Always a sexual being, Connie resisted the urge to pull him down onto the bed with her right now; images flickered through her mind of making love as lightning strobed through the bedroom windows. But her husband had been distant lately, and their lovemaking had become a regimented thing, not at all spontaneous, scheduled around times when the two boys were not at home.
Not that she thought, even for a moment, that things were bad between them. Despite his odd hours away, he was not having an affair; she was convinced of thatthe only other woman was his job. Things were good now, they were comfortable with work and home, but when they had first met, things had been well, theyd been perfect.
Shed been a model with the top agency in Chicago and he a photographer on the rise straddling the fashion and art worlds, already having had one successful gallery show and several big fashion magazine covers. When they met, the sparks had been instantaneous, two young attractive people making the kind of magic, both personally and professionally, that others could only dream about. They had fallen in bed, in love, and into a sort of muse/artist relationship that seemed to take his work to a new level. For two years, the work, the creativity, the money, the electricity of their sexual relationship, had flowed.
Then they got married, had their first child (Kevin), and, as in so many marriages she guessed, things had changed. Or, anyway, shifted.
Her husband was a good father, attentive and caring, but something had come unraveled in his professional life when Connie moved from muse to mother and stopped modeling to stay home with their son. Her husband began working with other models, but nothing really clicked. He seemed to lose the magic and the galleries lost interest and the big ticket clients in the fashion world (always a limited market in Chicago) moved on to the next hot prospect.
To his credit, he never seemed bitter and did not hold her responsible for him having to get what he called a real job, one that paid respectably and brought him genuine satisfaction as a photographer, with the only significant drawback that it sometimes caused him to have to leave in the middle of the night. Theyd had their second son, Kyle, whom her husband adored; and theirs was, measured by any reasonable yardstick, a happy family life.
Even so, true to her nature, and like her parents, Connie spent a lot of time waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Her husband crossed the room, bent down and hugged her to him and gave her a quick kiss.
Get some sleep, he said into her ear.
She held him an extra moment. I sleep better with you next to me.
He gave her another kiss. Thatll be me, snuggling in next to you, before you know it.
He drew away and moved toward the door.
Pulling the blankets up to her throat, Connie said, Dont forget your raincoat.
Not likely, he said with a grin, in this.
And dont forget I love you.
He said something that might have been, I love you, but she didnt quite make it out. Then she heard the door close and he was gone.
Thunder rumbled and rain lashed the windows. She snapped off the TV and lay trembling. She began to cry. Not heaving sobs, just tiny self-pitying tears.
Shed been doing that a lot lately, and had no idea why.
April 17 Chicago Heights, Illinois
Adrienne Andrews (Addie to her friends), with only one more month until prom, was determined not to be a virgin when that magical night arrived. A lanky, pale-skinned, light-blue-eyed girl who wore her blonde hair short and shaggy, thin Addie was sure she would look better if she could only, please, Jesus, lose another five pounds off her hips. Tonight, she had hidden the offenders under loose-fitting jeans. Her black T-shirt had been tucked in when she left the house, but once out of sight of her folks, she had pulled it out and knotted it so that her tummy (and pierced belly button) showed.
Addie had a straight nose and a nice mouth despite rather thin lips, and her crooked smile could turn the heads of a lot of the boys, especially, thankfully, Benny Mendozas.
Like Addie, Benny was a senior at St. Vincents Catholic High School on Ashland, and he was a babe, a stone fox. Tonight, the Hispanic boy wore a White Sox home jersey with his jeans, white with black pin-stripes, the name of his favorite player, THOME, stenciled on the back above the number twenty-five.
With his close-cropped black hair and slenderly muscular frame, Benny was everything Addie wanted in a guylong, narrow, handsome face, with deep brown eyes and lips so full that Addie had to hold herself back from kissing them every time she saw them.
Now, for instance.
They sat next to each other in the bucket seats of his navy blue Hyundai Tiburon. The car was actually Bennys moms, but Mrs. Mendoza rarely drove it, and the vehicle had become, in a de facto kind of way, his. Either that, Addie thought with a laugh, or his mom had left behind the Ozomatli CD they were listening to!