“Tell me.”
He lay back down, thought about it, then told her, letting it all spill out in one long breath, the struggle with the bald thug in the barn, the fight for the gun and it going off, how the man’s face broke out in surprise in a single twitch. He’d coughed blood and had gone slack, and then that had been the end of him.
Francis felt lighter for having told her. He wouldn’t quite call it a confession, knew the thug would surely have killed him, but Francis was still glad to have talked it out, like he’d puked out some poison that had been making him ill.
She didn’t say anything. Just scooted toward him, putting a hand on his chest.
“I don’t think I can get back to sleep,” he whispered.
She kissed him softly on the cheek, her warm lips lingering. She kissed down to his ear, nibbled the lobe.
Emma’s hand drifted lower from Francis’s chest and under the waistband of his boxers. She found him ready. She covered his mouth with hers, and they kissed hard as she worked him. She ducked into the sleeping bag to tug his boxers off.
Her head popped back up, and she said, “Did you buy what I told you? At the last stop for gas?”
He had.
Francis fumbled in the dark for the little paper bag, found it, and opened the box of condoms inside, handed her one. She ripped it open with her teeth, her other hand still on him. She took it out of the package and rolled it down along his length. She pulled him on top of her.
“You get to do the work,” she said.
He was more than happy to oblige.
She was ready and eager, and he glided inside, soon finding a rhythm. Her arms and legs went around him, pulling him into her, nails digging into his back toward the end as their breaths caught and they finished together in a blinding explosion of pleasure.
And Francis had no trouble getting back to sleep.
* * *
Middleton sat on the edge of his bed. He wore black silk pajamas and had sprayed himself with expensive cologne. He’d forgotten the name. Something French. His sat with his head down, elbows resting on his knees, his toes kneading the plush carpet. He felt all tight inside, wound up.
“Ahem.”
He looked up and saw her leaning in the bathroom doorway.
“What’s a girl need to do to get noticed around here?” Meredith teased.
She wore a gown that literally took his breath away. It was a subtle pink held up by two straps and going all the way down to her ankles. But it was fashioned of some gossamer material and hid absolutely nothing. She stood in bare feet, toenails painted red to match her fingernails.
“I’m noticing,” Middleton said. “I promise I’m definitely noticing.”
She crossed the room with a deliberate, almost painful slowness until years later she stood directly in front of him, his knees on either side of her legs. She caressed one of his cheeks with delicate fingers.
“You okay?” Meredith asked. “You seemed distracted when I came in.”
“No,” Middleton said. “I mean … let’s not talk about it.”
They agreed to meet when her workday was done … which was about three hours after everyone else usually knocked off for the day. He’d been waiting for her in the pajamas. Then waited for her to slip into something more comfortable, as they say. But she’d seen it in his face, could read him like a book. The large-print edition of a very simple book.
“We don’t have to talk,” she said.
Good.
He ran his hands down the sides of her body. The gown was so sheer it might as well have been a hologram. She pulled him to his feet, wrapped her arms around his neck, and they kissed. His hands roamed. They kissed harder.
She pulled away, her eyes met his, and a mischievous smile bloomed, a wicked gleam in her eye. Her hands went to the ties on his pajama bottoms, tugged them loose.
Slowly she sank to her knees.
Middleton’s eyes went wide. Yes. Thank you. This was what he needed.
Anything to distract him from his wife. It wasn’t fair. All he’d built, the world he’d created for himself. She was the one who’d decided it wasn’t working between them. She was the one who’d changed when everything had been fine. Why should she make demands, intrude, interfere? Now she was trying to take away what was his. He’d been forced to take drastic steps. He took no pleasure in it. In fact, it made him ill whenever he tried to imagine the gruesome details. No, he would not feel guilty. And yet it ate away at him. The acid in his stomach churned, and all he could do was think about—
“What’s the matter?”
He looked down. In spite of her attentions, Middleton was quite clearly failing to rise to the occasion.
“Oh, I … uh…” Middleton felt his cheeks and ears burn. He began to tug on himself. “Just … wait, I can do it. Just wait.”
“It’s okay.”
“A minute. I just need a minute.” His breath became short, that all-too-familiar panic feeling creeping up on him.
She stood, leaned in, put her cheek against his, her arms going around him. “Shhhhhh. It’s been a long day.” She held on to him. “I’m tired too. Exhausted.”
A sob welled up in him, and it was silly the pride he felt at forcing it back down. That would be too much to break down and cry in her arms. He hugged her back, gratitude flooding him. He hung on to her as if she were a rock in the middle of a raging river.
“Yes,” he agreed. “A long day. A long week.”
She pulled up his pajamas for him, tied them. “These are nice. I like silk.”
“Yes.”
She eased him down onto the bed. He curled, drawing his knees up to his chest. Meredith scooted in next to him, draped an arm over him, and pulled him close. He sighed. She stroked his hair. They stayed like that for a long time. She’d stay as long as he needed her. She’d hold him close to her. Thank God for her. Thank God.
The lights faded ever so slightly. It was the house computer sensing them in bed, lying so still, but without a command to turn off the lights. So it was decreasing the illumination gradually, easing them into the night.
Middleton thought about his father so long ago in hospice. The cancer had left the old man a husk. Middleton was maybe thirteen at the time. He stood at the end of the bed, his mother and uncles and aunts gathered around to watch the light leave the old man’s eyes. We’re here, Arthur, he remembered his mom saying in a hushed tone. We’re all here.
Middleton tried to imagine how it must have looked from inside his father’s head, looking out through his eyes at those gathered to watch his passing. The pain had been so very intense at the end. Arthur Middleton had floated on a cloud of painkillers, his bed a magic carpet that would deliver him to the great beyond.
Middleton lay there, with Meredith nuzzled against him, and watched as the computer house gradually took the light away. Is this what it looked like to his father, the world growing dim slowly and slowly and slowly, easing him finally into total darkness?
He hoped he wouldn’t dream.
* * *
The boat was a distant dream, but she sure was pretty.
Ron Kowolski had finished the fantasy novel he was reading. A pretty good one about a girl with magical tattoos that gave her special powers. Lots of good sword fighting and wizard action. He’d need to hit the library soon for a new stack. He usually gave fantasy novels two chapters, maybe three, to decide if he’d keep reading.
In the meantime, he paged through an issue of Salt Water Fisherman, occasionally glancing up at the security monitors. The other three guards in the blockhouse played Monopoly in the break room.
Ron looked at the magazine ad for the boat with naked longing. At twenty-eight feet long, the Boston Whaler 280 Outrage was perfect. A good size for just him or maybe one other beer-drinking buddy. Twin outboard motors. Yeah, he could see himself out there on the ocean, a cooler of cold beer, reeling in a big one.
Yeah, right. Maybe if a huge sack of cash falls from heaven.
<
br /> He resigned himself to a future of pier fishing.
Ron did his usual scan of the monitors. Nothing around the vineyard or the old house or the big house. Nothing on the roads. All quiet in the land of Richie Rich.
Something on the main gate monitor caught his attention. It looked like a truck or maybe a van, but at this angle, he could see only the tires and lower half. Technically, anything beyond the gate wasn’t Ron’s headache, but he took his job seriously. Nobody should be parked over there.
He reached for that camera’s remote and maneuvered it, the picture on the monitor swinging up to show the rest of the vehicle. It was a van, the phone company’s logo clear on the side. So nothing fishy. A repair truck. This time of night seemed odd to send these guys out, but if Ron Kowolski could get stuck with shitty hours, then so could phone company employees.
He went back to his magazine, drooling again over the Boston Whaler.
26
Francis felt like he was on some bizarre honeymoon.
The old truck ate up the miles west. Francis always drove. Emma never volunteered to take a turn, and Francis didn’t ask her. For her, the long ride seemed like downtime. She talked little, stared out the window at the passing scenery. It wasn’t quite like meditation, but her face seemed peaceful in a way he hadn’t seen before. Sometimes she’d reach across the bench seat and hold his hand for a little while.
At the next gas stop, Emma purchased a bar of soap and a bottle of cheap shampoo. If she had a secret plan to find a shower, she wasn’t sharing. As far as Francis knew, the plan was to camp again. Even if they hadn’t been in hiding, he had the feeling Emma didn’t want to be around people. She also bought cheap hot dogs and buns, a bag of salt-and-vinegar potato chips, a twelve-pack of Coors Light, and a Styrofoam cooler with ice.
They were camping. They were a couple. Everything was good and normal.
But something weighed on her, and it seemed like she was taking a break from it. Part of the odd honeymoon again. She needed to ignore it—whatever the it was—wanted only to enjoy Francis’s company, the wind on her face when she rolled down the truck window, the sights of the mountains and the forests as Colorado turned into Utah.
“I want to stop earlier tonight,” she said. “I don’t want to keep pushing until we collapse. I don’t want to put up the tent in the dark.”
“Okay,” Francis said. “You know a place?”
She did.
They soon found themselves passing through Fishlake National Forest. Again, they avoided the designated camping areas, and Emma directed him to an unmarked dirt road.
“You’ve been here before?”
“Dad took us camping,” she said. “Starting when we were six and eight years old until we were about fifteen. All over. State and national parks, mostly. He said people always wanted to go to Paris or whatever, but we had such great, beautiful places in our own country, and our own people didn’t even know about half of them. I guess my sister got the travel bug from him.”
“Not you?”
She thought a moment, then shrugged.
The narrow road took them through the forest, limbs overhanging the road, possibly a sign the road hadn’t been used in a while. Fine by them. Privacy was what they wanted.
The forest split open to reveal a huge lake glimmering blue before them. The dirt road continued on around the lakeshore to the east, so Francis took the truck off road west, weaving a path between tree trunks, keeping the lake in view out the passenger window. He stashed the truck in a copse of trees, feeling confident it wouldn’t be easily spotted.
He climbed out of the truck, stretched.
Emma did the same. “There’s still plenty of daylight. Let’s get the tent set up.”
Francis stifled a yawn, nodded. “Right.”
He grabbed the big canvas bag from the truck bed and followed Emma to a flat patch of ground she’d designated tent-worthy. They unpacked it, spread it out, and began inserting the thin, flexible poles that would hump the tent up into a dome. By the time Francis had circled the tent, pounding the final stakes into place, he looked up to see Emma gone.
I see how it is. Leave the man to do all the hard work.
But he didn’t mind, really. There was something satisfying about the erect tent, the synthetic fabric pulled tight. Like a well-ironed shirt. Like a properly tied necktie without the thin part hanging down lower than the fat part.
I am a dork.
He shrugged. So be it.
Francis saw her come out from behind the truck. Emma stood completely naked, back straight, white skin brilliant in the sunlight. She held the bar of soap in one hand, the shampoo bottle in the other. She strode toward the lake like some earth goddess, the wilderness seeming to surround her, to make her its center.
He would never get used to her, he realized. She would always be new to him, startlingly beautiful, a puzzle, a fantastic bewilderment.
Emma paused, glanced back at Francis over her shoulder. She nibbled her bottom lip, a wicked gleam in her eye.
Francis dashed for her.
Emma shrieked laughter, running to get to the lake before he could catch her. Francis shed clothing as he went, tossing shoes over his shoulder. He left a trail to the water’s edge.
She splashed in just ahead of him, still laughing. When she was hip deep, she dove in, kicked, and shot below the water and surfaced again ten yards away. Francis jumped in and swam after her, the water cool but not the cold shock he’d feared. They circled and splashed each other, playing like otters.
When the laughter trickled away, they drifted into each other’s arms, kissed, the green world wide and bright around them like they were the only two people on the planet. The made love unhurriedly but directly and without frills simply for the release.
She soaped Francis, then shampooed his hair. He returned the favor, and they emerged from the lake, fresh and clean and wet, and realized they didn’t have towels.
It didn’t matter. Nobody was there to see them, and they went about their business until the air dried them. Francis felt part of some hippie commune as he gathered firewood buck naked. It was with a bit of relief when he dried enough to slip back into jeans and one of Dwayne’s Harley-Davidson T-shirts that Emma had packed for him.
So. Francis wasn’t cut out to be a nudist. Another thing he’d learned about himself.
His eyes slid to Emma, now wearing cutoff denim shorts and a yellow tank top. He smiled and watched her. She was still barefoot, hair damp and slicked back. She squatted on the ground, stacking the firewood in a tepee, a ring of stones making an impromptu fire pit. Emma was delicate with it, placing each stick so as not to disturb the others. Her face was peaceful, focusing on the mundane task, no tension in her, that hardness in her eyes Francis had seen so many times now gone.
She looked up, caught him watching her, and smiled. Not the quirk of lips he knew so well, the wry smile edged with sarcasm. This time it was warm and effortless, and at that moment Francis knew he’d lost himself to her and there was no coming back and that was just fine.
“Go pick your stick,” she told him.
Francis blinked. “Wait. Do what to my stick? Are you saying a rude thing?”
She laughed. “For your hot dog, dink.”
They cooked hot dogs on sticks and ate and drank beer. Francis circled the area one more time for firewood before the sun sank. They built up the fire and drank more beer and talked about the least important things they could think of. Emma told him every knock-knock joke she’d ever heard, and they were all terrible.
Since it was warm, they dragged the sleeping bag out of the tent and lay together looking up at the stars. She took his hand and cradled it to her chest, and a few hours slipped lazily away from them. Unasked questions loomed in their future, would insist upon them in the morning light, but without speaking both agreed to pretend there was no tomorrow. They were tired and buzzed from the beer but fought off sleep for as long as they could.
At la
st they surrendered and dragged the sleeping bag back into the tent, falling down the endless dark hole of sleep, holding on to each other, chests rising and falling as if breathing together, heartbeats in sync.
* * *
They awoke with the light and silently went about the business of breaking camp, a light mist on the lake, dew on the grass. When the truck was packed, they headed back to the dirt road, then eventually to the highway again, resuming the trek west.
Francis couldn’t bring himself to start in on the questions that needed to be asked. His heart wasn’t in it. He felt leaden.
They crossed into Nevada, their green world giving way to brown.
“I’m hungry.” It was the first thing Emma had said in an hour.
It was a little early for lunch, but they hadn’t had any breakfast.
“Okay,” Francis said.
They stopped at a place called the Silver State Restaurant in Ely just off US 50. They sat at the counter. She had a cheeseburger and fries. He had a BLT and a salad. Francis thought maybe now was the time to start asking questions, but they both set about their meals with mechanical determination—bite, chew, swallow, repeat.
Thirty minutes later, they were back in the truck, heading west again.
When they reached the open, dusty nothingness beyond the city limits, Francis said, “I think we need to talk.”
“I know,” Emma said in a small voice. “I know we do.”
“I’m not trying to pressure you about it,” Francis said. “Really, I’m not. It’s just that we’re running out of America. California’s next. I want to know how to help you. I want to know everything.”
She looked out the window, saying nothing. Tumbleweeds and cacti.
“There’s nothing you can say that will change how I feel about you,” Francis said. “We’ve come too far for that. So if you’re afraid, don’t be.”
She looked back at him, face unreadable. “Not here. Not out in the desert.”
“Then where?”
“There’s a place I used to love,” she said. “Do you like doughnuts?”
“Of course,” Francis said. “What am I, a commie?”
“Then that will be our reward,” she said. “I’ll tell you anything you want. We’ll save it all for the end.”
No Good Deed Page 19
