whole time that he was you.”

Laughing, he gathered her up and rolled over again. She folded her legs around him and he came into her, slow and easy, as natural as breathing. She held him tight, pressing her lips to his cheeks, his eyes. “I never thanked you for not laughing at me that night. You saved me, Reuben. What would I have done without you?”

“If you really don’t know, Gus, I’ll tell you sometime. But not now.”

“No, I mean it. You
saved
me.”

“The pleasure was mine.”

“And you were so gallant.”

“That’s me. Now—”

“If you hadn’t—”

“Listen,
ziskeit,
I hate to tell you, but we’re only doing this once this time. So if you want me to get it right, you should keep quiet and let me concentrate.” She smiled, and he slipped his hands into her hair to anchor her. The fresh smell of the grass they’d flattened beneath them mingled with the scent of sunshine in Grace’s hair, filling his head, making him dizzy. Nobody kissed the way she did, wide, wet, luscious kisses that jolted into him like electrical currents, obliterating everything except the soft feel and the sweet taste of her mouth.

“I’m not worried,” she said, pulling away to bite his chin. “About you getting it right. See, I know what was in the tea you drank this morning.”

He blinked down at her. “Chinese wolfberries.”

“And something else.”

“What?”

Her eyes twinkled. “You won’t believe me.”

“What?”

“Boiled bull’s balls.”

What could he do but laugh? “You’re right, I don’t believe you. You made it up.”

“No, I didn’t! Ah You says it’s good for virility. Henry swears by it.”

Ridiculous, absurd, completely a product of his imagination—and yet—a definite, extra-powerful surge of energy came to him just then from
somewhere.
He used it to good purpose, regaining Grace’s complete attention.

“I
love
this,” she gasped into the air over his shoulder. “Not just this—I mean you and me, everything—all of it—”

“Me, too—shut up—”

“Okay”

But a little later she turned her head aside to mutter tragically, “Oh, God, Reuben, I don’t want to fall in love with you!”

Amazed, he saw a tear shining at the corner of her eye. “Would it hurt so much?” He made his voice casual, brushing the tear away with his lips.

“The end. I might as well kill myself.” He laughed uncertainly. “What would you do if you fell in love with me?”

The question took him off guard; he said the first thing that came into his head: “Run like hell.”

She sighed, her soft breath fanning his face. She kissed him as gently as anyone had ever kissed him, and whispered, “Then I hope you never do.”

He hated this conversation; he wished they’d never started it. He arched up over her and sucked her breast into his mouth almost roughly, while the rhythm of their bodies quickened. She clutched at handfuls of earth on either side, writhing under him and making those soft, incredible sounds he remembered from before. He could make her lose her mind, he exulted, reveling in the illusion of control—until she slipped one hand beneath her own straining thigh, and took hold of his testicles.

His breath whistled through his teeth. He slowed his strokes, but the power in him mounted higher. “Mmm,” she hummed, caressing him softly, her eyes closed, while he swelled in her hand. He lifted her, wanting her deeper, harder. She yelled; he stopped. But he’d misunderstood; she wanted exactly what he wanted, and she told him so with her urgent hips and her heels pressing against his calves. She cried out all at once, shifting under him until her body made a long, undulating bridge, supported by the flat of her feet and the back of her head. When she climaxed, her strong, rhythmic contractions tightened around him—fast at first, slowing gradually, and he had time to think that a woman was a wondrous thing, God’s finest creation, and this one was the most wondrous of all.

He let go. Pulsing into her without reserve, he let it be what it was, a free, abandoned, frighteningly natural act of love. What it had in common with the only other time they’d done this was that he wanted it again, immediately. She was like Wing’s drug, he mused as he sank down, joyful and fatalistic, on her breast. Grace was addictive.

“What does
ziskeit
mean?” she murmured a few minutes later against his hair.

“Mmmm. Hard to translate.”

“Try.”

“Sweet one. Sweetheart.”

She sighed dreamily.

He wanted to tell her something important, something timely. What was it? It flirted at the corners of his mind, dancing away each time he closed in on it. He let it go, too lazy and contented to catch it, and hazily relieved when it was gone.

When she could move, she kissed his damp temple and ran her fingers through his hair. “Ah, Reuben.” He took it as a tribute and accepted it humbly, whispering, “Ah, Grade,” in the same spirit. But then she said, “What am I going to do without you?” as if she didn’t expect an answer. He didn’t have one, so he didn’t reply.

The sun had begun to slide toward the mountains by the time they started for home. Home? Just a figure of speech, Reuben told himself; it was what you called wherever you’d been living for a while. You could call a hotel home if you were speaking figuratively. They didn’t hurry, and they stopped often along the way to kiss, or just to hold each other. Grace had a lovely soft blowsiness about her, her skin still flushed, her mouth blurry from kissing. Neither of them had much to say, but the silence wasn’t awkward. He guessed talking about certain things—feelings, stuff like that—wasn’t any easier for her than it was for him.

They were still a hundred yards from the house when they spied Henry on the front porch. He saw them at the same moment and bounded down the steps, hollering for them to come on, hurry up, he had news. Before they reached him, Reuben thought to say quickly, “Come to my room tonight, Gracie. Hurry—say yes!”

He’d have dropped her hand, for Henry’s benefit, but she held on. “Yes,” she said immediately, smiling up at him sweetly.

“Ziskeit,”
he whispered.

Henry was waving a yellow piece of paper. “Telegram!” he shouted, jogging toward them. “He’s in! Doc Slaughter says he’ll do it!”

“Hot damn!”

“But only for half the gross,” Henry added, without as much enthusiasm. “That’s his price.”

“That’s okay with me,” Reuben told him. “He’s the one taking most of the chances.”

“And if everything works out the way it’s supposed to,” Grace pointed out, “there’ll be plenty for everybody. I say we accept his terms.”

Henry nodded grudgingly. “He says he’ll start looking for the two rental properties right away, and he expects to meet us in San Francisco by the day after tomorrow.”

“So soon,” Grace breathed.

“Are you strong enough for it?” Henry asked Reuben.

He didn’t look at Grace and she didn’t look at him. “I believe so,” he said gravely.

Inside the house, Henry said they should drink a toast to celebrate the start of their venture. They clinked glasses of whiskey and drank. “I still say I should be the doctor,” Henry said peevishly. “I did it once before, years ago. I can’t call to mind now exactly why, but I remember I was damn good at it. What do we need an outsider for?”

Reuben smiled down into his drink, warmed by the notion that Henry considered him an insider. “We need Doc because he
is
a doctor,” he said reasonably.”Wing’s smart; he’s bound to investigate the setup before he agrees to anything.”

“Besides,” Grace chimed in, “you haven’t seen him, Henry, you don’t know how perfect he is. He looks like an M.D. you could corrupt, because that’s exactly what he
is.”

“Hmpf,” grumped Henry, not consoled. “Who the hell am I, then?”

“You’re the mastermind,” she said diplomatically. “You’re taking a big enough risk as it is just by showing your face in the city. If anybody recognizes you, we’re dead.”

Ah You poked his head in the door. To announce dinner, Reuben thought, but instead he rubbed his spidery hands together and said, “I go too—I be messenger! Right, boss?”

Henry flopped down in his chair, taking the bottle with him. “That ties it,” he groused. “Now
everybody’s
got a job but me.”

18

The cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf, and we ought to guard equally against both.

—Thomas Paine

“P
ERFECT.”

Reuben stood on the cracked sidewalk, looking across Balance Street at a small, shabby, two-story office building with a shiny new sign. “J. Hayes, M.D.,” read the shingle, “The Painless Doctor.” The building sat between a grog shop and a Salvation Army meeting hall.

“Perfect,” he reiterated. “How did you get it set up so fast?”

Doc Slaughter stepped on the half-inch butt of his last cigarette and felt in his pocket for a new one. “I had all my old equipment, never threw it away. It only took a couple of hours to move everything in.” He pointed up at a dirty second-floor window. “I slept upstairs last night.”

“How was it?”

“Noisy.”

Reuben grunted. It was a rough neighborhood. “Have you gotten any patients yet?” he asked, half joking.

“Not yet.”

“What’ll you do if one walks in?”

Doc gave him one of his day-old cadaver looks. “Treat him.”

They strolled up to Pacific Street and turned left. It was a typical summer day in the city, chilly, nasty, and damp. Everything had a vague but grim familiarity to Reuben, who was pretty sure he’d gotten lost in the fog with Grace on these same seedy streets not very long ago. Doc asked him if he wanted to see the empty warehouse he’d leased on the Embarcadero; Reuben said it wasn’t necessary, and asked how much the rent was.

“Twenty dollars a month. I had to take it for six months, minimum, and they wanted forty dollars up front.”

“Crooks,” Reuben said automatically. “I can’t stand throwing money away for nothing.”

“But it’s necessary. Wing has to believe we’ve got a legitimate place to store his drugs, however temporarily. Without that, he’s not going to hand over thousands of dollars to us, no matter how impressive he finds my papers.”