A taint in the blood by Dana Stabenow Page A

pulled himself to the edge of the bed and let his legs slip to the floor. Some help from the bedpost and he was vertical again. Something squished beneath his bare foot. It was a used condom.
     
    "Oh crap." He peeled it off and limped into the bathroom. He checked his crotch again in the mirror just to be sure—one cock, two balls, yep, all present and accounted for. He even felt himself up to make sure they weren't a mirage. He turned the shower on as hot as he could stand it and got in.
     
    He arrived in the kitchen damp but resolute.
     
    It was empty.
     
    "Kate?" he said. There was no answer. "Kate?" he said again, raising his voice.
     
    No answer, and no Mutt, either.
     
    He opened the door to the garage. The Subaru was gone.
     
    There was coffee in the automatic coffeemaker, a clean mug on the counter beside it. There was also a note on the table.
     
    He eyed it with foreboding. It was probably some mash note, saying how wonderful they'd been together and telling him that she'd gone out to buy the ingredients for an elaborate breakfast, which he would be expected to eat massively and praise effusively, and over which he would be required to hold her hand and make cow eyes.
     
    With reluctance, he reached for the note. It read:
     
    Half-and-half in the frige.
     
    I had a good time.
     
    Thanks,
     
      Kate
     
    7
     
    After a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs, Kate found the pay phone at the Hogg Brothers and called Charlotte. Charlotte didn't want to talk on the phone—who knew why—so Kate got directions and hopped in the car. Mutt looked at her, tail wagging expectantly, and Kate unfolded the napkin holding the rest of her bacon. "Don't tell me I never sacrifice for you," she told her.
     
    Charlotte lived in a big house, of course, on Hillside, naturally, as high up as you could go and not be in Chugach State Park, it went without saying. Kate had been on Hillside before, and that she had not been carted back down in an ambulance wasn't the fault of the person she had come to see. Her attitude increased with the altitude, and by the time she was knocking at Charlotte's door, she had formulated an entire scenario about Charlotte Bannister Muravieff and her life and times.
     
    Charlotte destroyed the first stereotype by answering her own door, and the second by answering it dressed in ragged gray sweats, although she was as meticulously made up as she had been when she had come to see Kate in the Park. "Please come in," she said, standing back and motioning to Kate.
     
    "Where did you stay?" Kate said. "I never thought to ask."
     
    "Where did I stay where?" Charlotte asked.
     
    "In the Park. When you came to see me."
     
    Charlotte's brow cleared. "Oh, I didn't stay. I drove on home."
     

It was sixty miles of pitted gravel just to Ahtna, and another three hundred highway miles to Anchorage, and Charlotte had left Kate's homestead at sunset. "Did you drive there that day from Anchorage?"
     
    "Of course."
     
    Kate never understood why anyone would choose to drive instead of fly, and Charlotte had to have enough money to charter her own plane. The rich really were different.
     
    She followed Charlotte into about the biggest living room she'd ever seen, filled with light from the bank of southwest-facing windows that filled one wall. The floors were wood, the walls invisible beneath a layer of paintings, not prints, all by local artists of the very first rank, and the furniture a rich teal leather that looked as comfortable as it did classy. There were a few sheepskin rugs tossed here and there, an entertainment center with a shelf full of CDs and DVDs, and a wall full of books. There went the third stereotype—that the rich don't read. It annoyed Kate. She wanted Charlotte to be a part of the Great Washed, the ones with more money than brains, the ones who inherited and thus never had to scramble around for the rent, the ones who said "Let them eat cake" without ever having been short of bread. In