Out of Sight

"That day we met on the street, did you know it was me?"

"You kidding? I almost stopped."

"You didn't."

"I wanted to, but I was embarrassed wearing that tourist outfit. I didn't want you to think I dressed like that."

"The black socks with the sandals."

"Part of the disguise."

"I watched you all the way down the street."

"I could feel it."

"You were going to see Adele, weren't you?"

"I don't think we should get into that."

"No, you're right. Or Buddy. I won't ask if he's with you or what you're doing here. Or if you've run into Glenn Michaels yet."

He said, "Don't talk like that, okay? You scare me." He said, "I was trying to remember-Faye Dunaway and Robert Red-ford start kissing..

."

Karen nodded.

"As he's untying her."

"How did they get from there into bed?"

Foley watched her get up from the sofa and hold out her hand to him.

She said, "Come on, I'll show you," and took him into the bedroom. He sat on the bed to take off his shoes, stood up to take off his pants.

Got his socks off. She said, "Are you gonna leave your tie on?"

Watching her undress, Karen getting down to a black bra and panties, he said he wasn't sure if the old ticker would be able to take this. When she got out of her undies and came over to him, standing close to help him with the tie, he was thinking he might Ve died already and gone to heaven. When his clothes were off he looped the tie around his neck again. Seeing her in lamplight before she turned it off he said, "My God, look at you." He had never seen a woman's body like hers naked.

In magazines maybe, but not in real life. In the next few minutes he realized he had never met anyone under the covers like she was: man, all over him with her scent, touching, kissing, saying his name, saying "Oh, Jack," in a whisper that sounded sad. He asked her if she was having fun and saw her face in the light from the sitting room that filtered the dark, saw her smile, but even her smile was sad. They made love and she didn't speak or make a sound until she began to say his name again, "Jack?" He asked her what. But that's all she was doing, saying his name, saying it over and over until she was saying it pretty loud and then stopped saying it. No woman had ever said his name like that before.

"What am I now?"

Lying in his arms in the king-size bed, light from the sitting room almost reaching them.

"You're still my zoo-zoo."

She moved away from him to sit up and swing her legs off the bed.

"Are you coming back?"

She said, "You can always depend on the old bank-robber fucker."

He reached her before she could leave the bed, and sat up, getting close behind her, his hand touching her breasts as his arm came around to hold her against him.

"Are you being funny?"

"I have ta go to the bathroom."

"Are you?"

She said, "I don't know."

He let go of her, watched her get up and go into the bathroom. The door closed. He felt they were coming to the end of the time-out and he'd hear a whistle blow the way hacks blew whistles to tell you to stop doing something and start doing something else. He didn't know what to say to her now to get her back; he wasn't sure if he could put himself in her place to know what she was thinking. He did know how to listen and how to wait; he was good at waiting. If he couldn't get her back, at least for a while-there was no time limit-then he would become serious, not wanting to but knew he would, and they'd play it out.

But when she came back to the bed and stood naked looking down at him, he believed he could get her back.

She said, "I want you to know something. I wasn't looking for just a fuck, if that's what you're thinking?"

"Why are you mad?"

"Or I did it for some kind of kinky thrill. Score with a bank robber the way some women go for rough trade."

"What about my motive?" Foley said.

"Now I can say I fucked a U.S. marshal. You think I will?"

She hesitated.

"I don't know."

"Come to bed."

He raised the covers and she stood there making up her mind before finally slipping into bed and his arms took her in.

He said, "I know of a guy-his wife held him down, wouldn't let him go out with the guys, wouldn't give him any money-he was a drunk. So he robbed a bank to get back at her, a bank where he was known and he'd be sure to get caught. The wife was humiliated and the guy was happy. He did fifty-four months, came out, patched things up with his wife and robbed the same bank all over again. Another guy, he goes in the bank holding a bottle he says is nitroglycerin. He scores some cash off a teller, he's on his way out when he drops the bottle. It shatters on the tile floor, he slips in the stuff, cracks his head and they've got him. The nitro was canola oil. I know more fucked-up bank robbers than ones that know what they're doing. I doubt one in ten can tell a dye pack when he sees one. Guys like-remember that movie, Woody Alien robs the bank?"

"Take the Money and Run."