A hand gripped the muscle of his right shoulder. Another gripped his right hipbone.
He was flipped over onto his back.
She sat on the base of his stomach.
She was slapping his head, face, shoulders with both hands.
In the dark he tried to find her flaying arms, grab them, protect his head.
Finally he crunched his stomach muscles, sat up enough to get his arms around her back. He pulled her down to him.
She straightened her legs along his.
He rolled over on top of her.
She stretched her legs wide, hustled him inside her, gripped her legs behind his back.
It continued violent and was sudden.
Letting out a long exhale, she said: “Alixis.”
Then, almost immediately, she said: “More.”
There was more.
•
He did not realize the skin of his back was torn until the shower’s hot water hit it sometime later.
There was blood mixed with the water on the shower’s floor.
After drying off, he twisted to see the length of the gash on his back in the bathroom mirror.
Then he was sitting on the edge of his bed.
Behind him, on the bed, Alixis asked, “Anything the matter with you?”
“You cut me.”
“Oh, poor Jack.” Instantly, in the dark, the tips of her fingers ran along the cut on his back. She had known she had cut him, exactly where.
The cut was sticky and made her fingertips sticky.
He was still bleeding a little.
“Poor you,” she said. “Red blood. Red blooded boy.”
“Just thinking,” he said.
“What is poor bleeding boy thinking? Can’t afford the blood? Do you mind losing it that much?”
“If I did to you what you just did to me, I’d be in prison for twenty years.”
“Shit,” Alixis said. “I’m not the first girl who’s snuck into your bed while you were asleep and fucked your brains out.”
“No,” Jack said. “You’re not.”
“Boys like it any time, any place. Isn’t that right?”
Jack didn’t say anything.
“You all come with Everready batteries. I know that. I mean, you have it. You’ve got to give it. It’s got to go some place. Isn’t that true?”
He said, “Yeah.”
“And you can’t get pregnant.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Girls have something long considered an asset, something they can sell, give away, or not. It’s their choice.”
“And boys don’t have a choice?”
“Not if a girl wants it. Boys are sexy. They produce and produce and produce. Onto the ground or into a girl. It’s a girl’s choice to take it or not.”
“I see.”
“Boys can’t get hurt.” She knelt on the bed behind him. She folded her arms around his chest. She put her cheek on the top of his head. “Did poor Jack get hurt?”
“You can’t hurt a boy,” Jack said, “is what you said.”
“I’m sorry I scraped your back.” Moving against him, she was smearing the blood dripping down his back onto her belly.
“It’s all right.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Stings.”
“You shouldn’t even complain about it.”
“I’m not complaining.”
“You can’t say you didn’t enjoy it.”
“I enjoyed it.”
“Boys always enjoy it.”
“Sure,” he said.
“Sure,” she said. “Boys can’t stop themselves. Good boys always enjoy it. Good boys are fucking machines. They’re just there to be fucked. And what’s also nice is that they never complain.”
“No,” Jack said. “Never.”
She clutched his hair with her fingers and pulled his head back, way back. Her other hand clutched his extended throat, his neck muscles, and squeezed.
Her lips found his mouth. She forced her tongue through his lips, his teeth, into his throat.
He had to twist toward her. Again he wrapped his arms around her arms, around her back.
Alixis said: “More.”
There was more.
13
“You have a cut on your back.”
“Yes.” While Jack was raking the Japanese garden, Radliegh’s secretary, Nancy Dunbar, had come into the garden with a cup of coffee. She sat on the bench she and Jack had used the day before and lit a cigarette.
“Don’t let it get sunburned,” she said, “or you’ll have a scar there forever.”
“I know.”
It was early Saturday morning. Jack was in the shade of the garden’s wall.
“Do you have anything to tell me?” Nancy Dunbar asked.
His first time doing such a thing, Jack was trying to make an interesting design on the garden’s sand with his rake.
Did he have anything to tell her? In Nancy Dunbar’s words, “Any plans you hear anybody make; if you see people together you think don’t belong together; comments you hear people make about each other, Mr. Beauville, me, Doctor Radliegh….”
Only a few hours before, in the dark of his bedroom, he had found himself sucking his own blood from the tits of Doctor Radliegh’s younger daughter.
Jack had heard that same daughter say she didn’t care if her father was murdered; had heard Duncan Radliegh admit he had cheated to graduate from college, lied about applying to any business school, considered disobeying and selling stock in Radliegh Mirror to support his car racing interest and, Jack surmised, his drug habit.
He had seen the elder son, Chet, All-American quarter back, betrothed to Shana Staufel, demand sexual attention from the stableboy.
He knew there was a duffel bag full of beer under Peppy’s bed.
He had seen Doctor Radliegh himself and Shana Staufel sitting on a bench in a rose garden at dusk talking quietly while holding hands.
He had heard local people mock Nancy Dunbar.
“No,” Jack said. “Nothing.”
“You’ve heard, seen nothing which might be of interest to us?” Nancy Dunbar asked.
“Nothing.”
“You’re making the design in the sand too tight,” Nancy said. “Loosen up.”
“Loosen up?”
“Yes. Relax with the rake. Use it as a paintbrush.”
“I’ve never used a paintbrush,” Jack said, “except to paint a garage.”
“Think of an abstract painting,” Nancy said. “Make big swirls, curves, straight lines at odd angles.”
“Oh.”
“You’re too tight.”
He started over. He didn’t know what to do with the sand around the big, jagged rocks in the garden. He sensed the lines made by the rake’s tines ought not dead-end at the rocks, but flow around them somehow.
“It’s Saturday morning,” Jack said. “Not even eight o’clock.”
“Yes.” Nancy lit another cigarette.
“You work every day of the week?”
“I’m supposed to have Saturday afternoons and Sundays off.”
“Do you?”
“Maybe once a month. This isn’t a job, it’s a living. Doctor Radliegh’s mind never stops. And when he wants something, he wants it right away. He himself keeps a very tight schedule, but he never really knows, or cares, what time of day it is, or even what day it is. It’s a little hard to understand that, at first. It seems contradictory, doesn’t it?”
“Is that all right with you?”
“That’s fine with me. I am going to be able to leave here someday reasonably young, and very rich.”
“That’s nice.”
“By the way, there’s a big party here tonight.”
“You mentioned it.”
“You’re serving drinks, whatever.”
“Drinks? Here? At Vindemia?”
“Of course. Chester can’t dictate the habits of the whole world. Show up at the kitche
ns of the main house about five thirty. White shorts, dress white shirt. They’ll give you a blue bow tie when you get there.”
“Okay.”
“Tell me anything odd you hear, see, tonight.”
“Okay.”
“In the meantime, you can take this afternoon off.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean, don’t plan to leave Vindemia, in case somebody wants you. Like, go for a swim, or something.”
Eric Beauville, dressed in plaid shorts and a pink short-sleeved shirt, stood in the arched gateway of the Japanese garden. He had a manila folder in one hand.
“No, you’d better not go for a swim,” Nancy said. “You don’t want that cut on your back to scar.”
Beauville said, “A gardening accident?”
Jack said, “I got scraped.”
“Sure,” Beauville said. “Did the same tree give you those hickeys on your neck and chest?”
Nancy Dunbar looked at Jack with narrowed eyes.
Laughing, Beauville sat on the bench next to Nancy.
“I’m blessed by far-sightedness.”
“Who—?” Nancy started to ask.
Beauville nudged her. “Gimme a cigarette.”
She did so, and lit it for him.
“It’s nice that ladies can carry purses,” Beauville said, inhaling gratefully. “If old Chester ever spotted a package of cigarettes on me, he’d tongue whip me for weeks, and see that my health insurance premiums tripled.” He took another deep drag. “Yet I don’t seem to be able to get off this Goddamned place without an excuse from a doctor, which I can’t get, because Chester’s got a kept doctor on the estate.”
Nancy said, “I thought you were to play in a golf tournament in Sea Island this morning.”
“‘Were’ is right.” Beauville exhaled. “I were. Our inspired leader called me at five fifteen a.m. demanding a complete review of his Will, Estate, Trusts, cash in hand …”
“You mean ‘Will,’” Nancy asked, “as in Last Will and Testament?”
“Last Will and Testicles,” Beauville said. “Nicolson is flying in from Atlanta. Clarence is on his way here from Ronckton.”
Jack asked them: “Am I suppose to disappear at this point?”
“Naw,” Beauville said. “Without even checking, I know you’re not mentioned in the Will, What’s-your-name.”
Jack said, “That’s a relief.”
“I like the design you’re making,” Beauville said. “Nice and tight.”
“Thanks.”
“And you don’t look a bit Japanese.”
“Sorry.”
“Too tight,” Nancy said.
“That’s what I can do to annoy Chester,” Beauville said. “I can put the proposition to him seriously: If he has a Japanese garden, why doesn’t he have a Japanese gardener? I’ll hint he might be charged with discrimination.”
Nancy said, “He’d take it seriously.”
“I know he would. Someday I’d like to drive him as nuts as he drives me.”
“You’re not smart enough, Eric,” Nancy said.
Beauville said, “I can try.”
“What could he be thinking?” Nancy asked. “Why the rush review of his estate?”
Beauville extinguished his cigarette against the sole of his loafer. “Maybe Jim Wilson’s being killed by lethal gas in a laboratory where there wasn’t known to be any lethal gas yesterday has something to do with it.” He handed his cigarette butt to Nancy.
“Jim must have been planning some experiments of his own.” She put Beauville’s cigarette butt into the Ziploc baggy in her purse. “Or someone else at the lab was.”
“Sure,” Beauville said. “There’s an explanation for everything.”
Dunbar said, “Things happen.”
Beauville said to Nancy. “Chester didn’t want me to play in that golf tournament this morning. He never wants me to leave Vindemia. He’s afraid someone reasonable might make me an offer to run a reasonable company and live a reasonable way of life.”
“You never would,” Nancy said.
Beauville said: “In a heartbeat.”
He stood up. “Come on. You have to help me get some papers out of one of the smaller, underground, bombproof safes.”
She collected her purse and her empty coffee cup.
Looking at Jack’s raked design in the sand, Beauville said, “It’s gettin’ too loose now. I liked it better before.”
Scurrying after Beauville, Nancy Dunbar said, “It’s still too tight.”
14
“Here we are,” Fletch said. “I think.” There was no sign on the long, empty dirt road. There were just decayed fences extending out of sight both sides of the road.
“Oh, joy,” Crystal said from her bed in the back of the handicap van. “I finally get to meet Mister Mortimer, the meanest man in the world. Do you suppose he will hang me upside down by my toes?”
“He might.” A half mile down the road on the left a few buildings were visible in the shade of a clump of deciduous trees. Fletch felt for Mortimer. This sparse country was a long way indeed from the noisy arenas of the northeast. He almost felt guilty. “He just might.”
They were arriving at Mortimer’s boxing camp even earlier than Fletch had thought. It was five past eight. Neither Crystal nor he had slept well. They had gotten on the road before dawn. They stopped only twice for food and not at all for lavatory facilities. The first person Fletch asked in the small Wyoming town gave immediate, simple directions to the boxing camp. The local citizen Fletch asked said, “You mean that mean son of a bitch New York bastard?” He knew just where Mortimer lived.
Fletch said, “He may hang us both up by the toes.”
Fletch accelerated the van down the bumpy, dusty road.
“Fletch!” Crystal complained from the rear of the van. “You might bounce me off the bed!”
“I’ve decided to try to take the old bastard by surprise.” Seeing the place, Fletch considered that Mortimer had real reason to shoot Fletch on sight.
“Fletch, slow down!”
“Hang on!”
“Are you sure you’re doing the right thing bringing me here?”
“Of course not!”
“Help! Let me out!”
“Now, Crystal,” Fletch said in a reasonable tone. “You wouldn’t know you were in Wyoming without a rough ride.”
A lanky old man appeared at the edge of the cluster of trees surrounding the buildings. In one hand was a shotgun. He fired into the air.
A shirtless boy in shorts ran to a position a few meters from Mortimer and knelt on one knee. He, too, carried a shotgun. He took aim at the van.
He fired.
A puff of dust arose in the air just in front of the van.
“Fletch!” Crystal screamed. “They’re shooting!”
“They’re shootin’,” Fletch said, “but they ain’t hittin’.” He began swinging the van’s steering wheel. “Zigzag,” he said.
“Fletch! Enough of zigzag! I’m sloshing around back here!”
Through the rearview mirror, Fletch saw the bottom half of Crystal’s sheet rising into the air. She must be raising her legs, he realized.
He didn’t know she could do that.
Mortimer, having reloaded, fired at the van.
His shot went high.
Fletch left the road. He aimed the van straight at Mortimer. He accelerated.
Going over ground even rougher than the road made the van jounce wildly.
“Fletch!” Crystal sounded like she was strangling. “You’re beating me to death!”
Mortimer jumped out of the way.
Holding his shotgun by the barrel like a club, the boy ran after the van.
Fletch stopped the van near the buildings in the shade of the trees.
In the swirling dust, the boy stopped a meter from Fletch’s open window.
“Hi,” Fletch said through the window. “Are you Haja, or Ricky?”
“Ricky.”
&n
bsp; “What? Say that again.”
“Ricky.”
“Wow. ‘Ricky.’”
“What is the matter?”
“Never heard anybody say that before, I guess. That way.”
The sixteen year old had the perfect boxer’s build.
But his voice had a timbre that sounded as if it were coming from the back of a miles-long cave.
Ricky, holding the shotgun by the barrel with one hand, gently rested its butt on the ground. He positioned his legs oddly, creating the impression of being totally alert and relaxed at the same time.
Chin tilted sideways, the boy’s eyes looked at the ground between them. Then he ran his eyes slowly up the van’s door and fixed them on Fletch’s face.
Doing these simple things the boy gave the impression of complete readiness, to listen or to fight, to laugh or to twist Fletch’s head off.
“Wow,” Fletch said. “Fascinating.”
Fletch was dimly aware of Mortimer stumbling up, yelling his head off.
He tuned Mortimer in. “—G.D. S.O.B.! I told you to stay a state’s length away from me! I told you if you showed up here, I’d shoot you! And Goddamn it, I will!”
So great was Mortimer’s fury that he dropped the shell he was trying to jam into the shotgun.
Another young man, heavily muscled and well over six feet tall and naturally darker than Ricky, stood under a nearby tree, his long arms relaxed at his sides.
Fletch said to him, “How’re ya doin’, Haja?”
“Good,” Haja answered.
Fletch surmised from both boys’ sweaty hair and dusty socks they had been on a long run.
He envied them.
While Mortimer was picking the shotgun shell off the ground, Fletch got out of the van.
“Dreadful lookin’ place you got here,” Fletch said. “It’s a wonder we didn’t give it back to the American natives.”
As Fletch walked straight up to him, Mortimer dropped the shell again. He snapped the empty gun barrel closed. He pointed it at Fletch’s stomach.
“I told that damned woman of yours who answers your phone in Tennessee that if you showed up here I’d blast your head off.”
“Fletch?” Crystal’s voice quivered from the back of the handicap van. “Fletch?”
“She’s not a damned woman,” Fletch said, “and she’s not mine. She does answer the phone, when it rings. And I don’t much appreciate a city foulmouth like you shoutin’ barnyard language at a genuine country lady long distance!”
Fletch Reflected Page 10
