Clean Slate

Chapter 3

She was late. Church must be running long, Earl thought. Good thing, because he was late too.

Unlocking the door to Room 33, Earl slipped inside, leaving the door just ajar. The room was small, a cube, really, with a bathroom and closet at the back. Pale walls, maroon drapes and carpet and bedspread; TV, bureau, night-stand, phone, as anonymous as the purposes to which it was put. Its air hung dusty and musty. Probably, Earl thought, hadn't been used since last Sunday. He hit the a/c and went into the bathroom.

Washing his hands and face with water from the small sink, Earl mopped himself dry with a thin white towel and then recombed his straight thin black hair into perfection. He was a smooth man with a deep tan, just 50 that year, no matinee idol, not in the greatest shape, a bit bulky, in fact, suggesting bull-like strength of shoulders and arms. But Earl was well kept in all the obvious ways: white capped teeth, clean shaved skin, neatly trimmed nails, aromatic breath, male-musky cologne. He wore a blue short-sleeve banlon shirt and comfortable khaki trousers and new black running shoes. His look worked well for most purposes: the bland affect of a bureaucrat or functionary, except for the eyes, which made others, when up close and personal, feel like they were being gleamed with searchlights. Otherwise people hardly knew he was around. When he chose, he could hide in plain sight sitting beside you on a bus. In look, in sound, in feel, he was the smooth man with a deep tan: no coarse places or hard edges, at least that you could see.

Folding the hand towel, he hung it back on the rack. Damn it, Ruth, get here, he thought. And just then he heard the hinges, and then a click. About time. He felt excited, of course, and both loved at hated that feeling – hated it because of the control the woman had over him. He exited the bathroom to see Ruth Wildern standing by the nightstand, tugging at her thin pink dress gloves. She wore a pink suit with gold buttons, the straight skirt ending demurely just above her knees, and high-heel tan sandals with thongs snaking up her ankles. Her light brown hair seemed to gleam. Even in this room of a thousand secrets, she looked to Earl goddess-like, untouchable. Stopping at the foot of the bed, he said: "Get over here."

She did everything but shrug. "I'd rather you didn't talk to me that way."

Taking her low voice as a subtle taunt, Earl went at her, catlike for such a bulky man, while Ruth, seeming to ignore him, continued to peel off her gloves. Earl took her by the neck and pulled her to him. She got her arms up to block him, but he hammerlocked her head to him and kissed her neck, her squirms and struggles no match for his strong arms. Finishing the brusque kiss, he gave her a push that felled her slight form to the bed. "Turn over."

Eye-bright, flushed, she said: "May I take my sandals off first?"

"No." Hovering over her, Earl felt the rush of power, of control, of incipient possession -- this perfect doll-like woman, so unreachable, at least by mere mortals -- all here for him. He took her arms with his strong tanned hands and tried to turn her. Eyes slits, she kicked at him with her heels, swatted at him with her perfect nails: not play, dead serious. Earl wound up and backhanded her on the shoulder with his loosely bunched fist, hard. The punch rocked her, and she gasped and shuddered, but that was all. Eyes resolute, she turned over onto hands and knees, breathing hard now. Earl pulled the skirt up over her slim firm hips, swiftly yet oddly gently, as if unwrapping a gift.

Spreading her knees, Ruth crouched. "Don't tear anything."

Earl tugged at her nylons and pulled them down. Her smooth pampered skin was warm on his hands. Her panties tore, but he didn't care. Freeing himself -- out, hard, and ready -- he cleared the path, feeling a breathless tightness in his chest. "Ready for this."

"Yes," she said over her shoulder, edging back to him. "Yes."

---

Later Earl lay there, atop the fitted sheet, tanned knees up, absently staring across the dim room at the silent flickering TV – CNN, Food Channel, something like that – while through the wall behind him thundered the shower. At his brown feet lay the top sheet and counterpane, a twisted wad half off the bed, evidence of the violence of the episode just ended. Further evidence of a more personal nature to Earl was the inch long welt on his hairy chest, above his left nipple, where Ruth's fingernail had gouged him as she braced herself athwart him, conscious of nothing but her own sensations, as she thrust down-up, down-up, eyes shut, head twisted away, small breasts bobbing, mouth half open showing pink tongue. He hadn't thought he could come a second time. Not with her. After that she'd unsaddled, with that quiet smile, then given his head an appreciative pat before gliding into the bathroom to bathe.

Leaving Earl hurting. Not just from the welt, and not just from the feeling in his penis that he'd just emptied himself for good, perhaps blasted his last. No: where Earl was hurting – hurtin for certain, his daddy would have said, in that Twenty Towns accent Earl had taken great pains to train out of himself years ago – was upstairs. Behind his eyes. His conscience.

Now, many acquainted with Earl Bucaro – for few really knew him; most people, having sized him up, chose not to get closer – would have gone into gales of laughter at the very suggestion that the man owned any such thing as a conscience. And for most of his 50 years Earl had thought "conscience" to be a theory, proffered by preachers and teachers and other book-reader types. Only lately had he felt an unfamiliar stirring, and then only under very specific conditions. Before each of his seven dates with Ruth so far, he'd felt nothing but hungry anticipation, bordering on desperation. That, for Earl, was troublesome enough. But then after each date – at moments like this – he felt mental pangs – birthing pains for what he slowly realized had to be his conscience.

Which seemed to be saying to him: having sex with Ruth Wildern just wasn't right.

It was as if Earl, who, since his twenties, had only driven Corvettes, suddenly bought a Geo Metro.

It was as if Earl Bucaro, who insisted on Stoli, had been caught guzzling at a a jug of Mad Dog.

It was as if Earl James Bucaro had forsaken his St. Kitts vacation condo for a double-wide in New Jersey.

For this stocky, solid superintendent of the Bureau of the Bailiff, Recorder's Court, County of St. Marys, had, until two months ago, rigorously restricted his considerable and continual sexual exertions to ladies much younger than he. Once upon a time the cut-off was 32. Then it moved to 30, then 25. These days he bestowed his attentions only on girls who were, at most, 22 years of age.

But Ruth Wildern, on the other hand – Ruth was 60, if she was a day.

Put another way, Earl liked girls who could not remember the Reagan administration.

Ruth had been conscious for Truman.

Hence Earl's pangs of bewilderment and guilt. All his life, he had made a point of translating the results of experience into principles, and then applied those principles with rigorous consistency. Having discovered at the midpoint of his career that a) he had the power to get younger women into his bed, and b) that this was a very pleasant thing to do, he made a point -- a point of pride -- of sticking to the prevailing age limit. Till that late afternoon two months ago.

Not that Ruth Wildern was a dog or anything. Matter of fact, for a dame her age, she looked quite nice. She was slim, she dressed well, she had great legs and fairly firm tits and a curvy if somewhat large-ish ass. Though wrinkled in places and stretched in others, and tattooed here and there with the inevitable effects of an abundance of years, she was tasty looking snatch of female, Earl had always thought. But even all of that, times ten, would not have been enough to cause him to violate his age-limit rule. What did that -- he knew this, lying there glumly -- was her allure. Who she was, what she was.

Ruth Wildern, the Judge's wife.

For all these years he'd watched her. The perfect political wife, posed, plastic. Sitting dutifully at her husband's elbow, gazing worshipfully as he waved his arms, pounded the podium, mouthed his bullshit. Always, as if issued from a machine, Ruth was perfectly dressed and coifed, legs primly crossed, saying just the right things, appearing at all times precisely where she was supposed to be: teas, panels, task forces, symposia, concerts. Local talk shows, the occasional ladies's political rally, her perfectly neat signature always near the top of petitions politely pleading for playgrounds or new halfway houses or some such tree-hugging horse shit. For 30 years, and strictly because she'd picked the right parents and the right husband, Ruth Wildern had skated along the upper crust of the St. Marys power-elite, in all things having her way, making everything look so easy.

Through all those years, Earl had been drawn slowly closer to her by the irresistible pull of his career. From Department of Sheriff he had moved to the Bureau of the Bailiff, rising through the ranks to superintendent, in which capacity Earl now dealt closely and daily with Chief Judge Wayne Wildern, to the point where both found it expedient for him to drive the chief judge each day from home to Court House and back in the Judge's capacious county-owned Caddy. Often, too, Earl was detailed to deliver court paperwork to the Judge's house on evenings and weekends.

And so for several years now, nearly every day, Earl had seen Ruth, ever closer, up close, personal. And heard her soft, mannered voice. And caught her faint, fruity scent. So perfect, proper, untouchable.

At least until the afternoon they first fucked –

"So," Ruth said, emerging from the bathroom, "what's to be done, do you think?"

Unapologetic for his nakedness, Earl looked up from his meditations. Ruth was dressed as before, in the pink suit and high-heel sandals. She'd restored her makeup, down to the glossy pale lipstick, replaced the earring that had somehow come off earlier, and returned to perfection her short wavy light brown hair. Her soft tone of voice matched the placidness in her deep blue eyes. Earl grunted. "About what?"

"The black book," she said, sitting on the edge of the bed, facing him.

"There is no ‘black book.'"

"I thought that's what the Blade said," she replied, sounding almost apologetic.

"Bunch of lying jerk-offs. What the sheriffs confiscated is ledger books and print-outs and computer disks, from what I hear. And it's under control."

Ruth looked away. "I've had the impression that the sheriff's evidence room hasn't always been completely secure."

Earl snorted. "The bale of reefer that time, you're thinking about."

"Quite." After a moment, she asked, "Is it fair to say that our work is not yet done?"

"Guess not," Earl answered, conceding and not liking it.

In the silence that followed, Ruth seemed to be watching the silent flickering TV screen. Earl was thinking about Terry Wright, the deputy he'd sent to roust Brody, the "hooker madam," as the papers termed her. Earl had made Wright, that little jerk-off; nurtured his career, ushered him along. And now he pulls this. Earl had been sure that Wright would understand that this was to be just a roust. Earl wanted Debby Brody slam-banged around, jailed, booked on some kind of public nuisance ordinance, to send the message -- which a woman as experienced in the ways of the world as Debby Brody would have no trouble understanding -- that she was no longer welcome in St. Marys (Belle Terre, either) to field her whores, peddle internet sex parties, or -- more to the point -- be the Judge's secret little play-toy.

Wright had busted her, all right. But then, being an over-achiever (a trait that, heretofore, the young man had skillfully hidden), Wright had confiscated the records from Brody's Riverwood office, and then gone public with the announcement that he'd shut down a major prostitution operation. And then Brody, skanky opportunist that she was, let it be known via the Blade that those confiscated records contained names. Serious names.

Which probably, Earl glumly speculated, included that of Chief Judge Wayne Wildern.

What to do?

Earl became conscious of Ruth's hand, stroking his bare thigh. She was still idly watching the silent TV. The stroking continued -- warm silky hand, tantalizingly slow. Earl cleared his throat. "Strip."

She smiled. "Please, I'd rather not," she said coolly. "Where you hit my shoulder, it's sore. I need time to heal."

"You loved it," Earl grunted.

"And besides," she said softly, "For what you want, I need not remove so much as a stitch."

He looked at her. This was a first. That tightness clamped his chest again. "Mess up your lipstick," he said faintly.

She smiled. "There's more," she said, and bent to him.