Death Dream (31 page)

"You have no idea how many wannabe photographers there are in this world," she said, with a scornful little smile.

The waitress returned to their booth. Dan ordered another round. Dorothy did not demur, but as the waitress went back toward the bar she asked, "Doesn't your wife expect you home for dinner?"

"She's staying with her mother," Dan said, surprised at how bitter it sounded in his own ears. "She's used to me working late."

He walked her home after the second drink. She told him that their parking spots were safe until eight o'clock the next morning.

"Let's have dinner," Dan blurted as he recognized the front of her apartment building. He did not want the evening to end so soon.

In the shadowy light of the street lamps shining through the bare branches of the trees, Dorothy seemed to search his eyes for something. Or maybe she was searching herself.

"I can fix something for us," she said, so softly than Dan barely heard it. Then she added, more firmly, "I'm a pretty good cook."

They ended up in bed. They never got to dinner. Once Dorothy led Dan into her apartment they both seemed to forget everything else except each other. For the first time in his life Dan threw away all the rules and did what his hormones demanded, all the while amazed in a far corner of his mind that this gorgeous willing warm exciting young woman wanted him as much as he wanted her.

He felt incredibly guilty about it afterward. Stuttering that he had to drive all the way to his in-laws' house all the way out in Xenia, he fumbled himself back into his pants and shirt and shoes and made a hasty retreat toward his car leaving Dorothy smiling at him from her bed.

By the next morning he felt more ashamed of himself than guilty. He tried to avoid Dorothy all day but finally had to go past her desk. She smiled at him as if nothing had happened. When he tried to apologize over lunch, hunching over the cafeteria table and whispering his miserable little regrets Dorothy nodded solemnly.

"I know," she said. "I understand. It was my own fault, really. I wanted it to happen."

"What?" He felt stunned.

Dorothy lowered her eyes but repeated, "I wanted it to happen."

He did not know what to say. He was not certain he could speak if he tried to.

Tortured, fascinated, wretched, elated, Dan's affair with Dorothy deepened week by week as his wife's pregnancy advanced and she spent more and more of her time with her sisters and her mother.

Dan learned what addiction was like. He knew he was doing something terribly wrong, yet he could not find the strength to stop. They explored each other's bodies with the eagerness of teenagers. Dorothy constantly sought for new sensations, new ways of exciting them both. Dan began to wonder how much experience she had already had.

She laughed, beside him in bed. "In my neighborhood in LA they call it breaking the cherry. As soon as I started growing boobs the guys were all around me, sniffing like a pack of dogs. I picked the leader of the pack, and he kept me safe from the rest of them."

Looking up at the shadowy ceiling of her bedroom, Dan asked, "Then why me? Why am I so lucky?"

"Because you're the best man I've found here."

"But I'm married," he said.

"That's part of it. That makes you safe. We can have fun in bed and enjoy each other without worrying about getting tangled up in commitments and all that."

"So I'm protecting you from the other guys?" Dan did not feel like much of a protector.

"Kind of," Dorothy answered, turning toward him. "Everybody knows we're a twosome so the other guys don't bother me so much anymore."

Everybody knows except Sue
, thought Dan.

He asked, "Don't you want a commitment? Don't you want to get married someday?"

"Oh sure, some day," she said vaguely. But not now, not yet."

"This can't last forever, can it?" he whispered.

"Us? No, not forever. But let's enjoy it while we can." And she guided his hand down the length of her body to her groin.

Dr Appleton found out, of course. He called Dan into his office one afternoon, firmly shut the door, and then went to his desk. Dan knew what was coming from the disapproving frown on his high-domed face.

"Dan, I don't want to interfere in your personal life, but I think you're heading for big trouble."

Dan had no reply.

"You know what I'm talking about, don't you?"

"Dorothy."

"What are you going to do about her?"

With a slow shake of his head, Dan said, "I wish I knew."

"All right, then," said Doc. "I'll tell you what you're going to do. You're going to stop this romance right here and now."

"That's what I ought to do," Dan admitted"

"You're going to be a father soon. You have a wife and a child on the way. Those are responsibilities you can't avoid."

"I know."

Appleton's stern visage eased into a fatherly sadness.

"Listen, son, we've all been through episodes like this—"

Dan's eyes widened. "Yes, even me." Appleton blushed slightly. "A long time ago. You've got to put an end to it, Dan."

Appleton did not threaten or shout or lose his temper.

He talked to Dan for almost an hour, more like an understanding father than an outraged employer. Dan felt grateful. And miserable. When he left the lab that evening, it was still a balmy springtime outdoors, just after Daylight Savings Time had started so that it still was something of a surprise to have the sun shining as he headed for his car. He drove to the Greenwood Lounge and Dorothy was waiting for him there in their usual booth.

His mind was in a turmoil. They ordered their drinks, and before Dan could say anything Dorothy asked, "When is the baby due?"

"Another two-three weeks," said Dan.

"How is Susan feeling?"

"Okay. Tired and cranky, but no real problems."

"
Gracias a Dios
," Dorothy murmured.

"Huh?"

She rested her long-fingered hand on his and it sent a tingle all the way up his arm. But her face was somber. She looked just as unhappy as he felt.

"Dan, it's time."

"Time?"

"For us to end this thing. It's getting too heavy. I don't want to break up your marriage, especially with the baby coming."

He grimaced. "Doc talked to you, too, huh?"

"Doc?" she looked genuinely surprised. "He hasn't said a word to me."

Feeling puzzled, Dan asked, "Then why . . .?"

"If we don't stop now I'm going to really fall in love with you and you'll have to choose between me and Susan and your new baby." Dorothy said it all in a rush, as if afraid that if she hesitated for even an instant the words would stop coming. "I don't want to be in that position and I don't want to ruin all our lives so we've got to stop seeing each other."

Dan opened his mouth but nothing came out.

"You know I'm right," she said.

"Yeah," he heard himself croak. "I know. But still—"

"Do you love me?"

"Yes!"

Dorothy smiled sadly and shook her head. "Wrong answer. You love your wife. And you will love your baby when it arrives."

"I love you too."

"Not the same. Not for a lifetime. It was a very good thing for a few months, Dan, but now it must end."

He knew she was right but still he did not like it. She started dating Major Martinez soon afterward. Dan thought Dorothy was doing that to keep him from trying to get her back. He felt angry, jealous. And incredibly grateful that no one kidded him about his love affair breaking up. No one even mentioned it.

Except Jace.

"She just used you to get Martinez's attention," Jace told him.

Dan wanted to hit him.

"Yep," Jace said, as casually as a man reading the time from a clock, "it was Ralphie boy she was really interested in all along. Friggin' hard-ass was too uptight to go after her, so she used you to make him jealous."

"That's not true," Dan said through gritted teeth.

Jace grinned at him. "Yeah. Sure."

Then Angela was born and he was like a man coming out of a dream. He was a father now, and he had a loving and lovely wife whom he had betrayed but he would spend a lifetime making it up to her and never again look at another woman and thank God Sue didn't know anything about Dorothy.

One of the other wives told Susan, of course. At the wedding of Dorothy and Ralph Martinez. Susan was furious. She took her three-month-old daughter to her parents' home and refused even to speak to Dan on the telephone. Dan knew he deserved every bit of her rage. He wrote her long letters of abject abasement and apology, never once even thinking that he had any excuse to offer, any counter-accusation to make.

It took nearly four months. Dr Appleton played the peacemaker, even going to Susan's parents' home to ask her to relent and forgive Dan. "I introduced you two," he reminded her. "I feel responsible for you."

Grudgingly, Susan returned home and they slowly began putting their marriage back together. Dan always thought that if it hadn't been for Angela, Sue would have left him for good.

And Dorothy, married now to Ralph Martinez, never spoke to Dan again unless there were other people in the room with them.

CHAPTER 23

For the first time in many years Susan and Dan had gone to bed angry, spent the night in cold silence, not touching one another. Dr Appleton phoned at six a.m. with the news that an Air Force plane would pick Dan up at the Kissimmee airport at eight o'clock. Breakfast was tense, broken only by Dan's rummaging through the kitchen drawers for a road map that showed the airport. Susan knew she could print out a map for him from her computer files but she did not suggest it.

"I'll phone you when I land at Wright-Patt," he said tightly as he got up from the kitchen table.

"What about the office?" she asked. "Shouldn't you call Kyle and tell him you won't be in?"

Thinking of the plane waiting for him, Dan said, "Could you call? Please? I've got to run—"

She nodded. "It's too early for anybody to be at the office now, isn't it?"

"Maybe Jace," he said, going to the door" "But he won't even notice I'm gone for a day or two."

Like hell
, Susan thought. But she said nothing.

"Give Vickie a buzz. Even if she's not there you can leave the message on her phone machine."

Susan said to herself
, I'll phone Kyle. Not Vickie.

She went to the breezeway door and watched Dan gun his old Honda and back it out the driveway. This early in the morning the neighborhood looked like a movie set, clean and new and uncluttered. Neat lawns and shrubs of tropical hibiscus and oleander blossoming pink and red in November. Young trees planted at precise intervals along the curb side. Each stucco-covered house painted a pastel Florida pink or aqua or mint beneath its red tile roof. Not a soul in sight. No one moving about, except for Dan's car turning left, heading for the highway. The whole scene as flat as a studio sound stage, uninhabited, antiseptic, sterile as a Moon colony.

Susan sighed. This can't be reality. Reality is the big old houses back in Dayton with their painted clapboards and doo-dad trim around the eaves. And porches. And real trees, big and lush in the summer, gauntly bare in the winter. Not these palms and bottle-brush pines. Leaves and litter in the autumn. Sidewalks! And people who waved to you, people you had known all your life. This isn't home, she thought as she gazed sadly at her Pine Lake Gardens neighborhood. This is a set for some TV advertisement.

Then she noticed a car parked at the curb halfway up the block. A faded old green sedan. Unusual. Isn't there a town ordinance against parking overnight in the street? she asked herself. Maybe I ought to call the police and ask them to look it over.

Dan's car finally disappeared from her view. I trust him, Susan told herself. I trust him. I shouldn't have gotten mad at him. It's not his fault that something went wrong and Doc needs him. But still she felt anger. Not at Dan; at Dorothy.

She remembered the one and only time she had spoken with Dorothy. It was at the Christmas party Dr Appleton had given at his house more than a year after Dorothy's marriage to Ralph Martinez. The house was crowded, noisy with holiday cheer and people greeting each other with alcoholic effusiveness, as if they didn't work together every day of the year. Susan saw Dorothy come in with Ralph and kept as much of the crowd between her and Dorothy as possible. Mrs. Appleton, round and white as the Pillsbury Doughboy, bustled from kitchen to living room to enclosed porch, hauling trays of food and drinks.

Susan slipped into the kitchen to lend her a hand and get away from the smoke and noise and overheated holiday cheer.

Dorothy stepped through the swinging kitchen door a moment later. Her red sheath clung to her and made Susan feel skinny and plain.

"Oh!" Dorothy seemed surprised, almost startled.

"Merry Christmas;" said Susan coldly. It was all she could think of.

"Feliz Navidad
," Dorothy murmured. She went to the sink. "Do you know where Doc's wife keeps the water glasses?"

Susan gave her a stare, not trusting herself to say anything more.

Turning toward her, Dorothy said in a low, throaty voice, "Look, I'm sorry about what happened. I'm glad you and Dan got together again—"

"No thanks to you."

Dorothy accepted the slap without flinching.

"I just hope somebody tries to wreck your marriage someday," Susan spat, "just so you'll know how it feels."

"I wasn't trying to wreck your marriage."

"Like hell!"

"Did you ever think," Dorothy said softly, "that perhaps I saved your marriage?"

Susan wanted to pick up the nearest bottle and hit her with it.

"Dan was miserably unhappy. Anything could have happened. I sent him back to you."

"I don't need your leavings!"

"He was yours. All along, he was yours. He never loved me; it was just an adventure for him, a fantasy."

"Bitch!"

"I kept him safe for you. He was ready to explode, he might have done something foolish, something terrible. I'm not the only woman on the base, you know."