She moved against him, legs wrapping behind, his hand mauling her and her arms holding him close as if the breath she needed to live was within him.
Chester ambled in from the kitchen and stared at them. When their kiss paused the cat lost interest and curled himself into a furry circle beneath the piano.
“Is your back good,” Mary asked Dooley, her voice mostly breath.
“Yeah.” His hand left her breast and poked through the sweatshirt’s collar and cupped against her cheek.
“I’ve never been carried into bed,” Mary said.
Dooley smiled, his hand pulling back through the collar and out from under the shirt, joining its mate on Mary’s trim bottom. She closed her eyes and kissed him again, the bench grinding away from the piano and his legs pushing off, lifting her and carrying her through the living room, her lips planting wet kisses on his face and neck, his hands each clutching a denim-covered cheek.
She swatted the living room’s light switch off as they passed and sat erect in his embrace, her arms pulling her TOTY sweatshirt over her head and dropping it in the hallway. Dooley kicked the bedroom door shut and carried her to the bed.
Eight groups of costumed beggars came over the next two hours. All left empty handed.
Twenty Two
The front door opened inward and the screen door pushed out just before nine. Mary followed Dooley onto the porch and hugged herself against the cold.
He straightened his coat with a roll of his shoulders and touched the hair above her face. It was mussed, and it looked wonderful.
“I wish you could stay.”
“On a week night? What would your neighbors think?”
“Probably filthy, debaucherous, accurate things.”
“I want to kiss you,” Dooley said.
“You did.”
“I want to kiss you right now,” he clarified. “But that wouldn’t be good.”
“Wouldn’t it?” She reached out and slipped the fingers of one hand over the top of his jeans.
He backed away, her smiling playfully. “Who are you, Mary Austin?”
“Just me,” she said, then blew him a kiss and scooted back to the warmth of her house.
Dooley backed down the walkway, through the gate in the low white picket fence that would have difficulty corralling a dachshund, and spun finally toward his car. Stepping off the curb his foot skidded slightly on a sheen of black ice, the glassy hazard crackling under his weight. He kept one hand ready over the hood and made it to the door, climbed in, and started the Blazer up.
He switched it to four wheel drive right away and drove slow away from the curb. The tires spun twice before the corner, then found good pavement and took hold as he headed down Cougar Mountain.
He turned the radio up loud and sang along with the Eagles, giving himself something to do, something to think about. Because he knew what he’d be doing right then if his brain was simply cruising along at idle, and he didn’t feel like answering to his critical self at the moment. He didn’t want to think at all. Not about the kids, not about their lies, and not about Mary.
The former he could deal with in the morning, in some way he’d yet to decide upon. But her...
Let his head have it out with his heart later. After a glass of wine, maybe. For now, just let it be what it was. Just let it be.
Karen can’t get lucky, but you can? a voice asked silently, accurately.
“That’s right,” Dooley said aloud, coldly, impetuously. His heart talking.
He sped past the ‘Leaving Holly Village’ sign, two characters in lederhosen waving and smiling at him. Why lederhosen, he hadn’t a clue. So he thought about lederhosen and the accusatory voice in his head shut up.
The long, empty stretch from the Holly Village sign was too long, and too empty for traditional Bavarian garb to completely occupy his thinking, so Dooley flipped through the stations in search of something that would grab his thoughts and hold them prisoner. But the mountain had other ideas, and all he got for his trouble was a wash of static at each spot the radio stopped. Soon the display ran through the spectrum endlessly, the faintest signal now gone.
He turned the radio off and gripped the steering wheel. The red brake lights of a log truck curved into the forest ahead. Red like stoplights. Like warnings. Like warnings one should see before they do something so goddamn stupid!
Dooley shifted in his seat and leaned into the mild curve that was marked in advance by the old squiggly snake with an arrow for a head. Dangerous curves. Indeed they were, and you enjoyed every one on her body. Didn’t you?
Thankfully the log truck was in sight again. Something to concentrate on. Practice your safe driving skills, Dooleybug. Why he’d self-used the nickname his mother had fancied for him when he was a sprite of a lad was beyond him. Maybe it was her memory’s way of joining the on-again, off-again mental fray to put in her two cents worth. And what would she say? he let himself wonder. She’d tell him to keep his distance. Fine, he thought. I will. Maintain your distance. There was a log truck ahead that would require distance. Healthy distance. I’ll use your advice there, mom.
He shifted again in the slick leather seat and focused on the red taillights coming at him. Don’t get impatient. Stay back from this big mother running fast with a load of Douglas fir. Keep your distance. (From her, Dooleybug.) Your distance. From the truck, boy.
Dooley pressed on the brake.
The taillights raced at him. Kept racing at him.
Watch it. Watch it!
He stomped down all the way on the pedal. Stomped hard. And the pedal went all the way to the floor.
But the Blazer did not slow one bit. The log truck’s taillights now looked like the crimson eyes of some nocturnal predator glaring at him, glaring as the beast closed in for the kill.
“SHIT!” he screamed, standing on the brake by instinct and swinging left just before ramming the rear of the truck, racing alongside it on the steep downhill in the lane of oncoming traffic. “DAMMIT!”
A curve came up quick, and he was going too fast. His left foot went for the emergency brake and mashed down on it. It went fast and limp to the floor like its primary cousin.
Dooley swung hard right, cutting just in front of the log truck, its headlights filling the Blazer’s interior with a blinding whiteness and its horn blaring. He took the gearshift in hand and tried to drop it into low. Metal ground reluctantly in response.
Fifty, the speedometer said. Yellow arrows ahead glowed in warning, pointing to the left.
Too fast, he thought. Way too fast for the curve. There was no way he would be able to negotiate it. No way. No way.
He leaned left and steered across the oncoming lane, trying to ‘straighten’ the curve. The major flaw with that idea was the van coming straight at him, its nose diving as it braked hard.
Dooley pulled harder left and scraped the carved granite face of the mountain. The left side windows exploded inward as the van passed to the right, taking the Blazer’s side mirror with it. He steered back across the oncoming lane toward the right lane, but met a conflict in the form of the log truck already in that space. The Blazer bounced off the truck’s diesel tank and then off the granite wall and again off the truck, connecting with the massive front wheel this time, and Dooley saw two bright flares of white coming at him.
This is death, he thought, almost calmly. Almost accepting. Then something inside burned hot and waked him to the reality of what dead really meant, that there would likely be a hell of a lot of pain involved in this manner of dying, and he turned the wheel hard right, pushing the Blazer into the side of the log truck and nudging the behemoth just enough toward the side of the road that the oncoming vehicle— he had no idea what it was other than fast and bright as a twin mini suns —blazed by, narrowly missing him.
And then another curve threatened in the very near distance.
“SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!” Dooley swore. He tried the brakes again, to no avail, and the gears, too, with no success.
The log truck, though, had brakes, and they began to scream and spew smoke that washed over the Blazer, losing it in a caustic, smelly haze.
Dooley coughed and steered left, trying to break free of the truck as it began to skid. Skid away from the side and toward the face of the mountain, pushing the Blazer that way as Dooley realized that his car and the truck were effectively one vehicle. He reversed course and rolled the wheel as far as it would go to the right, brake and tire smoke gagging him now, the Blazer and he willing the truck not to make a sandwich of him.
With a tremendous BANG a tire blew, loud and with a force that he could feel as well as hear, and he knew it was the truck’s front tire when it dipped to the left and sent an arc of orange sparks over the hood of the Blazer. They rippled off the back and chased the rolling wreck down the centerline like drunken kamikaze fireflies.
The Blazer suddenly bucked hard, up and down, dribbled against the road like a ball, two of its own tires blowing. It shuddered violently, the wheel spinning free of Dooley’s grip, the airbag slamming into his face as the windshield became a million tiny stars twinkling by like a starfield in motion.
Dooley sat motionless, in a hot darkness, thinking he was dead until the driver of the log truck pulled him back from the deflated airbag and called him a stupid motherfucker.
Twenty Three
The county sheriff’s car pulled through the barricades and stopped short of Mary Austin’s house. Joel Bauer opened the back door and helped Dooley out. Two camera strobes pulsed at him before a deputy suggested to the photographers that they ‘Back off and give the fella some breathing room, for Chrissakes.’
“You should be at the hospital,” Joel said, but Dooley waved off the concern. “The paramedic said you should go.”
Dooley glanced briefly at the men with the cameras as if they were an ugly pair of bipedal vermin. “Where should I look for the pictures?”
Joel looked at the men. Their cameras whirred from their new spot on the far curb. “The Standard and the Sun. I think that’s the guy from the Sun, anyway.”
“Wonderful.”
“Let me have someone take you to Mercy,” Joel suggested, recalling the radio call from the paramedics at the crash scene saying they had a ‘real hot RT.’ Real hot meaning pissed off and on the warpath, and RT for refuses treatment. “You don’t look very good to me.”
“Thanks, doc,” Dooley said, and walked past Joel and stood over a pair of kneeling blue suits poking at the ground where his car had been parked. “Anything?”
“With the ice it’s tough to say, but there could be some fluid here,” one of the evidence technicians answered before looking back to see who was doing the asking. When she did her eyes flared. “It was your car?”
“Was it brake fluid?”
“Could be.” Shit, he looked like a punching bag. “We’ll have to check.”
Dooley looked across the lawn to the house he’d made love in just a few hours earlier. Mary was there, on the porch, a bathrobe down to her slippers. She put a hand to her mouth and started to cry.
“Why don’t you go to the hospital?” Joel suggested again, trailing the man who was one fine example of the walking wounded.
Dooley faced him and asked, “Have you checked to see where Chuckie was?”
Joel scratched above one eye. “You think it was him.”
“The little son of a bitch has it in for Mary. I was here. He doesn’t like me either.”
“There’s a problem with that,” Joel said. “You see that old lady the sergeant is talking to?”
Across the street from Mary’s house the old woman Joel spoke of stood at the curb, a stone’s throw from the paparazzi with press passes around their necks. She wore a short coat over a long nightgown and was talking fast to the officer with a clipboard. “A witness?”
“Yes.”
“What did she see?”
“She guesses it was around seven when she saw a bunch of kids no higher than your side view mirror hanging around your car. She thinks one of them crawled under it. She figured they were playing hide and seek or something.”
“How many kids?” Dooley asked. His stomach burned suddenly, angrily.
“Four or five.”
“Son of a bitch.” Dooley stalked in a tight circle, fists digging at his hips. The blood that had stopped from the cut above his right eye began to flow again. “Little motherfuckers.”
“We’ll deal with—”
“Hold that thought,” Dooley said, and left Joel talking to himself. He strutted through the white picket fence and stopped close to Mary without stepping onto the porch. “Did they know I was going to be here?”
“Who?” Mary asked, shocked because she knew who he meant. I made love to you. Why can’t you believe like I do? (Why do I believe?) “They couldn’t do—”
“Did they know?!”
Mary wiped the tears as they fell. She might have said something. No, she had said something. Something about... “I said I was going to see you tonight.”
“You told them that?”
“I told you I did. To give them a deadline.”
“Jesus, Mary! Now what do you think?”
She sniffled. The hound opened its hot eye again and stared out of the inner darkness at her. “I still believe,” she said (obediently?).
Dooley shook his head slowly at her, as if he were a judge high on his bench wordlessly scolding some miscreant. He was two people right then; one made of want, one of anger. “They sure know how to take care of their own problems. I wonder where they learned to do that?” He started to walk away.
“I can give you a ride home, Dooley,” Mary shouted to him, her words quick and desperate.
“I’ve made arrangements,” he snapped, loud enough that Mary and most of the block could hear it. He went to one of the county sheriff’s cruisers and sat on its warm hood.
Ten minutes later Karen pulled up and ran to her ex husband. She dabbed the cut over his eye with a tissue and didn’t notice him looking past her. “My God, Dooley. What have you gotten mixed up with?”
“Just a case,” he said confidently, but the truth was far from that wishful answer. It was more than that. What, he didn’t know. But more. Personal now. Close.
He’d been close to cases before. Many times. Lots of times, his maddened thoughts lied to him.
Not close like this. Not close where he’d become a target.
Not close like this in other ways, as well, he knew, watching now as Mary retreated inside her house, her face buried in her hands.
“Dammit,” Karen commented quietly, blue and red spokes pasting she and her ex every second or so. “Are you okay?” She moved his chin gently so he was looking at her now. “Are you?”
He met her strong, worried gaze and felt himself calm. “I’m cut pretty good, I guess.”
“Do you want to go to the hospital?” she asked him, expecting the answer and ready for it.
“I hate hospitals,” he said. He knew he needed stitches, and he’d had stitches before. He hated the idea of some intern gawking at his wrists and asking, just for the records, of course, What happened there, Mr. Ashe? Did you...
A low light had been on in the bedroom, Dooley recalled for some reason, and Mary had pulled his shirt off, had run her hands over his arms. Over his wrists. Had looked at them. Had planted tender, cool kisses on them.
...cut yourself, Mr. Ashe?
Karen nodded. “All right. I can call John. Nan’s husband?”
“I remember him.” John Grant, with his wife Nanette, was one of the many friends they’d shared while married. Most had gone to Karen in the unwritten settlement that ended their union.
“He’s a doctor,” Karen said as she folded the tissue to a part not yet stained red and touched it to another cut along the line of his jaw. “I’m sure he can take a look at you.”
After a moment’s contemplation, Dooley accepted the suggestion with a nod.
Karen put her palm to the small of his
back and helped him to her car. As she drove away he stared back at the pretty little house with a white picket fence around its yard.
Karen noticed his interest and gave the dwelling a casual once over. To her it looked peaceful and warm, but her ex was gawking at it like something dear to him had died there.
Twenty Four
Class had begun and Michael was at the front of the room, his attention just shifting to the flag, when the door opened.
Dooley stopped barely inside, giving the door just enough room to close. His face was pocked with small red scabs and a few longer crimson welts. A fist-sized bruise lay along the left side of his jaw.
Most in the class thought he looked like he’d lost a fight. A few knew better.
Mary’s right hand had been almost to her heart when he entered. Now it collapsed into a loose fist, bunching the sweater in the small valley between her breasts.
“I’ll just stand back there,” Dooley told her. His words were edged with a razor sharp certitude that spoke a silent challenge: And you just try and stop me. He was here, alive, bloodied but breathing, and he wanted them all to know it. Wanted them to know that he was going nowhere.
As he walked to the back of the room he looked at the body of the class. All the shocked little faces washed away to blurry splotches of color that could have been crafted by a kindergartner with crayons. All but six.
He gave them each a portion of his attention, but settled on Joey and kept his eyes focused there until el presidente turned away. Fuck you, Dooley thought.
It felt good to be angry at a child. He had a reservoir of that animus saved up.
When their unexpected visitor had found his spot at the back of the class, Mary recomposed herself, cleared her throat, and flattened her hand over her heart. The students followed her lead and shifted their eyes from Dooley to the flag. “Michael...”
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