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Lots of giggling now … at least, two or three girls.
No, sir. Sorry, sir.
The voice had been sultry. He had craned his neck, but hadn’t been able to make out the person.
Perhaps you’d like to come up and conduct the piece at a tempo more to your liking.
By then the entire orchestra had gotten into the act. Egging her on. Red-faced, she stood up. But she did it. Conducted the entire piece. Did a pretty good job of it, too.
All he had remembered was his heart pounding out of his chest. Good thing he was such a natural, because he hadn’t known what he’d been playing. His mind racing, his thoughts a jumbled mess.
Where the fuck had she been hiding?
So mind-boggling gorgeous, and best of all, she didn’t even know it.
Immediately, he started sending her “the vibes.” But they hadn’t worked and he figured out why. She was a good girl. Well, that wasn’t so bad. Because he knew all about good girls. They weren’t hard to catch, but you had to do it indirectly. Then she walked by one day, and Bull made some lech comment. They had all laughed about it. Bull also mentioned that she’d been his tutor.
The opening he’d been waiting for.
But it wasn’t working out as planned. She was supposed to be a blow and go. Instead, something got messed up in his head.
He closed his eyes, allowing his brain to flash up her image. He studied the purity of her oval face, the arch of her cheekbones, the liquid in her exotic, amber eyes, the sweep of her long, auburn hair.
Though he tried to fight it, he knew he was going under.
He was falling in love.
His groin ached. He realized he was rock hard.
So that’s why he had wanted to drink. He had wanted to suppress his arousal. God, he wanted her.
But that was out of the question.
He grabbed his rubbers, a handful of old neckties, and headed for the streets.
6
Rina realized the bed was empty. Not an infrequent occurrence of late. Ever since Peter had returned home from New York, he’d been hit with bouts of insomnia. The nightstand clock read two A.M. Stomach still awash in sleep-laden nausea, Rina rose slowly from the bed, donned her robe, and slipped her feet into mules. Moving slowly through the darkened house, she found Peter seated at the kitchen table, fingers running through his mop of red hair, his shoulders hunched over the Formica top.
“What are you doing?”
Startled, Decker pivoted around to face her. “I didn’t hear you get up.”
She sat next to him. Immediately, Decker began stacking papers in front of him. Once they were piled up, he covered them with his elbows, hiding them from Rina’s eyes as if she were trying to cheat off him.
“Peter, what are you doing?”
“Just going over loose ends.”
“What loose ends?”
“Just business stuff. Not important.” He scooped up the papers and stood. “Come on. We’ll both go back to bed.”
Rina pointed to his chair. Decker sat back down. “Tell me the truth. Are you working on the shopping-bag rapist?”
Decker didn’t answer.
“Peter, just what do you hope to accomplish from three thousand miles away?”
“So what should I do? Sit by while this asshole picks off women? He got another one—”
“I’m aware of that—”
“Rina, I sat with my daughter and her friends for two friggin days. Hearing them cry … they may be women on the outside but inside they’re frightened little children. I spoke to Cindy this afternoon. This time, she wants to come home.”
“So she’s coming home?”
“I told her no.” Decker began to pace. “I told her, give it a little more time. Because if she comes home, the bastard wins. And what will that do to her psyche? Chased away by a phantom. Know what, Rina? He is winning!”
“It’s wretched, but—”
Decker blurted out, “You ask me what I can do three thousand miles away? The sad truth is nothing. But if it makes me feel better reading some detective’s case notes, then indulge me!”
Abruptly, he threw the papers across the room and looked at Rina.
“Do you think I did wrong by telling her to stay?” Decker began to pace again. “As her father, I really want her home. But I don’t want her to leave because someone is chasing her away. I raised her to feel she was strong enough to conquer the world. Now this SOB …” He sank back in his chair and rubbed his face. “I think I’m going nuts!”
Slowly Rina got up and began assembling the papers. She set them in front of her husband, then placed a kettle of water on the stove. “Do the police have any ideas?”
“They think it’s someone on the inside because he knows the secluded areas of the campus. College! Perfect breeding grounds for weirdos and perverts. You’ve got hyper-hormoned kids with poor judgment thrown together unsupervised. Bastard rapist. He knows they’re easy fodder.”
“Cindy’s twenty-one.”
“When she cries in my arms, she’s a kid. I can’t stand this. Screw it! I’m sending her a plane ticket tomorrow—”
“Peter, you did the right thing by telling her to stay. You can’t protect her forever.”
“So I’ll protect her as long as I can.”
“If the monster strikes again, then you and she can reevaluate. In the meantime, if she can stick it out until he’s caught … handling this situation will give her a sense of mastery. That this maniac didn’t scare her away. Believe me, I know what it’s like to live in fear.”
The kettle began to boil. Rina brought out two mugs and made tea. Decker was quiet, remembering how they’d met. Rina had been a witness to a rape, Decker had been the cop assigned to the crime. During the course of the investigation, they had found out that Rina had been the intended victim. Even with that knowledge, Rina had held firm, refused to be scared away by a madman’s perversions. In the end, she had come away the better for it.
But this was his daughter.
“So you think I did the right thing?” Decker asked.
Rina placed a cup of ginger tea in front of her husband. “I think so, yes. Drink.”
“Okay, you’re a smart person.” Decker sipped boiling tea. “I’ll trust you.”
“Thank you.”
“I trust you, you trust me. Isn’t that what this whole thing’s about?”
“You mean love?”
“Yeah, love and the whole nine yards.”
“The whole nine yards?”
“You know what I mean. Love, marriage, kids, dogs, mortgages, responsibility, life—”
“Poor Peter. You’re feeling so burdened.”
“I’m not feeling burdened, I am burdened.”
Rina took his hand. “You want to go out to New York again?”
Decker shook his head no. “What does that say to Cindy? That every time there’s a crisis, Daddy’ll come to rescue her? No, I’ve got to let her deal with it and just pray for the best.” He looked at the kitchen clock. “Is it too early to say Shacharit?”
Rina thought a moment. There were entire sections of Talmud written about the permissible times to say the morning prayers. Rina looked at the kitchen clock. A little before three A.M.
“It’s never too early or too late to pray. And Peter, add your own private wishes at the beginning of Shemonah Esreh. Ask Hashem specifically to look after Cindy, to watch over her and keep her safe. Make your requests as detailed as you want.”
Decker smiled. “I can do that?”
Rina smiled back. “You can do that.”
7
In the dead of night, I wrote letters to my grandparents, all the while growing even more aloof from my father and stepmother. Jean tried to cut through my secrecy with insipid stabs into my personal life. It became clear that she thought I was sequestering a boyfriend. I answered her politely, but revealed nothing. My father never even picked up on my change of attitude. To him, I was a house pet. As long as I was healthy and didn’t pee on the carpet, I was left to benign neglect.
The school week rocketed by. With Chris gone, I was back to walking home. On Tuesday, Bull—né Steve—Anderson met me at my locker after school and offered me a ride. The school’s star halfback, as did Chris, ran in the fast lane of booze, drugs, and sex. Steve was handsome and buffed with a con-man smile. He’d been cordial to me the year I’d tutored him. But beyond that, he had never given me a second glance.
On the lift home, I sensed a change—the wolfish way he looked at me. I sat rigidly in the passenger seat of his Camaro, showing scant interest in his conversation. When he parked in front of my house, he told me I needed to loosen up and have some fun. He invited me to a party that night. I declined, citing schoolwork. When I closed the door to my house, I turned the deadbolt.
The next day, when Steve saw me in the halls, he acknowledged me with the barest of courtesy. I was relieved.
Chris called me up the following Friday morning. Hearing his voice sent ripples of pleasure down my spine. He wasn’t coming to school but he told me to come to his place tonight at the usual time.
I was weak-kneed when he answered the door that evening. He wore a black silk jacket over a black tee and faded jeans. His hair had been stepped in back, but it was long and loose in front. A gold crucifix hung from his neck. He took the lead-filled backpacks I was carrying.
“Welcome back,” I said.
“Thank you.” He hefted the book bags onto his kitchen counter. “These are heavy. Next time, just leave them in the car and I’ll get them for you.”
He poured me a cup of coffee and told me to take a seat. I pulled up a stool. “How’d your gig go?”
“Without a hitch,” he said. “I never have any problem with work. How’ve you been?”
“Fine. A little nervous actually.”
“Why’s that?”
“Mr. Hedding announced an orchestra test this Monday.”
“Which piece?”
“Brandenburg Number Two. I’m embarrassed to play in front of you.”
“Why?” He poured himself a shot of Scotch. “I’ve heard you play before.”
“Yeah, but now it’s different. I know you.”
“You see me struggling in my studies all the time. I’m not embarrassed. You shouldn’t be either.”
“But this is different.”
“Why?”
I leaned on my elbows. “Because my bad playing is so … visceral. It’s so … out there … public.”
“You never cared before.”
“Because I never had to look you in the eye afterward.”
Chris held a finger in the air, disappeared, then came back a moment later with a violin case. He took out the instrument, tuned it, then motioned me up from the stool.
“Play for me.”
He offered me the fiddle. I regarded it as if it were an evil talisman. “I don’t have the sheet music.”
He sat on his leather couch and sipped his drink. “Play what you know by heart.”
“I don’t know anything by heart.”
“So just draw the bow across the strings. Get a sound from it, all right?”
I sighed. I got As in orchestra only because I showed up on time and took all the tests. It was no reflection of my skill as a musician. Red-faced, I started bowing open strings. My hands were shaking. I made sounds akin to a strangling cat’s. I stopped and giggled, but Chris kept his expression flat.
“Keep going.”
“I know how sensitive your ear is. How can you stand it?”
“Keep going.”
I played the test piece as best I could by heart. I made mistakes. I sounded terrible. I was almost in tears. I kept waiting for him to grimace, but he sat stoically.
