by Gwen Florio
“This never happens,” Lola mouthed to Dave. The prospect of the hike back to Dave’s car, so short on the way in, seemed infinitely less desirable with the burden of a sleeping child. She said as much to Dave.
“Not an issue,” he said. He pointed to a tall sagebrush casting a fat shadow. “Why not let her nap in the shade? She’ll wake up full of energy.” He stood and shifted things off the blanket, and tugged it beneath the bush. Lola followed, looking hard once again for snakes. She didn’t see any. She prodded the base of the bush with her foot, wishing she’d opted for boots over the thin-walled running shoes in which she had never once run. Nothing rattled.
“All right, I guess.” She laid Margaret in the shade and looked around for Bub. He rose, shook sand from his silky fur, and positioned himself beside the sleeping child.
“Sweet,” said Dave. He kicked off his sandals and shucked out of his shorts.
“What the hell are you doing?” Lola hissed.
He pulled his shirt over his head. “Going for a swim,” he said. He stepped out of his underwear as he walked away. Clothed, he looked skeletal. Bared, his long body revealed itself as lean muscle, deep tan lines bisecting his upper arms and thighs. “You coming?”
Muscle, thought Lola, and one very sweet ass.
“Hell, yes,” she whispered, as she peeled off her own clothes and jogged behind him toward the water.
NINETEEN
Dave was right about the long expanse of shallows. Lola floundered toward him, desperate for deep water to cover her small, high breasts and the profusion of curls between her legs. Although she refused to wax, she understood that women just a few years younger considered it an integral part of grooming. For all their male contemporaries knew, adult women remained as bald down there as the little girls with whom the boys once had played doctor.
She wondered if Dave would find that a turn-off, then told herself it didn’t matter, because nothing was going to happen between them. The skinny-dipping was just a lighthearted romp, something she could have done as easily with her friend Jan. Bullshit, a voice said within. The water lapped at her thighs. She dove into it, closing her eyes against it, letting it flow into her ears, blocking out the inconvenient voice. When she came up, crouching so that only her head and shoulders were above the water, Dave was beside her.
“Let’s go out to the middle.” He put both hands on her shoulders and slid them down her arms, fingertips brushing her breasts along the way. He locked his hands around her wrists and towed her into deeper water, seemingly unconcerned that standing to do so momentarily exposed him. Lola glanced away, although not before noticing that he was proportionate to those long arms and legs. The footing fell away beneath them and Dave dropped her hands. Lola paddled backward to a safe distance and let her feet sink beneath her, treading water.
“What do you think?” Droplets of water sparkled on Dave’s lashes.
Think of what, Lola wondered? His naked self? His naked self and hers, together?
“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?”
Unless Dave’s ego exceeded even that of any healthy young male of the species, he was talking about the lake in which they hung suspended.
His arms skated across the top of the water, bringing him closer. Lola forced herself not to move away. She didn’t have anything to worry about, she told herself in the silent reminder quickly becoming a mantra, because Nothing Was Going To Happen.
His foot encountered hers again. He slipped it up her calf.
They sank below the surface, his hands running over her body, her pulling him close, sinking down, down into the darkness before she kicked free and shot for the surface and air and sanity.
“Charlie,” she gasped into the sunshine.
“Say what?” Dave surfaced behind her, wrapping her in his arms, hands to her breasts, moving himself between her legs. They sank again, Dave pulling her down against himself. Lola’s breath escaped in a moan, and then she needed air, blessed indispensable oxygen, its necessity saving her from herself. She twisted free and clawed toward the light, gasping as she broke the surface, spinning to face Dave before he could latch onto her again.
“Charlie,” she said. She sucked in more air.
“Who’s Charlie?”
“Margaret’s.” Gasp. “Father.” Lola took a deeper breath still as his feet found hers again. Her body yearned toward him in eager betrayal, her legs twining with his. He stroked the water with one arm—they’d stay above the surface this time, no last-second salvation—and let the other slide between her breasts and down her belly until the heel of his hand was pressed against her. He held it there, leaving it up to her to move against him. Which Lola felt herself do.
“Charlie,” she whispered.
“Charlie’s not here.”
“But. Oh.”
His hand moved, its motion timed to hers. “He’ll never know,” he said, his breath warm in her ear. “I’ve got a girlfriend back in Massachusetts. She’ll never know, either. Nobody gets hurt. Everything’s good. It is good, isn’t it?”
His tongue slid into her mouth and his hand moved to her breast and she wrapped her arms around him to keep from sinking, and her legs, too, and he was between them again and she knew in a second he’d be inside her, and God, she wanted him there, she was hot in a way she’d forgotten during the years of once-in-awhile, almost-married, hurry-up-the-kid’s-asleep sex she had with Charlie. She closed her eyes and saw Charlie’s face, broad and brown, his slow smile dissolving the harshness of its planes—“No!”
She shoved at Dave’s shoulders, disentangled her legs, and swam toward shore in a thrashing backstroke. The smooth rocks beneath her feet were the foundation she needed, each step on solid ground one more away from wavering madness, the water and all its seductive power sluicing from her body. She stumbled toward her clothes, yanking hard to pull them on over her dripping flesh, and fell onto the blanket beside Margaret. Only then did she turn and look toward Dave, following her out of the water, striding easy through the shallows, still hard, letting her see what she’d missed.
She turned away again and shook Margaret more roughly than necessary. “Wake up, honey. It’s time to go.”
Dave dropped them off at the supermarket parking lot where she’d left her truck. He’d chatted casually on the way back to town, letting her know everything was fine. Which was how guys like Dave operated, Lola supposed. He didn’t have the creepy vibe she associated with predators. He merely saw opportunity and gave it a shot, and moved on cheerfully if he got turned down. It had, in fact, been her own modus operandi in the years before she’d met Charlie. What bothered her was that Dave had sensed something receptive in her, and what bothered her even more was that she couldn’t deny it had been there.
TWENTY
That evening, Lola turned off the ringer on her phone so she’d be able to tell Charlie, truthfully, that she hadn’t heard it when he’d called.
Which of course didn’t stop her from seeing the calls stacking up in the “incoming” box, along with the texts and finally an email. “Check in. I’m worried about you.” The phone sat on the windowsill above the sink, blinking guilt at her as she washed the dinner dishes. Lola was worried about herself, too. Was her near-miss an impulse toward a last fling, one final romp before settling down? Or was it a sign that a fatal flaw lurked within her relationship with Charlie? More than anything, she resented the fact that his proposal brought such questions to the forefront of her consciousness. She’d have preferred things to remain exactly as they were, ignoring the need—if such a need existed—to probe deeper. “Cleopatra, Queen of Denial,” Charlie had called her more than once.
“Denial is a fine coping mechanism,” she’d retorted. “How do you think I got through all those years in Afghanistan without denying the reality that I could end up dead at any moment?” Which once again brought up the uncomfortable fact that, beyond suc
h flippant remarks, she’d refused deeper discussions of Afghanistan, deflecting Charlie’s questions with, “There’s no way to understand unless you were there.”
“I’m here,” he’d said.
They’d been on the reservation at the time, on their way home from visiting some of the aunties, the pickup rolling past settlements of flimsily built bungalows that, for lack of any alternative, housed far too many people; past the jobless young men smoking on the street corners; past the older ones who’d given up looking for work and turned to drink, the same way people in Afghanistan got hooked on the heroin that was for all practical purposes the only viable part of the country’s economy. Lola had, in fact, often spoken of her desire to write a series called “America’s Afghanistan,” a way to funnel her outrage over the way the government found it acceptable to let the reservations languish. “Five billion a month over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!” she’d sputter. “Put a single month’s spending into the reservations. That would fully fund the Indian Health Service, build enough houses for all the people on them, do real job training—”
Charlie’s indulgent smile, full of patience for the newly informed, stopped her. “I know, I know,” she’d smiled back. “Here comes another white person, charging in with all the answers.” But at least, she thought privately, her rant ended his questions about her own experience in Afghanistan.
A sharp pain in her ankle interrupted her reverie. “Ow!”
Jemalina shot squawking across the kitchen, Bub in respectful pursuit, close behind but not close enough to risk another peck on the nose. “Who let that goddamn—that flippin’—chicken in the house?” Lola scooped up a handful of soapy water and flung it Jemalina’s way, succeeding only in creating a slick spot on the floor. Bub hit it full tilt and slid into Jemalina. Feathers and fur flew. Margaret waded in, fearless, emerging with Jemalina in her arms. Bub retreated to a corner, licking new wounds, his blue eye, full of indictment, turned upon Lola.
Pal wandered out of the bedroom, eyes heavy with sleep or booze. Lola no longer cared which. At the moment, she was disenchanted with just about everyone she’d encountered that day—Dave and his damnable charm, Bub and his accusing stare, the fuzzy-footed chicken and her razor-sharp beak, and even Margaret for rescuing the creature from what might well have been certain death from Bub and resulting sweet relief for Lola.
Pal rubbed the stubble on her head and fell into one of the kitchen chairs. “What’s going on?”
“Somehow the chicken got in the house.”
Margaret scurried for the door, which Lola was pretty sure had not swung ajar by accident. “Good night, Jemalina,” Margaret sang out theatrically and made sure Lola could hear the door click closed.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Lola dried the dishes and put them away with rather more noise than necessary, emphasizing the fact that one of the adults in the house was doing all of the work.
“Too much racket,” said Pal. “Don’t sleep much, anyway.” Her eyes were red.
Could’ve fooled me, Lola thought. Pal retreated to the bedroom immediately after dinner each night, not emerging until Delbert’s arrival each morning. Lola, a longtime insomniac herself, often listened for the telltale rhythm of pacing footsteps, of the gurgling that would indicate a glass of water filled in the kitchen, or the flush of a toilet, but had yet to hear anything. She’d just assumed Pal drank herself into a nightly stupor. Well, she was sick of speculating about Pal. Time for some direct questions. Or at least, less indirect.
“Gotta be tough, losing a boyfriend. No wonder you can’t sleep.” Even to herself, Lola couldn’t pretend her voice held the least bit of sympathy, her words sounding exactly like the accusation they were.
Pal’s hands fell to the table. Her head snapped upward.
“Boyfriend? What boyfriend?”
“Oh, please.” Lola ran a towel around a final pot. She’d done a credible job with spaghetti, funneling her confusion over the afternoon with Dave into meatballs that to her surprise had turned out exactly the way the online recipe had promised. Both Pal and Margaret had had seconds, much to Bub’s dismay. Lola turned to face Pal, bracing her back against the kitchen counter. “Mike. Mike St. Clair.”
Pal passed a hand across her eyes. “Mike wasn’t my boyfriend. Where’d you get that crazy idea?”
So this was how it was going to be, Lola thought. First, Pal said she didn’t know poor suicidal Cody Dillon. Now she denied the man with whom she’d been in love. Or at least in lust. Given that she apparently was dealing with a pathological liar, Lola thought it best not to divulge where she’d learned what everybody in town already knew.
“I guess I just assumed,” she said. Hoping Pal didn’t know enough about reporters to realize that “assume” was a word that eclipsed the worst of curses.
Pal didn’t know. She stood up. “You assumed wrong,” she said. She strode from the table down the hall toward the bedroom, slamming the door so hard that Lola felt the reverberation in the kitchen.
“Three,” Lola said.
“Three what, Mommy?”
Three slammed doors, Lola thought. Tyson Graff at the hardware store. Tommy McSpadden’s mother. Now this.
“It’s not important, sweetheart. Mommy’s just set a new record is all.” Lola put the spaghetti pot in the cupboard and, just for the sheer hell of it, banged the door shut with as much force as she could muster. She hoped Pal could hear it in the bedroom. She doubted Pal cared.
The hardware store owner remembered Lola, emerging from the store’s dim interior as soon as she walked through the door the next day. Margaret wandered over to the popcorn machine and stood hopefully before it as the man approached. “You’re looking for Tyson.”
She hadn’t said anything. “I am,” she admitted.
He wore a green bib apron with his name stitched on it. “Carl.” As before, the store was empty of customers. “He’s not here.”
Tyson must have made it clear he didn’t want to talk to her again. Just as Dave had made it clear, when she’d forced herself after their encounter to call him and ask, that he wasn’t going to come with her. “You’re on your own on this one,” he’d said.
She’d promised herself not to beg. “But it’s a big story,” she’d blurted anyway. Which, she thought, she shouldn’t have had to point out. Most reporters she knew were like bird dogs on the hunt once they got even a whiff of story, let alone one of any size. Everything else—food, family, even sex—became secondary.
“Is that what this is about?” Dave had said. “Another feather in your cap?”
Lola expected questions like that from outsiders. She didn’t think she’d have to explain to one of her own that it went beyond that. “Dammit, it’s the human element. This war is more than Pentagon budgets and kill counts. But people want to ignore that. They can’t when you put something like this next to their breakfast cereal in the morning.”
“Put it on their phones, more likely,” Dave said.
Lola took a moment to let the crack at their age difference pass, and bit back a dig of her own. Coward, she’d thought, glad yet again she hadn’t slept with him. Cheating on her boyfriend was bad enough, but sex with a lazy reporter was its own special category of sin. The store owner spoke again, bringing her back to the task at hand.
“He quit.”
“Excuse me?”
Carl picked up a wrench and sat it back down with more force than necessary. Lola was getting sick of everybody banging things around. “Up and quit. After I spoke up in court on his behalf and everything. Guess he didn’t need me once they dropped that attempted murder charge.”
Lola sensed a potential ally. “I read in the paper about what you did. That was really nice of you.”
“He thought so, too. At the time.”
Lola veered away from the subject. Best not to ask too soon about what she so desperately needed
to know. Time to talk about the weather. “Hot out there.”
“Too hot.”
“How’s the snowpack?” Even after five years, she still thrilled to the fact that she’d learned the lingo, knew that water—actually, everyone in this part of the world called it “moisture”—was an all-consuming topic, and that instead of rain it came in the form of high-country snows whose springmelt fed the rivers and creeks, enabling the irrigation that had made white settlement possible in the West.
“Below average. Again.”
Lola whistled long and low. “Sorry to hear that. It’s the same up in Montana, where I’m from.”
“Saw your license plate. What brings you to Wyoming? Not Tyson.”
Nice, she thought, that he’d led her back on topic. She affected an airy laugh. “No, not Tyson. Just visiting friends on my way to Yellowstone.” She hurried on so that he wouldn’t ask about the friends. “Any idea where I can find Tyson? He’s the friend of a friend.” Which was sort of true, given that he and Pal and served together.
The wrench banged against the counter again. “Try the Mint. Back to the scene of the crime, you might say.”
“The scene of the crime,” Lola murmured as she left the store. “That would be my specialty.” She was back on the chase, slipping into the old well-oiled moves, shedding the confusion of the previous day with Dave. It felt familiar. It felt good.
TWENTY-ONE
It was either gutsy or truly stupid on Tyson’s part, returning to the bar where he’d gotten into so much trouble, Lola thought. She leaned toward the latter.
But The Mint presented problems of its own. It was one thing to bring Margaret along on interviews in a store, or at someone’s house, or even on a picnic where she’d ended up in near flagrante delicto as her daughter—please God—had lain sleeping. But a bar. That was another matter, despite the fact that Lola had seen her fair share of toddlers in Montana’s homespun bars, the kids’ lips and cheeks stained scarlet from a steady succession of maraschino cherries as their parents got shitfaced beside them.
