by Rose Lerner
Sam tried to picture them all sitting in the living room listening to the radio like a normal family. She couldn’t quite get her head around it. The daughters still looked like their pictures, just cut out and moved to the living room. She couldn’t picture the son at all.
“They can’t have been married long,” she said. “I mean, they look awfully young in their pictures, and neither you or Mrs. Richards is what I’d call old.”
“Thank you, that’s very kind. Ruth married last year. She’s the younger one, only nineteen, but she was eager to start a family—and none of us have very much time left.”
Richards was driving, so he couldn’t look directly at Sam. She was glad of it. A poker face only went so far. “I’ve heard that,” she said. “I mean, you’ve said a couple times about the world ending and all. But it’s still important to have kids?”
“Of course,” Richards said. “No soul that glorifies the Lord is wasted, however short its stay on Earth.”
Not a bad sentiment, Sam thought.
“And women in particular have a purpose to fulfill. Best, if possible, for us all to stand complete before our savior when he returns.”
“Oh,” she said, and was glad that the car had just turned onto Ventura Street. She could see City Hall ahead: a tan adobe building with a tile roof and a taller bell tower in front. Nearby, a three-story office building in similar Spanish style but on less impressive lines promised lawyers and businessmen of less obvious description.
Slowing, Richards reached over and patted Sam’s shoulder. “Don’t take that to heart, now. God knows how devoted you’ve been to your father. That’ll count for you as much as any marriage.”
“Thank you,” said Sam, trying to sound sincere. “And thank you very much for the ride. I don’t know what I’d do without your help.”
“It’s no trouble at all. I’ll call ’round for you in about an hour, shall I?”
Sam smiled. “I think that should be more than enough time.”
Sliding out, she closed the door behind her and quickly walked up the steps of the office building. She didn’t look behind her, though she heard the car pull away.
“Can I help you?” asked the pretty blonde behind the desk.
“Is Mr. Wellington in? Third floor?”
The blonde blinked. “There’s no Mr. Wellington here. Third floor’s been empty for a year.”
Sam turned and looked out the window, putting on a puzzled face while she watched for the car to return. “This isn’t 410 Ventura Street?”
“No, it’s 401. South,” said the receptionist, friendliness turning into jaded half-patience.
The car hadn’t returned. “Oh, darn. I’m sorry, then. I’m at the wrong spot,” said Sam.
She opened the door again, stepped out, and made a beeline for City Hall.
* * *
Sam entered the cool shadows of the building in a burst of sunlight. She strode in with great purpose, heels clicking and copper hair bouncing, but slowed as she reached the foyer, giving Talathan the opportunity to step forward and take her arm.
Even expecting him, she caught her breath, and gasped again, though quietly, when she could see him better. “You cut your hair.”
“Most men do, in this time and place.” Lacking funds or any willingness to trust a barber, Talathan had managed the job with a knife and the mirror in a deserted public restroom. He’d ended with hair that just covered the tips of his ears: not entirely respectable by modern standards, he’d thought, but not so unusual as to stand out, either.
“Yeah, sure, but—” Visibly she searched for words, shrugged, and said, “You’re not most men, mac. Not that it doesn’t make my job easier, but—your hair didn’t mean anything, right? Like a religious deal, or those guys from China with the pigtails?”
“The powers of the world care very little about my hair, I promise,” Talathan said, and smiled, anticipating the grin that flashed across her freckled face.
City Hall was not noticeably populated. A few employees passed them, absorbed in their own affairs; Sam led the way through doors and up stairs with a confidence that it would take a bold man indeed to question, and Talathan, as her companion, had it as a shield as well.
In a small room, an older woman behind a desk kept watch over a few low tables and rows of metal cabinets. At their entrance, she looked up from her magazine: a glossier issue of the one Sam had kept in her old hotel room. “Help you?”
“I need to see the land deed and the maps to a place out in the country,” said Sam, with a look of concentration, “but I don’t quite know the address. Are they organized by last name, or—”
“Last name. ‘A’ is over there.” The woman pointed a plum-colored fingernail.
“Thanks.”
Sam went down the cabinets, examining the labels carefully, then stopping, pulling one out, and flipping through the documents it contained. She beckoned Talathan over and he followed, bending so that they faced each other on either side of the cabinet. Then she pulled out a sheet of paper, written over with a mixture of authoritative black printing and fine script, and stamped with an official-looking seal in red ink.
“Take a look,” she said in a whisper. “I think I might need one of these. And this,” she added, producing a larger, folded paper: a map, with similar official marks.
Together they went over to the table. Talathan sat and studied the documents, which didn’t take very long: glamour tended to fill in details, once the basic idea was familiar. At his side, close enough that he was aware always of her scent and the simple presence of her body, Sam was unsnapping her suitcase.
In a short time, Talathan once more tucked the map under the deed and turned toward the small woman sitting beside him. “Now?”
“No. The setup’s not right yet, and I don’t have anything to change. But we’re going to need more cash.” She handed him a compact bundle of green and blue silk. It was in Talathan’s hands before he recognized it: the gown she’d worn when they’d met. On top, her rings and earrings glittered, false stars in an alien sky. “The dress is used and the jewels are fake, but a decent pawnshop should give you at least ten dollars for the lot.”
“Ah,” he said, and watched her eyes gleam blue in the shadows. “A shame to give them up.”
“Thanks for the sympathy, but we’re not exactly talking family heirlooms here.”
“Yet I remember them all fondly.”
Where compliments were concerned, Sam was proving to be as wary a target as any game Talathan had ever hunted. Once she’d taken his meaning, she met it with a quirk of her lips and a pair of arched eyebrows: the very picture of amused, worldly cynicism. “Full points for style. Come on—let’s make tracks before they kick us out.”
Had there been a moment, or perhaps only a second, when her smile had been undisguised pleasure, when her eyes had widened with surprise or darkened with interest? Talathan thought so, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to trust his senses in this case. The most he could do was put his hand on her arm again as they left the building, and it was only that short walk outside before he had to drop it and step away, lest he damage her ruse.
As Sam waited in front of the neighboring building, Talathan slipped into the shadow of a leafy oak. There he watched. She paced idly, holding her suitcase; she looked off into the neighboring hills, past scrub and sagebrush; she watched others pass on the sidewalk.
As Richards’s car rounded the corner, one of the passers-by slowed and turned to Sam. He was an older man, with patched clothing and a grizzled face. “Miss?” His voice was quiet: a man in Talathan’s position wouldn’t have heard it. “Sorry to bother you, miss, but do you have a nickel or maybe a dime you could lend me? I ain’t had work in a couple weeks—”
Sam was already reaching into her purse. Talathan saw the man’s face find a moment of dim, weary light as he took the coin—one of Sam’s last, whatever it was—and closed his hand around it.
“Miss Mitchell,” said Richar
ds, every syllable swollen with disapproval.
“Oh, Reverend,” Sam said, and turned from the beggar as he wandered off. “I’m so glad I didn’t make you wait any.”
“You shouldn’t give money to vagrants, child. They’ll most likely only spend it on drink.” Although the other man showed no sign that he’d heard the reverend, Richards didn’t lower his voice, nor even glance in his direction.
Sam hastily looked down, closing her purse and hiding her eyes in the same moment. “He didn’t seem drunk, Reverend.”
“Not now, maybe. You’re as generous as you are innocent, I’m sure, but nobody who lives an upright life would end up like that...man.”
This time he did look toward the other. In so doing, he missed the moment when Sam’s mouth pressed in on itself, when her body went rigid and her eyes became slits full of fire. In the next few seconds, she let it go; by the time Richards looked at her again, she’d bent her head and was looking embarrassed.
Only she and Talathan knew that she’d ever heard Richards’s words with anything but grateful shame. Talathan doubted she’d forget that brief interlude; he knew he wouldn’t.
* * *
“I was wondering if I could ask you something,” Sam said. She spoke quietly, mumbling a little, and kept looking at her feet.
Looking uncertain was good just then. That was convenient. She didn’t know if she could have faced Richards with a smile and a sweet voice. She kept her hands tight on her suitcase’s handle. The weight didn’t calm her temper, but it countered the impulses it spawned.
“You may ask anything, Miss Mitchell, and I’ll be glad to answer.”
She nodded, but waited while they seated themselves in the car. Richards started it up with a loud growl that was still smoother than Sam remembered from her dad’s old Model A, or any of the assortment of jalopies she’d ridden in over the years. The man could afford the best.
Once they’d pulled out onto the road, and Sam had taken the chance to compose herself, she asked, “Do you, um, really think the world’s going to end? I mean, soon?”
Mostly that was a distraction, and a lead-up: you had to walk to the plate before you could take a swing. But Sam was curious enough to watch Richards’s face when he answered.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I’ve done the calculations. Even if I hadn’t, there are omens plain as day. The moon waxes too big. People rise up against their proper rulers. Plague. Famine.”
His hands shook against the steering wheel. Sam watched the road, glad it was mostly empty and mostly straight, and still thought she could have chosen a better time to ask. She wished she’d chosen not to ask, not just because she didn’t want to die in a car wreck. Richards’s pupils had grown, and he slicked his tongue out to lick his lips after every word.
“Sir,” she started, and he didn’t hear her.
“There can be no doubt. The Lord has tired of our wickedness. He gave his word never to drown the world again, but he said nothing of dust. Within our life, this world will end.” Richards turned his head quickly and his eyes fastened on Sam. “Within your youth, most likely.”
In a moment, he’d turned back to the road, and Sam was free to shrink into her seat, a low sick feeling in her stomach.
“I’d been wondering when you would ask,” Richards said.
Sam swallowed. She didn’t think the man was dangerous, not unless he ran them into a telephone pole in his distraction, but still every nerve in her body sent up an atavistic flare: Get out of here. This guy is wrong.
That wasn’t an option.
“Then...does it matter what we do now?” she asked, and was glad now more than ever that she’d thought out what to say ahead of time.
“It does. Those who repent will be rewarded. The Lord will still bless those who choose Him before the end, and he blesses those who guide his lost children, shows us his favor to ease the burden of our message. And the ones who don’t turn from their sinful ways before the end…” He sighed like a broken furnace. “I can grasp but a fraction of the punishment waiting for them.”
From the sound of his voice, he wasn’t a hundred percent upset about it either.
“Oh,” said Sam. “I... Well, thank you.”
She was studying her hands again. Later, when she was prepared, she’d come to him with her story; for now, it would only make sense for her to be subdued during the rest of the trip, perhaps even quiet through dinner. The Richardses might ask questions. Sam would say she’d learned things she had to think about.
Really, she’d learned things she didn’t want to think about, or at least seen them. Richards was honest in this case. She’d seen belief in the steadily working muscles of his face, heard it in the hollow cadence of his voice, but worse, she’d seen the effort of that belief. There’d been a time when he’d chosen a spot and jumped right in. Now he was kicking as hard as he could to get to the bottom, not knowing when his breath would run out and maybe not caring.
A man, maybe, could sell his soul to himself.
* * *
Perhaps Sam had made a sound. Perhaps she’d moved. She was silent by the time Talathan woke fully, her body rigid as drawn wire next to him, and it might have been even that unnatural stillness that had disturbed his slumber. Then, too, it might have been the trapped-animal speed of her breath, or the very smell of fear.
Whatever had woken him, he recognized nightmare almost as soon as he knew himself to be awake.
“Sam,” he said, hopefully not loud enough to draw attention, though the thought didn’t concern him greatly. It was the very dead of night, and Talathan doubted either the Richardses or their maids were awake to hear. “Samantha.”
She was not a heavy sleeper. Seconds after Talathan had said her name, Sam opened her eyes. At first nothing else changed; she held herself as still as she’d done in the grip of the dream. Her hands uncurled and pressed into the blankets at her sides, her eyes gradually focused, and she swallowed, then sat up.
“Thanks,” she said, and the word was a whisper, though Talathan didn’t think she intended it so. Her voice sounded too hoarse to bear anything else just then.
As he watched, Sam rubbed her eyes with finger and thumb, then raked a hand through her hair. Finally she cleared her throat. “That was some kind of lousy. Sorry for busting up your shut-eye.”
“It’s easy enough to remedy,” he said. “Do you often dream badly?”
“No more than most people, probably. Haven’t exactly taken a survey. Once in a while.”
Her body was still a thing of angles, muscles taut against the bones. Her hands shook in her lap. “Then I’m glad to have been here this time,” said Talathan.
When he put a hand on her bare shoulder, he knew that he was daring at least a little: she’d never struck him, in their brief yet intense acquaintance, as a girl who took comfort lightly. Yet he saw the tremors in her hands, and the pallor of her face, and couldn’t help but reach out.
Beneath his hand, Sam went still again. She looked down at her arm, then up into Talathan’s face; then, in an instant, she closed what little distance remained between them.
* * *
Big fears left no room for little ones. Five minutes before, Sam had—at least in her own head—been lost in an endless black duster. She’d felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up with electricity. She’d kept her hands over her nose, shut her mouth as tightly as she could, but the dust had started invading. In life, it generally took a long time to die of dust pneumonia. In the dream, she’d known it would happen in minutes.
Tomorrow she might give a damn about awkwardness. Tonight she was awake and alive, and Talathan was as tempting as ever. That was all she needed to know.
In her arms, his body was firm and lean, his back and shoulders hard with muscle. Sam lifted her head and kissed him, and he didn’t take long about responding. If she had worried that he’d reject her, or only go along out of duty, the sudden strength of his hands against her back would have convinced her oth
erwise, and so would the heat and urgency of his lips on hers.
With the few other men she’d been with, pleasure had started out faint and built over time. Now it ran through her whole body, a melting sensation that started between her legs and didn’t spread so much as flash outward, sensitizing every bit of skin. It was like she’d been starting fires with two sticks all her life, and someone had just handed her a match and a bottle of kerosene. If Sam hadn’t been sitting down, she’d have been dizzy.
She didn’t know if Talathan urged her backward onto the bed, or if she sank down and pulled him after her. Either way it was welcome. Either way he followed readily, holding himself just enough above her that he could fondle her breasts through her nightgown, his long fingers deft and certain as they cupped and rubbed and brushed over her nipples.
When he moved his lips from her mouth to her neck, Sam had to bite her lip: she could no longer count on him to muffle any sounds she made, and she definitely had the urge to be noisy. She did her best as far as volume went, but Talathan’s mouth was hot against the spot where her neck and shoulder met, his hands were a welcome torment on her breasts, and small groans kept escaping her.
Talathan was breathing quickly himself. His lower body fit snugly against hers, too, and apparently elves weren’t any different from humans in some ways. The feel of him hard against her, even through his pants, went through Sam like an electric shock. That time, she bit his shoulder to avoid being too loud.
He chuckled, low and throaty. The sound itself made Sam’s sex ache, and the way it vibrated through both their bodies didn’t hurt any. Then he was kissing her again, stroking his tongue deftly against hers, retreating to catch her lower lip gently between his teeth, then claiming her mouth once more while she gasped and squirmed and thrust her hips up against his body.
There were too damn many buttons on his shirt. Why had she chosen a shirt with buttons? Why were men’s shirts so awkward? Sam had gotten about a third of the way down, half detaching one button, when she felt Talathan slide a hand down her body to her thigh. Gently, but without pause or hesitation, he began pushing her nightgown up.
