"You seem tired."
"Your dad kept me up late."
"How did it go?"
"We cuffed six home invaders in about thirty seconds. You father blew a kid's hand off, then one of the Men blasted the rest of them with twelve-gauge beach sand. When the lights went on the Bolsa Cobras looked like gophers caught above ground."
"Do you find that impressive?"
"The kid with no hand did. How involved are you?"
"Well . . . Dad's been trying to get me on board for about; year now. He supported my college, but he's less enthused about me practicing veterinary than helping him run the Ops. He': made no secret of it—he'd like me to run the business when he': too old."
When the final bills come due, John thinks. Sooner than she knows?
"You're not tempted?"
"Tempted, maybe. I'd like to please him. But I can't say that security and privatized law enforcement really turn this girl on It would be years before he really needed me. I could practice veterinary, think about it. More to the point is, I don't approve of blowing off people's hands."
"There's that."
"And that's why I'm taking my time."
"He must make lots of money."
"It's unbelievable. The Ops is international, you know. We just inked a deal with the Ugandan Development Ministry. What they're developing is a SWAT team to kick tribal butt fast and hard. It's a three-million dollar deal over time. But the foreign stuff is just kind of glamorous. The high-tech industrial accounts we have in Irvine alone account for a million a year. That's not including personal security and investigations."
"He told me that the Ops does vengeance. For money."
Valerie shrugged. John could feel her fingers tighten against his own. "That's not really true. Dad exaggerates."
"He sounded serious."
"There were a couple of creeps let go on legal technicalities. Real flagrant miscarriages. One was a stalker with a former for forcible rape. The other one a thug hired by an ex-hubby. They walked before trial. Both of their victims had contracts with us. Well, the pay-per-mug just plain disappeared. The stalker got squashed in a hit-and-run. I won't say anything more about them because that's all I know. I've heard a few things spoken, but nothing really said, if you get the drift."
They round the western shore. With the Big House and all its subordinate buildings now invisible behind the island, John feels the expansive privacy of a world of nature without men.
"Goodness, it's nice out here," says Valerie. "So, dad sees me as the front-woman for Liberty Ops, and Lane wants to head up day-to-day stuff. I'm not sure if Dad wants Lane in that position. I know he's trying to vett Sexton's worth. Adam's great with people but he doesn't know much about the day-to-day things. Does he want to put you to work, too?"
"I sense that. I, uh . . . participated last night. Tangentially. He gave me a little task for today."
"What?"
"Contact Susan Baum of the Journal and set up a meeting with her."
John feels Valerie's hand go stiff now, and the sudden tension in her arm. For a long while she says nothing, but John still feels the strong energy inside her.
"What?" he finally asks.
"I hate that self-righteous cunt. Dad does, too. She crucified Pat for no reason, then went after Dad. Dragged up a bunch of crap that wasn't true, published it to a million-and-a-half Orange Countians. No apologies when Teresa Descanso finally couldn't positively identify Patrick. Patrick, with the 'innocent certitude of a Mormon zealot.' Baum never even met my brother. Hardly a mention in the Journal when Liberty Ops turned over the real rapist to the cops a year later. Not hot. Not news. I can't imagine one reason on earth why he'd want you to contact her now, except maybe to . . ."
"What?"
"Nothing. I was going to say put a bullet between her eyes, but I'm a little peeved. I wouldn't have really meant it."
"Someone already tried that."
"That skinhead dweeb from Alamo West, according to the FBI and the Journal."
She looks at him, the smooth skin of her face flushed pink and her dark brown eyes aglitter. The tensile strength of her grip recedes and she squeezes his hand gently.
"I know. I have a bad temper sometimes. When it comes to the people I love—or hate."
"Do you think he'd really want her dead?"
Valerie looks up at him again as they walk. "No. Not any more."
"He did, once?"
"Sure. I did, too. It's over now. Pat's gone and the rage abates."
"He said he wants to talk to her."
"That might be hard, given that she's paranoid now. Paralyzed by fear that someone will try her again. By her own profitable, unparalyzed confession, that is."
"I think that's where I'd come in."
Valerie looks at him, then out at the water, then to the little stand of toyon trees ahead of them. "Here," she says, pulling him along. "Here's where we should eat."
They find a clearing. They each hold two corners of a soft white acrylic blanket and set it on the ground amidst the toyon trees. A little cluster of the red berries falls to the blanket, tiny red apples in ultraminiature.
Valerie reaches into the basket and pulls out a gas lantern.
"For later," she says, setting it aside.
Out come two perfect oranges, a bottle of Zinfandel, a loaf of bread wrapped in foil, a triangle of cheese and a large plastic bag filled with chunks of white meat.
"No wonder that thing was so heavy," says John.
His first long sip of the wine is a communion with Rebecca that ends in a shudder as he pictures her image from the night before. To you. His second drink is to the woman beside him.
"Cold?"
"No."
"You shivered."
"The wine."
"That makes no sense."
She moves close to him, one arm against his. "Eat your lunch."
He pulls out a fine-ribbed segment and tries it. It tastes of garlic, mesquite smoke and faintly of flesh. He has never had a firmer, subtler meat. "Catfish from the lake?"
"Not fish at all."
He examines the piece in his fingers, the thick spine and close ribs curved in unison. In his mouth it has the feel of abalone. "Oh. Now that's funny."
She giggles. "Going to be sick?"
"No. It's good."
"Freshness counts."
"You retrieve it after our walk?"
"Straight into the marinade. Ten minutes on a side in the Weber. Not in the little cookbook they give you."
"Well," he says, swallowing and lifting his wine glass. "Here's to shooting the devil before he speaks."
"To the new improved Eve."
"To aspiring vets."
"To safe puppies," she says.
"To wasting not."
"To wanting not."
"Young lady, you seem to have it all," he says.
"I would like to."
Suddenly her eyes are point blank and her nose is against his cheek and her lips are on his. Her breath smells, illogically, of milk. Her fingers on his face feel cool. When she pushes him back her hair falls forward to make a shade that smells like apples. She cradles the back of his head as she might an infant's as he settles onto the blanket and her tongue comes past his teeth. He feels its changing girth, the slickness of its bottom. John places his hands on her face, then her neck and shoulders, then runs them down her arms. She is tense as a bulldog, he thinks, and just as strong. She's trembling. Over him, her weight shifts and he feels the loop of his belt pulled up, then a long strong yank that frees hole from shaft, then strap from buckle. But when she tries to pull it free it sticks from its own friction and she only manages to turn him half onto his side.
"Uh, Val, it's kind of stuck. I can—
"No."
He feels her weight vanish. Then she's standing over him with a half-stricken expression, smoothing her dress with her hands, her eyes riveted on the ground, face red as a Christmas tree bulb.
"I thought you ju
st . . . I'm awfully sorry. It's my mistake, John. Just forget it."
"Come back."
"Oh, no. Really, it's not... I shouldn't be—"
"You don't have to."
"Goddamnit."
He laughs.
"Do not laugh at me."
"You're funny."
"This isn't funny."
"It should be. You almost tore that belt in half, you know."
She still won't look at him. "I'm trying to . . ."
"I know what you're trying to do."
"Ah shit, John, I don't know how you do this."
"I know you don't."
Finally she looks at him, just a glance. Then she shakes her head. "I'm such a spaz."
"Come here. You don't have to do everything. You don't have to do anything. Just come here and lie down with me and be quiet. Okay?"
Her face is still ablaze and her eyes are flittering everywhere again, like birds looking for somewhere to land. "You know I'm pretty good at just about everything. I can shoot and cook and think and get into vet—"
"Can you lie down and shut up?"
Eyes still on the ground in front of her, she moves toward the blanket, then lies down. Her back is to him.
"No reason to pout, you know."
She says nothing, so he props up on an elbow and strokes her hair. "It's even worse when you're a guy, because you can feel it being over with before you're even really started."
"Can't you fight it?"
"Not very successfully."
"It's just. . . kind of embarrassing, John."
"Well, don't be embarrassed. It's kind of funny, anyway."
"It is?"
"If you picture what you're doing, or if you watched it on a screen, I think you might find yourself laughing."
"I watched a dirty movie once, and laughed."
"Then there you have it."
"What do we do?"
"Why don't we just wait until it happens?"
"I want it to happen now." She backs her rump and shoulders into him. "Found what I wanted. Had my heart set on it."
When she turns around to face him, her eyes are shiny and the pupils are big and her forehead beaded with sweat.
He moves on top and her legs part around his weight. He lifts them and the dress falls over her brown smooth knees.
"Don't stare." Her eyes are closed.
But he does stare while he sits back to work his pants down because she's naked underneath the dress and he just can't believe how good she looks. He scoots back into position and begins to see himself as a comic figure, not necessarily a good sign, he feels. But she's got him in one hand, stroking him hard, trying to pull him inside herself.
"Uh, easy does it, sweetness," he says.
"All right."
In the next whirling moments John's thoughts explode in rapid succession, like a line of bottles pierced by a single bullet. None stay whole long enough to name. They are shattered, derationalized, lost. He follows her adamant guidance, moving inside until he feels the threadlike sinuous resistance, then the quick gasp of her breath against his ear.
"Thought you were kidding, Val."
"No."
She uses her hands on his flanks to control him. She shudders and withdraws, opens and accepts. The increments of pleasure build and drop in John, whose thoughts careen back and forth between immensities of chaos and hyperfocus. He is a hawk streaking through blue. Does it hurt? He glides beneath a black tonnage of water. Does it actually tear? He is a thousand silver butterflies netted in skin. Are we smashing her hat?
"OH!"
"Sorry."
Her hands draw him deeper.
"Ooohr
"Go slow . .."
But he knows he is past it. She shivers and tightens around him—all of her—hands and fingers, arms and stomach, legs and mouth. He tries to be still but she forces him hard up inside her and John imagines the wash of dark red blood. Thinks it's imagination anyway. She's still shuddering and holding him tightly and he's aware for the first time of the nails jammed into the twin peaks of his ass and the cool-wet pain around them, of the groans vibrating from her throat into his, of the hissing of her nostrils tight against his face, and of the power of her legs clamped hard at his sides. All he can think to do is just wait, locked here like this. So he waits while her arms close around his shoulders and head, and the inside of her is jerking and he hasn't got clue one whether this is pain or pleasure until he looks down at her wide open eyes and the look of surprise on her face and the little lines at the edges of her mouth that suggest a smile. He tries to hold still but suddenly here comes a wholly unpostponable surge of effervescence that feels like a long fizzing string being drawn out of him. Out it goes. Then the riotous discharge of voltage, all the mixed up thoughts, the sweet shakes.
Time does pass.
"Oh," he finally says.
"Oh."
"Oh."
"Oh, my!"
chAPTER 34
When they wake up it is almost two. During their sleep someone has brought the sides of the blanket over them against the afternoon breeze, but John can't remember doing it and Valerie can't either. John's neck is stiff from the ground. Valerie's hat has blown up on its side against a toyon tree and stayed there. Her dress, which twenty-three years ago protected Carolyn as Carolyn protected her, is now wrinkled everywhere and spotted with blood. She stands in the clearing, twisting the stained part around so she can see it, and looks down at the material. John packs up the basket in a heavy silence that seems to him breakable only by meaningful discourse. But he can't think of anything to say that can approximate his feelings at the moment.
"The spring," Valerie notes. "I'll dip it in the spring to get out the stains."
"Are they bad, Val?"
"They add a primitive cache to the garment. It's a keepsake, after all. Imagine what I can tell my daughter about it."
"You all right?"
"I'm great. Don't you think so?"
She looks at him with the same matter-of-factness she looked at the stains with, then a little smile breaks across her mouth, but fades as her eyes well with tears.
"I sure do."
"Let's just walk with our arms around each other. We'll go see the spring in the cave and I'll wash the stains in the water."
"You know you could just take it to a good cleaner."
"I could tear it into gun rags, too."
They emerge from the trees, John with the basket again and Valerie holding her big flowery hat.
"I feel like a teenager who just got away with something," she says.
"Me, too."
"Twenty-two years one way, then you're another. I feel like I'm supposed to think of everything differently now. I don't feel really different, though. There's a pain down there, and some blood on my clothes. I know what it is to have a man inside. I've made the offer and had the taking. But I'm not so sure this is the most revolutionary moment of my life. I mean, I was really crushed when I found out there wasn't a Santa Claus."
"I guess I don't know what you mean."
"Well, you know, just a time when the illusion is gone. Or the change is made. The page is turned. You've thought about it a lot and then it happens and you're still the person you always were. It's good. You're still there."
"I'm glad you're still here."
She turns her face to him and consumes him with the darkness of her eyes. He can tell she's going to ask him how he feel about it and he wishes she wouldn't. Too many gradients of the truth to register. Too much complexity to unite.
But she doesn't ask that, exactly. She looks away, out toward the water and leans her head against his shoulder.
"Does this mean I have to love you?"
He laughs. Then, quietly: "I don't think so."
"Well, I do. So there."
"Then that's a good thing."
John marvels for the millionth time in his life: How can a woman lead you to say something that's true in the way you say it but not true
in the way they hear it? Somewhere in between the meaning changes direction, like a signal bounced off a relay. You both know it, which complicates rather than simplifies.
The Triggerman Dance Page 32
