Criminals Read Online Free Page B

first yap of the hungry house lizards, the cicaks, coming out from behind calendars and picture frames at the cocktail hour, when the air would fill with mosquitoes for them to catch. He would tell her what to do about the snake. He would say a cat had left the bird. “If it were for us”—she could hear him—“they would have put it at the front door.”
    Despite the white hair John didn’t look his age, but bit by bit she recognized the time hidden on him, brought in with them like contraband. It was the old-fashioned obviousness of his teasing, his careful fingers bringing up the knot of his tie. His way of waving, his saying “Drink up” and “Right-o.” She had seen it in movies. His flick to alertness if she casually said “fuck,” his inability to hear it as anything but sexual. While she, whose lust for him had been legendary among the nurses, had entered a state of quietness and caution, and become watchful, as a bird might watch its nest from another tree.
    His calling certain songs “her” music. His discreet awe of pill and tampon. His wife had finished with all that. First wife.
    â€œOh, John, look!” While they were having breakfast one of the tribe of feral cats had come into the yard, stepping sideways with little hops. He knew what the trouble was. He said, “Somebody putboiling water down the drain. They scald their paws.” The house sinks emptied directly into a concrete drain surrounding every house like a little moat, running into the great V-shaped monsoon gutters along the streets and roads. Strays fed in the drains, cats and the hairless raw-skinned dogs. The cats had eye infections but kept their hair. Cats are like women , Amy thought. We are not as pitiful as the men.
    That liquid song was an oriole, John said. That swipe of yellow paint in the profuse white flowers of the frangipani tree planted all over the lorong , the little circular lane where the university housed visiting faculty. And was it the tree of graveyards, as someone said? Closer to the house was a row of lime trees, the fruit like bottle caps among the leaves. Sometimes a lime flinched, blinked, became the pouch of a green lizard.
    John stood up, stretched and shook himself, ran his hands through his hair already darkened with sweat. “Don’t forget the Barneses are coming for a beer. I think that’s still on. And the fellow from New Zealand. Carruthers. His wife’s gone home without him. Don’t you do that.” There was a faint tremble in the hand that tipped up Amy’s chin. She sank against him.
    â€œLet’s not do anything special,” he said against her hair. “Just put out beer, they’ll leave before dinner. Do we have any napkins?”
    Napkins. How could he think of that? An invisible life reared up in back of him. A woman. Napkins. Silver.
    â€œWe have some paper ones. I wish . . . I wish they didn’t have to come.” With her thumb she wiped the sweat from under his eyes. She would have liked to press the dark lids restfully down.
    â€œI don’t care much for the idea either,” he said. “But let’s get it over with. It will satisfy everybody for a while.” He sighed and tapped his breastbone. She didn’t like that, the scar there with his heart under it.
    One day not long after they arrived, the students who played handball with him had made him stop. They had sat him down, fanned him. They weren’t medical students but he was short of breath and they called the hospital.
    The doctor who saw him had a wife in the Koran study group, who mentioned it the next day. Amy pretended she knew. When sheasked John, he said they had made him sit down not because of his breathing, as the wife reported, but because of twisting his ankle on the court. And indeed he was limping.
    He waved from the gate and disappeared on the back path to the hospital. This whole slope of the city was