Shutter Island(44)

“I work a lot,” Teddy said.

“Sit.” She tugged his arm.

Cawley nudged him forward with a glance, so Teddy allowed himself to be led to the bed. He sat beside her. Whatever had caused that howl in her eyes in the photograph had fled from her, at least temporarily, and it was impossible, sitting this close, not to be fully aware of how beautiful she was. The overall impression she gave was liquid—dark eyes that shone with a gaze as clear as water, languid uncoilings of her body that made her limbs appear to swim through air, a face that was softly overripe in the lips and chin.

“You work too much,” she said and ran her fingers over the space just below his throat, as if she were smoothing a kink in the knot of his tie.

“Gotta bring home the bacon,” Teddy said.

“Oh, we’re fine,” she said, and he could feel her breath on his neck. “We’ve got enough to get by.”

“For now,” Teddy said. “I’m thinking about the future.”

“Never seen it,” Rachel said. “’Member what my poppa used to say?”

“I’ve forgotten.”

She combed the hair along his temple with her fingers. “’Future’s something you put on layaway,’ he’d say. ’I pay cash.’” She gave him a soft giggle and leaned in so close that he could feel her breasts against the back of his shoulder. “No, baby, we’ve got to live for today. The here and now.”

It was something Dolores used to say. And the lips and hair were both similar, enough so that if Rachel’s face got much closer, he could be forgiven for thinking he was talking to Dolores. They even had the same tremulous sensuality, Teddy never sure—even after all their years together—if his wife was even aware of its effect.

He tried to remember what he was supposed to ask her. He knew he was supposed to get her back on track. Have her tell him about her day yesterday, that was it, what happened after she walked the shore and built the castles.

“What did you do after you walked the lake?” he said.

“You know what I did.”

“No.”

“Oh, you want to hear me say it? Is that it?”

She leaned in so that her face was slightly below his, those dark eyes staring up, and the air that escaped her mouth climbed into his.

“You don’t remember?”

“I don’t.”

“Liar.”

“I’m serious.”

“You’re not. If you forgot that, James Solando, you are in for some trouble.”

“So, tell me,” Teddy whispered.

“You just want to hear it.”

“I just want to hear it.”

She ran her palm down his cheekbone and along his chin, and her voice was thicker when she spoke: “I came back still wet from the lake and you licked me dry.”

Teddy placed his hands on her face before she could close the distance between them. His fingers slid back along her temples, and he could feel the dampness from her hair against his thumbs and he looked into her eyes.

“Tell me what else you did yesterday,” he whispered, and he saw something fighting against the water-clarity in her eyes. Fear, he was pretty sure. And then it sprouted onto her upper lip and the skin between her eyebrows. He could feel tremors in her flesh.

She searched his face and her eyes widened and widened and flicked from side to side in their sockets.

“I buried you,” she said.

“No, I’m right here.”

“I buried you. In an empty casket because your body was blown all over the North Atlantic. I buried your dog tags because that’s all they could find. Your body, your beautiful body, that was burned up and eaten by sharks.”

“Rachel,” Cawley said.

“Like meat,” she said.

“No,” Teddy said.

“Like black meat, burned beyond tenderness.”

“No, that wasn’t me.”

“They killed Jim. My Jim’s dead. So who the fuck are you?”

She wrenched from his grip and crawled up the bed to the wall and then turned to look back at him.

“Who the fuck is that?” She pointed at Teddy and spit at him.

Teddy couldn’t move. He stared at her, at the rage filling her eyes like a wave.

“You were going to fuck me, sailor? Is that it? Put your dick inside me while my children played in the yard? Was that your plan? You get the hell out of here! You hear me? You get the hell out of—”

She lunged for him, one hand raised over her head, and Teddy jumped from the bed and two orderlies swooped past him with thick leather belts draped over their shoulders and caught Rachel under the arms and flipped her back onto the bed.

Teddy could feel the shakes in his body, the sweat springing from his pores, and Rachel’s voice blew up through the ward: “You rapist! You cruel fucking rapist! My husband will come and cut your throat open! You hear me? He will cut your fucking head off and we’ll drink the blood! We’ll bathe ourselves in it, you sick fucking bastard!”

One orderly lay across her chest and the other one grasped her ankles in a massive hand and they slid the belts through metal slots in the bedrails and crossed them over Rachel’s chest and ankles and pulled them through slots on the other side, pulled them taut and then slid the flaps through buckles, and the buckles made a snap as they locked, and the orderlies stepped back.