Wanton's Web
Chapter One: Spiderwoman

A blurry twilight was softening the concrete angles along Lake Street as Cassidy McCabe and her friend Maggie Benton stepped outside the air- conditioned movie theater into a breezy July night.

You're in such a spin about what you and Zach are up to--could've been watching Godzilla Meets the Three Stooges for all you know.

Pausing on the sidewalk, Maggie cocked her curly head. "I assume, of course, we're going to eat ourselves into oblivion with double dip cones at Edie's."

Cassidy nodded and the two women started strolling toward the ice cream shop a block east of the Lake Theater in the heart of demalled downtown Oak Park. Maggie wants ice cream. I want my guardian angel to come sit on my shoulder and promise I'm not about to make another hideous mistake.

"Thirty-three's too many," Maggie complained in the husky voice Cassidy envied. "I wouldn't want just chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla, you understand. But ten'd be nice. I could cope with ten. When I look at thirty-three, I get immobilized. I just stand and stare at the lucious array in front of me and then I go into overload."

About the same height as Cassidy's five-two, Maggie had a delicate face surrounded by soft, curly hair and an air of contentment that flowed from her like a magnetic field.

They passed a Starbucks, tables on the sidewalk, a half-dozen coffee drinkers lounging in the balmy air. A caffeine junkie herself, Cassidy felt tugged at by the rich aroma. The night swirled with soft lights, clumps of straggling pedestrians, sounds of clogged traffic creeping along Lake Street. Do it now. Otherwise you'll act like a tongue-tied idiot tonight, then have to make up some stupid excuse to get together next week. So just say it. Get the old voice box in gear and start pumping out words. Cassidy ran the tip of her tongue across her upper lip. "Zach and I are planning to get married." "What?" Maggie stopped short and grabbed Cassidy's arm. Her clear gray eyes stared in surprise. "Well, what do you know!"

Cassidy swallowed and said in a small voice, "Does that mean you think it's a bad idea?"

Maggie threw her arms around Cassidy in a quick hug. "Don't even try to fish for reassurance," she said, resuming her ice-cream bound journey.

"You're not getting one word out of me--either pro or con--about what I think you should do. Just give me all the juicy details right now."

"We're thinking of early September." Her mouth went dry. Never imagined I'd get so nervous just talking about it. "We're going to keep it tiny, but I would like you to stand up with me." Holding onto her short magenta dress to keep the skirt from blowing, she added, "You're the first person I've told."

"Me, a bridesmaid. I never expected to get so traditional. But you're my closest straight friend, so for you I'll do it."

A rusted-out Ford prowled past, the radio amping out rap, a young black driver in dreadlocks jumping to the beat. When their ears had recovered, Maggie asked, "So, how sure are you?"

"Umm." Cassidy pressed her palm to her cheek. "Eighty percent?"

"What's that uncertain twenty?"

"Oh, my history of getting left. Zach's history of leaving. You know that can't be just coincidence." She paused. "Plus the fact that the first husband I picked turned out to be such a jerk."

Maggie let out a light, puffy laugh. "Can't you for once stop acting like a therapist and just enjoy being in love and planning a wedding?"

"The other thing is, my life's been going too well. It makes me nervous. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop."

"Well, of course it will sometime. But why not enjoy the good stuff till it does?"

Same thing you always tell clients.

Yeah, but letting your guard down is too much like tempting the fates.

Cassidy breathed in air smelling of trees, car exhaust, and a hint of pizza from the shop across the street. Letting her worries go in a long sigh, she felt the tension in her neck and shoulders drain away. "You know, I've always wondered why people who are living together and getting along fine want to up and spoil it by getting married. And here I am, doing it myself."

They stopped for the light at Lake and Forest. "The perversity of human nature, my girl. People can't stand for their lives to stay in balance. They get bored and have to stir something up."

"Well, and it's a damned good thing they do, or we therapists'd be out of business."

* * *

Cassidy dropped her friend off at the small brick house Maggie shared with her partner, Susie, then drove north on Ridgeland, east on Briar to her corner two-story. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. She and Zach had been living together nine months, and their life had fallen into an easy rhythm that allowed her to pull in her claws, sleep more soundly at night, and sing along with Bette Midler and Bob Seeger on the radio.

Even the climate reflected her current state of contentment, providing day after day of bright, mild air without the usual stickiness that in previous summers had made her feel like soggy Kleenex. The weather gods in my corner? Not hardly. More likely compensating for that killer heat wave a few years back that racked up so many bodies Chicago ran out of places to put 'em.

She parked her Toyota in the garage and started the ten-yard trek along Briar toward her back gate, and past that, her tall, box-shaped house, a yellow glow radiating from every first floor window. Among the many things Zach's mother had failed to teach him was the economy of turning off switches. Although night had officially fallen, the village's white street lights and the city's rosy aura kept darkness at bay. Cassidy watched a flock of grade school kids rollerblading in the street, said hi to a couple of neatly dressed teens moseying in the direction of Austin Boulevard, the border between her integrated suburb and an all-black section of Chicago.

The too-good-to-be-true part was the change in Zach. She'd initially pegged him as a man to be stayed away from, the kind of irresponsible, noncommittal jerk that had always been her downfall. Even told you flat out on the first date, intentions were strictly dishonorable. A short fling, then bye-babe, been-nice-to-know-you. That had been his modus operandi for nearly twenty years, but somehow, this time out, he'd gotten sidetracked and moved in with her. Once he got his waterbed installed in your house, turned out to be the kind of guy who brings coffee in the morning, talks out problems, and now, the most amazing thing, actually eager to put a ring on your finger.

Overall, most of the rough edges had smoothed out. She'd finally paid off the debt bequeathed to her by her ex, Kevin, her client load was increasing, and Zach was mowing the grass before it achieved ankle length, as she'd let it do in previous summers. At thirty-eight, Cassidy had navigated some pretty unpleasant shoals. Kevin's bimbo-fever yanking you into a divorce, a bread-and-water stint in graduate school, a two-client private practice start-up. And then, against all better judgment, getting involved with Zach. At the beginning, seemed you had to be either crazy or masochistic to have anything to do with him.

She opened the back door into her client waiting room, a space partitioned off from her large kitchen by a free-standing oak closet. She'd done her best to make the room inviting, with mauve wicker chairs, airy wallpaper, a filmy raspberry-sherbet fabric draped around the window. Despite worn linoleum that curled at the seams and a kitchen twenty years overdue for remodeling, she had managed by dint of much elbow grease and little money to overcome the sense of slumminess her old house was always in danger of slipping into.

Before starting toward the stairs in front, she made a quick stop in the half-bath off the waiting room. Checking the mirror, she pushed wayward auburn curls back from her face. The reflection she'd been seeing for several months now was softer and more relaxed than in the past. During the difficult years, her narrow face had always appeared bony and drawn. Tonight the image was rounder and fuller, the deep-set hazel eyes, high cheek bones, and pointed chin actually striking her as attractive. First time ever thought I was pretty. Not sure if the difference is how I look or how I see myself. Must be the steady diet of love and sex.

Coming around the oak room divider, she noticed a nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the kitchen counter next to the sink. Above it the cabinet door hung open. Nothing unusual. Zach always has a drink or two in the evening. 'Cept he usually manages to close the cabinet behind him.

On her way through the track-lighted living room, she glanced out the wide front window. The back of Zach's head was visible above the wicker couch on the dark, enclosed porch, their favorite place for summertime sitting.

As she opened the oak door, the smell of bourbon hit her full force. Don't like this. Zach looked up. Starshine, sitting erect in the casement window next to the screen door, jumped down, extended her front legs in a long stretch, and greeted her with a Mwat.

He was fine when I left.

He's not fine now. When she'd kissed him good-bye at four, he'd glanced up from his computer screen, given her his usual lazy smile, and returned to whatever he was doing. She'd gone off to visit her mother, then to meet Maggie for dinner and a movie, with no sense of anything amiss.

She sat beside Zach, her back teeth clamped in anger at the alcohol fumes rolling off him. "Well," she said, keeping her voice even, "what's up?"

The midsummer night was soft and buttery, the air perfumed with flowers and freshly cut grass. A light breeze jangled the wind chimes and rustled the trees lining both sides of Hazel.

"There's something I have to tell you."