Cry Uncle (23 page)

Today would be different. Regardless of how
annoyed she was with Joe, Pamela was going to be the best damned
mother-figure she could be. She hated failing at anything, and she
wasn’t going to fail at this.

She filled her cup with fresh coffee, took a
sip, and set off in search of Lizard and Ms. Whitley. She found
them on the screened back porch. Lizard had lugged a carton to the
table and was systematically emptying its contents: glossy white
paper and jars of finger-paint.

What a perfectly domestic activity. Lizard
might be rude and crude, but she knew how to impress a social
worker. She and Pamela could finger-paint together, just like a
mother and daughter would, and Joe could sulk outside, for all
Pamela cared.

Smiling, she carried her coffee to the porch
and declared herself ready to tackle an art project. “I asked that
lady if she wanted to make a picture,” Lizard announced, pointing
to Ms. Whitley. “She said she didn’t want to get her hands
dirty.”

“
Well, I certainly don’t
mind getting my hands dirty,” Pamela lied, accepting a sheet of
paper from Lizard’s supply. She stared at the clean white rectangle
for a minute, trying to remember how one went about
finger-painting, something she hadn’t done since her nursery-school
days.

Lizard seemed to realize that Pamela was
stumped. Rolling her eyes at Pamela’s ineptitude, she poured two
pools of paint, one red and one blue, onto Pamela’s paper. “Smear
it,” she instructed her.

Pamela smeared it—on the paper, on her palms,
on her wedding band. On her blouse. On her chin when she scratched
an itch. The paint was thick and slick and viscous. It was
disgusting. But somewhere in the midst of all her smearing, she
forgot about her spat with Joe, the spilled cereal, the fact that
back in Seattle a hit man was undoubtedly still stalking her. She
forgot all the tenets of architectural design. There were no
parameters here, no client’s specifications, no environmental
impact studies. This creation was devoted to oozing color,
shapelessness, anarchy.

To her utter amazement, Pamela loved it.

Within minutes, she became so engrossed with
the swirls and spirals and loops she was creating that she forgot
Ms. Whitley’s presence. She blended the red and blue into a rich
violet shade and traced flower-like shapes. She added yellow
streaks, green squiggles, more red, more blue. When she decided her
picture was done, she took a deep breath, smiled proudly and
straightened up. Ms. Whitley was gone.

Pamela gazed around her, blinking back to
full consciousness. Lizard was currently smearing paint across her
third sheet of paper; her first two masterpieces were spread on the
floor to dry. “I’m going to wash up and change my clothes,” Pamela
said, eyeing the daubs of paint on her shirt and sighing.

As she entered the kitchen,
she heard the low murmur of voices, Joe’s and Ms. Whitley’s,
emerging from the living room.
Isn’t Joe
lucky I dusted and vacuumed in there
,
Pamela thought, a twinge of her earlier anger returning. Cleaning
last night, finger-painting this morning—she ought to be in the
running for Mother of the Year honors.

She rinsed her hands in the sink, then walked
down the hall to the living room doorway, from which vantage she
had a clear view of Joe and the social worker seated side by side
on the sofa, drinking coffee and chatting. Joe spotted Pamela and
rose. “Hey,” he said quietly.

“
Hey” didn’t qualify as an
apology. But now, with Ms. Whitley sitting beside him, wasn’t a
very good time for apologies. “I’m going upstairs to put on a clean
shirt,” Pamela said.

“
Good idea.” Joe’s gaze
skimmed the front of her shirt. She knew he was staring at the
splotches of paint, but she couldn’t help feeling as if he were
ogling her bosom.

As if that part of her anatomy deserved to be
ogled. Joe ought to save his ogling for the Shipwreck, where he
could feast his eyes on the generous endowments of Kitty and the
other women who frequented the joint, half-naked in their tank tops
and short shorts.

Pamela decided she enjoyed thinking the worst
of him. It made her less likely to remember those few precious
moments of closeness they’d shared on their wedding day. From the
start she’d been determined not to let this marriage serve as
anything more than a survival strategy. Labeling Joe a breast man,
whether or not the label was true, helped Pamela to keep her
feelings for him in perspective.

With a nod toward Ms. Whitley, she turned
from the doorway and headed for the stairs. To her dismay, Joe
excused himself and hurried after her, reaching the foot of the
stairway a step ahead of her and blocking her path.

His gaze wasn’t on her chest anymore. He
stared directly into her eyes, searching. “Are we okay?” he asked,
his voice muted, husky.

She bit her lip. No, they weren’t okay—but it
didn’t matter, as long as they could pretend to be okay for the
social worker. “Jonas...”

“
That paint looks kind of
cute on your blouse,” he said, although his gaze never left her
face.

“
My blouse is ruined,” she
said coldly. She wasn’t in the mood to be teased.

“
You ought to dress a little
less formally when you’re finger-painting.”

“
I dressed for Ms. Whitley,”
she hissed, darting a quick glance toward the living room. “I
really don’t think we ought to be having this conversation right
now.”

“
Well, we aren’t going to
have it later,” he said reasonably. “I’ll be at the
Shipwreck.”

She checked her watch. “Gee, it’s after ten.
Maybe you ought to be on your way right now. It’s not as if anyone
expects you to be home at this hour.”

Instead of matching her sarcasm, he laughed.
The skin around his eyes crinkled; his teeth flashed white. “I’ll
be on my way real soon,” he promised. “As soon as Ms. Whitley is
done raking me over the coals.”

Pamela put aside her hostility long enough to
consider the woman in the living room. “Is that what she’s doing?”
she whispered.

“
She’s trying to get a
handle on our marriage,” Joe whispered back. “She’s been giving me
a hard time about our whirlwind courtship.”

“
Courtship?” Pamela snorted
softly, then cast another quick look toward the living room to make
sure Ms. Whitley couldn’t hear them. The woman was hunched over a
notebook, scribbling. Reassured that she wasn’t eavesdropping on
their conversation, Pamela turned back to Joe. “I don’t recall our
having any sort of courtship.”

“
Honey, if I courted you,
this marriage would be a whole other thing. My style of courtship
doesn’t lead to separate bedrooms.”

Pamela felt her cheeks grow warm. She didn’t
want to be teased—and she didn’t want to be wondering about Joe’s
style of courtship. “I’d rather not discuss this,” she muttered
through pursed lips.

“
I know you don’t. That’s
why I’ll be leaving for the bar in a few minutes. Meanwhile...” He
trailed his index finger lazily along her jaw line, behind her ear
and around to the nape of her neck, leaving a tingling trail of
heat on her skin. “I think we ought to put on a little show for the
lady, so she’ll believe my song-and-dance about how it was love at
first sight between us.”

“
Is that what you told her?”
Pamela asked, her voice unfortunately faint.

He slid his other hand along her side to her
waist. “What else could I have said?”

Certainly not the truth. Actually, the truth
seemed kind of cloudy to Pamela at the moment. Every time Joe
stroked his fingertips across the nape of her neck, every time she
peered up into his eyes, she became less sure about truth.

It wasn’t love at first sight; that much she
knew. But their marriage wasn’t merely a survival tactic, either.
At least, it wasn’t merely a survival tactic when Joe was this
close to her, his lips an inch from hers, his gaze boring into her
and his hand molding to the curve of her hip.

He brushed his mouth against hers, then
straightened up and smiled hesitantly. “Faking it is easy, isn’t
it,” he murmured, drawing his hands away and clearing his throat.
His eyes were luminous, his breath uneven. He didn’t seem to be
faking anything. “I’ll be on my way as soon as I’m done with
Whitley.”

Pamela understood then why he was avoiding
her: not only for her own sake but for his. The instant his mouth
touched hers, she felt his yearning. She felt the air temperature
in the hallway rise, the beat of her heart accelerate. This must be
Joe’s style of courtship—and it definitely didn’t lead to separate
bedrooms.

“
I’m going to go change my
clothes,” she mumbled, gripping the railing for support as she
started up the stairs.

“
Yeah, slip into something
more comfortable,” Joe joked, although she heard no laughter in his
words. She didn’t dare to turn around. She didn’t want to see him.
And she didn’t want him to see her all flushed and
flustered.

Reluctantly she acknowledged that he was
right. For her sake—and his—it was better if he stayed away from
her.

***

“
BEING MARRIED HAS changed
you,” Kitty observed.

Joe avoided eye contact with her, focusing
instead on the blender, watching the rum, bananas and crushed ice
turn into a thick beige froth.

He knew being married had changed him—far
more than he’d ever expected. It was different from the change he’d
undergone after his sister’s death, when Lizard had invaded his
life. That change had entailed moving to a real house, devoting his
free time to the kid instead of to boating and flirting, and
developing a sense of responsibility.

Pamela had changed him in a completely
different way. He had always thought the up side of marriage was
you could have sex whenever you wanted, and the down side was that
you couldn’t have sex with anyone but your wife—at least, if you
took the relationship seriously. Instead, he was finding that the
only lady he wanted to have sex with was his wife—and sex with her
was out of the question.

Part of his and Pamela’s agreement, he
recalled, was that they could take lovers if they were discreet
about it. But he didn’t need Mona Whitley’s court-appointed
intrusion into his life to remind him that screwing around with
women who weren’t Pamela would pose a grave risk. Even if a leggy,
stacked woman sauntered up to the bar right now, handed him a key
and purred, “Meet me at midnight, I’ll bring the condoms,” he
wouldn’t follow through.

He poured the banana daiquiri into a chilled
glass and gave Kitty a bland look. “Sure, marriage has changed me,”
he drawled. “Ever since Pam and I tied the knot, I’ve been speaking
with a British accent.”

“
Cheerio, old chap,” Kitty
scoffed. “You’re still talking like the same guy you were always
were. You’re just acting different.”

Joe studied her through the haze of blue
cigarette smoke that clouded in the air. Her hair looked less
brassy in the Shipwreck’s muted light, but her tank top was too
snug; her breasts bulged from the scooped neck like two yeasty
mounds of dough. He used to admire her luscious curves, but
now...it was too much of a good thing.

Yeah, marriage had changed him, all right. If
he could find himself looking at Kitty and thinking wistfully about
Pamela’s modest proportions, the change was profound.

“
Okay, I’ll bite. How has
marriage changed me?”

“
I don’t know. I’m trying to
put my finger on it.” Kitty scooped a few cocktail napkins from the
pile on the bar and set them on her tray. “It’s like you underwent
an attitude adjustment. You seem more serious or
something.”

It wasn’t that he was serious, he almost
argued, but rather that he was tired. And hornier than any newlywed
ought to be.

“
I mean,” Kitty persisted,
“I want to know if everything is going okay with you and Pamela.
Because, I mean, I feel kind of responsible, on account of I set
you guys up and all.”

“
You didn’t exactly set us
up,” Joe said, thinking he was doing Kitty a favor by letting her
off the hook. She
had
set them up, but if the marriage was a mistake, he didn’t want
her to feel guilty about it.

The marriage
wasn’t
a mistake. In terms
of proving to the court that Joe could provide a good home life for
Lizard, the marriage was a stroke of brilliance. The only mistake
was that he’d gone and married someone he found himself lusting
for.

“
I mean, I knew Pamela
before you did,” Kitty reminded him. “And she’s kind of serious. Is
she making you serious?”

“
I’ve always been serious.”
Right. And the sun always rose in the west. “Isn’t there a customer
waiting for that banana daiquiri?”

“
Let her wait. Brick? Help
me out here. Doesn’t Joe seem more serious to you than
usual?”

Brick joined them at the bar, carrying a
cutting board heaped with the lime wedges he’d been slicing. He
eyed Joe up and down and grunted.

Kitty pounced on this as corroboration. “See?
He thinks you’re serious, too.”

“
I am serious. I’m seriously
going to fire you, Kitty, if you don’t serve that banana daiquiri
soon.”

“
Come on, Joe, what is it?
Pamela isn’t a good wife?”

“
She’s an excellent
wife.”

“
She’s not getting along
with Lizzie Borden?”

“
She and Lizard are getting
along phenomenally. It’s weird, how well they get along. This
morning they did finger-painting together. They run errands
together. Lately they’ve been collaborating on a scheme to renovate
Birdie’s house together.”