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Cracks in the marriage of New Orleans Mayor Jarman Martrell and his architect-wife Madelyn turn into fault lines by Chapter 27 of SILHOUETTE, as multiple murders, a secretive love affair, and a politically-charged investigation engulf the Mayor's inner circle.
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JARMAN STOOD with his shirt off in the light from the open refrigerator door, drinking orange juice from the container. He was still wearing his suit pants, dress socks, and belt from the workday.
“Naughty boy.”
He flinched, startled. Madelyn strode up to him in a loose robe and grabbed his belt. She leaned down and peered over his neck at the orange juice and open refrigerator. “How many times have I told you not to do that?” She kissed his neck.
“I’ll put my name on it with a marker pen.”
“This isn’t a dorm.” She smelled his neck with a big, deep breath. “I got so hot for you the other night at that debate.”
“I was that good?”
“Ohh, yes.” She pulled him closer to her. “I’m hot for you now,” she said. Â
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“Hmm.”
“Just look at you, standing here like a bad little boy, shirt off, smelling all kingly.” She licked his ear and whispered. “I want some tongue. I want some cock. I want it inside me. And I want it now.” She pressed into him.
“Whatchoo drinkin’?” he asked.
“You,” she said. “I’m going to drink you all in.” Â
“What if I don’t feel like getting drunk?”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I want my man. I need him.”
She wrapped her hands around the orange juice container and directed it back into the refrigerator. She grinned, mussed hair in her eyes and around her mouth, just like when she would get on top of him, moving her ass and whispering her pleasure. She kissed him, turned him and took his hand and put it through her robe, on her body.
“That feels so nice,” she said. “Doesn’t that feel nice.”
She tugged him by the belt away from the refrigerator, toward the open door through the kitchen to the backyard.
“How about outside?”
He barely moved.
She saw a glass on the granite island. “Bad boy. There’s the glass you were supposed to use.” She waltzed him to it and picked it up. “The glass. See?” She smiled and kissed him again, but he was flat. She raised the glass and her face changed. She brought it down with a shattering crash on the counter top.
“Maddie!”
“See?” She picked up a shard with her bleeding hand. “See how easy it is to break something? See?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Wrong with me, Jarman? Wrong with me? I told you what’s wrong with me. I want the man I adore like nothing else in the world, and he won’t even touch me. Ben asked me if you had changed. I didn’t tell him about the biggest change of all.”
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“Ben? When was this?”
“Yesterday. What—is there someone else? Some little bitch somewhere you’ve carefully hidden?”
“No.”
“Then how,” she started tearing at her robe, shoulders first. “Could you—” Tearing it off. “Not.” Tearing it more, getting blood on it. “Want this?” She stood before him naked.
“Maddie.” He walked around the island to the sink and wet a dish towel under the faucet.
“Answer me,” she said. “How? Look at this body. Does your little bitch have a body like this?” Â
He walked to her and tried to take her hand. She snapped it back.
“Don’t touch me,” she said.
He waited. He went for her hand again. She tried to pull it back, but he held firm. He pressed the towel against it. He took the towel away and she resisted as he looked at her palm.
“I hope it doesn’t need stitches,” he said. Â
He set her hand on the counter and curled her fingers around the towel and went upstairs and returned with his robe. He went to put it around her shoulders. She shrugged it away.
“Why were you talking to Ben?”
“Why does it matter? I can talk to whomever I want.”
The robe in one hand and her towel-wrapped hand in the other, her husband led her to the couch. He coaxed the robe around her and they sat.
“What else did you tell him?”
“Don’t worry,” Madelyn said. “There wasn’t anything to tell him.”
Her long body stretched beyond the couch armrest, so she tucked in her legs.
“Okay,” Jarman whispered.
She started to relax. As the tension dissipated, she cuddled against her husband.
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He smoothed his palm along the side of her thigh, raising his fingers toward the end. He raised his hand, but she put it back on her thigh. He ran his fingers along it and smothered his lips in her hair and kissed her head and held her and in time, heard the deep breathing of her sleep. Â
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