“He must have been. But what I thought was that he was trying to cover an affair.”
Drex looked at his cohorts to gauge their opinions. Gif looked interested but as yet undecided. You could have cut Mike’s skepticism with a knife.
Drex turned back to Talia. “What shape did his strange behavior take? What did he do to make you think something was really out of joint?”
“Nothing threatening or overtly weird. He never mistreated me. On the contrary, he was solicitous, often to an annoying degree. But sometimes, when he looked at me in a certain way, it would cause a chill to creep over me. I began making up excuses to avoid intimacy.”
“How did he react?”
“Casually.”
“Not violently?”
“Not at all. Just the opposite. He was indifferent.”
She pulled one of the sofa’s throw pillows into her lap and hugged it against her chest. A shield, Drex thought, against what she was still reluctant to admit.
“His indifference seemed abnormal,” she said.
“It’s all kinds of abnormal,” Drex said, “because he is. Some of these guys can’t function sexually unless it is violent. But Jasper isn’t about sex. It’s the mind fuck he gets off on. Except for my mother, his relationships with the women have been platonic.” Mike and Gif looked like they’d been goosed. “Yes, I told Talia this morning, and I trust her not to reveal it to anyone else. But back to the point I was making. None of his other relationships have been characterized as love affairs.”
Mike said, “Even the solicitations he put on the match-up websites didn’t reference sex or romance. Only companionship.”
Looking at Talia, Drex said, “For whatever it’s worth, I doubt he was romantically involved with Elaine. I don’t believe she would have betrayed you. However, to you, an affair was a logical explanation for his quirky behavior.”
“Why was I the exception to his platonic relationships?” Talia asked.
“We’ll come back to that,” Drex said. “Go on with what you were telling us earlier. How did his strangeness manifest itself?”
“Small things, any one of which could have been overlooked, but collectively they bothered me. Like his obsession with his clothes, his closet.”
For the benefit of the other two, Drex described it.
“He was fanatical about the fit of every garment,” Talia continued. “He fussed over sleeve length, buttons, everything. I was never allowed to fold his laundry and store it. He had a ‘system,’ he said. I teased him about the way he lined up utensils in the kitchen drawer.”
“He didn’t laugh it off,” Drex said.
“No, he took umbrage. His obsessions like that began to wear on me. Walking a fine line twenty-four/seven is exhausting. I started inventing reasons to go out of town. My business trips came to feel like escapes. I could only relax when I was away from him. Which should have told me something, shouldn’t it?”
She asked it of all three men, letting her gaze light briefly on one before moving to the next, until she came back around to Drex. He said nothing, wanting to hear how she answered her own question.
“We’re supposed to trust our fear. That’s what we’re told. I didn’t. I rationalized it away or denied it altogether.” She waited a beat, then added, “Until you moved in next door. Then everything changed.”
Mike shifted in his seat. Gif cleared his throat. Drex didn’t move, just continued to look into Talia’s troubled eyes.
“Jasper was mistrustful of you right from the start, although you’d given him no reason to be. You’d even returned the fan he loaned you. I couldn’t understand his aversion.”
“He saw Drex as competition.”
She nodded at Gif. “Male assertion, protecting his territory, that would have been understandable over time, and if Drex and I had given him reason to be jealous. But Drex has been here all of a week, and Jasper turned paranoid almost from the day he moved in.”
“‘Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind,’” Drex quoted.
“What?”
“Shakespeare,” Mike said.
“But don’t be too impressed,” Drex said. “I only know that line because it applies to a mind like Jasper’s.” He held up his index finger. “Except that he feels only the suspicion, not the guilt. In his mind, whatever he does is sanctioned.
“Oh, he’s subtle,” he went on. “He doesn’t pull the wings off houseflies or eviscerate kittens. Although he may have in his youth, or in secret now. But when he’s ‘working,’ he assumes all the trappings of normalcy.
“He expresses remorse when it’s called for. ‘Shame about your dog getting hit by a car.’ He apologizes