Savage Lane by Jason Starr Page B

sweetie. Enjoy!”
    The driver, an older Indian guy, looked at her in the rearview and said, “I’m sorry?”
    “Not you,” Deb said. “I was talking to the husband-stealing whore who lives in that house over there.”
    Then she texted Mark: Drop J at sleepover at Andrews
    That was perfect—texting about Justin but leaving her plans tonight a mystery. She wanted him to feel the loss, know that the intimacy in their marriage was gone forever.
    The car service dropped her in the parking lot of the country club where she picked up her Pathfinder. Driving, she turned on her iPod and let Billy Joel, My Life , rip as she opened both front windows part way and felt the wind rushing through her hair. She wasn’t forty-four, she was seventeen, driving along a highway in Bergen County, New Jersey, where she grew up. She had completely lost her buzz from the Stoli, but it didn’t matter.
    It was all good.
     
    O WEN WAS never late for sex and tonight was no exception. At eight-thirty headlights appeared, and then his car eased into the spot next to where she’d parked, and he cut the engine. Then he got out and got back in to the backseat. She exited her car, barely aware that it was starting to rain, and opened his car door. As usual, he had left a flashlight, turned on, on the front seat, which illuminated the entire car in a dull orange hue, but bright enough to see each other clearly. He was sitting casually, one foot up on the seat, smiling widely.
    “I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away from me for long, baby,” he said.
    Deb, halfway into the car, froze, not sure if she was mesmerized or just confused. It was raining harder; she felt the cold drops on her head, neck, and back.
    “What’re you waiting for?” he asked.
    Deb didn’t budge until she realized she was starting to get soaked and then she came in all the way and shut the door.
    “The wet look,” Owen said. “I like that.”
    He reached under her dress and touched her thigh, and she instinctively tensed. Rain sizzled on the car’s roof.
    “Come here,” he said, grabbing her waist and trying to pull her toward him.
    Resisting, Deb said, “Don’t.”
    But he didn’t listen; instead, he grabbed her harder, saying, “Come on, what’s—” and Deb had to push him away from her. He wasn’t grinning anymore.
    “Why’d you do that?” he asked.
    Outside lightning flashed and Deb thought, Who is this kid ? Kid , because that was how he looked—like a child, a baby. In this dim light he could be fifteen years old, younger than when they’d met, and there was nothing sexy about him, and he didn’t even seem particularly attractive. He was wiry, awkward looking. His ears stuck out too far, and he had oddly shaped arched eyebrows. For the first time, she realized, she was seeing him the way Riley, and probably everybody else saw him—there was definitely something off about him. He hadn’t gone to college and was living with his parents and was working at a temporary, dead-end job. Worse, he had no real interests or ambition and there was nothing particularly interesting about his personality. He wasn’t funny or smart or a very good conversationalist. From her new perspective, as a separated woman, she realized there wasn’t anything even intriguing about him. Though they’d had good sex, now it was hard to fathom why exactly she had been so attracted to him. Thoughts of his bony, hairless child’s body seemed repulsive—she couldn’t even stand the way he smelled, with his nauseating Axe cologne. This wasn’t close to the suave, sophisticated Italian man she’d been fantasizing about meeting. Now it seemed absurd, completely insane that she’d been involved with him at all, and she just wanted, no, needed to get away.
    “This was a mistake,” she said.
    She reached for the door handle, but he grabbed her waist. There was another, brighter flash of lightning, as if someone had snapped a photo of the two of them, and then they were