So he’d fixed her breakfast—doughnuts zapped to warm in the microwave, sliced bananas, oranges. Brewed Kona coffee he’d never opened—a gift when his parents had gone to Hawaii a year back, just before Iris was diagnosed with cancer. He shredded his Levi’s for her. Pinned them up the side every two inches with two-inch-long safety pins his mother had bought for him—Now, Henry, you never know when these might come in handy, just put them in a drawer for later. He did that. On the way to the stables they stopped at Mervyn’s for a bra (Jockey, 34B), women’s underpants, plain cotton, white, three pairs of socks, and tennis shoes. Impractical, she insisted, because she could only wear one shoe, obviously. Well, are you going to go to work barefoot? She steered him away from the expensive brands. These here are twice the price, now what’s the good of that, I ask you?
They fit better, he said hopefully. She poked a crutch tip at him and he capitulated. Fine, they’re your feet, get whatever you want. She wouldn’t let him buy any more than that, insisted she’d get her stuff out of the compound eventually, the police couldn’t keep her clothes, could they? Maybe they could. Nevertheless, he noted her sizes in the blank pages of his Week at a Glance while her back was turned at the register. Never again would he be stuck clueless as to what kind or size of underwear she wore, jail, bail, or upcoming court date, when in all probability she would require a decent dress, stockings, good shoes, the whole nine yards.
She was coated with a light layer of dust by afternoon. When a nasty-looking Appaloosa got out of hand and sidestepped the foot-and-a-half-high jump a little girl asked him to take, Chloe signaled them both to the center of the ring. Immediately the horse started shaking, from mule ears down to horseshoes, penitent, but Chloe wasn’t buying the routine. After holding the reins of the criminal and seeing the rider safely to the ground, she pulled herself right up onto his back with her arms. That took decent upper body strength, more than he had. Her wrapped cast stuck out comically but no one laughed. While she ordered the beast through his paces, insisting he back up, turn every which way, and execute a few jumps to her liking, it seemed as if the whole stables ground to a halt to watch her. The cast didn’t trouble her much. She rode the rangy little horse out of his nasty mood, never using the riding crop once, but Hank could tell the horse never forgot for an instant that it was in her hand. After a dozen circles the fractious horse began to move fluidly, and the two of them reached for each gait as one unit. Pure grace flowed from the canter, where before the rank attitude had kept it choppy. Beneath her, muscles stretched and rocked slinkily, as if set free. She collected the reins and sat back in the saddle and they came to a smooth halt, not a misstep or stumble. At Hank’s side, Kit mumbled, “See that? A leg in each corner,” then turned and hurried off. Chloe reached down to pat the horse’s neck and spoke in his ear. Only when faced with her dismount did she look around uncertainly. Hank slid under the fence and went to her, caught her in his arms, and helped her to the ground.
“Downright gallant,” she whispered into his ear. “You trying to get all these little girls to fall in love with you?”
“I wouldn’t say no to some intense affection.”
She gave him a playful smack; then he was ordered back to the fence. More girls in tight pants. So many perfect bottoms in one place. All those well-developed leg muscles. Something he could tell Asa come Monday.
When dusk fell and the bridles and saddles had been scrubbed down, dried, polished to Chloe’s standards, and set away into the sheds on their individual racks, she was finally finished with her workday. He watched her tally up checks and cash, enter them into her ledger—a pink spiral-bound notebook with considerable water damage rippling the pages—deduct 10 percent of her take and put that into an envelope for the stable owners. He could read upside down; she wasn’t in the red, but within a hairbreadth of breaking even.
“Why do you do this?”
“What do you mean?”
“There are easier ways to get along. Why not learn to type and go be someone’s secretary?”
“This is honest work. Here I get to be my own boss. I hate typewriters.”
“It’s backbreaking work.”
“Which I happen to be pretty good at. I have to put this envelope in the safe up at the barn,” she said. “On the way, you maybe want to meet my horse? Or are you too tired? God, I’m sorry, you probably aren’t used to this. We can go.”
“No, no. I’m fine.” His bones were lead weights surrounded by damp tissue paper. Windburned and gritty, he’d undertake the Boston marathon rather than wimp out on her now. “Lead the way. As long as your leg’s up to it, I’m game.”
“Well, the check has to be delivered.”
They drove the Honda partway up the dirt road.
“Pull over here and stop.”
She took him to stall 72, in what she explained was the breezeway barn, a corrugated metal roof covering twenty-four stalls on each side. The upside of horsetown. Here the pens were roomier; a horse could trot around a little, roll over, lie down. The horses each had individual feeders filled up with green chunks of compressed hay. They shared a watering device that swiveled between the bars and filled with fresh water when a tongue pressed a metal bar in the center. In the lower stalls he’d seen filled trash cans with thin scummy coatings of moss on the surface. The horses didn’t seem to mind. He watched her unlatch the gate and slip inside. The horse dropped his nose once to give her a nod, made a low noise in his throat that sounded more like a grumble of pleasure than a warning, then continued eating.
“He doesn’t sound as if he wants to be disturbed.”
“That’s just saying hello.” She shut her eyes and put her arms over his neck, whose arched crest sported a shining black mane. He watched her trace the muscles in his neck down to his wide breast with fingertips, as if she were reading him like Braille. The horse lifted his massive head from the feeder and nuzzled her neck, dropping mangled bits of hay onto the sweatshirt, down her neck, and throughout her hair. She shivered. The smile that covered her face left him in awe. Hank had seen Chloe grin, bark a short laugh now and again, cry out in passion, and once in his car wail in grief and rage, but then only briefly, and immediately postscript it with a stammer of apology. She’d wept into his pillows over a dog she couldn’t speak of directly when the sun rose. But right here there was history, intimacy, relationship. Nothing he’d done in the nine weeks they’d been together came close to this. Not pay her bail, buy her tennis shoes, or bring her to climax.
“What’s her name?”
“He. Absalom.”
“Like the Faulkner novel?”
“Guess so. I didn’t name him.”
“Who did?”
A jet from the marine base passing overhead rattled the corrugated aluminum roof. Chloe waited until it was gone before she answered.
“A man.” Her voice was soft, tentative.
“Who was he?”
“His name was Fats Valentine.” She pointed to the small heart on the animal’s upper rear leg. Whereas he was an otherwise unbroken dark brown—bay, Chloe informed him—this heart consisted of whitish hairs fixed somewhat lopsided, as if he’d resisted the tattoo. “See here? His freeze-brand? The little heart. All Fats’ horses had them. Have them,” she corrected herself. “He’s dead now, but there’s still some horses.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. He broke and trained Ab, and when I got the money together, I bought him. I wish I had a cigarette. Don’t suppose you’d spring for the cigarette machine?”
“I might. Be nice to me.”
“I’m nice to you, goddammit.”
“He’s a lovely animal.”
She brightened. “He is, isn’t he? He has a great heart. He would jump off a cliff if I asked him, give up his life in an instant. Funny thing is, I might have to put him down.”
“Down?”
“You know, down, mercy killing.”
“Why?”
“His legs. He has navicula
r disease pretty bad. And a horse that can’t work for his board, well, let’s just say it’s impractical to feed him.”
Hank put his hand through the bars meaning to pet the doomed horse, but got his fingers nipped for the effort. “Hey! That hurt.” He rubbed his fingers, feeling for broken skin.
“I tell them not to, but the stable brats feed him sugar cubes. They all think he’s Black Beauty reincarnated. He thought you might have a goody for him. Carrots for fingers.” She reached for the injured finger and gave it a kiss.
“Your animals don’t seem to like me.” Christ, Hannah. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring that up.”
She slipped back out and latched the gate. “Don’t even worry about it. Maybe she’ll survive the highway. Maybe she’ll be back. You want to go eat?”
That was supposed to be his line. All day he’d had visions—quiet dinner, a glass of wine, scenic drive through the hills while the sun set—a bit late for that now. Finish up in his bedroom where he would try his best to cheer up her flesh and relieve his own pressures—all of which she managed to skew, quite naturally, in her own straightforward, rather unremarkable way of stating the obvious. “You’ve been on your feet for hours. Maybe you’d rather pick something up and take it back with us.”
“Sure, grab a hamburger, whatever you want.”
He drove down the canyon highway and took the turnoff toward Hughville. At first Chloe didn’t seem to notice, then she sat upright. “Where are we going, Hank?”
“Just a drive by. No one can arrest us for that.”
She slid down in the seat. “This is stupid. Even I know better than this.”
He made the left toward the compound, then saw the sheriff’s sawhorses, the yellow tape. He waved to the deputy who turned around at his headlights, made a U-turn and edged back onto the narrow road.
“What did you see?” she asked.
“Nothing that would help.” He reached for her shoulder. “You like onions and pickles on your hamburger?”
“Whatever. I’m not that hungry.”
Not hungry enough to eat all her sandwich and half of his, a cup of potato salad, both dill pickles, and sigh as she bit into one of the half-dozen croissants he’d bought for morning. So what. She’d worked hard enough to afford the calories. Most women he’d dated picked at food as if it were unseemly to have an appetite; required behavior to waste a twenty-dollar entrée so long as they weren’t paying.
With the aid of the cowboy’s cane she managed the stairs all by herself, though it took nearly ten minutes. When she got to the top, she voiced doubt about getting down unassisted. “Up is okay. Up I can handle. Maybe I need glasses. Downstairs just looks so damn far away from up here. And steep.”
“Try it right now if you want to. I’ll spot you all the way down in case you lose your footing.”
There on the carpeted landing she shook her head and stripped off her dusty clothes, let them drop, and held out her arms. “You are such a polite man, Henry Oliver. It’s a wonder you ever get laid.”
Lame horse, lost dog, court case pending, she gave up all her worries in his bed, let him investigate her body like a kid playing detective. “You smell wonderful.”
“I smell like a team of mules. I wish you’d at least let me get up and brush my teeth.”
“Not a chance.” He held back, kissing conventional places in utterly conventional ways, prolonging the instant when their bodies would shift into high gear from this humming idle. He ran his hands down her belly and legs, stopping at the top of the cast, fingering the fiberglass where her knee stopped and the mending apparatus began. One, two, three fractures. He hefted the weight of it in his hand. “Does it hurt?”
“What?”
“I’m curious. I never made love to a woman with a broken bone.”
“But you’re going to.”
He smiled. “I am.”
She rubbed her palm across his chin. “When you do all that other stuff I can’t even feel it.”
“But otherwise—it hurts?”
For a moment her face clouded. “Yeah, like somebody shot me.”
“All day?”
She nodded.
“Well, Christ, why didn’t you say so? I had the prescription for your pain pills filled.”
“I like a clear head when I’m working. Horses are stupid, but they outweigh me. No sense in giving them an advantage.”
He leaned against her, resting his head on her shoulder. “If I were in your position I’d be outraged. But you just turn a little to the left and keep on going. I can’t quite fathom it.”
She ran her knuckles across his cheek. He could feel a day’s worth of whiskers bristle under her fingers. “Much as I hate to own up to it, I’m pretty fair at handling trouble. I’ve had a lifetime to get used to that. Orangewood, foster parents. All that stuff.”
“But jail?”
“Maybe they’ll drop the whole thing. Slap Hugh with six more fines and forget about me. What good’s it do me to worry? Still have to pay my bills. Keep on working. Head down and all that. Believe me, I’ve been through worse than this.”
“No to the pill, then?”
She smiled, but it was a tired smile. “No. If I can’t brush my teeth, I guess it’s just yes to you.”
He stood up and took a long look at her lying naked on his bed. She didn’t grab for the sheets or turn her face away in shyness. He knelt at the bedside and reached for her, beginning at her feet and moving north, became distracted by the V of her pubic hair, the neat way he could cup the entire area in his palm, how it fit as if made to be framed in his hand. With his thumbs, he parted the two halves and bent his face down to taste her there, felt her hands reach down to push him away, mutter an argument about washing up. He grabbed her wrists, thin for such a strong woman, pinned them both in his right hand and anchored himself across her; she couldn’t move. “Hank, don’t.”
He lifted his face. “You like it.”
“Sometimes I do, but not right now.”
Her wrists pressed against his fingers, then slackened. He felt her pulse fluttering and loosened his grip a little, but kept his mouth on her, decisively exploring.
“Hank. Hank, come on.”
He kept on; she quit fighting. Now he was sure she was content to hold on for the ride. He worked his tongue over her flesh in earnest, exploring and rolling the inner folds between his lips, lightly tapping the clitoris with the tip of his tongue. When her breathing quickened, her whole body focused into a singular taut muscle ending between her legs. It was difficult not to move over her, enter the tight, damp passage roughly when he felt her so ready, arching up to meet him. This time he wanted to take her this way, all the way to orgasm, under his control, guided by his moves. He pressed his tongue in deeper, and felt her squirm beneath him. Didn’t like that, couldn’t move away. His hand was a lock, the cast a weight. She was beginning to like it, in spite of any misgivings. He tried different rhythms, assorted movements, cataloging the cries she made—whimpers, begging, gasps, low throaty grunts that echoed a sympathetic ache in his balls.
“Hank,” she cried, but he wouldn’t stop, not until he found a way to move his tongue that sent her stiff-legged and arched, suspended into another dimension where horses ran soundly and lost dogs were found, and money—Christ, what was money when you had this? Nothing, nothing at all, nothing. When she came, the cry was just the beginning, the sound of a clay bell, an O tone so pure he wanted to stop and listen. It ran slipshod over his pretentious decorating, spoke volumes to the newlywed neighbors who were probably simmering in another unpleasant aftermath. He lifted his damp mouth and smiled; she was in tears.
Hank reeled himself in and moved up the mattress to lie next to her. In the windowlight he could see the small rosy rash erupt on her upper chest. The accomplishment made him feel stupidly proud. Spots he planted; he owned her for however brief a time that might be. He slid his swollen cock inside her. So tight, so wet, he moved only once, possibly half that again,
before giving up the gentleman’s notion of trying to hold back and didn’t apologize for any of it—the small hurt it caused or the haste.
Sometime later, she found her voice. “Wasn’t fair.”
“Tell me you didn’t like it.”
Her damp cheek turned away from his face.
“I heard you come. What I did sent you someplace else, somewhere far away.”
After a minute she said, “Maybe I wasn’t ready to go there. You could have asked me before you went ahead and bought me that one-way ticket. What you did, Hank. Some people might put a nasty name to it. You might have listened to me.”
He gave it some thought under his allocation of sheet. Knew better than to touch her now. “I won’t let things get out of hand again, I promise.”
She wiped her face. “Could you get me a washcloth?”
“Sure.” He pulled out of her. In the bathroom he switched on the light and took clean towels from the cupboard beneath the sink. He ran the faucet over one and glanced up at his sorry face in the mirror. A streak of blood swathed his cheek and stained his mustache. He touched the drying blood as if it were warpaint, some kind of ancient initiation rite in a flush of male pride. But he’d paid a high price for it when the animal had gone cold beneath his knife. He splashed his face and rinsed the towel under the faucet until the water ran clear. Well, she wasn’t pregnant, and she sounded as if she might forgive him. When he opened the door and the light arced out in the bedroom, he was surprised she was still there in his bed.
“I had this crazy idea you might leave me.”
She stubbed out one of her cigarettes into a saucer on the night table. “Where would I go?”
CHAPTER
15
I hope you’re practicing safe sex with that goofy teacher,” Kit said, mining ice with her straw for the dregs of her Diet Cherry Coke. “But why anyone would voluntarily allow one of those fossilized hunks of dinosaur caca to pork them is beyond me.”
Hank & Chloe Page 17
