The Method

by Ralston, Duncan

  Under the covers, she slid her hand over the light hairs on his thigh until she found his cock, already semi-hard. He must have been having good dreams. She stroked him a few times, but his breathing never increased.

  Still asleep, she thought. Good. He won’t question it. Won’t ruin it with talking.

  Raising the sheet, she straddled him. The flood of relief as she felt his hardness inside her lasted until Frank opened his eyes.

  “Linda?” He blinked, looking confused and hopeful.

  Guilt threatened to derail her desire, and she placed a finger on his lips, rising on her knees until he was about to slip out of her. “Shhh.” She lowered herself, twisting her hips. She rose slowly and descended, twisting until she grinded against his thighs.

  Confusion forgotten or simply set aside, Frank grasped her hips.

  She rode him harder, allowing herself small moans of pleasure, still very aware of the cameras. The thought that someone might be spying on them—Alex maybe, even Teri—increased her enjoyment until her whole body shuddered in orgasm, squeezing him to his own climax.

  She collapsed on top of him with her head against his on the pillow, facing away, feeling his chest rise and fall, his wild heart beating out of sync to hers.

  Her eyes felt heavy. It would be too easy to fall asleep here and fall back into the pattern.

  Would it hurt so much?

  She forced her eyes open.

  Not me, maybe, she thought. But him. Best to tear the bandage off quickly.

  “I should go,” she said, rising from the bed.

  “Linda, what—?”

  “We’ll talk in the morning.” She pulled down her long t-shirt and stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind her without looking back.

  She heard hushed voices in the main hall and paused before turning the corner.

  “—you just know Harriet’s gonna want a little extra something on her check for pulling that stunt in her room,” Neville hissed.

  “If she wants to renegotiate her contract next time, that’s up to—”

  Alex hushed. The silence drew out.

  Certain she’d been caught, Linda turned the corner.

  The men stood Neville’s doorway. They saw her and stepped into his room without acknowledging her, closing the door behind them.

  Linda returned to her room, wondering what the hell that was about.

  She didn’t waste much time thinking about it, having already decided to leave with Frank in the morning. Maybe they could separate amicably. Maybe it would be a difficult break. That look of hope in his eyes told her it would likely be the latter.

  But they would do it themselves. This place had only confused their predicament.

  She flicked off the light, exhausted and mostly satisfied. When she laid her head against the pillow, she immediately fell into a deep and restful sleep.

  8 — Dogs

  When Frank stepped into the dining room the next morning, Linda was already eating scrambled eggs and toast. He’d had trouble sleeping after Linda left, uncertain what had caused her 180 from being pissed off at him to jumping his bones within the span of an hour.

  “Someone’s got an appetite,” he said with a playful smirk.

  Linda looked up at him, scooped another forkful of bright yellow egg into her mouth, and chewed.

  “Oh, okay, we’re not talking now? Because it seemed like you were real interested in me last night.”

  She sipped her coffee. “I wasn’t the only one interested in you last night.”

  “Oh, so that’s what this is about. You saw what happened with Teri Lumley. I told her not to come in, Linda.”

  She didn’t look up from her plate. “You didn’t kick her out.”

  “I knew it. I knew you saw. That’s why you came into my room last night, isn’t it? You got jealous so you had to prove you still own my dick, right?” He realized how self-satisfied he must sound and changed tack. “I mean, what was I gonna do, physically push her out the door?”

  Linda shrugged.

  “She came to me because she was concerned about her husband, okay? I didn’t want that to happen.”

  “Yes you did, Frank. You just didn’t want an audience.”

  “Fine, okay, part of me wanted her. I mean, obviously, or it wouldn’t have happened.” He pulled out the chair across from her and sat. The steaming cup of coffee between them smelled strong and black.

  Like Neville, he thought.

  “Like you’ve never had thoughts about other men.”

  Don’t give her any ideas, Frank.

  “I wouldn’t act on them,” she said.

  “And I didn’t! I stopped it, or did you not see that?”

  “It was hard to tell with all the groping.”

  Frank shook his head. “You’ve gotta be crazy.”

  Linda shrugged, not looking up from her food. “I get it, Frank. She’s an attractive woman. We hadn’t been intimate in a long time. Shit happens.”

  “You say that, but I don’t think you mean it.”

  Her eyes met his, clear and unwavering. Thinking back to what she’d written on her assessment steeled her resolve. Those words unchangeable, graven on paper.

  “Forget it. If the tables were turned, I might have done the same.”

  “You—” He chose to ignore it. “Those two. I don’t even know if they really are who they say they are. They could be—I don’t know. I mean, for all we know, they’re in on this, right?”

  “It doesn’t matter. We’re leaving, aren’t we? That’s what you decided?”

  “We’re leaving,” he agreed. “But I don’t want to leave if we’re going back to separate beds. Separate lives. I’ll stay here as long as it takes. I just want us to be good again. Like we used to be.”

  Linda blew on her coffee. “Honestly, Frank, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.”

  She took a casual sip from the mug emblazoned with the Lone Loon Lodge logo, and Frank held her gaze. When he realized she wasn’t backing down, he pushed up from the table, scooped himself some eggs, plated bacon, toast, some jam packets, and a carton of milk and returned to his seat.

  “You sure got a funny way of cutting ties, slipping into my room in the middle of the night. Once more for old times, eh?”

  “It was a mistake, Frank. I’m sorry, but that’s all it was.”

  Frank bit his lip and nodded. He had no appetite, but he ate anyway, supposing he’d need sustenance for the long drive ahead of them.

  Linda waved her fork in the direction of his face. “He hit you?”

  “Yeah he did. Sucker punch.” Frank touched the large purple bruise on his jaw. “Will you do me one favor before we go?”

  Linda finished chewing. “Depends.”

  “Come for a walk with me.”

  “That’s it?”

  He saw her words on the page between them as if they’d been written on her face: I’m here because Frank needs closure.

  “That’s all,” he said. “You don’t have to forgive me. We don’t even have to talk about it if you don’t want. Just take a walk with me in the woods. It’s a nice day. The sun’s shining. Who knows when we’ll ever get to do that again?”

  Linda chewed thoughtfully before shrugging. “I can’t see any harm in that.”

  “Great.” Frank smiled and began to eat. “This bacon’s to die for,” he said, but the reference failed to return a smile.

  The Lumleys never made it to breakfast, and Alex was nowhere in sight when Frank and Linda rang the bell in the lobby. She knocked on the office door and jiggled the handle but found it locked, so they headed out into the woods to the east of the lodge, circling the lake, which grew much wider the farther they got from the other buildings.

  They’d been walking maybe twenty minutes through the dense forest, sweating under the hot morning sun, when they first came upon the tree with initials engraved in its bark: HK + JD.

  The letters had mostly grown over, and sap had oozed from a lon
g, vertical gash above them into the woody notches. Frank ran his fingers through the grooves of the K as they passed.

  “Wonder if these two are still together,” he said.

  A few paces ahead, Linda glanced back. “That’s got to be at least twenty years old. If those two are still alive, they probably don’t even remember each other.”

  Frank rolled his eyes.

  They trudged onward, over a washout caused by a nearby beaver dam and up a hill to where the widely spaced giant redwoods creaked and groaned, their gently swaying canopy high above, turning day to dusk.

  “Sounds like a haunted house out here,” Frank said.

  Linda peered over her shoulder with a quizzical look.

  “All that creaking,” he explained. “When’s the last time you heard a bird?”

  She stopped a moment with an ear cocked, and Frank caught up to her. “There’s one.”

  Frank listened. After a few seconds, he heard a single bird calling from a good distance away. “Kinda sounds like a monkey.”

  “I’m pretty sure they don’t have monkeys in Montana.”

  “I didn’t say it was a monkey. It does sound like it though, doesn’t it?”

  “Kind of, I guess.” She shrugged. “Whatever it is it sounds like, it’s laughing.”

  “You think it’s laughing at us?”

  Linda gave him a look of annoyance and continued ahead.

  “Are we gonna talk about this, Lin?” he called after her.

  She didn’t slow her pace. “Haven’t we done enough talking? All we do is talk talk talk, blah blah blah blah blah. It’s worse than C-SPAN.”

  “So you’re done, are you? Just because of a kiss?”

  She rounded on him. “I don’t give a shit about the kiss, Frank! It’s a symptom of the larger issue. We’re incompatible.”

  “We used to be compatible.”

  “We used to be in our twenties. We used to run marathons and screw in strange places. We used to make time for each other.”

  “Don’t lay that shit on me—”

  “I’m not laying anything on you, Frank. I’m guilty of it too. And that’s my whole point.”

  Frank shrugged. “We gave up a long weekend to save our marriage. I could be relaxing. You could be getting work done. But we came here.”

  “And we couldn’t even make it through the night.”

  “Those two crazy people—”

  “It’s not just them, Frank! It’s us. Nine years ago we would have never let something like that come between us. Because we cared enough to fight for us. Because there was something to fight for. Now all we do is fight each other.”

  “We still want the same things.”

  “Do we? When’s the last time we talked about the future? When’s the last time we planned anything together?”

  Frank thought to mention this weekend again, but decided against it. “We planned a climbing trip with Trevor and Dillon.”

  “You don’t even like them.”

  “But I went. I went for you.”

  “I don’t want you to have to do things because I want them, Frank.”

  “Well, we can’t always want the same things. I mean, isn’t that what a marriage is? A series of compromises?”

  “If that’s what you think marriage is supposed to be—”

  “Not just for me,” he said exasperatedly. “For you too.”

  “Oh, well thank you for including me.”

  “Jesus Fucking Christ, Linda! Remember last year when I wanted to do that locked room mystery thing, but you thought it was corny? And I mentioned it a couple of times, so you backed down and we went and you ended up having a good time?”

  “It was tolerable.”

  “That’s compromise.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Well, isn’t it?”

  “I thought you wouldn’t stop talking about it if I didn’t go.”

  “Regardless, you could have ignored me. You could have told me to shut up about it. But you went with me and you had a tolerable time.”

  She said nothing, only trudged onward into thick green underbrush. “Ow!” She stopped walking and raised a bare leg to look at her calf. “Don’t walk in this. It’s prickly.”

  “That’s juniper,” Frank told her. “It’s what they make gin from.”

  “Thanks for letting me know.”

  “I didn’t see it until you were in it.”

  Linda stepped out of the bush and walked around its outer edge where the juniper grew taller and thicker, the branches like dry, twisted vines.

  “Lin, I know I messed up last night. If I could take it back, I would—”

  “I feel like we’re going around in circles,” she muttered.

  “Maybe we are. But just tell me you don’t love me and I’ll—”

  “No, Frank. We’re just going around in circles! There it is again!”

  “There what is?”

  She pointed to it.

  The tree with initials carved in its bark.

  “One . . .”

  The agony as the trap snapped closed on Frank’s leg, crippling him.

  “Two . . .”

  The revelation of the chain, linking the trap to the tree with a declaration of love carved under its oozing gash.

  “Three!”

  Linda pried open the metal jaws, tearing her fingernails to the quick, and before she could even get it wide enough for Frank to pull out his foot, it clamped down harder, opening the wound further and bringing fresh blood.

  The barks of dogs somewhere in the woods met Frank’s agonized howl, and the barks grew nearer.

  Frank and Linda’s eyes met in shared fear.

  “Probably just hunters,” she assured him.

  The barking grew vicious, as though the dogs had found their quarry and had begun salivating to tear it to shreds.

  The first appeared over the hill, where the tops of the ancient redwoods swayed and groaned in the hot summer breeze. Even from a distance, it looked big and mean and nothing like a hunting dog, fangs visible as it bolted down toward the valley where the two of them sat, completely exposed.

  “Go,” Frank said.

  “I’m not leaving without you.”

  “Fine. We’ll do it together.”

  Linda nodded, and the two of them pulled the jaws apart. On the verge of passing out, Frank added very little strength, but with both working together, the bloodied metal teeth snapped open just as the dog hit the leafy valley floor and set its sights on them.

  Linda grabbed Frank’s hand and pulled him to his feet.

  The Rottweiler charged forward, kicking through underbrush and dry branches without taking its beady, brown eyes off them. It was so close now they could hear its panting and the trundling of its paws on hard-packed earth.

  Frank tripped on a loose stone, and his leg gave out. He fell back on his ass, bringing Linda down to her knees beside him.

  She closed her fingers on his and they pushed to their feet, but the dog had closed the distance, its snout wrinkled in a snarl, strings of saliva dripping from its yellowed fangs.

  Linda shouted, “The trap!”

  The dog was less than ten feet from tearing the two of them to shreds. They wouldn’t make it far before they’d have to fight or die.

  Nearest to the chain, Frank tore his hand from hers and jerked the trap closer. The jaws snapped down so hard on the dog’s front leg that Frank heard the bone crack as he and Linda skittered out of its way.

  The chain pulled taut, and the dog’s forward momentum whipped it around in a tight half circle. It slammed down into the dirt, its muscular body scattering leaves, and yelped as it licked its injured leg.

  Frank paid it only a moment’s attention. Two more Rottweilers had appeared over the ridge and barreled down toward the valley floor.

  “Come on!” Linda cried.

  She rushed toward the patch of junipers and plunged in, gritting her teeth against the prickles. Frank hesitated only a moment
before following, knowing it would be more painful for him without a shoe and with the fresh wound exposed on his ankle but aware they were short of options. With no second trap to ensnare one more dog, let alone the two of them, he hoped the juniper would deter the dogs long enough that they would give up the chase and go home.

  A high, single-note whistle stopped the charging dogs in their tracks. They panted halfway up the hill, torn between hunger and loyalty. Another whistle made them dart around and tear back up the hill.

  The dog in the trap lay on its side and howled.

  “This way,” Linda said, stepping out of the brush.

  Frank hobbled along behind her. They were lost, but she often managed to find her way as long as the sun was visible. With any luck, they would get back to the lodge or at least as far as the lake before the dogs found them again, or their master saw what they'd done to the first dog.

  Frank’s leg hurt like hell. Dried leaves stuck to tacky blood on his sock and ankle, and every time he put a little bit of weight on his leg, he felt like he might black out from the pain.

  But they were alive and they were together.

  That had to count for something.

  9 — Refuge

  On the verge of passing out several times, suffering under the midafternoon sun, Frank stumbled along behind Linda on his injured leg. After walking for what seemed like hours, they finally came to a clearing with a small body of brown water, little more than a pond.

  Frank dropped to his knees on the pine-carpeted shore and splashed his hands in the water. He doused his hair, neck, and armpits with the gritty water. Despite being on the verge of dehydration, he didn’t dare drink any. He’d seen enough survival reality shows to know it was a surefire way to get sick.

  When he looked up from the water, he saw the cabin.

  The way the sunlight flickered off the old graying wood and sloped roof, he wasn’t sure if it was real or a mirage until Linda confirmed it.

  She favored him with a sympathetic look. “Think you can make it?”

  “We’ve come this far.”