Primal Threat

by Earl Emerson

Stacy was an entirely different proposition. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, she was coming off a delicate, windblown perch she’d been poised on the last few years, and Zak didn’t want anything to disturb her equilibrium. After almost ten vagabond years of moving from city to city and state to state, she had finally settled down in Seattle and obtained a part-time position delivering mail for the US Postal Service, a job she was overqualified for but loved. In years past she’d been a legal secretary, a doctor’s assistant, and a supermarket manager, and was now trying to finesse her way into a permanent position with the USPS. When you thought about it, her story was even stranger than Al’s. In fact, when you thought about it, everyone in his family had an odd story except Zak. At least that was how Zak viewed it.

  10

  “Forty–love,” Nadine said, after tossing the yellow tennis ball into the sky and whacking it with all her might. Zak was only able to return a fraction of her serves, though he was doing better on his volleying, but even those points were infrequent against Nadine’s powerful returns and anticipation. After half an hour he noticed she was having a harder time moving to her right than her left, no doubt because her left leg still had pins in it, but the inside knowledge helped only a little.

  She was surprisingly aggressive, putting him away with wicked overhands, grunting as she smashed the ball into his court. Her thighs were tan and thick with muscle, and her calves flexed as she moved in the sunshine. She rarely hit the net and almost never sent a ball out of bounds. She had one grunt for her forehand and another distinctive sound when she put both hands on the racket for a backhand. He began to find the grunts endearing.

  “You’re not going to win this one,” Zak said, even as they both knew she certainly was—she’d won every game so far. The ball landed inside the line on her right side, and she returned it as hard as she could, but he’d run up to the net and was able to tap it inside the left corner for a point.

  “Nice,” she said.

  “Thanks. How much longer do you want to play?”

  “As long as you can stand it.”

  “I was just thinking it looks like your ankle’s starting to bother you.”

  “Is that why you were hitting more to that side?”

  “You noticed that?”

  “Sure. It is getting sore, but I don’t have anybody lined up to play tomorrow, so I’ll swim and that’ll give it an extra day of rest.”

  “Are you trying to wear me out, Nadine?”

  “Your serve.”

  “You can’t wear me out. You can beat me, but you can’t wear me out.”

  “I’m killing you.”

  “And enjoying every second of it, aren’t you?”

  “Serve.”

  In Nadine’s mind every minute on the court was clearly for tennis; she didn’t like resting or talking. All she wanted to do was play. He knew he couldn’t beat her, but he was determined to grind her down and maybe get a few points, even win a game if he could. He’d been an athlete all his life and thus admired her innate aggressiveness, her dogged determination to do him in. In many ways she reminded him of his dead sister, Charlene, who had been a high school swimmer and was just as tenacious in competition. Zak stopped mentally compiling the similarities between Nadine and his sister when he realized they’d both been in rollover accidents, and that he’d saved one and not the other.

  It was May, and he was starting to put in some of the hardest rides of the year on the bike. This was going to tear his legs up for the ride later in the day. Yet she was so aggressive, and excelled so at the game, that he played for the first half hour in sheer wonderment. She’d seemed so ingenuous and gullible off court, so simple and uncomplicated, yet on court she was complex, tricky, and imbued with a killer instinct he hadn’t seen often in women. Unlike a lot of females playing against a male, she didn’t give an inch.

  “Is this where you always play?” he asked.

  “At Seattle U. They have indoor and outdoor courts. And at the Seattle Tennis Club. When I wasn’t at school, that’s where I always went. It was easy to pick up a partner there.”

  “So why aren’t we there today?”

  “There are too many people I don’t want to run into.”

  “I can’t imagine there are any people you don’t want to run into.”

  “You have to see the tennis club to understand.”

  “You’re talking about your boyfriend, aren’t you?”

  “He gets funny when I’m with another guy.”

  “Then why isn’t he playing you?”

  “He likes to win too much to play me.”

  “Your boyfriend was that guy visiting your brother the other day?”

  “Scooter. We’ve been together just over a year.”

  At the two-hour mark Zak noticed she’d begun limping badly. “Listen,” he said, “I don’t want you to overdo it, and I’ve got things to do, so why don’t we just say you won?”

  “Finish this game?”

  “Okay.”

  Afterward they packed up their rackets while two men who’d been waiting impatiently for an open court began warming up. Zak walked her to her car, a white Lexus SUV identical to the one she’d rolled in February, parked in the main lot near the paved trail that circled Green Lake, the most popular walking trail in the city. As they approached her car, she said, “No wonder you’re always getting hurt.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not exactly a natural athlete, are you?” Zak smiled not at how many times she’d made him look like a fool on the court, but at how wrong she was in her estimate of his athleticism. He decided not to tell her he was planning a sixty-mile ride later in the day, that the road rashes she’d seen were the result of daredevil stunts, not the boneheaded mistakes of a novice she assumed they were.

  “Oh, my Lord,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Somebody’s been in my car.” There was no sign of forcible entry, but somebody had rifled through the CDs, emptied her glove box, and taken a spare racket out of the case. “The racket alone is worth six hundred dollars. At least it’s still here. Everything’s still here. It’s just messed up. I wonder why they didn’t take anything.”

  “Maybe they were looking for cash. You sure you locked it?”

  “Yes. I wasn’t even parked that far away. Half the time I could see the roof from the tennis court. How could this happen with all these people around?”

  “I don’t know, but you’re shaking.”

  “I’m cold. I’ve got some warm-ups in the back…if they’re still there.” She opened the back door and sat on the seat with her feet in the parking lot, slipping into a pair of sweatpants. “Do you think I should call the police?”

  “Of course.”

  “I wonder how they got in without breaking anything?”

  “Does anybody else have a key?”

  She was quiet for a few moments. “Maybe I’ll call the police when I get to school. Gee. I’m scared to get in now. Isn’t that funny?”

  “Why don’t we walk across the street and get some coffee at Starbucks? Give you a chance to let this wear off. We can sit in the sun and dry off, and I’ll walk you back.”

  “I thought you had somewhere you had to be.”

  “I have time.”

  “Sure. That would be nice.”

  They locked her car and walked across the field past the children’s playground, Nadine choosing to carry her expensive rackets rather than leaving them in the Lexus. She ordered a mocha while he had a soy latte. They paid individually and sat at a table on the sidewalk at the busy intersection, watching cars and pedestrians, joggers, bicyclists, and women pushing prams.

  “Is your boyfriend the jealous type?”

  “I guess you could say that.” She sipped her mocha and gazed across the street at two women jogging side by side. “I don’t want to talk out of school, so I really shouldn’t say anything more about him.”

  “What? You think I’m going to tell him
what you said?”

  She crossed her legs and looked him in the eye. “Scooter doesn’t like you. Not from that first time at the fire station. I think it was because you saved me. It makes him feel insecure. He’s a complicated personality. Don’t judge him too harshly. He’s got a lot of good qualities that most people don’t see.”

  11

  August

  Everyone in the camp was embroiled in a conversation except Zak, who slumped in the camp chair and stared into the fire. Building a fire was careless and dim-witted—but worse, each of the cyclists, including him, had chosen the cowardly path by not insisting they put it out. Certainly if he hadn’t been playing Hugh, Muldaur would have reverted to his fire officer role and taken charge.

  Stephens was talking to the Jeep guys about the economy and various hot market tips he’d either heard about or invested in recently. Even though Scooter probably had control of more money than Stephens would see in his lifetime, Stephens lectured the younger man on the vagaries of the market and the tribulations of investing in overseas exchanges. Maybe it was the age factor, Stephens being almost thirty years older.

  Meanwhile Muldaur wandered around the camp, butting into conversations and making a nuisance of himself the way he did at the firehouse when he visited other shifts.

  “It’s getting real hot,” Hugh said. “The fire’s making me sweaty.” He walked over to Giancarlo. “Aren’t you getting sweaty?”

  Giancarlo smiled. “Not yet. I’ll let you know.”

  “Maybe if you took that helmet off, you wouldn’t be so hot,” blurted Kasey from the other side of the encampment. Hugh ignored him and stared at the fire. It was part of Hugh’s act to select one or two in a group to ignore.

  Nadine had taken Zak to Lake Roosevelt with most of these people, and he knew they were boy-men: their brains filled with nothing more than thoughts of drinking parties and days with no responsibilities.

  “Remember that time we went to Mexico and picked up those whores?” Scooter said. “We kept telling them we were with the Mafia? And Fred’s said she had crabs. Fred says, ‘I don’t care,’ and brings crabs back to Julia and then tries to blame it on her for not using the paper cover on a public toilet seat. Then she dumps him.”

  “We broke up for other reasons,” Fred announced, downing one Budweiser and popping the cap on another.

  “You broke up because of crabs,” yelled Scooter, laughing. Fred shrugged it off and swigged from his bottle, which looked, in his massive hands, as if it were designed for a child. He and Chuck were football players, and Kasey said often to their faces that he kept them around less for their witty repartee than for protection. Although Giancarlo was thirty pounds lighter, he could probably outmuscle either of them, but then Giancarlo was a freak of nature. “My favorite was when we were racing your father’s Maserati all through Bellevue that night,” said Kasey to Scooter, “and we found those guys in another Maserati. What were the odds? So it’s like neck and neck, and then they pull into that TacoTime and we keep going and we see these cops, so you pull a U-ie in the middle of Bellevue Way, right in front of the cops, and then solo all over Bellevue making sure you don’t lose the cops until right before the TacoTime, and they go in and arrest the two guys with tacos in their hands. That was hilarious.”

  “How about that time after you got your pilot’s license and we were flying over your ex-girlfriend’s cabin on Orcas Island,” said Scooter, tapping Kasey on the shoulder. These boys were showing off now, attempting to impress the older cyclists with how carefree and wonderful their lives were, hoping to establish a power structure based on anarchy. Alcohol had to be playing into it, Zak thought. “Remember that? We were going to toss out some Baggies filled with flour, you know, bomb the house, but you decided to toss out the whole twenty-pound bag, and it went through their skylight and almost killed the maid.”

  “Hey, shut up,” said Kasey. “You know they’re still looking for the guys who did that.”

  “They’re still looking for a lot of people,” said Scooter. “That doesn’t mean they’re going to find anybody.”

  “Just don’t be blabbing our business all over, would you?”

  “Is it all right if I tell them about the time we got Ryan so sick on tequila he threw up all over his father’s office downtown? We were down there to watch the fireworks, and the next Monday the suckers all came to work and booted up their computers and started smelling Ryan’s dinner.”

  “That wasn’t funny,” said Ryan Perry. “My father still doesn’t trust you guys.”

  “We’re not the ones who barfed,” said Scooter.

  The war stories continued until Kasey said, “When you think about it, the good times are about over.”

  Stephens, who was in his late forties, said, “You know, you’ll remember these days with fondness. We all…well at least I still remember crazy stuff I did when I was twenty. How about you, Zak? I’m sure you have some stories to tell.” Stephens had tried earlier to get him to join in.

  “Not a one.”

  “Well, you know. It’s definitely a crazy time.”

  Hugh broke the silence that followed by launching into a long story about his uncle who got a hook caught in his nostril while fly-fishing. Sensing that the tale would go in circles the way his jokes had, the others began interrupting, and soon there were two or three conversations looping across each other. Hugh kept chattering while Jennifer looked on with wary fascination. Though he said nothing and was not outwardly judgmental, Zak knew Giancarlo was uncomfortable with the boasting and the tales of hijinks. Giancarlo came from a deeply religious family where everybody toed the line and family gatherings were of great importance. Zak admired his ability to withhold judgment, because Zak himself was critical of almost everything he disagreed with and wished above all else that he wasn’t. It was one of the qualities he liked most about Nadine: her ability not only to tolerate differing opinions and outlooks, but actually to embrace them.

  Stephens and Morse clearly felt more at home with this group than the three firefighters, turning the conversation back to the stock market and investments, dropping numbers and amounts of money, each group trying to impress the other. Morse, Zak knew, had worked his way up from a blue-collar family to his current position as labor negotiator and was proud of it, while Stephens’s parents had been elementary school teachers—though to hear him talk, you’d think they’d been on the board at General Motors.

  Zak looked around to make sure Hugh wasn’t getting into trouble and discovered that Jennifer had placed the TV in front of him; he was raptly watching Die Hard 2, mouth agape, cheeks flabby and expressionless. It was uncanny how easily he could alter his appearance. Muldaur was fond of telling his crew that each of them was a bullet in the brain away from being a moron; by becoming Hugh, he’d found a way of illustrating it.

  Zak found it interesting that half the time these Jeep guys were bragging about their family money and how much they were going to make in their lifetimes, and the rest of the time they were boasting of indiscretions, many of which were illegal and most of which were unethical. They seemed to be stuck midway in a netherworld between reckless brats and self-satisfied billionaires.

  12

  August

  Trailing a drag chute of dust, the Ford Expedition looked like an official vehicle, and Zak wondered if they weren’t about to be cited for trespassing, maybe even arrested. He wasn’t sure who owned this land, but he knew it held tens of millions of dollars’ worth of timber, and he had a feeling the owners would not be happy at the thought of interlopers starting fires.

  Zak was walking toward the bluffs for a better view of the Expedition when he noticed an enormous malamute curled up beside a tree. Without raising its head off its paws, the dog bared his teeth and then lunged at Zak.

  The dog was less than a foot from Zak’s face when he was jerked to a halt on the end of a chain. Standing on his hind legs and straining against the chain, the dog was almost as tall as Zak. He could
feel the dog’s breath on his eyelashes.

  “Dozer! Dozer!” Jennifer Moore said, grabbing the dog by his collar. “Sit. You silly thing.” She turned to Zak. “Don’t mind him. He’s just hot and irritated. Aren’t you, honey!” She began slapping the dog’s hide while he continued to snarl at Zak.

  When he got to the side of the mountain, he saw the white Expedition traverse the bridge and head up the mountain on the road the cyclists had used. If it had only been the cyclists, the Expedition would drive right on past without realizing anybody was there, but with all these vehicles and the campfire…there was little chance they would be overlooked.

  The Expedition chugged up the steep road and turned directly into the short spur, parking near the campfire. Almost immediately four young women got out. One of them was Nadine Newcastle. Without introductions, the girls spilled into camp. Clearly they all knew Kasey and the others. Nadine nodded diffidently at Scooter, and said hello to Jennifer, a friend since long before she’d begun dating Chuck Finnigan. Then Nadine and one of her friends walked over to Scooter, and the three of them stepped behind the Land Rover and entered into what appeared to be a weighty discussion. After a few minutes, Nadine abandoned the others and walked directly to Zak.

  “This is my fault,” she said.

  “What’s your fault?”

  “Them following you up here. You told me last night about this bike trip, and I guess I mentioned it to a couple of people. Anyway, Scooter found out. If I’d had any idea they were going to dog you, I would have kept my big mouth shut. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m just sorry they found you. Do you hate me?”

  “Of course I don’t hate you.”

  “Well, I don’t see any major rioting. Maybe it will be okay. As soon as Mom told me Kasey and his friends were headed up into the hills near North Bend, I knew what was going on. I just had to come up and find you and make sure everything was all right. I know what Scooter is capable of, and I know how intolerant you are of anybody with money…I just thought it would be a lethal combination. What have they done so far?”