“Public Displays of Affection”

Excerpt from “Public Displays of Affection” © Susan Donovan, 2009

Joe dropped the duffel bag on the white Mexican tile and let his eyes adjust to the cool dimness of the space. It was all very pale and sleek, and the powers that be had done a pretty good job picking out stuff to go in it, he supposed — not that he had any particular interest in interior design.

He walked through the kitchen, running a finger along the cold white surface of the kitchen counter. He flipped the switch to the family room ceiling fan, then bent down to check out the gas fireplace. The idea that he’d be here long enough to watch spring and summer pass into fireplace season made him sigh.

Living room — fine. Dining room — whatever. Like he’d be doing a lot of entertaining. He went up the stairs and looked out over the open foyer — God! If he had kids he’d be scared they’d crash through the railing and plummet to their deaths. Who designed houses like this? He grabbed the polished oak railing and shook it to make sure it was secure.

He poked his head into an open door — his bedroom. Good enough. What concerned him most was his office — he’d told the movers that he wanted the biggest bedroom for his office space, and he was relieved to see they’d followed through.

Joe stood in the doorway of what was probably referred to as the “master suite” in real estate agent LoriSue Bettmyer’s world. It had a vaulted ceiling, dual ceiling fans, four huge windows, two walk-in closets, and a fancy attached bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub. He could live with that.

The movers had set up his desk against the inside wall. He’d have to change that. He wanted it by the windows. He’d be spending a lot of time at the computer, and maybe an occasional dose of fresh air and sunshine would lessen the feeling of imprisonment.

He bent down to double-check that all his computer equipment and files had been delivered. He counted thirty-two boxes. Everything was here.

Joe ran a hand through his hair and scratched his chin. His two-week goatee was just starting to feel smooth under his fingertips, finally past the itchy phase. He hadn’t had facial hair since his Mexico City days, and it was going to take some getting used to. And the hair on his head — he’d had a good eight inches hacked off the day after Steve and his family were killed. He remembered watching the hair fall to the barbershop floor in dark hunks, visual proof that another undercover assignment had ended. He stared at the dark curls, waiting for the sensation of relief to hit him the way it usually did. That sensation never came.

He sauntered over to the wall of windows and tested the action in the mini blinds. He saw drapery hardware still attached to the window frame and decided he’d get real thick, real private drapes as soon as possible. He’d better start a shopping list.

His eye was drawn to the big Palladian window in the master bath, right over the tub. As he walked toward it and took off his boots, he figured whoever built this house must have had a penchant for flashing the neighborhood. When he stepped into the sunken tub to pull down the blinds, he saw them.

Three kids and two women sat at a wrought-iron patio table under an umbrella. They were talking and eating, maybe an after-school snack. He checked his watch — it was four o’clock, so that would be about right.

He got a good look at the older woman — the grandmother probably. One of the kids was a redheaded, chubby girl no more than seven or eight. She looked like a pistol. There were two older boys. The mom had her back to him, but he could see nice reddish hair up in a ponytail. She had slim shoulders and she was laughing with the kids.

Joe found himself easing down onto the edge of the tub, in slow motion, his hand frozen on the mini blind pull. He leaned forward, breathing hard. His skin had started to tingle. His blood had begun to hum. And he was hit with the oddest combination of sensations: dread, regret, lust, utter disbelief. The scent of honeysuckle cut through his nostrils and into his brain.

Just then, the mom stood up from the table, bent over to pick up a tray of cups and plates, and he got a good look at her petite, shapely body. Her little round ass. Her dainty waist.

She turned and headed to the back patio door, calling over her shoulder. He saw that graceful throat. That sweet face. That shiny hair.

He slapped down the blinds, nearly tumbling over the edge of the tub in his hurry to get on the phone to Roger.

“Get me out of here,” were the first words out of his mouth.

How could this have happened? There she was, right next door! After all the years he’d searched for her, she was an arm’s length away and he couldn’t go to her! He couldn’t talk to her! He couldn’t get to know her! Joe methodically sliced open the boxes one-by-one with his pocketknife, aware that the violent slashing motions might be on the verge of overkill. But it felt good. And as soon as the computer was up and running, he’d find where the movers had stashed his punching bags. Then he’d fight himself into a state of oblivion.

Ah, hell. She was so obviously married. Those were her kids. She was probably content in her little life here in Bum-Fuck with her lucky son-of-a-bitch husband, whoever he might be.

She probably didn’t even remember him.

Joe was sweating by the time he’d reached the last box and caught his reflection in the floor-length closet mirror. He stopped, straightened, and jogged to the glass, where he bared his teeth.

The left front tooth was as straight and white as its companion, but anyone who looked close enough could see it had a story to tell. It was his story, and hers, and dammit, every time he saw that tooth he thought of her, which meant he thought of her at least twice a day. Over thirteen years that was, what — nearly ten thousand times?

And that didn’t even count all those times she’d invaded his dreams, when she’d come to him sticky with honeysuckle juice, her skin hot to the touch, so much fire in such an innocent-looking little package.

When she drove away that day, he’d forced himself not to turn around and memorize her license plate number. And it was surely the single biggest mistake he’d made in a life full of them. What had he been thinking? He hadn’t been thinking at all, of course. He’d been young and stupid and so damn sure that there would be an endless supply of incredible women in the world that he just let her drive away.

Damn. She’d grown from pretty girl to beautiful woman, and he hadn’t been there to see it. And knowing that made him feel more alone than he’d ever felt in his life.

It was only nine, so if she were good, she’d use this time to do her Tae Bo tape. No, wait — Charlotte had recently read a magazine article that said it was self-defeating to label yourself “good” or “bad” when the focus should be on the behavior itself. The article said that people make just two kinds of choices in life: harmful ones and helpful ones.

So after she checked on the kids, she headed downstairs and made the choice to find the box of Triscuits and the can of squirt cheese. Then made the choice to sit at the kitchen table and chow down.

“You only live once,” she said to no one, popping another salty, crunchy, squishy, artificially flavored tidbit in her mouth, thinking the whole time of the Chippendales dancer LoriSue said had moved in next door.

After a few more savory concoctions, Charlotte stuck the cracker box under her arm and tucked the squirt cheese in her shorts pocket and wandered out to the back patio. Though the days were growing longer, it was fully dark by now, and the neighborhood was quiet. She took a seat at the patio table and propped her feet on an empty chair.

Right after Kurt died, more than a few well-meaning people had asked if she planned to sell the house. The answer was no, not if she could help it.

She topped another cracker, a little shocked at how loud the aerosol sounded out here in the quiet. She loved her home — the acre of yard that provided privacy and plenty of play room for the kids and Hoover, the mature shade trees, the roomy floor plan. She loved that her children felt like they belonged here. She loved that they felt close to Kurt.

What she didn’t love was the mortgage — $1,500 a month, every single month, even after refinancing. She munched down hard on the Triscuit, wiping a few errant crumbs off her scout leader shirt. She’d told herself countless times that it could have been worse — Kurt could have died with no insurance instead of a modest amount. He could have died leaving a mountain of debt instead of a few conservative investments. It’s just that no man thinks he’s going to drop dead at age thirty-four. And no woman thinks she’s going to walk into the family room to rouse her napping husband for dinner only to find him cold.

The bottom line was they weren’t prepared for the wage earner in their family to die. And Charlotte refused to go out and get a full-time nursing job with the kids this young. They needed her attention. They needed her time. They needed her — because she was all they had.

Multi-Tasker, Inc., was something she could do while the kids were in school. It was something she could juggle in the summer and something she could set aside if one of them was sick. With the life insurance and social security, it made them just enough money to squeak by.

She squirted out a big, sloppy pile of Day-Glo cheddar on a cracker and shoved the whole thing in her mouth. Almost immediately, she stopped chewing and her ears pricked.

Thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba...

It sounded like muffled gunfire. She choked down the cracker and sat up straight, her ears straining to identify its source.

Thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba... Then she heard a loud “Uhmph!”

Charlotte shot to her feet and stared up toward the children’s bedroom windows. It wasn’t coming from there.

Thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba...

Bonnie and Ned’s house was quiet. And it wasn’t coming from the Noonans’ over the back fence because they were still in Florida and their security system could wake the dead. Thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba...

Her head whipped around — it had to be the Chippendales guy!

Charlotte gathered her snacks and tiptoed around to the driveway, where she stood half-hunched in the darkness, listening. “Uhmph! Uh! Mmmm, mmmm, uhmph!” “Good Lord,” Charlotte whispered to herself. Still hunched over, the Triscuits tucked close under her elbow, she glanced furtively up and down the street, making sure there were no cars or dog walkers coming. She then slipped past the pine trees to the edge of her property and sidled up to the privacy fence around the new guy’s in-ground pool and patio.

The sound was definitely coming from behind the fence, but it wasn’t the pool pump. It wasn’t mechanical. Charlotte pressed her face up to the fence boards, and though she tried several angles — twisted around until her neck hurt — she couldn’t quite find a way to align her eyeball with the small vertical slits. She sure couldn’t peek over the fence — it was nine feet tall! So all she saw was a sliver of light and indistinct movement.

Thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba. . . “Uhmph!”

Someone was being murdered! That had to be it. She suppressed her gasp and skittered away from the fence, racing full speed to her own patio, running inside the back door. Hoover lay in wait, hair on end, ready to pounce — and his whole big body shuddered with relief that it was only her.

She slipped him a Triscuit. “Good boy, Hoov.”

Charlotte bolted the lock on the family room double doors. She did the same to the laundry room door leading to the garage, and the front door.

Then she took the stairs two at a time and, for lack of any other source of reassurance, she spoke to Hoover.

“We may have a situation on our hands,” she said.

The dog blinked and yawned, exposing a set of huge white canine teeth. He waited briefly for some kind of command, then burped and went into Matt’s room, where he collapsed in a heap.

“You call yourself a watchdog,” she muttered.

Then she saw them. The spy binoculars sat precariously on the edge of Matt’s small desk, the lenses reflecting the hall light. She grabbed them, slinked down the hallway to her bedroom, and locked her door.

Now if this wasn’t the lowest point in her life, she didn’t know what was. She was going to spy on her new neighbor! And after the lecture she’d given Matt that very afternoon on the importance of respecting other people’s privacy!

But that sound — it could be anything, right? And those animal noises! If it wasn’t murder, maybe he was injured. What if her new neighbor was having some kind of spasm or epileptic fit and swallowing his tongue? She turned off all the lights in her room. She stood at the window facing the drive and tried to figure out how to focus the binoculars. She certainly wouldn’t be discovering any new solar systems with these cheap plastic things, but she hoped they could at least put her mind to rest about the tongue swallowing.

She aimed out the window, and she followed the light from his patio, guiding the binoculars through the tree branches, locating the fence, and tilting down the binoculars until she could see the pool area.

A punching bag. The guy was pounding on a punching bag. That realization took about a nanosecond to register in her brain before the real important information came to the forefront: LoriSue, God bless her slutty little soul, had been absolutely correct. He was male-stripper material, and he’d been thoughtful enough to strip to a pair of athletic shorts on his very first night in the neighborhood.

Charlotte prevented herself from crumpling to the carpet by leaning against the window frame. The binoculars clicked against the glass.

This was so wrong. So illegal. So bad. And so incredibly gratifying!

She chuckled to herself and found a comfortable stance, immediately deciding that LoriSue’s term “juicy piece of man” didn’t go far enough in describing the image now framed in the binocular lenses. In fact, Charlotte didn’t think there was a term for a man like him.

And he just kept punching, his back toward her, the little bag blurring and spinning from the impact of his boxing gloves. His longish hair was wet with perspiration and black against the nape of his neck. His cut shoulders,back, and arms rippled, glistening with sweat, an image made all the more surreal by the haze of moths drawn to the patio light.

“Moths to a flame,” Charlotte said out loud.

She stared, stupefied, watching his feet dance and his thighs and calves bunch up and release, his tight backside bounce and jut, his lungs pump air in and out of his body.

And just then, a thick, slow-moving fog of déjà vu began to roll through her. It was like she’d once had a dream about this moment or that her subconscious was whispering to her that this man reminded her of someone she once knew — or wait; maybe she’d once seen a movie where some pathetic, lonely widow stared at her attractive neighbor with her son’s cereal box binoculars!

She groaned and was about to put an end to the whole sorry business when the man stopped. He pulled his hands out of the gloves, tossed them on the pool deck, then shook his sweaty hair. He reached around, grabbed a water bottle, and playfully tossed it up over his head.

That’s the moment he turned toward her, snagging the plastic bottle in midair. She saw his face.

Charlotte’s legs didn’t hold.