"Yes," he agreed.
She said tiredly, "You're an idiot, Joe."
"What does that mean?"
She shook her head. "It doesn't mean anything, only words. It means I don't want to talk about it. I want to find Cathy. I don't want an affair, so if you're planning one you'd better find someone else. I—aren't you forgetting Alice?"
"What's Alice got to do with you and me?"
"I don't know. I don't even know who Alice is." They had a brief battle of eyes. She wasn't sure who won, although it left her breathless. She said, "I don't even want to know." It was an out-and-out lie. She added quickly, "What's the next step? I mean Cathy."
"Do you?" There was something new in his eyes, a spark that hadn't been there before. He said, "I wonder if either of us knows what we're doing." His eyes passed over her head, towards the water. She had the idea that he was looking for his boat although there was no way he could see it from here. "All right. Cathy. I guess we'd better go further afield. Tomorrow we'll try the nearby beaches. There are a lot of people out there in campsites, some of them living on the beach for months on end. It's probably the cheapest way to live in Mexico."
For dinner he took her to the beautiful seaside restaurant called the El Moro, proving that he didn't always eat at taco stands. A Mexican waiter made them welcome with a quiet flourish.
They didn't talk about Cathy over dinner, but about the town and its history. Joe said that the English Cromwell had made a base of La Paz, that the Mexicans referred to him as one of the pirates who had used the Baja as a hideout. The waiter joined in, half in Spanish and half in English, telling her that the Coromel evening winds of La Paz were named for Cromwell, that the Englishman had often had to wait for those southerly winds to sail out of La Paz bay.
On Joe's recommendation she ordered the mixed rice, found the plain-sounding dish to be composed of generous quantities of shrimp and ham, as well as many other unidentifiable but delicious components. He ordered cerveza for himself, and she had some of the Mexican beer too. The waiter, smiling and enthusiastic, made it his business to help Dinah with her Spanish.
When she came out of the restaurant, she was glad that they had not brought the car. She wanted to preserve the quiet magic of the evening, and driving in La Paz was nerve-racking. The Mexican drivers had a disconcerting habit of ignoring stop signs and playing a game of chicken at every intersection.
They walked slowly along the sea wall. Joe laced his fingers in hers and swung her hand gently as they moved. Once they stopped to watch a ponga tearing along the water through the darkness, and Joe said, "In Mexico, the people have time to smile. For all our technological wonders, the so-called advanced countries sometimes forget how to do that." He started moving again, swinging her arm lightly with his. "I bet if you say hello to any Mexican using his language, he'll greet you back and smile." He laughed then and added, "Even if you aren't a blonde señorita."
When they passed her hotel, she didn't remind him that this was where she should get off. It was pleasant, an easy-going kind of paradise just walking along the sea wall with him, smiling at the people they passed, saying buenas noches and hearing the greeting returned. With Joe's fingers linked through hers, she didn't get the same reaction from the Mexican men. She smiled about that a little, but shook her head when Joe asked about the smile. She didn't want to draw attention to his handholding. He might let her hand go free and she didn't want that.
She was falling in love with him. There was nothing she could do about it. Oh, she could push him away, never see him again. That would be the sensible thing and she had thought about it, but it did not seem like an option. Not that she was dreaming impossible dreams. He was a drifter and he had no intention of stopping. She knew that. She knew it would end with pain.
So much for dreams, she thought as she stared down at his fingers on hers. But then, she had never dreamed impossible dreams, not since she was a child, and of course she wasn't starting now.
He led her to the beach, to his rubber dinghy that was beached among so many others. "I thought we'd go out to the boat for a nightcap," he said then, and she realized they had been silent a long time. It hadn't seemed like silence. There was warmth inside her from the touch of his hand and his thoughts.
Joe pulled the dinghy out into the water, letting it ride on a set of wheels that he had fixed to the back of it. While he put the wheels back up, Dinah took her shoes off to board the dinghy, catching her skirt in her hand to keep it from getting wet.
She had abandoned her stockings days ago, going bare-legged like most of the Mexican women. It was simply too hot for stockings. She was wearing a blue cotton dress tied with a black sash. She'd bought both here in La Paz and they were comfortable and pretty, yet cool and informal. She had bought a poncho and Mexican sandals, too. She was wearing the sandals over bare feet, but there hadn't yet been an evening cool enough to wear the poncho.
Joe's eyes were on her legs as she sat in the dinghy. "You're tanning," he said, although he surely couldn't tell that in the dark. "You are still using the sunscreen, aren't you?"
She nodded. He had taken her to a drug store for the sunscreen the day she sunburned her arms. Now the red had faded and she was building a golden tan on the parts of her that saw the sun.
He started the engine and ghosted out through the boats. The water was motionless now, the evening breeze gone. His boat was dark except for the anchor light that he had once told her was rigged to a photo cell so that it turned on at dark every night even when he wasn't there.
She climbed up onto the deck while he held the dinghy at the side of the sailboat. She was sharply aware of the way her skirt swung, and wondered how much of her legs showed to a man sitting in a dinghy below. She looked down at him from the deck, but he seemed to be looking at the water, studying something.
"What about Alice," she asked as he joined her on deck. He was tying the dinghy to something and he didn't answer. She said, "I didn't mean to ask that."
She turned quickly to cross the deck and he said, "Don't walk away."
"Where could I go?" She swallowed, said, "Actually, you're the one who walks away. If I ask a question that touches the part of you that you don't want public, you just walk away, don't answer, change the subject."
"Then we're both guilty, aren't we?" He came up behind her. He took her hand in his and when she pulled to free her wrist he held it tighter. Inside her, something snapped and she was back on that beach, back ten years.
"Don't—" Her breathing went short. She could feel his fingers imprisoning her everywhere, her body compressing with the tension of his trap. She pulled and it seemed that his grip only tightened until she felt the desperation growing, the knowledge that he was stronger, that she could not escape his trap. She jerked in a deep breath and yanked hard on her arm, but it only hurt.
"Let me go." It was a growl, low and angry. It didn't sound anything like Dinah's voice. She twisted, positioning her knee. Abruptly, she was free, staggering back and jolting to a wary balance against the lifelines of his boat.
There was tension in his body too. He was watching her as if she had grown horns. In the light from the moon, she could see his nostrils flaring with the tautness of his breathing. She felt her own face rigid with wariness. She was uncomfortably aware that she had nowhere to go, no escape.
Abruptly, the tension drained out of his body. As his hands relaxed, she realized that her own fingers were curled into fists. He said softly, as if talking to a disturbed child, "Don't you think you're overreacting?"
She closed her eyes, felt the darkness surge in with her breath. "Yes," she agreed.
What had happened? He had grasped her wrist, and perhaps it was the darkness and the water that had stirred the memory, but suddenly it had not been Joe there any more. She swallowed, said, "I was over-reacting, but don't ever do that again."
"Do what?" he asked, as if trying to clarify directions to the gas station. "What am I not to do, Dinah? Not touch y
ou?"
"No." She'd dreamed of his touch on her flesh, his fingers stoking as he had stroked a kitten in the street yesterday. "I don't mean that." Was that an invitation? She didn't know, wasn't sure if she meant it to be. "Don't touch me like that. Restraining me." Her fingers went to her wrist. "I know it's not rational, just don't ever do that again." She swallowed, said, "Don't use your strength against me."
He was silent for a long time. Finally he said softly, "Hank would say there has to be a reason for your saying that. Who did that to you, Dinah?"
He was putting things together and they were adding up. She could see it in his eyes. Her odd reaction earlier when he had asked if she were a virgin. He would be adding two and two and getting seven. "Who hurt you?"
She pushed her hair back, then shook her head impatiently so that the blonde cloud fell back around her face.
She saw his face, although moonlight wasn't enough to read his eyes. She offered uneasily, "I'll trade. Tell me who Alice is."
He said quietly, "That's an uneven trade. Alice isn't important to me, she's just crew." He shifted, leaned against the lifelines with his hands slipped into his pockets. "I don't make ocean crossings alone. A lot of people figure the ocean is pretty empty and they go alone, sleep when they get the urge, leave the boat set on wind-vane and hope they don't hit anything. I figure that's something like Russian Roulette. If you do it often enough, you'll get caught one time. I always take crew with me."
"Alice is crew? She looks like Raquel Welch." She could feel herself calming down. That night was so far back, it made no sense that the terror could still be alive.
"We're not lovers." He said it quietly and she believed him. "We might have been, if we'd felt the inclination." He touched her hand, then drew his back as if it had been an invasion. "I don't know about Alice, but I didn't feel the urge." His voice dropped and he said, "My wife died three years ago, and I don't know if I'm still mourning her or not, but I haven't wanted another woman very often. I didn't want Alice. I like her. We're friends, and I think she'll be good crew." He swallowed and said, "I'll trade you this, señorita. You're the first woman I've really wanted since Julie died. You're the first woman I can touch and close my eyes and not see her."
It was not a declaration of love, she knew that. It was in his voice that the wife who had died would not be replaced by a blonde señorita. Yet she could feel his need, and it was more than the physical desire that had flared between them. His heart was frozen. If she helped him thaw it, it would not become her heart. It would never belong to any woman again. She knew all that, because he told her without words.
"I'll get deck chairs," he offered, "and a drink."
Mexican beer again. She liked the taste, but wondered how she would get back to her hotel if she kept on accepting drinks. She liked the music he had started while he was below.
"You still haven't shown me the inside of your boat."
"No," he agreed gently, "but if we go down there I'm not sure how honorable I might be. You're looking very beautiful tonight."
"What about Alice?" She played with the glass, knowing it was her turn to confide something. They had made a deal, hadn't they? He'd told her something. Her name had been Julie, and he still loved her. It didn't seem to matter where Alice was, but she asked, "Where's Alice."
"Gone on a trip to the mainland. Since I've delayed leaving, she's taken the ferry to Topolobampo. She's getting the train there to go into the mountains and see the Copper Canyon." He touched her hand gently, caught her fingers and stroked them. "Your turn, señorita. I've turned myself into an open book."
"An open book? That sounds like a wild exaggeration." She drew her hand away because it was easier if he could not feel any trembling she might do. "It was a long time ago."
"You haven't forgotten, though."
"Why should I tell you?" She took a drink of her beer and thought about asking for another.
"Have you ever told anyone?" She shook her head and he said, "Then don't you think its time?"
Was it? "Leo didn't ask," she said unsteadily. Leo had not asked any questions. "He knew there was something, but he didn't ask. And I'm not hung up about it, not really."
"No?" He settled deeper into the chair and set his drink down on the deck. "Do I get to know who Leo is, too, or do I only get one question?"
She smiled. Memories of Leo were always pleasant. "Leo was my social worker, sort of. My parents died when I was twelve and I was made a ward of the court because there weren't any relatives that counted, no one that could take me on." She grimaced and admitted, "I was trouble, Joe. I wasn't an easy kid. I went through several foster homes pretty quick and there was no reason why any of them would want me."
His fingers tightened on hers and he didn't say anything silly, but she could feel that he knew how alone she had been. She said briskly, "Well, it kind of went on like that for quite a while. Foster homes, group homes in between foster homes. I was in the north, but I ran away several times and one way and another I moved around the province. When I was fifteen I ran away to Vancouver, hitchhiked and ended up getting picked up by police and turned over to Children's Aid there."
She was silent a long time and Joe suggested, "And you met Leo?"
"Yes," she agreed. "He was a weird kind of social worker. They had me in a transition home, were talking about shipping me back to the last foster home. I wasn't saying anything, but the moment they put me on a bus, I was going to be off at the next stop and selling what was left of my ticket. You see, I kind of had a complex by then. Too many people had messed around with my life, and I wanted to make my own decisions."
"That seems pretty natural." He spread her fingers and she found them closing around his. "Tell me what happened next."
"Leo told me that he knew I was thinking of skipping." She grinned and said, "Anyone else would have lectured me and I'd have shut them right out. Not Leo. He gave me his phone number, his home number, the unlisted one that social workers never give out. He said if I wanted to come out on top, I'd better think about playing the system to get there. He said I'd never make it panhandling on the beach, my hand out for change from the tourists. Begging." She laughed harshly and said, "Some kind of independence, eh? I told him to stuff his number. I'd look after my own future."
"What did he say?" He brushed back the blonde hair from her face, a fleeting caress.
"Nothing. He just took my purse and opened it up and put the piece of paper in. Then he told me I didn't need a reason to call. I was a miserable little hoodlum, Joe. I didn't even answer him. I just stared and the wall and finally he left. It should have felt like a victory, but it didn't. I guess I realized even then that he was one person who could help me, and I was crazy to let him walk out the door. I took off that night, slipped out the kitchen window when the house mother wasn't looking."
He didn't say anything. She had told him a lot, but he was going to wait for it all. She thought about the woman named Julie and somehow it seemed like an offering, a crazy attempt to comfort him, to share part of what no one had ever heard before.
"I made it for almost a year. You see things on television, and it seems that a teenaged girl can't survive on the streets unless she becomes a prostitute. It's not true. It wasn't true for me, anyway. I stayed with a couple on the beach for a while. They were bumming around, living on next to nothing, and they had a baby. I helped with the baby and we shared what we scored."
She shrugged. "Food lineups and so forth. Then there was a commune, kind of like the place we visited today, the artists. Drugs. I didn't get caught in that trap, but I saw other people who did. I started to get scared. I was getting by, cooking and minding babies for people who were too stoned to do it themselves, but where was it going? Where was I going? That's what turned me off about that place today. It was the same kind of setup. I could smell it. Maybe I imagined I smelled it."
"No," he said. His fingers stroked hers gently. "You were right. I only took you there because I thought it
might be a lead for Cathy."
"I know." She closed her eyes. "I hope Cathy's not in that kind of trap, but I know she might be. She called for help, though. You see, that's the first step. It means she wants out. She wrote Leo in February. Last year she called him one night. He went out and came back with her. She stayed in the apartment downstairs with me for a week, then her boyfriend came and she left. Leo was worried about her."
Joe's fingers continued their gentle massage. "Leo must be quite a guy."
She nodded, turning her hand and lacing their fingers together. "Was," she said gently. "He died in February. He was only in his fifties, but he had a heart attack and that was—He knew he had a problem. The doctors were trying to schedule him for surgery and he was stalling."
He let her be quiet for a long time before he said, "Tell me about when you called Leo."
She didn't think she had told him. He must have guessed. She supposed it wouldn't have been hard to guess. "I didn't call him for a year, but I didn't do anything with the phone number. I kept it, memorized it actually. It thought about it sometimes ... thought about it a lot, but—"
The music came up to a crashing climax, then faded away to nothing. They sat quietly with the sounds of the water moving gently against the hull, voices somewhere nearby, perhaps on one of the other boats.
"Just say it," Joe said in a low voice. "Something happened. Someone hurt you. That was what finally got you to call Leo."
"It wasn't really that big a deal," she said finally. "I was out walking on the beach. It was night and I was thinking, wondering how long the commune thing would last before I had to move out, wondering where I would go. I thought of Leo, but I couldn't have gone back to another foster home. I was sixteen and that's what would have happened if I went to a social worker for help. Another foster home. Then—I didn't see him at first, but there was this kid. If I'd seen, I would have given him a wide berth. I wasn't stupid, and staying untouched through that year took more than just luck. There were times—Well, I just didn't want anyone to force me into anything, whether it was a foster home or sex."
So Much for Dreams Page 10
