Free An Absence of Light by David Lindsey

knows it was there. He knows it should not have been there.” Panos turned and looked at her. “I believe he has been unfaithful to me… in his way.” He grinned.
    The telephone between them rang before she could respond to that, and Panos answered it.
    “Yes.” He listened a moment “Thank you.” He put down the telephone. “He is with two other men, but he has just asked for his bill.”
    She opened the door of the Mercedes and got out The private club was in an old, ivy-covered brick building and sat in the center of a thickly wooded grounds. The narrow lane that led to it was one-way, entering from one side of the grounds to a small parking lot and exiting on the other side. Kalatis was parked very near the entrance to the small lot, and she had to walk nearly fifty yards, passing through the dim wash of a streetlamp before she rounded the end of a hedge to the parked cars.
    As he watched her walk, Kalatis had to admit she was far from losing her touch, or her shape, or, certainly, her sexual appeal. Though he would never let her know that. Whatever her fears of aging might have been, they were premature, but he liked seeing her afraid nonetheless.
    There were only six or seven cars in the small lot that could not have held more than twice that number when it was full. The club was very exclusive indeed. She had met the man on two occasions only recently, while she was in the company of someone else, but it was enough for her to have made an impression on him, enough to give him a reason to think about her after she was gone. This would not have worked with ninety-five percent of the men Kalatis knew, but in his middle age Toland had become rash about sex. Irresponsible.
    She waited in the darkness of a tree’s canopy at the edge of the parking lot, and when the front door to the club opened she started walking. Kalatis watched with interest.
    Having opened her purse again, she was looking in it as though searching for something, as she approached him in the dimly lighted car park. He saw her first, of course, and just as she looked up and closed her purse, he said something to her and she stopped. She turned, and oh, yes, recognized him.
    Kalatis watched their body language and followed the gist of their conversation. Toland straightened up a little, tightened his stomach a bit What in the world are you doing here?
    She explained she was supposed to meet X here, but the arrangements had been made quite early in the evening. and then she had got delayed and could not reach him by telephone, and a cab had just dropped her by on the off chance that he might still be here.
    No, he wasn’t here, Toland said. She tilted her head with good-natured disappointment. He asked a question, and she shook her head and explained something. He asked another question and gestured to his car only a few feet away. She tilted her head again, thinking a moment as she looked toward his car, and then nodded in appreciation.
    She took him to the parking lot of a condominium not far from the club where her car was already parked anonymously among the others. She told him where to park, the precise spot. By now she was teasing him shamelessly, and he would have driven off the bank of the bayou into the water if she had allowed his hand another inch inside her panties. Instead of going up to her place, she suggested, why didn’t they…
    Kalatis had choreographed the event, but it would not have worked so well if his principal dancer had not been so talented. When Kalatis pulled into the parking lot behind them with his lights off, Toland was oblivious to everything but the increasingly revealing glimpses of the unfamiliar flesh in the seat next to him.
    Parking among other cars a good distance away, Kalatis rolled down his windows, took out his binoculars, and balanced them on the steering wheel. He focused them on Toland’s car, the interior of which was illuminated by the streetlamp behind it, presenting the two figures inside in